Bread and cheese

One of the smaller things wrong with the modern world is that, despite the amount of time and energy expended by and on behalf of foodies, it is quite difficult to get decent bread and cheese - or even cheese and biscuits (rather easier, with biscuits being products which stand fairly well) - in public places.

The bread on offer is usually poor, that noticed at reference 1 being a rare & honourable exception.

The biscuits are usually over complicated, with something sensible, simple & suitable like Jacob's Cream Crackers not usually being an option.

The cheese varies, is often quite good, but is often marred either by being served direct from the refrigerator or by being served in far too large a quantity. I don't need fattening up, particularly at the end of an already fattening meal. Nor do I need variety, to mix up all kinds of different flavours on the palette: one piece of good cheese is quite enough - so choice from the menu good, variety on the plate bad.

A different sort of problem is the difficulty cooks have serving cheese without all kinds of stuff: fruit, vegetables, crisps, pickles - the list goes on. They do not seem to be able to restrain the urge to try to tell the world how creative they are.

So on Sunday we put our local 'Marquis of Granby' to the test, this being the pub which once served the finest hot sausage rolls - sausage rolls made with quite decent white rolls and very decent pork sausages from the late lamented Porky White - by asking for bread and cheese for dessert, to be served without any trimmings.

Given the lack of warning, they rose to the occasion rather well. Two or three large wedges of a quite acceptable cheddar cheese, perhaps a total of a couple of ounces - so more than I wanted, but not grossly more. And not refrigerated. Then several pieces of warm toast, made from white bread which looked to have come from a small bloomer of some sort. Presumably toasted because the bread was either of poor quality in the first place or stale or both. Then several small, rectangular brown biscuits, complete with red bits - red bits which might have been cranberries, a fruit which has managed to acquire healthy associations despite its rather odd taste and despite its being bad for my warfarin, but which last problem I had taken on enough white wine to ignore. The sort of biscuits which can probably be bought at reference 2. And no trimmings whatsoever.

Towards the end of a Sunday lunchtime shift, I thought that this was a valiant and imaginative effort.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/winters-tale.html.

Reference 2: http://www.granarydeli.co.uk/.

A surprise

Following a morning with retinas according to Richard H. Masland, we moved on at lunch time to the workings of GPS systems.

It seems that without my having thought about it at all, the GPS system inside a fancy watch is now good to less than 5 metres. My suggestion was that this must be down to the watch being able to detect from what direction a satellite signal is coming from, rather in the way of the radio receivers of my youth which were fitted with rotating bar aerials and which were used for the off-shore navigation of small boats - by triangulating on three coastal transmitters, rather in the way of Captain Cook with his three stars, astronomical tables, sextant and chronometer.

However, later perusal of wikipedia (see reference 1) says that I was quite wrong. What actually happens is that each GPS satellite transmits suitable time and position signals, from which, with the aid of its chronometer, the receiver can compute the distance of the satellite. Given four such satellites, it can then triangulate its own position.

Which, according to the back of my envelope means being able to inspect radio signals in time intervals of the order of 1,000th of a second. Which sounds quite impressive to me.

The considerable costs of all this were paid for in the first instance, according to wikipedia, by cold war imperatives. But which later turned into a gift from the USA to the rest of the world.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System.

Tartt failure

Have now had a go at the goldfinch noticed at reference 1, reading maybe a dozen of Donna Tartt's 864 pages, noting on the way that, in the opinion of the 'Daily Mail', the book 'really does grip from the first page'. Another titbit that I had not noticed when buying the book was that it was the No.1 international best seller, shortlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction 2014. A prize I had not come across before, but seemingly in the gift of the people that sell chocolate flavoured sherry. See reference 2.

These accolades notwithstanding, I could not get underway. I thought I was after about half a dozen pages, I thought that I was motoring, but stalled again a few pages later. Don't know what is wrong with it or with me, but life is far too short these days to find out. Back to Rambaud instead, of whom more in due course.

I don't suppose the junk shop on Garrett Lane does refunds, so the book now on its way to the big skip set aside for such purposes outside the outsize Sainsbury's at Kiln Lane. A Tier 1 shop with Tier 1 facilities, excepting here the piggy bank machine on which they charge 7% commission. Not Tier 1 to my mind at all. See reference 3.

