Fancy spirits

Last Sunday to hear the new-to-us Novus String Quartet at the Wigmore Hall, a quartet founded at the Korean National University of the Arts, which presumably means the right Korea rather than the wrong one (which we have been bashing about or slagging off in one way or another for a very long time. No wonder they are a bit odd). But even the right one is a bit odd as the university web site is declared by MS Edge to be antique technology and suggests that I try that other antique, MS Internet Explorer, instead. See the rather slow reference 1.

Off to a tweeting start with a clutch of coal tits flapping about in the corkscrew willows (a domesticated version of the Chinese salix matsudana) on Clay Hill Green, a bird we only seem to see in the winter.

Trains behaving themselves this particular Sunday, with our riding in an unusually six coached train, complete with the name of the new franchise holder, but All-Bar-One in Regent Street was not, with service very poor. Reduced to going to Pret for BH's coffee fix. While I was reduced to watching as I don't trust the tea sold in such places.

Wigmore Hall full. We were expecting the quartet, being both young and far eastern to be sporting apples instead of scores, but in the event they turned out to be smartly turned out, in black, carrying regular scores.

Their three Haydn quartets (Op.17 No.6, Op.50 No.3 and Op.55 No.1) were all very good, just the thing for a Sunday morning. Music from a time when music was supposed to be reasonably complicated. but also pleasant and graceful. The words courtois and courtoisie come to mind. Possibly even funny. Before the heavies moved in with their rather heavier demands on both performers and audience. Before the moderns wanted to make instruments of the violin family do things for which they were not intended. Not that instruments have intentions, but I think the point is fair.

For a change, we thought to take lunch in the bar at the Langham Hotel, the place presently called the Artesian, for the well that the site or the building was once supposed to have had. This in preference to somewhere else in the same hotel which would have sold us a champagne tea for £65 a head or so and which might have been called the Palm Court. First, it was lunch time. Second, I am not that keen on that sort of a meal. Third, I might well have had to sit on a banquette rather than a chair. Need I go on?

But the Artesian was fine for lunch. It also sold a fine range of spirits and cocktails, including some which were very expensive indeed, although we did not partake on this occasion. Instead we had the background noise of the barman smashing up ice in a cocktail shaker. Quite a lot of smashing for what did not seem like a lot of takers for cocktails.

Classic romaine Caesar, aged parmesan, garlic croutons, Cajun ‘blackened’ chicken. This was nicely turned out and Cajun chicken was fine, nothing alarming or red sauce covered at all. For dessert I took biscuits - a nice touch that they can just give you a few biscuits - while BH had a flashily turned out dessert in a glass, a sort of layered affair involving various kinds of chocolate, white and brown. Very good apparently, probably getting on for 0.7 Mars Bar equivalents. All washed down with an entirely acceptable white wine - with another nice touch being that they pour it from the bottle at your table. My only mistake being that for the price of three small glasses, I might have done better to buy the whole bottle.

The sugar came with silver plated sugar tongs, and I dare say any butter would have come with a butter knife. Niceties which we have more or less abandoned here in Epsom, although they were still up and running in my childhood home.

Interestingly mixed clientele. Excellent service. All in all, well worth the extra one is paying over and above, for example, All-Bar-One.

Next stop the Waitrose food hall to buy a lump of Comté, the same brand as it happens, as one gets in Borough Market. I bought a fair sized lump, shrink wrapped, so we will see how it does for Christmas. Presently hanging in the roof of the garage, triple wrapped against the frost.

Three interesting buildings in the course of the visit. First, Chandos House, a relic of the past in Queen Anne Street, once the property of the Royal Society of Medicine, now a rather fancy looking B&B. Not particularly expensive, so maybe we will give it a try one day, rather than scuttling back to Vauxhall. No to be confused with Great Queen Street, home to quite a different sort of outfit. Second, the Harold de Walden estate office, also in Queen Anne Street, for all the world like the embassy for a small but proud country. Third, what was the Regent Street Poly in Regent Steet. I had never realised how grand it was inside. Very art deco. I remember it from the days of student unrest, back in the late 1960's, when shabby looking people with long hair used to hang about outside with fags on. Not sure if I ever went inside.

As it turned out, folding umbies was just the right thing for the modest amount of rain about.

Back to Vauxhall just in time to catch the 1506, so home at a respectable hour. Taxis had been down to two on the way out, but the line had been stocked up again by the time that we got back.

PS: reference 4 suggests that there is only one brand of Comté, in something of the same way as there is only one brand of Lincolnshire Poacher, my usual tipple. Maybe next time I am in Borough I will ask one of the young foreigns selling the stuff. From which I associate to the factlet that foreign is much the same word as the French word for someone who makes his or her living from working the fairs. See reference 5.

Reference 1: http://www.karts.ac.kr/index_karts.jsp.

Reference 2: http://www.chandoshouse.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.hdwe.co.uk/.

Reference 4: http://www.comtecheese.co.uk/.

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/following-precedent-set-back-in-autumn.html.

Reference 6: http://www.langhamhotels.com/en/the-langham/london.

Reference 7: http://www.artesian-bar.co.uk/.