Got half way to Epsom Station when I realised that I had forgotten my telephone. Too far gone to go back for it, but it felt odd to be without it: I might not make much use of it, but I have got very used to having it in my pocket just in case. Maybe the first time that I have so forgotten since having such a thing.
Pulled a Bullingdon from the pole position on the ramp, the top of the stand called Waterloo 3 and pedaled off to the Hop Exchange without incident. And more important, without getting wet.
Into Neal's Yard Dairy for supplies of Poacher, with buying about a pound of the stuff in two pieces, separately wrapped, having become the form - with wrapping being something that the Dairy people are very good at. And they also put your cheese in a small but sturdy plastic bag which is a very good size for picnics. I have a theory that the cheese keeps better this way. Failed to find a stall selling bread, despite the claims from the nearby baking school. See reference 3 - as it happens, another pole position cheese day.
Chickened out of cycling to Stockwell partly on the grounds of not long recovered from the flu, partly on the grounds that it could easily rain, and instead took the train to Tooting Broadway where I took lunch at Caffee Manal, across the road from the tube station and much patronised by people working the buses - there being a big and important bus stop not many yards away. For the first time that I can remember, I took two bacon sandwiches in one sitting. Unusual bacon, but rather good.
Decided again kabanos from Maciek as there was a substantial queue and it seems to be the sort of shop where customers like to chatter with the people serving them. Not of much interest to me as it is usually in Polish.
Proceeded to a discussion of religious affairs in Saudi Arabia, with my holding to the position that the religious settlement there was a deal between the ruling royals and the religious establishment. You can be rich and rule provided you give us a free hand in matters religious. I don't know where I got this notion from, but it was not substantiated by the interesting summary from the State Department subsequently turned up by google - along with all kinds of other interesting material put out by the same people. See reference 1. Notwithstanding, I think it could easily end in tears in the next fifty years or so: Saudi Arabia is a rich, populous and well educated country and I can't see the population at large putting up with the status-quo for that much longer. They are going to want to move on and join the rest of the world - while regimes of this sort do not seem to be very good at moving on. Bust rather than bend.
No aeroplanes at all at Earlsfield.
PS: thinking of the Clipper people noticed at reference 2, it occurred to me that I would be quite put out if I discovered that the Neal's Yard people had sold out to some large food company, in the way of Clipper. Neal's Yard started up in the early seventies in the wreckage of Covent Garden and it is quite likely that the founders - whom I always assumed (without any actual knowledge of the matter) to be long hairs of the hippy era - have reached retirement age and cashed in. Maybe some time ago now. Maybe their shops are now owned by some banker type who made a lot of money in the city before the crash and is now playing shop with his wife in the run down to his retirement.
How long this will run for I don't know. There seem to be a lot more tourists taking pictures in Borough Market these days than respectable people like myself actually buying stuff.
Reference 1: https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/208622.pdf.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/a-bout-of-top-down-thinking.html.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/cheese.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment