Entertained on the tube to Oxford Circus by a hoodie tricked out in what looked like new and reasonably expensive clothes, clothes which included a grey hoodie suit underneath an outer jacket. The hoodie completely obscured the face so we were unable to ascertain what sort of a person was inside, but presumably someone who was no longer a teenager and was in some kind of clothes-spending-money-generating employment. Speaking for myself, I have never been keen on hats (head overheats) or hoods (impairment of vision, not good on a cycle), but I suppose one has to pay some tribute to fashion if one want to be one of the chaps. Maybe they should bring back the medieval fashion of wearing a crest on top of the helmet so that everyone knew who they were dealing with. Not honourable to fight anonymously.
Up bright and early enough to pay our first visit for a while to Ponti's in John Prince's Street, the experience on this occasion being marred by slow service. Not impressed by what seemed to be our relegation, as non-eating customers, to the second division. And I would have eaten, had I found my way to the pastries, which were to be had but which were neither on display nor on the menu. As it was, the Earl Gray had been made too strong to be much cop with lemon.
Quartet very good, with the Hadyn doing very well as a warm up for the Beethoven, which last, that is to say Op. 59 No.1, 'Razumovsky', I am getting quite fond of; something I notice in concert hall timetables. I was interested on this occasion by the way that one had to pay attention to the Haydn, whereas the Beethoven just grabbed the attention. Not that this last is necessarily better, but it is different. And this morning, thinking of the very young looking ambassador to Egypt in our papers recently, presumably a middling sort of posting in the ambassadorial scheme of things, I wondered how many of our ambassadors are near professional violin players, as Count Razumovsky, sometime ambassador from the Tsar of Russia to the Emperor of Austria at Vienna, was in his day.
Light lunch at the downstairs bar at Debenhams, a place which we continue to find convenient. Not too busy, comfortable and with bright young service.
We then embarked on a hunt for a new raincoat, that bought in the margins of a very important meeting at Swindon, at Cirencester, quite possibly R. Scott & Co (see reference 2), maybe ten years ago, now a bit tired around the edges. However, Debenhams had nothing suitable and nor did John Lewis. Gents. raincoats of a decent length don't seem to exist in Oxford Street and all the rain coats that we did come across were far too short and most of them also came with unwanted lining or padding. What on earth do city gents wear when they flood across London Bridge morning and evening, in the rain? By this time shopped out so back home for a siesta. The hunt will have to be resumed on some future occasion.
The puzzle on the way home was the announcement that certain services were part suspended. Did this mean that they had cancelled every other service or what?
PS: I remember being quite appalled, towards the end of my days as an undergraduate, by said flood of city gents one wet and dingy morning. Hundreds and hundreds of seemingly identical gents rushing north across London Bridge - black coats, brollies and bowlers all. Was this what the future held? I should say that I was right to be concerned to the extent that, since that time, I have, on occasion, got very wet going across that very bridge on a Bullingdon. You really do need a cape on a bicycle when it is raining, something I no longer think worthwhile to carry about with me; certainly not convenient in the context of someone else's bicycle.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/two-not-theatres-and-not-bar.html.
Reference 2: http://www.rscott.co.uk/.
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