Danish Bacon

When I was small, Danish Bacon used to be a force to be reckoned with in the bacon world. In the days when you had to queue to be served in places like Sainsbury's and when you could buy loose groceries in places like the International Stores. There was even a Danish Bacon warehouse opposite the lay-by outside Exter from which one used to hitch to London. Long gone, but now we have the Danish String Quartet opening our Wigmore Hall season Sunday past.

Weak start with a problem with the smarties usually provided with hot drinks by the All-Bar-One in Regent Street. Then watering the small plants had clearly been a problem in Cavendish Square, despite this being one of the posher squares of London. See reference 1.

Flowers in Wigmore Hall had a red theme with red anthuriums in the lead, clearly a favourite with whoever has the flower contract, as can be seen from reference 2. Fidget in the front and fidget to the right - which last I did not notice, but BH, who was actually next to him, certainly did. Compounded by his musical alimentary canal. He also had a daughter doing cello at Oxford - which was odd as he did not appear to do string quartets.

With this one giving us Haydn Op.96 No.5 and Beethoven Op.18 No.4, which made for a nicely balanced lunch-time programme. The Beethoven, something of a favourite with me, was as good as I have ever heard it. Enthusiastic reception from a full house.

Nicely chosen bit of Swedish folk music by way of an encore.

To Pontis for lunch, also as good as ever, although let down by tiramisu having been struck off their menu. A comfortable sort of place, with reasonable prices and friendly staff. See reference 3.

Next stop the cheese department at Waitrose to see whether Lincolnshire Poacher has survived in the West End. To find a rather pretentious cheese operation which majored in soft French cheese and hard cheese biscuits. But, to be fair, they still had Poacher, with the innovation of cutting their one eighth truckles down rather than across, which was, in the sort of quantities that I buy, say between one and two pounds at a time, rather fairer in its sharing out of the rather evil tasting rind.

The check out girl was completely zonko at 1430, so we could only hope that she was getting towards the end of her shift.

Next stop the shirt department at the John Lewis above, with my having decided that I wanted plain white cotton shirts with no buttons on the collar points and one button rather than two on the cuffs. Major palaver, with huge choice, but with not much answering my specification. Which was clearly popular, as the few places on the shelves where they might have been were empty. There was also a dearth of staff. So not impressed. The BH theory was that Oxford Street shops were just showcases these days, where you went to look before buying on the internet. Which may be true, but I was not impressed. But after much of the aforesaid palaver, we escaped with two of the right sort of shirts.

The check out girl here was in rather better shape.

At Vauxhall, I made a complete mess of counting the number of stairs out of the tube. On the other hand I was, for the very first time, able to take a comfort break while admiring the headquarters of our secret intelligence service: maybe someone in TFL has a sense of humour. I couldn't find the place on gmaps - but then, aerial photographs, even ones as good as those offered by google, can be surprisingly tricky.

Fine new dictionary picked up at Raynes Park, a sort of children's version of the Larousse picked up at Tooting at reference 4. 'Dictionnaire HACHETTE juniors', once the property of one of the Barnes' Carnells. Quite good for me as it assumes a child reader, with a child reader from France being about right for an older me from England. Not as many pictures as Larousse, but good.

PS 1: one wonders whether the Danish Quartet go down well in the US. The publicity shot from their website included above has a flavour of rich people from the late 19th century about it, which does seem to go down well over there. Their version of Downton Abbey or Jane Austen.

PS 2: for some reason, this particular photograph does not come through the snipping and click to enlarge processes very well. Despite my snipping from a full screen version of the original. Perhaps the quartet economised on their publicity shots.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/strictly-2.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=anthuriums.

Reference 3: http://www.pontisitaliankitchen.co.uk/.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/larousse.html.