A little early for my ear pumping appointment and a little cool to bench wait, so thought to wait in Wetherspoons. The servers were far too busy organising full breakfasts to serve me, so on this occasion I settled for free loading. It is not as if I have not paid my dues to Wetherspoons, in one location or another. Whiled away the time turning over in my mind Simenon's account of bench life in inter-war Paris in 'Maigret et l'Homme du Banc'.
Onto the station where the ticket machine (operated by Southern Trains) took my money but failed to give me a ticket, which transaction took the chap at the window a few minutes to sort out. The growing queue behind me were very British about it and did not complain, settling instead for a moan about Southern Trains, the people who managed almost no service near Epsom for a few weeks, not so long ago.
Onto the train to find that YouGov were anxious to know my views about the election and so I completed my first survey for them from a telephone - and I can say that the telephone version of their survey application worked fine, much better than I expected. A good bit of web work. Later, they sent me an email explaining how their new big data forecast for the result of that day's election had been more or less spot on - unlike those from most other pollsters in town. Big data enough that their computers took some time - hours I think they said - to crank through it all.
Pulled a first Bullingdon off the ramp at Waterloo and pedaled off to London Bridge to find that it was still firmly shut after the recent terrorist attack. Shut with large steel shutters, the like of which I had not seen before. Set course for Covent Garden, for the other branch of the cheese shop, to find Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street well jammed up. Fearful of breaking the half hour barrier, pulled into Bouverie Street and took a quick wine at El Vino's, practically empty. I know it was a touch early but I think that back in the days when I first knew the place, in the early 1970's, it would have been full of noisy lawyers and journalists. Ladies accompanied and in the back bar only. There was still a good atmosphere to the place, so perhaps it was going to pick up as the day progressed.
Pulled a second Bullingdon and onto Drury Lane, from where I had some trouble finding the cheese shop, managing to get there via the Seven Dials pillar. The cheese shop girl told me that management had been allowed into the Borough branch to turn the cheese (or whatever they needed to do), but she had no idea when they would be allowed to reopen. The scope for damage or loss of expensive stock must have been large. Left with getting on for a kilo of Poacher, in two wedges, very nicely wrapped, as usual.
Took a second wine at the nearby Crown, being served by a cheerful young lady with a good selection of tattoos on her upper arms. A house which I had occasionally used in the distant past when I was working out of Selkirk House, then the HQ of the late lamented Manpower Services Commission, one of the last monuments to big government that were ever built.
Shortly after that, having made my rendez-vous, we would up in Terroirs of reference 1 for a spot of their Chenin Blanc, charcuterie and apricot tart. Tart only average, but washed down with a few shots of their excellent calvados, the second cheapest of the four on offer. Surprised to find on checking that it was more than six months since I last graced the place.
Very properly, walked back to Waterloo, to come across a uniformed Chelsea Pensioner who told me that they still do the ceremony of the cheeses at the Hospital, but, once again, I failed to think of offering him one of my two wedges of Poacher until it was too late, Would he have accepted? He was on the town on account of it being Founder's Day. It was also the eve of the Oaks and there may be some connection as I dare say Charles was a racing man.
PS: the full story being: 'the Royal Hospital Chelsea’s Founder's Day, also known as Oak Apple Day, is always held on a date close to 29 May – the birthday of Charles II and the date of his restoration as King in 1660. The oak reference commemorates the escape of the future King Charles II after the Battle of Worcester (1651) when he hid in an oak tree to avoid capture by the Parliamentary forces, and is expressed through all Chelsea Pensioners wearing oak leaves'.
I might add that I saw what I took to be an oak apple on a young tree down Horton Lane the other day. The size of a small apple and mainly white with red blotches - while I had remembered something much smaller and brown. Maybe this last is what you get when the things ripen, or whatever it is they do with time. A quick google turns up a huge range, including something very like the apple that I now remember, so perhaps oak apple it was.
Reference 1: http://terroirswinebar.com/.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/half-mast.html.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/viola-times.html.
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