As luck would had it a young girl noticed a Poirot as we pulled into Victoria Station and drew our carriage's attention to it. Obviously a Poirot as it was puffing smoke, and probably an important Poirot both because the tender seemed to be very intimately connected to the locomotive rather than just tagging along behind and because there was smoke puffing out of the very back of the tender as well of out of the very front of the locomotive. Not sure why the tender should puff but it surely makes the tender a very important tender.
Locomotive pulling a lot of Pullmans, possibly replicas, on some sort of an excursion. Quite reasonable showing of train spotters, mostly with cameras rather more elaborate than my mobile phone.
Pushed onto the Bbar for lunch, a place (see http://www.bbarlondon.com/) where I have previously had a Christmas Lunch, a lunch at which the chap in the chair tried to enliven the proceedings with a complicated tapping game, a game at which he excelled and the rest of us struggled with. Good ambience, good service and good lunch, at reasonable prices. In our case, a spicy parsnip soup followed by salt beef sandwich, which left us feeling very full. The sandwiches might not have been up to those of yesteryear from Great Windmill Street (where they boiled up the salt ribs on the premises and did an excellent chicken soup), but were a good deal better than others which we have had over the past few years, including some from Stamford Hill & Golders Green where one might think they ought to have known better.
Past the Palace (Queen not at home) where I was not sure about the plastic sheets wrapping the buildings being renovated at the top of Buckingham Palace Road, plastic sheets which had been printed up to make the whole thing look a bit like a building, rather than a building site. An arrangement which meant that rather than just strapping the plastic sheets to the scaffold, the luckless scaffolders had to bother about which sheet went where and which way around it went. All in all, both fake and wasteful without being particularly amusing or handsome: I think I would have preferred the wrapping plain.
Then through Green Park and into Piccadilly. Past the whisky shop and into the Japanese cake shop where there were lots of interesting cakes, very prettily presented, this last including the appearance and manners of the staff. We took a couple of what were described as their most popular items, red bean cakes, which turned out to be very like a soft Jaffa cake. But at £2 each rather dearer than the ones which I can buy in our Costcutter.
Onto St James, where I was interested to see an outdoor pulpit, something I do not recall seeing before, there or elsewhere. When was the thing last used for real? Inside there were some winos dozing on the pews of the northern aisle. Inoffensive but presumably sometimes smelly.
Onto Notre Dame de France, a church which we visit from time to time when in the area, which we found to have opened their doors to winos too. We also found that the art by Cocteau was complemented by mosaic by Anrep (see 6th February). I don't particularly care for either, but I was impressed by the way that Anrep had made his mosaic fit in with the tone of the Cocteau, and it was in consequence quite unlike those of the National Gallery.
Last stop Lisle Street, the street which no longer contains the Poons of the wind dried meats, a restaurant which we used to frequent maybe 20 years ago, to see the day before the New Year in. Greeted by an energetic dragon who seemed to be able to keep it up for an impressively long time. Stood by a posh bike which had a posh lock draped over the chain, but which completely failed to attach itself either to the bike or the stand. One could have walked away with it. Perhaps it was safe being a ladies' bike and with most bikes' thieves being gents..
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