Detrained at Clapham Junction to be reminded how large one of the big new four engine jets can look from the ground. Also that they have not necessarily settled onto the flight path down into Heathrow by the time they get to Clapham. Still plenty of time left to veer to the left or the right, depending.
Managed the run from Grant Road (East) to Manresa Road (Chelsea) in 14 minutes and 6 seconds. Which was fine, but I should probably have gone a few more hundred yards down Kings Road if minimising the walk to the Army Museum was important. As it was, I found out at all the Kings Road public houses which were famous when I was young have now been repurposed as banks or clothes shops. Also that the Neal's Yard people overreached themselves. Let's hope the contagion does not spread to their cheese operation.
Popped into the church of St. Thomas the Martyr. Quite grand but a slightly shabby feel to the place. All the altars hooded, as that at Weston Green had been a week earlier. Hooded, as it happens, in a very similar shade of pale purple. Lilac if you will.
The Army Museum has been refurbished and is now a light and modern space, complete with a cafeteria, various study rooms and study areas, in addition to the museum itself. Most of the visitors were pensioners like myself, a good proportion of whom I supposed to have served in the forces. There was also a clutch of young men who looked and sounded as if they were officer cadets.
I only did the Waterloo exhibit on the top floor and was a little surprised that, apart from the model of the battlefield, an antique in its own right dating, from 1838, there was not a great deal. One captured eagle, some uniforms and weapons and that was about it.
The model was around 10 feet square, made up of sections which were maybe 2 feet by 3 feet. I thought it was rather good. They had not tampered with the model but they had linked it into interactive displays so that you could get some idea of where the main events of the battle took place. I even got to see the point of models of battlefields complete with model soldiers. I had thought them a bit silly, but now, using model soldiers, cavalrymen and guns to mark the positions of the main formations seems as good a way as any, short of hiring an army, in the way of Bondarchuk. There also seems to be a good range of Waterloo war games and animations out there - and I dare say some of them are a good adjunct to more conventional aids to learning.
Both Cornwell and White-Spunner make the point that a big battle like this is complicated and confusing, complications and confusions not easily dispelled by the very large number of contemporary accounts, not to mention all those which came later. No way that you can hold it all in consciousness, rather one needs to be able to use memory and memory aids to zoom in and out, to pan around, to the bit of interest. Overviews might be necessary, but one needs to remember that overviews squash lots of tricky details which don't quite fit. I resist the temptation to carry on.
But to close out this section, I share a thought from this morning's Ewell Village anti-clockwise. Wellington needed to very nearly lose to make sure that Napoleon kept going, committed everything he had to this last throw. Had Wellington clearly been winning, Napoleon might well have pulled back in one piece. I associate to a story about Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz, where baiting the trap that pulled the Russians down off the Prazten Heights, was a calculated risk which really did weaken his position. But he had to offer the Russians something real, not just chicken feed. Le Carré makes much the same point in connection with the complicated trading of secrets conducted by spies.
From the museum I took a reasonably circuitous stroll to Daquise for a Polish lunch. First starter, brandy while I waited. Second starter, some kind of small sausages with an excellent horseradish sauce. Main course, a sort of large sausage roll made with a cabbage leaf rather than pastry. A little disappointing. Dessert, apple fritters topped with cream and some kind of red jam. Fresh and excellent. Chablis - a Petit Chablis from 2011 and Domaine Besson - a little disappointing, but I covered that with a drop more brandy.
No.14 bus to Fortnum & Mason where I was able to buy a couple of chunks of what turned out to be a very respectable Lincolnshire Poacher. Better than Waitrose, up to the standard of Neal's Yard. I was also very impressed by their stock of wine, with a much bigger selection of north European white wine, particularly German, than one usually finds. Good range of prices, nicely bracketing what I am prepared to pay for wine. I actually settled for Fortnum's own Greco di Tufo. Yet to be drunk.
Interesting young lady on the train home, not particularly good looking but both attractive and inaccessible; from some other world. I was reminded of the stories by both Hardy and Maupassant concerning arty old men who become infatuated with improbable young ladies in a vain attempt to hold onto, or rather recapture, their own lost youth.
Balanced by a clutch of thirteen year old school boys having a very serious conversation about the football or rugby match that they had been playing that afternoon. I don't think I ever took sports that seriously - or make any serious attempt to pretend that I did.
Tedious train guard who tried to entertain us with a run of weak jokes and witty remarks. All very tiresome, but luckily I was changing at Raynes Park.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/more-waterloo.html.
Reference 2: http://daquise.co.uk/.
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