Failed to score any points at Earlsfield on the way out, but, having decided not to Bullingdon on this occasion, got to use the rush hour exit from Vauxhall Station (Royal Vauxhall Tavern side), probably for the first time since I retired, getting on for ten years ago now. Plus a walk up Goring Street, left into Glasshouse Street and out onto the Embankment. To find, on the small bit of grass outside Lord Archer's London residence, some kind of Hindu memorial added to the Bullingdon stand already there. I suppose that with the recent rash of such things, they are getting a bit short of place to put them. But someone cared enough to decorate it, presumably fairly recently as I would have thought that there would be too many passing drunks for such decoration to last very long.
A little early, so I paid a visit to the Marquis of Granby in Romney Street, where I got a quite drinkable white wine for little more than a fiver. Pleasant atmosphere, but puzzled by there being lots of brown wood, including wainscots, but there not being sash windows, rather casements with swing windows above. Checking outside, there were sashes and brown bricks to the second floor, so perhaps there was a between the wars makeover.
Audience thinning out for this ninth concert of the series, but with Mailley-Smith appearing to have pulled something of a Sloane fan club. Lots of frocks.
The four scherzi, the main business of the concert, I did not greatly care for, although there were some good passages. A bit too virtuoso for my taste. But I was very taken with the five mazurkas, numbers 41 through 45. Mailley-Smith was playing without scores and said he was going to play 51 through 55, so one does wonder. How many people in the audience would have known the difference? Not me, that's for sure. But the Chopin Society had been sighted on previous occasions, so perhaps someone would have.
The lady behind me, perhaps a little younger than I, was not very used to being in churches and was wondering out loud where the altar might have been. Sitting inside I was having trouble working out in which direction the altar was pointing, but checking this morning find that, unusually, it was pointing west, with the main entrance with steps being on the north side of the church, looking over Lord North Street, the street where the late Harold Wilson lived for some years. I associate to a lecturer, I think the one noticed at reference 1, who told us about trouble with the direction of Mecca from a prayer mat in the US. Should one take the great circle route - more north than east from there - or not? Apparently the matter reached the civil courts.
However, the west windows over the altar did need cleaning and I was right that the organ was at the river end of the church, that is to say the east end.
The young lady next to me came from Watford and was able to tell me that the Orphanage where I once used to work, to the extent of growing marrows there, was now a housing estate. And the chap next to her came from Hornchurch in darkest Essex, although his accents did not suggest car or any other kind of factory. Perhaps there are good bits.
Rather lazily, got a taxi most of the way back to Vauxhall, with the result that I just caught the 2128 to Epsom, which was good, as we were due out again the evening following. Just can't do it these days.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/john-nash.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=mailley. For the other Mailley-Smith concerts.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/fliter.html. For the splendid South American performance of the preludes.
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