St. Luke's

I had not been that impressed with this term's programme at St. Luke's, but last week we made it to what was the first time this year and which may well be the last time until the autumn, which looks a bit more promising - with the odd feature that one can book tickets for concerts for which we have an artist but for which we do not have any art, that is to say any programme. Not keen on booking blind so that will have to wait.

Learned on the way that the Southern ticket office staff in Sutton were looking at redundancy, their jobs having being taken by Oyster, while those in Epsom were still OK, at least for now.

Also that instead of black stuff you can now put white stuff on flat roofs. White sheets which you cut to size and slap down with liberal application of some white liquid, presumably some kind of adhesive. Must find a roof person to ask what this might have been. Never seen before.

I had decided that I did not want, on this occasion, to be carrying a cycle helmet about so opted for walking to Old Street rather than my more usual Bullingdon. When, towards the end of Stamford Street, I came across what at first sight seemed to be a heap of something covered in large beetles crawling about - but which turned out to be a demolition site. I felt a twinge of loss for the building, a hundred years or more old and full of old style workmanship, probably plenty of fine oak and mahogany work, this despite it being a steel reinforced, concrete framed building, with the ornate exterior just cladding. At least that was what I took it for.

On through Smithfield Market, which much of that looking destined for the same fate.

Failed to find anything theatrical of interest at the Barbican, but did visit Chimes, as noticed at reference 5.

Onto the bacon sandwiches of Whitecross Street. I must say that they did me very well, despite my absence of some months. The manager even recognised me.

Into St. Luke's to hear Alexei Volodin do Rachmaninov, with a touch of Prokofiev and Medtner for warming up. Pleased to be able to say that Fiona  T. did not get too carried away with her introductions. We sat right at the front which made the piano sound rather different, but I have to say that the music was not to my taste, it did not seem to be doing anything other than rushing about. Good to push out the boundaries from time to time, but I guess one has to expect the odd dud. The boundaries are there for a reason after all, like comfort zones. However, some people clearly thought different, with the lady to our right knowing what the encore was. And with the gentleman to our left being a teacher from Ontario, long domiciled in north London. Who, unlike my mother, had almost no accent after forty or so years here, his story being that he had worked to get rid of it to stop his accent being an issue in class, rather than whatever it was he taught.

For lunch back to Jane Roe's kitchen, with our previous visit being noticed at references 2 and 3. And this afternoon, the famous cupboard is featured on the restaurant's front page. Maybe it is still there, as you read this, far right. See reference 1. Lunch still spot on - hummus, pizza and a drop of New Zealand white - and we learned while paying the bill that the couple who run it come from an island somewhere between Sicily and Africa. Climate mostly benign, not too hot. But I imagine there is little work, hence the restaurant in Old Street.

Next stop, St. Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield, somehow not quite as impressive as on previous occasions. But I was struck once again by one the the chaps under stones let into the floor being put down as a hair merchant, a stone we had noticed five years ago on the occasion of our first visit back in 2012. See reference 4. And I was a bit annoyed with myself about a defective memory. I had remembered a memorial tablet in the wall with the stone sill below, worn away in the middle by the miraculous tears of the sculptured head set into the tablet. Or the tears of pilgrims. Or something like that. But it turns out that there was no sill below and that the unremarkable condensation on the wall was something to do with late Victorian central heating, it just being a coincidence that the tablet had some words about tears.

A bonus was finding out that they do lots of lunch time music, mostly Fridays and mostly given by people from the nearby Guildhall School of Music. Maybe an alternative to St. Luke's if they don't do something about their programmes. In which case I could take to using the nearby Hand & Shears, scene of my second attempt at being a barman, an attempt which lasted around six months. At that time a house which catered in the saloon bar to hospital types and in the public bar to market types. Plus freemasons who seemed to straddle the two. Sometimes, when they felt the need for a bit of privacy, they used to meet in an upper room. Strange knockings and thumpings to be heard.

Got a bit lost in the city, reduced in the end to catching a bus to Waterloo, where we had thought to wind up the proceedings with a little something at the Green Room next to the National Theatre, but that was either empty or closed so we tried the theatre, full of people making full use of the free heating, electricity, tables and chairs. But with a shut bar, we were reduced to the Festival Hall across the way instead.

Reference 1: http://janeroekitchen.london/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/cupboard-love.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/a-touch-of-pepys.html.

Reference 4: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=hair+merchant.

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/wednesdays-girl.html.