Pictorial times

A few days ago, off to see the Foppa jigsaw again.

Weather a bit wet and windy, starting out with an announcement at Epsom station that there had been a landslip somewhere south of Dorking, that the service there would be buses for weeks and that, for the moment, one train in two to Waterloo was being cancelled. Then, once on the train there was a very dodgy sounding cough, terminal even, but a quick scan of the coach failed to reveal the owner. But the cough was soon masked by a small boy explaining his computer game, which sounded like a virtual, dungeons and dragons version of lego in that it involved collecting and assembling, at great length to his granny. He was very absorbed in the whole business and it all sounded quite educational: it might not be the same as reading Alison Uttley or Rosemary Sutcliff (which would have been about where I was at at his age), but world relevant skills were being developed.

Decided that the rain was going to hold off, so hopped off at Clapham Junction and picked up a Bullingdon at Grant Road East, heading off towards and through Battersea Park in the usual way. For a change, up the Mall and through Admiralty Arch, making it to a vacant spot in the stand at Southampton Street off the Strand just as serious rain started. Ducked into a natty little cup cake shop - which, frustratingly, I can now neither name nor locate - and took tea & cake, both being good, but with the cake being rather hard to eat without making a considerable mess. Clientèle mainly ladies and I was entertained by two of them having a serious, social worker style discussion about the sectioning of a child, perhaps the child or at least the ward of one of them.

Onto the National Gallery where I took in three pictures. The Adoration of the Magi by Foppa, the Grand Canal by Canaletto and some fruit, a tribute to Cézanne, by Gauguin. The Foppa is growing on me and I think I shall be visiting it again, quite apart from its jigsaw (now, it seems, discontinued. The gallery shop seems to have moved on to a rather different sort of jigsaw, without interest to me). The Canaletto, my next jigsaw, was enlivened by a trusty who was happy to talk about such things and who even admitted to knowing someone who did them in a serious way. The Gauguin was looking more sensuous than I remembered it, disturbingly so for a still life. The thing had come alife.

Calmed down by a visit to the Salisbury in St. Martin's Lane, where the entertainment took the form of a middle aged couple from Sweden, holiday makers staying in Bethnal Green of all places, although maybe it is not as rough now as it used to look from the train to Cambridge from Liverpool Street. I found that the lady knew all about the famous goose book (see posts of 17th February and 26th March of last year), but was much more interested in reading crime fiction to brush up her English. I could only think of Agatha Christie but between us we could drum up some more and ended up by directing them to Foyle's in Tottenham Court Road - rather than Charing Cross Road. Hopefully they made it as I imagine that Foyle's would have had a splendid collection of English language crime, maybe even running to translations from Swedish crime, to tie in with the better class of crime drama to be found on BBC, better that is than the stuff on ITV3, which is what we watch.

And so back to Epsom where the rain continued.

PS: annoyed to find this morning that I broke the half hour barrier on my trip from Grant Road, which, as a result, cost me £3. Must do better.