Back on the Bullingdon

Bullingdon season started last week, but off to a bad start when I lost the apostrophe on my telephone, that is to say on its virtual keyboard. I was absolutely sure it had gone missing, but when I backed out and started again there it was. Clearly either Cortana or I had been having a senior moment.

No improvement when I got to the ramp at Waterloo, say around noon, to find just one Bullingdon there, taking in all three stands. Luckily, by the time that I had found out that this one Bullingdon was out of service, somebody had turned up and deposited one that was clearly in service.

So on the road to Roscoe Street, to find Stamford Street as busy as last time, with the added attraction of an older Bullingdon rider, short gray, grizzled hair and no helmet, who had a very aggressive style at traffic lights and such. All perfectly legal, within the letter of the highway code, but aggressive. Perhaps a chap who needed to prove how fit he was. Took the last vacant slot at Roscoe Street. Perhaps management is having to cut corners, costs or both.

I didn't recognise the fruit & veg. man at Whitecross Street and he had no walnuts, so that was not much good either. But the thin waitresses had returned to the Market Restaurant (café no more, see reference 1), although one of them had metamorphosed from brunette to blonde. Still both from the same country though as they could natter to each other in foreign. Bacon sandwich satisfactory, right bread but a little stale.

St. Luke's more or less full for this opening concert of the season, with people without tickets being sent up to the balcony. Not tried it, but I think I would prefer where I was, downstairs towards the back of the front block of seats.

The Škampa String Quartet were standing in at short notice, which may be the reason we got Janáček's Kreutzer Sonata, a work which they knew well, since their student days with the Smetana Quartet. Both that and Smetana's String Quartet No.1 were very good, with the Kreutzer sounding as fresh and new as if I had never heard it before, which was not the case. See, for example, reference 2.

One connection with the Tolstoy story of the same name, was the passion, with Janáček, as an old man, having an unconsummated passion for the very young wife of someone else. I was slightly puzzled by both the programme and the producer talking of alleged adultery in the story, while I had thought that there was no question about it at all. Checking quickly yesterday, I think the story is that while the husband did not have proof, he had strong grounds for suspicion. So perhaps part of the point of the story is that he could not have been sure. Perhaps also a reading which will not survive the more careful reading to come.

The quartet's seating plan was violin 1, violin 2, cello, viola, with the cello taking the piano stool. And at one point violin 1 stood to turn the page, from in front of the stand, of viola opposite, something I have never seen before. The stringing of the cello was new to me in that the tail piece was cut diagonally. Was the idea to have strings of equal length, something a conventional stringing would not give? Google not help on this occasion, so I shall have to ask next time I pass a violin shop, of which there are a few about in London.

Quick refreshment in the 'Masque Haunt', then picked up the second Bullingdon at Old Street. Having taken wine, I chickened out of the Old Street roundabout and walked the Bullingdon across the road. Cheated further by walking it around the irritating no left turn from Clerkenwell Road into Farringdon Road. Otherwise without incident, apart from noticing one again that I no longer find the shiny black office block at the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge as exciting as I did when it was new. Whatever it was that it had has largely, although not entirely, worn off.

Quick call at Konditor & Cook where I fell for the four for a tenner offer. So four slices of a sort of lemon tart, an almond and continental version of our own lemon drizzle cake. Very nice they were too, if more substantial than they looked. BH said that that was down to their involving almond as well as or instead of regular flour.

Arrived at Waterloo in between trains, so wound up the proceedings with a glass of Lofthouse, a NZ sauvignon blanc, from the wine bar at platform 1, the gewürztraminer which they had offered in the past having gone off-piste. Not sure about the year, but rather good; maybe I shall make enquiries at Majestic. See reference 3.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/henry-iv-part-i-part-i.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/endellions.html.

Reference 3: http://www.lofthousewine.co.nz/Lofthouse-Vineyard-Our-Wine-__I.96.