PS: not a complete waste of space as I have learned that the painter of the goldfinch, Carel Fabritius, died in the explosion in Delft which Vermeer carefully avoided a few years later when he painted his view of the town.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/goldfinch.html.

Reference 2: http://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/piggy-bank-machines.html.

More tuition

On a whim, thought last week to have another go at the lecture recital, a form of entertainment first tried a bit more than a year ago and noticed at reference 1. On that occasion I was rather pleased with my day.

I knew more or less nothing about either Berg or his Lyric Suite, but for some reason the item in the calendar attracted me. Perhaps there was a hole in my calendar or perhaps I was get muddled up with or associated to his fellow central European and contemporary Bartók.

The day itself started off badly, it being rather wet and, for once in a very long while, there being a blogger outage, with google's blogger software being offline for an hour or more. Perhaps the occasion of the same sort of massive kerfuffle in the google HQ as we used to go in for for what we used to call Sev.1 incidents. Sufficiently wet that I used the tube rather than pulling a Bullingdon. Rain is OK for the regular cyclist, but not for the hobbyist.

A little time in hand so I was able to pay a visit to the violin shop in Mortimer Street (see reference 2) to enquire about the odd cello stringing, with diagonal attachment of the strings to the tail. noticed at reference 3. The chap in the shop was entirely happy to talk about this, although he had no personal experience of such a thing. He explained that the sound of the string depended to an appreciable extent on the length of string between the anchorage point on the tail and the bridge and that it was entirely possibly that a cellist would prefer the tones obtained from such a diagonal arrangement. He pointed out that other musicians got excited by the precise way that the pegs at the other end were cut, or perhaps hollowed out, which also made a difference which was appreciable to the trained ear.

Thus informed I took my second breakfast in a sandwich bar, possibly Avella's, in the right place but not looking quite right in streetview, a place where they were quite full of themselves, their drinks and their sandwiches. I took a small and expensive creation including a brown roll, some chicken, some brie and some very familiar flavouring which I could not name. Which last was irritating - and I did not like to ask - but the sandwich was very good. Brown roll unusually good too, chewy but not too chewy and without the filling-smashing crust in the way of the stuff you get from Paul.

Onto the Wigmore for, unusually for me, the house only about half full. And while the suite turned out to be interesting - particularly with the last movement being sung as well as played - and the lecture could have been interesting, I did not care for the platform style of the lecturer, one Gavin Plumley. All a bit too full of himself, too smug, not to say plummy, for me.

It turns out that Berg was very into letterology, numerology and musical jokes with this piece being littered with elaborate letter and number games. To the point that one started seeing things which were perhaps not really there. I recalled that Bach, to name just one, was very into much the same sort of thing and it also struck me that it was entirely appropriate that the piece was roughly contemporary with Joyce's Ulysses, with Joyce being another chap fond of such games. I associate to the claim I once read that Leopold's big day out in Dublin traces a big question mark on the map - a claim I have never bothered to check. Another angle was that Berg went in for a complicated personal life so as to have something to bang on about in his music. He arranged his life so as to generate copy, rather as a diarist or a blogger might.

We went Persian for a good lunch at the galleria of reference 4. Including glasses of a drink said to involve lemon and sherbet, which was rather good, if tasting more like lemon barley water than lemon sherbets. I associated to the sherbets one comes across in novels and stories about the middle east, with my understanding being that sherbet drinks are all over the place, in the absence of alcohol. The restaurant, however, did do alcohol, so I had the best of both worlds. All in all, a much better meal than that noticed at reference 5, perhaps because I managed to avoid the dried limes, of which Persians are said to be fond but which I find far too sour. Managed to avoid without remembering what they were called - that took a quick google this morning.

