Trio

Off to St. Luke's again the other day, a day on which it was not raining, so I Bullingdonned it from the Waterloo Roundabout to the Finsbury Leisure Centre behind St. Luke's. Bad start, as the first three or four Bullingdons I put my key in either flashed orange then red or did nothing at all. On the point of giving up, thinking that perhaps the computer had put me into a 10 minute end-of-access quarantine period, I tried a fifth - in appearance brand spanking new (rather an odd phrase, can't imagine where it comes from) - and I was away, down Stamford Street where I was rather held up by traffic lights then left onto Blackfriars Bridge. On the north bank, entertained by a shapely young lady wearing unusual candy stripe trousers under her short waistcoat; she certainly caught the eye, which one hopes was the idea. On up Farringdon Road to arrive at St. Luke's rather too late for the traditional bacon sandwich in Whitecross Street, so I had to settle for some miniature pork pies from the Tesco Express behind St. Lukes. Took me ages to find them amongst all the food & snacks destined for the workers round about, but I got there in the end. Luckily they were not the sort which come with built in cheese and chutney, which I abhor.

And then, this afternoon, it gave me my first opportunity of using the Tesco store locator (to establish whether it was a Tesco Express, a Tesco Central or a Tesco Lite), which took me a while to get the hang of, but it was my first experience of a Bing map from Microsoft, rather different from the Google offering which I am used to. And as one might expect from Microsoft, some interesting & natty features to make them a bit different from the opposition. At first glance, I thought the London map was rather good, rather more like the Ordnance Survey maps I know and love. It told me, for example, that the Goswell Road was the southern end of the A1. Maybe I will get to know them better. Question for 10 marks: does the spur and product of competition justify the waste involved in having two mapping systems covering much the same ground. Or are they actually the same mapping system, provided by the same mapping contractor, but dressed up in customer clothes?

Back at St. Luke's we had the Lendvai String Trio, the first such that I have heard, or at least remember. Three ladies rather nicely turned out in black outfits, all different but all the same to the extent of sequined sleeveless waistcoats. House not as full as usual for a Mozart programme: a Mozart arrangment of a Bach organ sonata (K404a) and a divertimento in E-flat major (K563). Just the thing for a light, lunchtime concert. I was reminded of my father explaining to me that the idea of a divertimento was that the composer would not mind if you had it played while you had lunch. It was not intended for intent and intense consumption, which was, however, what we accorded it on this occasion. Clearly time that I cracked out the tafelmusik (from Schola Cantorum Basiliensis via Archiv and in a very Baroque box) which has been sitting among the vinyl, unheard, for too long.

Home via the Tooting Wetherspoon's, where I have not been for a month or two, so I was pleased that the barmaid still recognised me. I also found that the fat blue book called 'Pathology' was still there, up on its top shelf, a book which had looked to be a standard medical text from the States from a long time ago. I had thought that FIL might have been entertained by the rather gruesome & grainy photographs of tumours and such like, despite the text being rather small for his older eyes, but desisted. And now, with pathology of my own, no longer interested on my own account and so left the thing on its shelf once again to concentrate on the Chardonnay from Chile, at least until they ran out of the stuff.

Tried for a quick aeroplane at Wimbledon, where the platform was pleasingly free from obstructions both to the east and to the west. But, despite it being the rush hour at Heathrow, no planes, except one which appeared to have taken off from Heathrow to fly east, which did not count at all. And, for some, reason, the northern tip of the platform had been declared out of bounds (see illustration above). At this point I had just a middle aged train spotter for company, sporting a large camera, but my train came in before I could touch base.