Wooden boxes

To the Wigmore Hall on Monday to hear the Brentano String Quartet - never previously heard of - do Shostakovich No.11 Op.122 and Beethoven Op.59 No.2. For once, we were sitting near the back and the music was very good; a tribute to the composer, the performers and the hall's acoustics. I was struck by two thoughts. First, that it was unusual for me to like a piece of music written as recently at 1966, about the time that I was doing A-levels. Second, that I really was listening to noises coming out of wooden boxes, cunningly wrought but wooden boxes just the same. What was it about their tone that brought this on? Not that the thought detracted from the music, it just described part of the experience.

Afterwards off to Benugo's at Brown Hart Gardens for some more of their hot meat sandwiches (see 2nd March for the first occasion). Sandwiches done, the Ukrainian Cathedral was still shut, so off down to Mount Street Gardens to visit the Farm Street Church of the Immaculate Conception, entering through the Mount Street entrance unusually contrived behind the altar, to find a very elaborate church, with lots of crucified Christ, painted sculpture and side chapels, all in very good order. Much lighter and brighter than Brompton Oratory (of the immaculate heart rather than the immaculate conception) or Westminster Cathedral. Perhaps being rather smaller makes this rather easier to pull off.

We then wandered south, taking in Grosvenor Square - to which our last joint visit may have been at the time of the demonstration against the war in Vietnam maybe forty years ago, an occasion on which some of the demonstrators, as I recall, saw fit to throw marbles under the hooves of the police horse sent to clear us out. On through Green Park and St. James' Park, both looking a touch shabby on this rather dull afternoon, despite the large numbers of daffodils, and so to County Hall, where I had the third thought of the day. Given that we now manage without a County Council for London, what on earth were all the people in this huge complex engaged at? Most of the serious business was done, even then, by the individual boroughs, so what happened here? It surely can't have been right that Thatcher abolished them? Everybody knows that that was just a bit of spite against Red Ken, nothing to do with the facts on the ground at all.

And so through the handsomely refurbished concourse at Waterloo and home to chicken soup for tea. There was a time when I used to pride myself on making soup without such aids, but lately we have taken to using Knorr Chicken Noodle soup powder as a base for a quick soup. The stuff is a bit strong taken neat, as per the instructions on the packet, but used as a starter for left over vegetables and the like, fine. In this case the left over vegetables were augmented by a couple of rashers of left over everyday streaky bacon, which may have been a mistake, not only because there was a touch of mould about them but also because they were too salty given the amount of salt already provided by Knorr. Must be more careful next time. Maybe we should start a campaign for real bacon (CARB), the sort of bacon that really is preserved meat rather than a spongy vehicle for salty water.

Soup dealt with, I went online to check out the Marquess of Reading, for whom we had passed a blue plaque in Mayfair, to find that he was Rufus Daniel Isaacs from Spitalfields, then a fruit and vegetable market, 1st Marquess of Reading, GCB GCSI GCIE GCVO PC KC, Viceroy of India, barrister, jurist and the last Liberal Foreign Secretary. He must have been a very good barrister as he was averaging some £30,000 a year at it around 1900 - a time when £30,000 meant a lot more than it does now. Illustration from Vanity Fair, via Wikipedia.