Being a little late, for the first time ever I managed to leave the tickets on the table. I realised half way down the road but decided it was too late to go back, although in the event we made it with 5 minutes or so to spare. Maybe I would have made it.
No taxis at the station rank at 0930. I suppose not unreasonable it not being a working day and with few people arriving at Epsom at that time. I associated to the allegation from one of the station staff that as many people arrive at this suburban station in the morning as leave from it. Perhaps the fault of our University of Creation, maybe a ten minutes walk away.
Unusual bird spotted hovering over the line somewhere between Motspur Park and Raynes Park. I thought perhaps a kite, a distinctive bird, although not one I see very often, and I did not get a good enough look to be sure.
Actually made it into All-Bar-One in Regent Street on this occasion, with our tea being served quite quickly. Tea good, but they have wound the Smarties down to one pot between two from one pot each. Perhaps just as well.
Replacement tickets a non-problem and I did not even have to flash the plastic to prove who I was, with name and postcode being good enough. All done in about 30 seconds. Presumably all much more difficult in the days before computers, when they probably did not have a handy record of who had bought what ticket.
Inside we had the Szymanowski Quartet give us two Schubert string quartets, D173 and D18, which we were very taken with, especially the first mentioned. And Mozart K465 aka 'Dissonance' well up to scratch, although I could have done with a music person to point out the dissonances, just for the record, for my personal satisfaction. Not sure that it would have added much to the music proper.
The quartet was led by a lady with a name which I initially confused with the name of the Quartet, plus three gents, rather than the two gents and one lady advertised at the head of the programme, while one of the gents sported long ringlets and a fancy embroidered jacket. And we learned that a terminal 'a' did not necessarily mean the first name of a lady, as it would in some languages.
We had noticed the Rossopomodoro restaurant in the John Lewis at Kingston, the subject of the last post, so today we thought we would give the one in Oxford Street a try, with our fall-back option being Ponti's, a place we have used and liked in the past but now suspect of having been taken over by the kids, the parents have taken a well earned retirement. Kids who are perhaps too keen to put their own mark on the place.
Quite a large place, carved out of the Cavendish Square side of the shop on the third floor. A cheerful welcome from what appeared to be genuine Italians rather than catering college Italians and we got a table by the windows overlooking the square. We even had a family of Italians eating nearby to add to the authentic, Neapolitan flavour. BH not terribly convinced by the faux-scruffy décor which involved a lot of scruffy white planking, some carefully fixed on top of regular furniture. I was not terribly convinced by a menu which had a section entitled street food - as if I want to eat out of some caravan or stall, I can always go to Whitecross Street and do the job properly.
However, the grub was actually very good. Two bruschettas to start, then pizza for me and chicken salad for BH. The only not so good bit was their tirasimu, advertised as involving nutella and with rather too much chocolate powder sprinkled on the top for my taste. Impressed that they managed a bottle of Greco di Tufo. And amaretto with the tirasimu damped down the chocolate powder effect. So not only are Waitrose making big inroads into the fancy chocolate market, but John Lewis is having a big push on the Italian eating market. The likes of ASK and Prezzo - both of which we rather like - had better watch their backs.
Goings on at the four corners of Oxford Circus. We thought that they were something to do with an art installation, with some evidence of same being talk in Friday's free papers about escaping balloons.
Fine views at Earlsfield during our short stopover on the way home, but no aeroplanes and no points. So we pushed onto Raynes Park where I picked up a war time economy edition of Waugh's 'Put Out More Flags', of which more in due course.
PS: something odd is happening with my all in one HP scanner/printer, which came more or less for free with some now retired desktop computer. The scan of the programme was more or less illegible on the HP desktop to which it is now connected, but just about legible here. Clearly some feature of the repeated translations and transformations involved in getting images from one screen to another. Probably not helped by the Wigmore Hall bearing down on its printing costs, with the result that the original is not that clever either.
Reference 1: http://rossopomodoro.co.uk/.
Reference 2: http://www.pontis.co.uk/. The branch in question being the one in John Prince's Street. Not all websites believe in the apostrophe, but the TFL site does and they should know.
Reference 3: https://www.szymanowskiquartet.com/.
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