Fine sunny morning, lots of people at the station on outings. Including a young lady and her young man in the seats opposite us, with the young lady with very fetching makeup - looking a bit like sequins but probably some kind of transfer, down both sides of her face between her eyes and ears. I thought the young man none to bright, but BH thought it was just that he was very tired and was not too thrilled at being carried off, first thing in the morning, to some music festival in North London, involving changing at Highbury & Islington. That was all we managed to eavesdrop and the best that Cortana could do was something in Hampstead Garden Suburb (at reference 3) which did not seem right at all.
I was offered seats by no less than two young foreign ladies on the tube, probably prompted by BH finding a seat unaided. They clearly felt that we both needed to be seated if one was.
Onto All-Bar-One in Regent Street, where our drinks came with two pots of smarties. With the false ceiling removed and the big windows, a bright and cheerful place in the morning. Always looks a bit crowded for us when we pass in the evening, almost certainly rather noisy. But having done down the young man, I managed to get in a muddle with my tea, completely failing to work out that the tea bag supplied needed to be added to the tea pot and stirred, before one attempted to pour out the tea.
Onto Wigmore Hall, wearing my sun hat in central London for the first time that I can remember. One is usually sufficiently protected by the tall buildings.
The key flowers of the otherwise pink and green flower arrangements were white arum lilies, perhaps chosen as a weak pun on the name of the first violinist, Ruben Aharonian, a chap who kept remarkably still while he played. But he and his quartet did us very well, doing particularly good job on the Mozart. And after the few minutes I needed to change gear, Schubert very good too. The first movement of Shostakovich's first string quartet by way of an encore.
Out to try our luck at the Galleria in New Cavendish Street, the last visit to which being noticed at reference 1. We had not booked, not being sure that we would be in the mood and wondered how busy it would be on a fine Sunday afternoon. As it turned out, not busy at all when we got there around 1300 and did not get busier while we ate. But there was art on the walls at the back where we ate, possibly accounting for the name, and there was at least one party of people who looked as if they might have been Iranian. While the waiter seemed slightly embarrassed by my talk of all the Iranian students at the LSE when I was there, and scuttled off - so maybe he was from somewhere in the EU, rather than from somewhere in the Middle East.
Lunch generally very good. Some warm flatbread, the same substantial lamb kebab I had last time, plus remembering to ask for the dressing to be omitted from the salad. Only marred by a very ordinary cheesecake for desert, the brown cake I had had last time being missing. Wine good, a Vermentino from Sardinia. Given the additional qualifier 'Marà', possibly something to do with reference 4, from where we have: 'Marà Vermentino di Sardegna D.O.C. Sguardo penetrante e seducente, chioma dorata, forma sinuosa e docile allo sguardo. Vitigno di antiche origini, dal colore giallo paglierino. All’olfatto è floreale con sentore di frutti a polpa bianca e ananas. Al palato è fresco, strutturato e minerale. Da gustare come aperitivo o accompagnato con crostacei, grigliate di pesce o carni bianche'. I don't do Italian or Sardinian, but it looks like just the sort of stuff we put on our wine sites; to the point where my translation would probably not be that far adrift.
On the tube back to Vauxhall we had an exhibition of the contrast between Muslim and European fashions. On the one hand a pretty, petite African lady, completely covered apart from her face and hards. And, as it happens, offering me a seat. Declined. On the other, a large, rather lumpy German girl, exhibiting large amount of not very pretty arm and leg. Giving rise to the thought that maybe dress codes have their points.
Two hawk flavoured kites over the office buildings along the tracks between Waterloo and Vauxhall.
Good haul from the Raynes Park platform library, to which I shall return.
PS: a little late in the day, I discover that this particular snap is not a good way to preserve the programme for posterity. While the original snap becomes perfectly legible if you enlarge it a bit, the version that arrives on the blog does not. Not even if one goes to the bother of downloading the image from the blog and enlarging that: the fonts chosen by the Wigmore Hall publicity people are not multi-layered image processing friendly at all.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/bullingdon.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/second-attempt.html.
Reference 3: http://www.northlondonfestival.org.uk/.
Reference 4: http://costadoria.com/prodotti/mara/.
Group search key: bqa.
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