C Major Quintet

On Thursday for what will probably be our last outing to St. Luke's of the season to hear the Signum String Quartet (http://www.signum-quartett.de/) plus Nicolas Altstaedt (duff web site despite being honoured by Credit Suisse) do Schubert's D956 quintet. A fine rendering, all the finer for being restrained; the young players did not see fit to play young and thump their way through the loud bits. One even got to hear the breathing of the entranced audience in the quiet bits, which came off on this occasion.

The day had started on a lower note, with an odd story about a care home, somewhere in the vicinity of Epsom, which expects relatives to supply incontinence pads for their nearest and dearest, until, that is, said nearest and dearest acquires a formal diagnosis of incontinence, at which point the National Health steps in and provides them free, most people with this particular complaint being old enough to qualify for free prescriptions. A very strange arrangement. One might think that the cost of such things might be included in the weekly rate, which at £1,000 or so might be thought sufficient. Or failing that, supplied from a large cupboard of the things as a chargeable item, like toe clipping and hair cutting - but to be phoning up relatives to get them to bring some in seems a very odd way of going about it. Presumably the home in question is not part of a chain with proper quality control of their procedures.

Then off to Epsom then Waterloo Station for the Bullingdon to the Finsbury Leisure Centre, taking in a ride-past of the famous Eagle public house on the way, just to check that it was still there, as I was a little early. And it was still there, albeit rather in the shade of various large new buildings. Last visited just about a year ago, on or about 23rd March, which happens to be today. The traditional pre-concert bacon sandwich not quite up to its usual standard, with the bacon being plentiful but rather thick and rather chewy and would have been better deployed in bacon and egg mode, in which one could have taken a knife to the stuff. God shop was able to provide one new-to-me DVD and one not-new-to-me DVD, this last being 'Fast Food Nation' which I am fairly sure I have seen and enjoyed before. We will see whether it stands a second outing.

Home via Garrett Lane, where for once in a while I took in the 'Leather Bottle', where as luck would have it I came across a gent. who had not only worked for the Department of Employment in the days when it was HQ'd at St. James' Square, but also played a variant of the aeroplane game from the windows of his flat, windows which took in the flights paths for City Airport, Heathrow and Gatwick. But he was impressed when I explained that from where I lived, that is to say from the top of Epsom Downs, you could, on a clear day, see the aeroplanes touching down at Heathrow, never mind the flight paths. He also told me that Watneys' Stag Brewery used to be in Palace Street in Westminster of all places, not that you could tell that from what is there now and not that I ever much used to care for the product, except the famous tinnies called 'Party Four's or 'Party Seven's, quite drinkable when one was young and when the fizz and the chill had worn off.

A touch of Google this morning confirms the Stag story and reminds me of its reincarnation as Stag Place, which I do know. Picture dated 1961, presumably just after demolition, courtesy of http://www.westminstermemories.org.uk/.