A week or so ago it was time to top up with cheese, so off to London Town. A warm enough day, but I thought with an outside lunch in the offing, probably best to be comfortable with cardigan, jacket etc. Which turned out to be the right move.
Got to Epsom Station just as a young man arrived with his electric scooter, complete with young lady riding pillion (as it were), to give the inoffensive ticket machine some serious verbal abuse. No idea what the problem was, beyond thinking that it was most likely him.
Then onto the station where the planter on the country end of platform 3/4 needed a bit of care and attention. One might have thought that in the absence of passengers that someone on the staff would have attended to it, but no. I associated to Stoneleigh station where, when we first arrived at Epsom more than thirty years ago now, there were still full-on flower beds. Perhaps it was still British Rail with their equivalent of resident park keepers.
Puffed a bit on the short hop from Waterloo to Drury Lane, but I was rewarded by a fine skip between there and the cheese shop. Plenty of whole bricks which, being old, would probably have been quite easy to clean. Sadly too far from home to be able to take advantage of it.
Pushed the boat out a bit at the cheese shop, only my second visit since the start of the second lockdown, and as well as my regular Lincolnshire Poacher, took a small piece of Red Leicester as well, Double Gloucester not being available. It was intended for BH, but I did get to have some as well, and it made a pleasant change. I remembered about foreign dye being involved, and checking back I find that this was probably the first time since an early visit to Neal's Yard Dairy, back in 2016, noticed at reference 1.
I thought to use the Brewmaster house next to the tube entrance in Cranbourn Street, but the English of the young lady guarding the entrance was not up to dealing with the fact that my telephone was not up to track and trace. I moved onto to the 'Garrick' nearly next door to the 'Garrick' theatre, where the English of the young man guarding the entrance was up to it and in fairly short order I had a glass of white, actually a pale yellow. I was impressed by the screens that kept the sheep from the goats: some enterprising joinery company had done quite a good job, neat and serviceable.
And so onto Aquavit, last visited in the course of the last expedition a couple of weeks previous, noticed at reference 2. Some conversation was provided by the pick-me-up snapped above, with the verdict on the day being that it was used for fixing car aerials to cars. But looking at it now, it seems entirely obvious that it is some kind of light weight masonry bolt: you hammer the thing in, the wedge bottom right drives into the shaft, spreading it out to provide the fix. How did we get onto car aerials?
Went for a different meal with different wine than on the last occasion, although I did stick with the mixed Swedish breads, served with the interestingly smoked fish flavoured creamed butter. Something called 'Beef Rydberg' and a 2018 Riesling Grand Cru 'Rosacker', Cave de Hunawihr, Alsace. Both very good. Pushed the boat out again with a spot of 'Rhubarb parfait'. A bit fussy and complicated, but rather good just the same, with the only problem being some rather chewy rhubarb getting stuck between two of my front teeth.
Amused by a chap of working age sitting nearby who spent our entire time working his telephone and laptop while consuming one cup of coffee. The staff didn't seem to mind.
On the other hand, not best pleased to find this afternoon that the same wine could be had from a shed in Ramsgate at £108.66 for six bottles, nearly four times per bottle more than I paid - which I think is a bit greedy. The rule of three is fair enough for cheaper wine, but I do object to four for (what for me is) dearer wine.
Out through the rather sad looking Royal Opera Arcade, where one otherwise empty shop window was full of dead flies and this shop floor had clearly been well worked over in its time - and quite neatly put back together again. Would look well enough sanded down and repainted or revarnished.
No.1 Whitehall Place looking rather better. But according to reference 3 a prestige venue with lots of fancy rooms inside. Must take a closer look next time I go by.
Used the facilities in a moderately smart hotel at the bottom of Northumberland Avenue but failed to find a bar that appealed so headed up the steps onto Hungerford Bridge (upstream), to be impressed by the facility of a youth nipping up the stairs on his in-lines. He explained that it did take a bit of practise but was not as hard as it might look.
Onto Waterloo and onto the train, taking a break at the 'Half Way House' at Earlsfield for the first time for quite a while. Wine was available, but sadly their rather good, US-style bacon sandwiches had been removed from the menu. Not that food was available at this particular time of day anyway. Just as well that I didn't actually want one at that point.
Plenty of cars whizzing by, but no scoring number, for which I had to wait until rather more recently, and already noticed at reference 4. And I reminisced about the days when there was quite a decent secondhand bookshop next to the station, run by a chap who liked his cricket and liked his fag out the back. While I might have taken a half corona on the smoking terrace of the 'Half Way House', by this time occupied by bright young things hoping to eat later - and who might well get quite cross if one started puffing.
All of which was followed by the first visit to the Raynes Park platform library for a while, where I did quite well. One of those pretentious looking magazines which are actually a vehicle for advertisements for pricey goods and services. But they seem to take themselves quite seriously at reference 5, so perhaps I should take another look when I am fresh. Then we had 'Where the bong tree grows – James Ullman – 1963' a tale of travel in the south sea islands. Just the thing for BH who likes the similar books produced by Paul Theroux. And then 'Proud destiny – Lion Feuchtwanger – 1948', a historical novel, I think about the French getting their own back for the Seven Years War by helping the US to their independence, which they would otherwise have taken rather longer to achieve.
Feuchtwanger was well known in Weimar Germany as the author of 'Jud Süß' (The Jew Suss), presumably about the 18th century banker of that name who came to a rather shabby end in 1738. A story subsequently made into an anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda film in 1940, while Feuchtwanger had left Germany for France in 1933, just managing to sail from France for New York in 1940 or 1941.
Along the way he stayed at Sanary-sur-Mer, where the arty colony included lots of German exiles and had once included Aldous Huxley.
At last but not least the first two and the last two pages of a number of the 'Brixton Review of Books', which appears to be a vehicle for wannabee writers. Not dear, but probably not my kind of thing. But see for yourself at reference 6.
PS 1: checking the sale of British Rail, I find that it happened a few years after we arrived, in the mid 1990's. As an Old Labour person, it was not a sale I approved of at the time, but thirty years on, while I still don't like it, I am less doctrinaire about such things than I used to be. That said, breaking it up into a national network plus a flock of regional operators does seem like a complicated way to have done things on a small island.
PS 2: while checking up on my wine from Aquavit, I found that I could have spent near £700 on a bottle of champagne. Not something that I am very likely to do, although I dare say I would like it well enough if someone else was buying enough of the stuff to enjoy it properly. The half glass they give you at weddings not being my thing either.
Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/04/beamer.html.
Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-hunt-for-two-seas.html.
Reference 3: https://prestigiousvenues.com/venue/one-whitehall-place.
Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/no34.html.
Reference 5: https://monocle.com/.
Reference 6: https://www.brixtonreviewofbooks.net/.
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