Bullingdon'd from Waterloo Station 2 to Broadcasting House, from where I finally made my way to Little Portland Street to see some cartoons for a Shostokovitch ballet called Bolt at a place called Grad. Sadly, I was two days late and the gallery was full of packing cases and workmen rather than exhibition. Consoled myself with tea and chicken pie in the old-style Italian café next door, old-style enough that there were brown wood wainscots and picture rails in the (crowded) room at the back. Two factlets from the noisy table of young ladies next to me. One, one cannot understand the Cats musical without reading around it (and the T. S. Eliot poem which is its starting point) first. Which I thought a bit poor: one should be able to consume musicals without preparation. Two, at La Scala, they have little screens on the back of seats, rather like the ones you get on aeroplanes, on which to display subtitles and such. Which seemed like rather a good idea, until I got to the Wigmore and saw that it would not work at all there at all; the seats would have to be both higher and further apart and no-one was going to pay for that. But I do like the idea, much less intrusive that having them up front.
Signum Quartet very good, so good in fact that the chap sitting behind me got so emotional that he had to retire just before the big fugue started.
Bullingdon'd down to Tate Britain (Broadcasting House to Page Street) passing further evidence of constructional activity in the form of two wagons full of structural steel in the Haymarket and further evidence of our state of alarm in the form of an armed foot patrol around the security service headquarters on the Embankment. Inspected and was much entertained by the victorious sculpture at the Tate. I think I shall be back.
Tea and cake - a rather dry coconut confection - upstairs, where I was able to admire their solution to the problem of joining round pillars to square walls, part of which was that some of the round pillars were actually square - as they are behind the altar at St. Luke's. See illustration and reference 1.
To close, Bullingdon'd from Vauxhall Bridge to Grant Road East, partly to check out the spring flower scene in Battersea Park. Flower scene, partly because the sun was in my eyes, seemed to be absent. Exit at the southwest corner of the Park to get well and truly lost getting to Clapham Junction. At several points I passed places from which I should have known the way, but contrived to miss it, at one point getting to the junction of Plough Road and St. John's Hill, having failed to recognise the western end of Grant Road. Maybe I was getting dehydrated but I was reduced to asking the way. Eventually arrive at Grant Road East, thinking that I had probably incurred a penalty fare, which I find this morning was indeed the case. The first time such a thing has happened for months. Very bad form.
Consoled myself with a couple of DVDs from the Red Cross shop (one of which turned out to be Region 2 and so unplayable on our equipment) and a supply of figs and Turkish Delight from the international grocer at the junction of Falcon Road and Grant Road. See reference 2.
PS 1: fierce, cold head wind when crossing Waterloo Bridge on the way in, quite took my breath away. Not sure why given that the wind is blowing into one. Then more head wind when crossing Chelsea Bridge on the way out. Bit of a swizz as the two bridges face more or less the same way.
PS 2: in the course of checking the spelling of munros, I also learned about corbetts and grahams. And to think that only yesterday I read that making classification and lists was a French obsession dating from the Enlightenment.
Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/following-our-separate-visits-to-royal.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/agm.html and http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/colour.html.
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