McCarthy & Stone

McCarthy & Stone being a well known provider of accommodation for the older person, noticed here occasionally, for example at reference 1. McCarthy & Stone themselves being found at reference 2.

They crop up today for two reasons.

First, I have learned that Abbeyfield, another provider of accommodation for the older person, but a charitable provider rather than a for-profit provider, is moving away from their bedsit model to something much more like the apartment model of McCarthy & Stone. Which led me to wonder where Abbeyfield get their capital from. Do they get government funding of some sort? Do they raise money on the market like any other business? Could I lend them money on interest? I dare say that I could find out if I did more than skim their annual report, but as it is the best that I can do is 'with an agreed loan facility to drive further growth', which suggests that they are raising money on the market.

Nothing wrong with a certain amount of convergence and consolidation as the market matures.

Second, quite by chance, I notice from the bottom of some promotional material, that RHS Wisley are proud to be sponsored by McCarthy & Stone. Here one is led to wonder about the scale of the sponsorship; the sponsorship of a retirement visitor attraction by a retirement home provider. All very incestuous.

PS: I was pleased to read on the McCarthy & Stone website that Messrs McCarthy & Stone really exist, or at least they did back in 1963 when the company was founded. 'John McCarthy and Bill Stone enter into partnership in 1963 and the McCarthy & Stone story begins.  Early work focuses on building houses and bungalows for the open market'. They are not just names dreamt up by the marketing department of some large conglomerate seeking to push into the older person market. Although it is always possible that they will be swallowed up by some such conglomerate in due course, with their marketing department retaining the names and branding because they work. Don't mend what ain't broke.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/walmer.html.

Reference 2: https://www.mccarthyandstone.co.uk/. Note all the children running around on the front page. Don't want the places to feel too old!

Reference 3: https://www.abbeyfield.com/.

Organic growth

Heading east along East Street there is a care home on the northern side of the road, just before one gets to the first turning into Ewell Village. A care home which I believe to have been run by a church flavoured charity, with a name something to do with sunshine.

A care home which has now been taken over by Abbeyfield. Presumably this involved some lawyer work to transfer the assets of the one charitable trust to the other.

An Abbeyfield which seems to be growing, and to be doing rather more than converting older houses into quality bed-sit houses for people wanting something between their own homes and a care home. Perhaps they are drifting into the mainstream and have got themselves onto some list of organisations deemed worthy to take government money for the provision of accommodation more generally for older people. Perhaps it is only right, proper and reasonable that charities that prosper should expand in this sort of way, quite possibly at the expense of those which are failing, for one reason or another.

PS: I have noticed that the sun is often worked into the names or logos of places which look after or otherwise care for the very old. With sunshine being preferred to sunset.

Reference 1: https://www.abbeyfield.com/. Established in 1956 by the late Richard Carr-Gomm, OBE.

Reference 2: http://www.carrgomm.org/. For a slightly different story from Scotland.

Duty chef

With the regular chef diverted to Abbeyfield (reference 1), I was duty chef today, and, as it turned out, the first bit of proper cooking that I have done for a while.

Buy a pound of shank beef, looking good and full of sinew and flavour, from our local butcher (reference 2). Good dark colour. Potatoes and mushrooms from the Costcutter next door.

Cut the beef, across the grain, into small slices about 5mm thick. There must have been plenty of sinew as I had to sharpen the knife a couple of times as I went along.

Brown in a couple of tablespoons of virgin rape seed oil - from Essex I think - and then add a couple of onions finely chopped. Add a little water, enough to almost cover, and simmer with lid on for 90 minutes. Add a couple of sticks of celery, finely sliced across the grain. Simmer for a further 10  minutes. Add the chopped stalks of 8 button mushrooms. Add a heaped tablespoon of cold mashed potato as a thickener. 5 minutes before the off add the mushroom caps, quartered.

In parallel, prepare and boil appropriate amounts of rice and crinkly cabbage. Leave potatoes for another day.

Good gear. My only comment would be that the cabbage would have been better cooked 3 minutes, perhaps even 150 seconds, rather than 4 minutes.

Rounded off with the pineapple upside down cake left over from yesterday. Which when entire, looked something like the one at reference 3, with the most visible difference being that BH omitted the (glacé) cherries which were not held in place by being in the centre of a pinapple ring, a concession to wobbly senior hands.

