The story starts with toggles at reference 2, with a second leather loop having burst a couple of weeks ago, and was replaced with the silk rope, with the second go being a lot faster than the first. The weather on the day of the concert was not very promising and I did not fancy chancing it on a Bullingdon - one can get very wet, for example, going across Waterloo Bridge in the rain - and with the duffel coat being up and running I opted for duffel coat, umbrella and cloakroom - this last being somewhere I generally try to avoid on account of the queues.
With the final touch of the three cheese scones left over from the day before in one of the fine plastic bags they give you at Neal's Yard dairy, in my pocket for lunch, I set off for the station. Rewarded there by a rare sighting of a train which was not a passenger train. Not as big a reward as a proper goods train, it being only a line cleaning set, but a reward nonetheless. Clearly time for first scone.
Victoria Line off for once in a while so I pushed onto Waterloo and Jubileed it to Bond Street. On this occasion the wall of tiles at Debenhams was doing really well, just the sort of thing I imagine the artist had had had in mind, despite there not seeming to be much breeze at ground level. Rain more or less stopped, but coat and umbrella had been the right call.
Into the bar at the Wigmore to take a drop of white and to admire the tasteful arrangement of empty jam jars, nicely setting off the arrangement of equally empty bottle of fizz. Into the hall to find that the flowers had not been changed from the Saturday before. The Radio 3 presenter did get up on stage, unusual for the Wigmore, but she kept things brief, so was OK. Plus I suppose she had the excuse that the sacrosanct one hour duration of a Radio 3 lunchtime concert - this one was going out live - was going to run twenty minutes over said hour.
The young pianist turned out in a very fancy red dress and hair do to match. The available lady sitting next to me did not look the sort to take any interest in the costs of such things, so I did not get to find out anything about that. Just one awkward pause between variations, as if the pianist had come off one variation leaving her in not quite the right position for the next, but she soon got over that. And after this concert, according to her site at reference 3, she is off to do it all over again all over Europe.
I really enjoyed this piano version. What one loses in precision one gains in emotional impact. And despite the loss of precision there was still some very tricky looking crossing hands going on at times. Another feature, to my ear anyway, was a sort of jangling effect from time to time. I wondered whether this was the piano making more of a meal of the occasional infelicities of temperament than the harpsicord. Need to quiz a musciologist.
Having a cloakroom friendly seat, I was third in the queue, a queue which stretched back up the stairs by the time I left, seconds later. To the 'Running Horse' for one of their pork pies and a glass of white - plus a dollop of a lurid yellow pickle which, for once, I tried and rather liked. Then off to the new Phillips auction gallery for prints and such at the top of Berkeley Square. Tough looking eastern European out front, large black gentlemen scattered liberally inside. All kinds of stuff on offer, including, for example a rather bad Picasso lino cut estimated at £5,000. Affordable art by the standards of the metropolitan folk - the folk that is who have just given a bit of a jolt by the folk up north, folk who would have probably something more important to do with £5,000, even supposing they could put their hands on such a sum. Or as Marie Antoinette once said, if they have such a problem finding work, why don't they come and do a few hours dusting my bibelots?
Last two scones in Berkeley Square. After which, fully fuelled up, I set off for Waterloo.
On the way I noticed that for once in a while, the big wheel had stopped. Passed on both the Sherlock Holmes and the Archduke, places I used to use occasionally but never anything so grand as haunts.
And so to Earlsfield to count aeroplanes, or rather not to count aeroplanes, scoring just the one rising in the east. The cloud must have been thicker than it looked.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/goldberg.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/duffel-coat.html.
Reference 3: http://www.beatriceranapiano.com/.
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