Finns at Old Street

This week at St. Luke's we had the Meta4 String Quartet from Finland and they gave us Haydn's Op.64 No.2 and Bartók's String Quartet No.5. Both good, but I think I prefer the Haydn to the rather more demanding - for me anyway - Bartók.

The viola player, pictured on the programme as if she is about to bash the first violin over the head with her viola, elected to wear the sort of gear one might wear to the gym, rather than the sort of thing favoured by Natalie Clein in previous weeks. Given that they played standing up, except the cello that is, she was able to give us some rather athletic body language. All rather good.

Oddly, asking the producer afterwards why it was that the St. Luke's concerts were not broadcast live while those from the Wigmore Hall usually were, he could only manage generalities about how it made programming much more satisfactory if one was not tied to live. And while he had a point there, he did not rise to suggestions that the Wigmore as the senior venue got the fancier treatment. And while I do not listen to these concerts on the radio, talking about it afterwards, we decided that there is a difference between a live and a recorded concert on the radio. I dare say the sound is identical in the two cases, but being live, knowing that it is live does give it an extra frission, an extra something. One does feel closer to the concert.

Nice sunny day, with lots of twittering at Epsom Station but no tweets, magpies and pigeons not counting. Although there was one of those small black and white wagtails hopping around on the platform for which, also being rather common, I suppose I might score half a tweet. Perhaps a pied wagtail.

On the Bullingdon front, very nearly a circular trip, with Waterloo 2 to Roscoe Street outbound and Roscoe Street to Waterloo 3 inbound. The first Bullingdon was the first I had seen in the new red livery of Santander (illustrated) and I managed to return the second Bullingdon, one of the old Barclay's ones - to the antepenultimate post on the stand, very nearly the top of the ramp. One day I shall make it to the ultimate post.

Another first on the outbound leg, in that I came across a trauma unit from the air ambulance service in Old Street. Presumably the people who try to stabilise you before they cart you off.

Bacon sandwich in Whitecross Street up to its usual standard. And then, afterwards, on my way to Vauxhall, I stopped off at the wine bar above platform 1 at Waterloo. Very handsome staff, athletic, but not in quite the same way as the viola. Very slow pork pie, so slow that I had to take a second wine, but they did cut it up and arrange it on a piece of stone for me, complete with a rather large amount of bottled mustard. Approximately five times the price of a wrapped one from Tesco, but otherwise fairly similar. Wine was good, not cold, a gewürztraminer from the Alsace, opened especially for me.