St. Luke's

Back to St. Luke's yesterday after what turns out to be getting on for 18 months, the last recorded visit proper seeming to be November 18th 2011 (in the other place). It is true that I paid a visit to the area in February and October of last year but did not actually get inside St. Luke's on either occasion.

Having got myself to Waterloo, took the last remaining Bullingdon from the stand at Waterloo Roundabout for a 21 minute journey to Finsbury Leisure Centre, the stand on Clerkenwell Road being full. The Bullingdon worked, but did not feel quite right, feeling as if a brake was not clearing the rim when it was off, this working despite my forgetting to take my helmet with me. The first mistake of this day (see Wednesday). The second was not leaving enough time for the now traditional bacon sandwich in Whitecross Street (not to be confused with http://www.whitecrossstreet.co.uk/), the result of which was that I had to settle for bread and cheese, the consolation being that it was a rather successful loaf of my own confection.

The concert was given by a trio who turned out to be rather good - the Vienna Piano Trio. I liked both their sound and their stage manners, neither flamboyant nor noisy but effective. They gave us the Mozart Piano Trio in G major, the Fuchs Tox and the Dvořák Piano Trio No. 2 in G minor. Mozart good although I was rather disconcerted to read afterwards that it was written when he was all of 8 years old, an age when I was still learning to read, never mind writing down music of my own invention. The Fuchs was interesting and necessitated some fiddling around in the insides of the Steinway, probably thereby invalidating the warranty, but I was left thinking that Herr Fuchs ought to be able to make a lot of money writing atmosphere music for horror movies, a context in which the movie carries the music along and it does not need to carry itself along. Dvořák good. A pity that I have neither the Mozart nor the Dvořák at home for a reprise.

Took a little refreshment in the neighbourhood Wetherspoons and then took the tube to Stockwell, thence to  Vauxhall. At which point the mistakes started again. It all looked promising enough with a train to Guildford due in a few minutes, following a train to Hampton Court. I had thought it likely that the Guildford train went to Surbiton rather than Epsom, but checking, found that I had been mistaken - but at least this was a benign mistake. I was so pleased with myself that I then managed to make a malign mistake and get on the first train rather than the second. Shortly thereafter, I was so busy reading the latest news in the Guardian that I made my next mistake, failing to notice that we were at the wrong platform at Raynes Park, the last place at which I could easily recover myself. So I got to go to Surbiton after all, from where I needed to get a taxi to get home in time for my next appointment with the District Nurse. A taxi in which I made my last mistake of the day, getting into a muddle about the nature of the junction of Victoria Road and Brighton Road, a junction which I have cycled through on many occasions. For a few seconds I was completely convinced that there should have been traffic lights there, traffic lights which were in fact missing. The taxi driver put me right and so on home, sufficiently put out to pass up the opportunity to revisit TB.