Kicked off with the near-last Bullingdon from Kennington Lane Rail Bridge and from there over Lambeth Bridge, up Whitehall, up Regent Street and so to Broadcasting House, the one in London that is, not by some derelict canal south west of Manchester - although a quick peek at gmaps suggests that the place would be well worth a visit with plenty for the tourist to do. What, for example, is or was the St. Francis Basin?
Tracked a young lady (on a bicycle) in the vicinity of Parliament Square, who, for once, did observe the Highway Code, with only the one lapse when she overtook me on the inside when I was only a couple of feet away from the kerb and thinking about turning left. Luckily she got away unscathed. And then tracked a lorry from the vicinity of St. James' Palace to Oxford Circus, a lorry from no less an outfit than Kent's Transport (see reference 2) and carrying a small load of mixed building materials. This driver had manners enough but did not seem to know London very well or be terribly sure about where he was going.
Arrived at Broadcasting House early enough to take a little something, a Riesling (my pronunciation of the word being quietly corrected by the waiter), once again at the Langham Hotel, where the waitress was happy enough to change the nibbles that came with it for biscuits, my not caring much for salty nibbles, much preferring sugary biscuits. In between whiles I was able, once again, to admire the fine brown wood cupboard behind the bar (old style) and the large off-white white wood candeliers (new style) hanging from the ceiling. The bar was quite a large L-shaped room with a very high ceiling and the interior designer, quite rightly to my mind, had decided that there needed to be something to occupy some of the space above. The chandeliers were, again to my mind, rather ugly, but that did not seem to matter, their function was to occupy some space and this they did. The ladies next to me were talking Lamborghini, but I was not close enough to catch whether it was Lamborghinis in general or their Lamborghini.
And so to a full Wigmore Hall to hear the first of what I imagine were hundreds of compositions by Haydn, his String Quarter Op.1 No.1. A slight thing, but amusing to have heard it and a suitable warmer-up for the rather more sophisticated Brahms Op.115 which followed - although it did take a couple of minutes or so to get online, as it were, with this second piece. The quintet sounded very good on the day, with the oddity that, as a former very bad player of the clarinet, I was picturing some of the score in my mind (in one of those yellow miniatures) but none of the fingering came back to the fingers. And then, back home, I thought to have a bit of my vinyl version by members of the Vienna Octet, who sounded better still. They marked out the string bits, the clarinet bits and the ensemble bits with a clarity and punch which had entirely eluded Badke & Martin - although, to be fair to them, that may not have been what they wanted.
Interestingly, Martin on the clarinet appeared to be based in Scotland but to have connections with the Canary Islands. I wondered whether his parents had been part of the migration from there to here to work our mental hospitals and hotels, this before poles had been invented.
Out to lose my way to Bond Street and then to lose my way to 'Leonidas', ending up in the 'Maison de Chocolat' in Piccadilly instead, where, as it happens I had ended up the year before, not having been able to cope with the crush at F&M.
Picked up the second Bullingdon at Sackville Street and made my way to Soho Square. And so to Foyles which seemed to have turned into a mixture of pop-up shop and pound-store. But then I remembered that they had moved into the Art College next door. It was my first visit to their new shop and very good it was too, which was just as well as the Blackwell's opposite (which I had never liked very much, far too low ceilinged and cramped feeling) was shut. No less than two collections of Sir Gawain books, one in the King Arthur section of the poetry department and one in the King Arthur section of the history department and I chose one from the latter. Then off to the mathematics department to look up geometry (see reference 4), where there was a quite a decent selection and I selected a slim paperback from Cambridge. Rather dismayed to find that it cost £60 and almost abandoned ship, but relented and had the price checked, with it turning out to be £30 rather than £60. Still a bit more than I had wanted to spend, but it was the right sort of book and I was rather committed to it by that time. We will see how I get on with it.
Picked up the third Bullingdon at St. Martin's Street and off up the ramp (for once in a while) to Waterloo 1. I was accompanied across most of Westminster Bridge by a police car, but he peeled off somewhere handy to the Marriott (in what used to be an important place of local government, in the days when we still had such) so perhaps he was not there to mind my crossing. Just in time for a train so did not bother with further refreshments, although I was rewarded with a fine pink sky to the west as we passed through Earlsfield.
PS: odd the ceiling which presumably comes from the same place as the French ciel should be spelt the way it is.
Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=clarinet+quintet.
Reference 2: http://www.kekentsltd.co.uk/.
Reference 3: http://maximilianomartin.com/. Notice the reference to 'Ensemble Villa de la Orotava', Orotava being a handsome town in northern Tenerife, the natal town of a former mental hospital cook who used to get into TB.
Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/memory-lane.html.
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