Snooze with Guardian draped tastefully over one. Monkey Life on low in the background.

Reference 1: https://www.abbeyfield.com/.

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

Reference 3: https://www.nigella.com/recipes/pineapple-upside-down-cake.

St. Luke's

First St. Luke's of the autumn season last week, attracted by Brahms' clarinet quintet, earlier concerts having been well outside my comfort zone. Far too old for that sort of thing.

The cold noticed at reference 1 still being up and running, I decided that I was not up and running and would walk from Waterloo to Old Street. A walk which, while only 45 minutes or so, seemed an age when compared with the 15 on a Bullingdon.

But an upside was passing the handsome building snapped above, at the bottom of Golden Lane. Now, seemingly, an outpost of the UBS empire, once Cripplegate Free Library, from the days when the wards and boroughs of London and philanthropic businessmen (like Mr Tate) went in for that sort of thing. One can get a good idea of the building as a whole by panning around in Street View, in which one can also see the plaque for the library. I wonder whether it was all library, all six or seven floors of it.

Whitecross Street very busy, as was the Market Restaurant. I was amused that the former was full of white collar types, eager to buy their lunch standing up from shacks and caravans, while the latter was full of blue collar types who liked to sit down and natter over their lunch. Bacon sandwich up to its usual standard. And price, which has always struck me as very reasonable.

And with entertainment provided by a young lady passing outside with outsize rips in her jeans, rips which left little to the imagination, but fig-leafed by what might have been built-in fishnet tights. The whole thing coming as a one piece package, ready made.

On into St. Luke's where the talkative Fiona Talkington was first up. She was followed by Michael Collins and the Heath Quartet giving us Howells' Rhapsodic Quintet Op.31 and Brahms' rather better known Clarinet Quintet Op.113.

The first was satisfactory, interesting even, while the latter fully justified its position as a family favourite. And despite my thinking that I knew the work fairly well, there were lots of bits which were new to me. The mark, perhaps, of a serious work; a work which always has both something old and something new to offer.

We were sat at the front, further forward than is my custom, next to the clarinet, which meant that the clarinet rather dominated the proceedings during the first piece, a loss rather than a gain. For some reason this was not the case during the second piece. But while being very close meant that one heard lots of detail that one missed further back, I also missed the blending which one got further back. And the fact that one's field of vision did not include the whole ensemble, to see which one would have to move one's head around, to the annoyance of those sitting behind.

Spot of light lunch downstairs. Pale vegetable soup not bad, but rather highly spiced for my taste. Roll clearly fresh out of fridge or freezer.

Back down Whitecross Street to take a quick look at the interesting charity shop there, a place where I have bought interesting stuff - books and DVDs over the years. On this occasion they were offering a pile of 78s, with sleeves a bit worn but the records themselves looking fine. Some of them from a store in Walworth High Road, some from a store in Clapham High Road. Maybe there are still retro shops which would sell one vinyl in both places. I believe aficionados of Jamaican music are particularly into such, with there being odd pressings of bits of music, rather in the way that you get odd barrels of Irish whisky. I don't have 78 capable equipment since I got rid of my Hacker, quite a few years ago now, so I passed. Possibly the Hacker GP42 which fetches more on ebay now than the £40 I paid for mine, back in the late 1960's.

Strolled through the market to Farringdon Road, chancing on the way to pay a visit to what used to be Charterhouse School and before that a Carthusian priory. At some point a graveyard that was put together at the time of the Black Death emergency. Small but interesting museum and an interesting trusty, who was also a brother, that is to say a resident of the almshouse side of things. One of forty or so brothers, under the leadership of a master. Arrangements not unlike those in, for example, Abbeyfield, with flatlets for living and communal areas for community and dining. Also a handsome chapel which reminded me of the very roughly contemporary chapel at Hampton Court.

Passed on art deco at 'The Blackfriar' and on wine at 'El Vino', and so sober to Waterloo.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/beethoven.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/bacon-hunt.html. For Fiona.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/clarinet-collins.html. Seemingly, the last time I heard Collins, out in the sticks, just about two years ago.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/widmann-and-others.html. Heath Quartet rather more recently, coincidentally collaborating very successfully in another quintet, that is to say Shostakovich's piano quintet.

Reference 5: http://www.thecharterhouse.org/.

Group search key: lkc.