Pulled a Bullingdon from the ramp at Waterloo which was in good condition, transmission fine. But that did not stop it seemed quite uphill going up Blackfriars Bridge. A seeming which showed in the longer than usual 19 minutes and 14 seconds it took me to get to Roscoe Street.
The Market Restaurant in Whitecross Street (not café, which I think I have noticed before, but forgotten) was up, running and busy. The crust of the bread of my 'crusty bread bacon sandwich' was rather chewy, not very crusty at all. White factory bread might be the best for bacon sandwiches but this particular factory bread was not of the best. But still quite a decent tea and sandwich - and certainly good value for money.
Get into a fairly full St. Luke's to find that the advertised pianist - I think Ingrid Fliter with a programme of Chopin nocturnes - had called in sick at short notice and that instead we had Ashley Wass doing a rather different programme, although he tacked the ninth nocturne onto the end. Presumably the St. Luke's people had to settle for what could be done at short notice. Presumably Wass was not a nocturne man.
He looked a lot older than the mug shot on the flier provided and illustrated above, and turned up rather casually dressed, wearing something like the loose sports shirt recommended by Charles Rosen. See reference 1. Not keen at first on his playing or his programme, but after a few minutes I got tuned in and it turned out to be a good concert. Another case of accidental & successful broadening of the horizons, with Schumann, Smetana and Prokofiev not being names to catch my attention on a programme of events.
Down to the basement to take a drop of white while we pondered on the next move, which turned out to be a bus to the church mentioned at reference 2. To find that something religious was going on, so we abandoned the projected visit and took another bus onto Tottenham Court Road.
From there to the cheese shop, where they had some good looking apples in boxes outside, some four or five different sorts, some of them varieties that I recognised - although I did not think that the Coxes looked very Cox-like. Chose my variety and picked some out, their turning out very well. Inside for my usual pound or so of Poacher.
From there to the Crown (at Seven Dials) to take another drop of white. Barmaid with tattoos missing, but the place was going alright otherwise. Good mixture of local, passing and tourist trade. Pleasantly lively without being crowded.
On an impulse, turned into the National Portrait Gallery on the way back to Waterloo, a place I have not visited for a while and tramped upstairs to where the older paintings lived. Taking in the famous painting of a nursing mother and a rather bland, larger than life size portrait of Judi Dench on the way. The nursing mother painting was well executed, but I found it slightly disturbing and I would not want it on my wall. Nor would I care for anyone that I care for posing for such a picture. Leave such stuff to professional models. But if you are interested, there are plenty of copies out on the internet. See, for example, reference 5.
Found the pictures of the queen and Lady Sarah, already posted at or around reference 3. We also had a young person playing what I took to be Bach partitas, rehearsing for a concert to be given later in the day. I thought she was rather good.
Last up, I found a French couple, a lady from Paris and a young woman whom I took to be her daughter but who lived in London. We talked about the Simenon novel that I was reading, noticed at reference 4. They both told me that the area that had been a dump - La Villette - when Simenon was writing about it, was still a dump. Gentrification had somehow passed it by.
Scored an eastern one trying to play the aeroplane game from the train pulling into Clapham Junction.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/cuarteto-casals.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/stop-press.html.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/lady-sarah.html.
Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/maigret-et-le-corps-sans-tete-suite.html.
Reference 5: http://www.artlyst.com/news/benjamin-sullivan-painting-wife-breastfeeding-wins-bp-portrait-prize/. And if that fails, searching for 'benjamin sullivan painting wife breastfeeding' will turn up something else.
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