Good start with a two aeroplanes at Clapham Junction, spotted from sitting in the train, always a bit limiting as one gets at most half the field of view that one gets from the platform.
Bad continuation in that I got screamed at on the ramp at Waterloo. I was coming slowly down the ramp on my first Bullingdon of the day, approaching a group of people milling around. I approached them slowly, they saw me coming and drew back. I carried on to find one chap, of middle years, dressed smart casual, did not. I did not stop and nor did he. As I drew level with him he start expostulating about how he was on a pedestrian crossing, with right of way, possibly but not obviously true. I suggested that he calmed down a bit, whereupon he started screaming abuse at me, while I made my escape, thinking that further interchange would be unhelpful. I could only think that he was either a mental patient on day release or someone who had had an unpleasant encounter with a cyclist in the past - something which could easily happen in London with plenty of both cyclists and pedestrians with neither manners nor road sense.
Checked the crane noticed at reference 1 and was pleased to find that it was still yellow and had not changed back to red in the intervening week.
Dropped the Bullingdon at the Hop Exchange and made my way to one of the French cheese shops in Borough Market. No Camenbert but the young Frenchman assured me that the round wooden tub was all the thing at a tenner, and it did indeed look as if he sold a lot of them. Curiously shrink wrapped with the lid on the bottom of the tub rather than the top, presumably to show off the interesting interior, an undulating crust of cheese, cream and pale brown in colour. He assured me that it would be fine for the Saturday following if kept in the refrigerator which indeed it was, despite my bag being very smelly by the time that I got home that day. Vaguely Camenbert like, with an edible crust but more or less liquid inside rather than more or less solid. Almost a spoon job rather than a knife job, taken in our case with brown bread. Looked rather better at that time than when I snapped the left overs, later that day.
It turns out that the Longuevilles in question is not the one near Dieppe, rather the one near the Swiss border in Franche-Comté (see reference 2), from which I deduce that the cheese shop has a regional loyalty. None of your Normandy stuff for him. With Mont D'Or being a hill rising to about the height of our own Ben Nevis out the back of the village.
Second Bullingdon from the Hop Exchange to Finsbury Leisure Centre and on to the basement of St. Luke's to take a glass. To find a young man in front of me making a first class performance of buying his coffee etc. Not rude, but just taking rather a long time about it, worrying first about this and then about that.
After which Lawrence Power and his friends gave us Schubert's overture for string quartet, D.8 (written we were told when he was all of 14 years old), Beethoven's fugue for string quintet Op.137, the last thing he wrote, and Brahms' quintet, Op.115, with the solo part on this occasion taken by the viola rather than the clarinet. With the good sign that it was Brahms himself who had done the adaptation.
The Schubert was fine, if a little scary in that such a thing could be produced so young. The Beethoven was very short but would, I suspect, have improved with some preparation. The Brahms was very good, with the stand-in soloist (as it were) making much less difference to the feel of the piece than I would have thought, despite Power's telling us that it made all the difference. Almost a new composition. I also had a repeat of the experience of the day before with the five parts rather standing out by themselves, with less integration than usual. See reference 3.
Instead of bacon sandwich, on this occasion I investigated the cellar food, to find it all very foreign. A knife and fork version of the street food available across the road. Not impressed, so pedaled back to Waterloo for a cheese and tomato sandwich there. To find that instead of the usual packet cheddar (ready sliced variety), the sandwich was made with Mozzarella, despite the stall having a name with a French flavour, with some green goo added instead of chutney. I should say that it was a rather good sandwich, despite the foreign cheese, with even green goo rather good - unlike brown chutney, which I am not keen on at all. A great puzzle to me why so many people use the stuff; they can't all be smokers with no taste buds left.
PS: alarmed this morning when my usually well-known password for TFL went missing for a second or so. A sign of things to come?
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/more-trios.html.
Reference 2: http://www.ccmontdor2lacs.com/commune/les-longevilles/.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/st-john.html.
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