So off to London Town. Off to a slow start with the Southern ticket machines at Epsom station slowed right down in sympathy with their semi-striking staff.
Took a Bullingdon off the ramp at Waterloo to find Stamford Street as busy as ever, then over Blackfriars Bridge to find the new cycle way good most of my way up Farringdon Street. I thought that the average standard of cycle road manners had improved a bit; maybe all the bad publicity about same is starting to sink in. Maybe young cyclists actually read such stuff.
Hoping to find a branch of Halifax pedaled all the way to Old Street, which is further than I usually go, and which turned out to be awash with big building sites - but no branch of Halifax that I could see. Back to the Market Café in Whitecross Street, full at around 1215. No ladies, apart from one new-to-me waitress, which was unusual, with the place usually getting a sprinkling. Bacon sandwich well up to its usual standard, with some office ladies arriving during its consumption. Recognised, possibly reproachfully, by the manager, after an absence of some months.
Somewhere along the way I discovered the natty new voicemail interface on my camera, although I failed to find it again the next day. Natty when you are there, not so natty when you are not.
St. Luke's pretty full and the irritating lady from Radio 3 went through her irritating chat performance, even asking silly questions of the pianist half way through. The Wigmore Hall does rather better in this department and usually, if not always, suppresses such stuff. Perhaps as an older and grander venue, they pack a bigger punch with these media people.
The pianist was from Siberia and looked much younger than his twenty five or so years, as if he was still at school. Perhaps what this is really saying is that I am getting older. In any event, he was young enough to have quite diffident stage manners; not quite got the knack of it yet. As it turned out, I did not much care for the program, a medley of Tchaikovsky and Mozart, although there were some fine passages. A reminder that medleys are not really my thing; I can't change aural gear fast enough to get much out of them. There was also a rather nice encore, a short piece which had been assigned to Mozart for a long time but which was now assigned to someone else.
Out to pull my second Bullingdon of the day at the Finsbury Leisure Centre behind the church (and next to some ecological power plant, noticed before) and off to Commercial Street, Shoreditch, otherwise Spitalfields Market, to find a cheese shop we had found out about at Terroirs (of reference 2) called Androuet, which turned out to be more of a café catering to the financial services trades than a cheese shop. But they did sell cheese and they did sell me what turned out to be a very good Camembert, with a delicate rather than the ammonia tinged flavour of some cheaper brands.
On the way I had passed a young lady carrying a small suitcase and pushing along a large open topped cardboard box which appeared to contain all her worldly goods. I assumed she was a student moving into this term's student flatlet. Also the first undergound convenience which I had seen for quite a long time: I had thought that they had all been converted to other uses, leaving the convenience trade to the private sector, who do such things so much better. Also a very flashy looking Mercedes sports car, with a new-to-me matt black finish and no less than four exhaust pipes. In fact the whole Spitalfields area was awash with young people with money and shops for them to spend it in. It has clearly come on a bit since we were last there, to see an subcontinental fashion show as I recall.
Third leg Norton Folgate (never before heard of, somewhere near Liverpool Street Station) to the Hop Exchange, helped along with directions from a helpful taxi driver and passing, for once in a while, 'Dirty Dick's', last mentioned at reference 3. There was nowhere handy to drop the Bullingdon so I was not able to go in.
The Comté at Borough Market was a little old for me, so I settled for some Beaufort, similar but very good. Also rather strongly priced. The young lady, quite possibly French, had the nerve to correct my pronunciation of Beaufort, but she redeemed herself by being able to direct me to a shop which sold English cheese, a shop which turned out to be a large and very impressive branch of Neal's Yard Dairy. Not seen so many truckles in one place for a long time. I was a bit concerned that their Lincolnshire Poacher might have been a little old, but back home it has turned out to be fine: the lengths one has to go to now that the Epsom Waitrose no longer does proper cheese.
Wound up the proceedings with some excellent apples from the Chagworth Valley people: some Coxes and a couple of Chagworth Beauty or some such. These last being large, shiny, red & green apples. A little sharp, but very good indeed: I was sorry back in Epsom that I had only bought two of them. A much better result than that noticed at reference 5, almost exactly a year ago.
Fourth and last leg of the Bullingdon from the Hop Exchange where I had recently landed to the top of the ramp at Waterloo from where I had set off earlier in the day. Positions one and two taken, position three broken, so I had to settle for position four, having completely failed on the hunt for a Halifax.
PS: the Guardian, by way of having a pop at Lord Bullingdon the other day, reported that he had spent one of his first days at the Foreign Office, poring over Palmerston's maps in the map room, dreaming about the glory days when we dispatched gun boats to bash foreign parts at the drop of a top hat. Bit rich for someone who is nearly a foreigner himself.
Reference 1: http://pavelkolesnikov.com/.
Reference 2: http://terroirswinebar.com/.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/boxed-set.html.
Reference 4: http://www.chegworthvalley.com/.
Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tea-ceremony-1.html.
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