PS: the day involved two time outs. One in Epsom, where I found that Wetherspoons first thing in the morning was a perfectly comfortable place in which to wait for quarter an hour or so - for the price of one of their fine selection of non-alcoholic drinks. Quite a sprinkling of people, either at breakfast or at the same game as myself. The other at Waterloo, where I went along to the upstairs bar, then closed, of the Festival Hall, where again I found quite a sprinkling of people. Some doing their homework on their laptops, some using the place for meetings. Some just with a bit of time to kill, like myself. One lady using it as neutral ground in which to try to make contact with someone - possibly more or less homeless - whom someone else was trying to trace and on whose behalf the lady was trying to mediate. It all sounded, from a distance, very careful & caring. Not a job that I would care for - or be any good at. I would not have the patience to grind the same old stuff over and over with the same person. And then the next person. And then the next.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/tuition.html.

Reference 2: http://guivier.com/.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/back-on-bullingdon.html.

Reference 4: http://www.galleriarestaurant.co.uk/.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-end.html.

Red and yellow

This snap of the red and yellow in the privy garden gives something of the flavour. But, as ever, you have to really be there to get the full flavour.

Oddly, the do not walk on the grass signs were mostly missing and some of the foreign tourists were taking advantage. Perhaps an experiment to see how it goes.

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Tulips

A snap of the spectacular tulips.

Playing the Japanese tree gazing game under one of the trees in the background, we noticed a surprising amount of mistletoe. But then, these days, we even get the stuff here in Epsom.

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Entertainments

Last week to Hampton Court to inspect the royal beans and to sample the magic garden.

Parked in the station car-park which was quieter than expected on this fine sunny morning and which is a lot cheaper than parking in the Palace proper. With the added bonus that we noticed a rowing boat on the river and thought to go rowing ourselves. As it turned out the hire boats were blue fibre glass replicas of the brown wooden skiffs of yesteryear, while the brown skiff which we had seen hailed from the Ditton skiff and punting club, a hundred yards or so downstream of the bridge, Surrey side. Brown skiffs so wooden that they have elaborate wooden thole pins rather than the usual steel swivels. And this morning I was rather surprised to read at reference 1 that people really do punt in this part of the Thames - which I would have thought was a bit deep. Maybe it is wise to hug the bank.

Hands getting soft these days, but just about got away with an hour's rowing. One paddle steamer with propeller assistance. One large barge with outsize anchors under the bows, painted a bright yellow. The anchors looked big enough to hold a full sized ship, but a crewman claimed that they really were needed when one wanted to stop two or three hundred tons of barge in a hurry. Not convinced at all, particularly since there was a matching propeller mounted on the poop.

Next stop the Royal Cabbage Patch, where I was pleased to see a decent size broad bean patch, successively planted, as is proper. A touch of broad bean nostalgia, it getting on for ten years now since I packed them in. See reference 2.

After which we made it to the fairly newly open Magic Garden, fairly full with happy young families this warm & sunny Sunday morning. A Magic Garden which turned out to be very tasteful; the finest children's playground that money could buy; the sort if thing, I imagine, that the likes of the Beckhams are apt to have put up at the back of their country houses. Perhaps not Abromovitch who, as far as I am aware, does not go in for family life. I suspect a fair amount of maintenance work will be needed to keep the place up to the mark, so it will be interesting to see how well it wears. I dare say that it will prove a useful addition to the take at the Hampton Court Experience, but I remain a bit uneasy, being more comfortable with a good wide strip of blue water between Merlin Entertainments and Historic Royal Palaces.

Lunched at the café in what had been the kitchen area of the palace in Tudor times. Pie and pease pudding followed by a slice of something called Elizabeth cake, this last with a yellow fruit jelly in the middle rather than the raspberry jam more usual these days. All very good.

Lots of blossom in the wilderness: chestnut, lilac and ornamental fruit trees.

Laburnum arch (illustrated) not as good as it had been on previous years because a fair bit of it had been replanted in the course of the last couple of years. Few more years to go before they are full on again.

Spectacular tulips in the beds along the semicircular path between the east front and the long water. New avenue along the long water coming along well. Pudding trees looking well in the bright sun. Privy garden with all its greens touched up with red and yellow. All in all a splendid day for such a place.

Aeroplanes slightly puzzling in that there was lots of take off but no landing. It is not as if they have just the one runway at Heathrow and have to take it in turns.

Reference 1: http://dittons.org.uk/.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=broad+bean+campaign.

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