Cold, rather overcast day and I had forgotten to take my older person's rail pass out with me. So not a good start. Broke the journey at Clapham Junction where a young mum almost came a cropper, thinking she could just push her (occupied) baby buggy out of the train and that it would land the right way up, despite the gap between the train and the platform. As it turned out the buggy made rather a bad landing but she managed to recover both herself and buggy without further mishap. Sundry ladies standing around looked rather shocked. Whereas I proceeded in an orderly fashion to the Red Cross charity shop near Grant Road to see what they had in the way of DVDs, this despite their having sold me a Region 2 DVD in the recent past. Frustrating at the time as it was the incomparable Zeta-Jones doing the equally if rather differently incomparable Catherine the Great which might have been fun. On this occasion I left with Eddie Murphy doing himself; that is to say his major role was an African prince in Brooklyn but he took on sundry other roles as well, just to show off. I seem to recall there are English actors who have done the same sort of stunt. Entertaining film, more or less zero content, so suitable for us seniors and exhibiting once again the engaging talent of the people of the US for making fun of themselves.
And so to Waterloo 2 where I pulled a blue Bullingdon (odd how I have only seen just the one red one) and pedaled off to Roscoe Street. Uneventful journey but I did spot the top of the Shard just emerging from a light mist and I did spot a traditional Turkish hairdresser at the junction of St. John Street and the Clerkenwell Road. Apart from being a rather odd spelling of traditional, what was such a hairdresser? Would he have served hashish with his haircuts? Finest Turkish?
Took my usual bacon sandwich at Whitecross Street, making the change on this occasion to thick sliced, having spotted some of the same at my last visit. A slightly confused discussion with the waitress who thought that what I wanted was crusty bread. I was slightly alarmed as I certainly did not want a bacon baguette, but took a chance on crusty, which turned out to come out of a plastic bag, just like the thin sliced - and to be entirely satisfactory. A better ratio of carbohydrate to fat and protein. The slightly worried waitress hovered until she was satisfied that all was well.
The Endellions were on their usual good form, offering Haydn Op.20 No.5 and Shostakovich Op.73. For once, they were wearing lounge suits rather than their trademark penguin suits with cummerbands, each to his own colour. As it has turned out, I have heard quite a lot of Haydn quartets this Spring and they are rather growing on me. Maybe I need to buy the collected edition, all ninety of them or something; he must have been a fast writer, the Simenon of the classical music world. BBC managed on this occasion with just four microphones, hanging about 10 feet above and a little in front of the quartet. Sometimes they seem to need rather more and sometimes a rather fat one (rather then usual round, thin job, rather like a fountain pen in shape, if a little larger) gets placed very close to an instrument. I also learned that the birthday of the centre manager who introduced the concert was just one day before that of BH, so I shall have to remind myself what it is BBC are going to do for us at lunch time on that day.
Out into Old Street to be passed by two police tricycles, that is to say the sort of small motor bikes which have two front wheels close together. Rather odd things for police men; they would have looked more impressive on bicycles.
On to sample the mix at the Tooting Wetherspoon's, which I have probably been patronising for even longer than I have been patronising the Endellions. Certainly clocked up rather more visits.
The discussion there centred on the question of whether barristers of the criminal bar were tainted by long association with their customers, most of whom are rather unsavoury petty and not so petty criminals. I was in the lead for the yeas, maintaining that you could not be associated with the same kind of people for years without picking up some of their ways. Without coming to think that, behind their knives and iron bars, they were actually quite decent chaps, uniformly kind to their gold fish. Interesting chaps to chat to at the other bar. The barrier of being wigged and gowned might slow the process down, but does not stop it altogether, and the luckless barristers are going to wind up with some of the mindset of their customers. Not for nothing do the Indians go in for castes to contain such problems.
Further entertained on the bus back to Earlsfield by three lightly hooded young Muslim girls chattering away for all they were worth. They were clearly having a good time. a time which could not have been had had they been properly hooded, à la ISIS. Made one think of all the simple and more or less innocent pleasures these last would deny the world. I suppose the Salafists are the sociological, doctrinal & developmental equivalent of our own Puritans of yesteryear - the people that hung and burned witches in New England - and I can only hope that the former do not take as long as the latter to work their way out of the system.
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