Knights in armour

Last week I was moved by the television adaptation of the P. D. James yarn 'A Certain Justice' to visit the Temple Church, a very old foundation, which we had never been to, despite its being just off the Aldwych, which we pass through on a regular basis.

Started the day by using Wetherspoons as a waiting room, which cost me £1.65 for a bottle of water, a little over half the price per pint of that of one of their better beers. But quiet and convenient, well worth the money.

Via trolley 49, onto the train and onto the ramp at Waterloo where I found that my key was red-lighting every Bullingdon in sight. Encouraged by the staff loading up the stand to phone in, I realised that the problem was that TFL had an out of date expiry data for my Visa card - and was pleased to find that this was something that could be sorted out then and there over the phone to the Bullingdon Bunker at Enfield. Fortunately I could remember the silly answer to one of my security questions.

So off across Waterloo Bridge, around the Aldwych and into Fleet Street, to drop my first Bullingdon for a while off at Chancery Lane. From there but a short step to the Temple Church, only the fourth church I have been to in London which makes a charge - with two of the other three being a good deal larger. The excuse of the pleasant lady at the check-in was that the Temple Church was not a regular part of the Church of England with access to regular diocesan funds, being some kind of direct extension of the monarch.

The church included a rare round replica of a church in Jerusalem (with another being the round church at Cambridge), was substantially rebuilt by the Victorians and then again after substantial damage in the second world war, and did not strike me as a very holy place, despite dating back to the Knights Templar and the reign of King John. The tombs of knights in armour which featured in the adaptation were a mixture of the real thing and replicas - with the most striking feature for me being the length of the effigies and the various Earls of Pembroke so memorialised must have been very tall. The Templars being the people who were suppressed with great cruelty in France in 1307, possibly because the French king of the day needed their money.

I don't know how old the altar piece illustrated was, it looking very late Stuart, but it was a handy reminder of what members of the Church of England are supposed to believe in. I wonder what proportion of the people who had to sign up to it all thought that it was all twaddle, even back then?

The lawyers' premises round about provided a further link to Cambridge in that it was all rather like Cambridge colleges with quads and stairs. I seem to recall that they also go in for wardens, masters, high tables, refectories, dining in and all kinds of other stuff of that sort - which I believe some law students, particular the ones from ordinary backgrounds or from overseas, can find a bit tiresome.

Next, popped into the nearby Courtauld Gallery, partly because I used, a long time ago, to work in Somerset House, entering by the door opposite what is now the way in to the Courtauld, and partly because I remembered that they had a lot of good stuff there. Which they did indeed, although the lighting is still a problem. A fine Cranach Adam & Eve. A lot of fine French painting from the second half of the nineteenth century. Not, however, impressed by some giant Gainsborough's which were much bigger than their subjects warranted and were not my sort of thing at all, fine portraitist though he was. Plus I am now rather irritated to find that I had confused Cézanne's 'Le lac d'Annecy', at the Courtauld, with a reproduction of something else which hangs above our stairs at home. Been seeing (rather than looking at) it more or less every day for 30 years and still managed to muddle it up with something else, albeit a superficially similar composition with a large dark tree left. And now rather more than irritated to find that I cannot now identify the reproduction at all. I shall work on it.

Picked up a second Bullingdon from a stand called 'Strand Strand' by the TFL web site and over to Vauxhall where I was pleased to use the cycleway provided which took me from the Albert Embankment to South Lambeth Road without having to brave two or three lanes of heavy traffic - my nerves for such not being quite what they were. Plus one does not have the speed on a Bullingdon to be able to pedal out of trouble. Dropped the Bullingdon at Hartingdon Road, Stockwell and repaired to the Wheatsheaf, once a Courage public house and now  a Brazilian flavoured music bar. Entirely respectable and very cheap white wine.

Carried on with a rather fancier wine, a 2014 Sancerre, from Berry Bros, which was very good indeed. And so to the Estrela Bar for a spot of grilled mackerel - not bad, but not exactly fresh either. Fresh out of a freezer perhaps. Portions of rice and salad very generous, but I suspect them of having changed their baker, with their bread not being up to their previously high standard. On the other hand, some of their waiters must have been there for at least ten or fifteen years.

PS: later: I think I must be right about the bread because I made exactly the same complaint in the other place about it back in November of last year.

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