The Hunt for Red January

On the day of the tree of the previous post, we were also looking for lobsters, having heard that large red lobsters were to be had from the Conran shop at the north end of Marylebone High Street (http://www.conranshop.co.uk/). The mission was successful in so far as we did indeed track the things down in the tastefully furnished café. Unsuccessful in that we were completely out of our depth on price. For a lobster, of which a half is pictured left, made out of a translucent red fabric stretched over a light frame, one had to pay around £2,500, knocked down from nearly £10,000. It seems that the things were not lobsters at all, rather works of art. But the café was successful with a well served tea and a pleasant ambience, pleasant enough to attract the odd nursing mother.

The shop was an interesting place, with the goods on offer being a sort of hybrid between the top floor of Dickens & Jones at Epsom with its home wares and the souvenir shop at a place like Wisley with its large range of tasteful gifts. Arty, but with an oddly sixties flavour, odd to my eye that is, but on reflection merely reflecting the glory days of the owner. One could, for example, buy a floor lamp which incorporated a couple of very visible transformers in the base, probably not doing any transforming but serving to steady the thing with their weight. Another piece of consumer art. One could buy a dining table with a top fashioned from oak maybe two inches thick, but in which the artiness consisted of leaving the quite large numbers of cracks and shakes open to the wind and to the food debris which would no doubt get there if the table was ever used. The legging arrangements of a deliberate and nicely made crudity, the idea being, presumably, to give the thing an artisanale flavour. Quite handsome and despite its not being terribly practical and its having, I imagine, an asking price of a small number of thousands, it had been reserved by someone.

No sign of butcher, baker or greengrocer, so I failed to get any of the Californian walnuts (with their clean, pale shells and distinctive red triangle stamp) I have been looking out for, much preferred to the European sort, at least in my family, but mysteriously missing this year, so pressed on the nearby telescope shop where I was tempted by their version of a pocket microscope, a roughly two inch cube, complete with screen and USB connection to a computer, coming in at around £100. But I was really after the pen shaped objects of my youth, at which time one used the things for peering at oddities found round and about in the countryside, and declined.

And so to the Nordic Bakery (http://www.nordicbakery.com/) at Dorset Street where we partook of Karelian pastries (served by a young lady from Denmark rather than Karelia), a soft brown pastry shell filled, in my case, with a savoury mix of cheese and mashed potato. Very good, despite declining something called egg butter on top, which I thought might be just a tad unhealthy and certainly a bit rich on my delicate palette. Later on, at home, I tried adding grated cheese to the supper-time bubble and squeak and it worked very well. No need to go to Karelia at all.

Two person of interest on the way home, whom I was able to stare at with impunity as I was standing above them in a crowded tube train.

The first was a gent. with a parting, something which I do not see much of these days, but a parting which had been very carefully engineered to hide the recession of the hair. Must have spent a lot on his hairdresser, not to mention matinal maintenance.

The second was a lady, probably a citizen of the USA. Quite a big girl, pleasant looking, not stunning but who appeared to be a model as she was showing her companion her portfolio, most of which appeared to be her modelling sweaters and such like, probably for clothes catalogues. But it was very striking how much better she looked in the pictures than she looked in real life. Much more flashy altogether. On the other hand, she looked normal and was certainly not unnaturally thin in the way of the sort of catwalk models who make it to pictures in the DT.

PS: we had passed two churches of interest, so will have to return. The first was a Portland Stone English Church, probably St. Marylebone Parish Church, and with, according to the pictures on Google, a rather grand interior. The second was the Red Brick Catholic Church in George Street/Spanish Place, behind the Wallace Collection, a place which I have been meaning to visit for a while, but to which we failed to find an open door on this occasion. Of the same generation as the handsome Catholic Church in West Croydon?