Lunchtime bliss

On Monday to hear Jonathan Bliss do mainly Beethoven at the Wigmore Hall, including the Waldstein last noticed on 5th April. It continues to do well, as does Bliss, whom I am sure I have heard doing Schubert at a lunchtime Wigmore, before he had a beard, a visit followed up by one to the late lamented Pelican bar nearby to try out one of their fancy Irish whiskies. But I can find no record.

The overgrowth path was new to me but made a good break between the two Beethovens. Resisted the temptation to buy a CD of same from Amazon afterwards.

From there to the Italian Gardens at Hyde Park, taking in a couple of machine gun toting policemen in Connaught Square on the way. We had assumed that the policemen were there for some minor but controversial embassy, but inspecting Google this morning it seems more likely that they were there for some major but controversial prime minister, one Blair, who has sunk some of his ill-gotten gains into a property there. Arriving at the Italian Gardens, decided it was time to take lunch and with the hut there offering very little, opted for the Island Restaurant instead where we had a very decent, and very reasonable, set lunch. I learned, amongst other things, about a sort of miniature lentil called a quinoa, which it seems is a very trendy thing to eat just presently.

It sticks in my mind that this restaurant occupies what used to be the once very trendy bar of the Royal Lancaster Hotel, a hotel once used by rich Arabs to house their London ladies, but which seems to have been rebadged as the Lancaster Hotel. For once, Google not very informative on this point.

Italian Gardens looking very well in the warm afternoon, if not quite as special as on my previous visit, recorded on 4th April. The swan was still present and correct, still sitting. Surely it must have been a new swan or at least a new egg?

From there strolled down the Serpentine taking in a small herd of rabbits playing in the margins of the Moore arch. Also some ducklings, goslings and a heron. Not to mention a very jolly Italian couple of tourists who asked us where the Serpentine was when they had their back to it - although to be fair to them this was not the best known bit of the Serpentine, being the bit known as Long Water, just to the north of the West Carriage Drive bridge. Lots of happy bank holiday people playing in and around the Serpentine. Various piles of Bullingdons belonging to picnicking people who were clearly not too bothered about the half hour limit on free rides.

Across Hyde Park Corner and onto to a new-to-me memorial to Bomber Command, a memorial which I have mixed feelings about.  It is one of what seems to be a large number of new memorials to the second war sprouting up in central London: it is very big, very conspicuous, very new and with the mixed feeling arising first because the second war was a very long time ago now and it is time to move on and second because I am a bit unsure about some of what was done by the Command in the closing stages of that war. That said, the men served and some 50,000 of them died; they deserved a memorial - but it was a pity that we did not do it at the proper time, when feelings on the matter were cleaner and clearer.

And so back to Green Park tube where we had started the day out. Through to Vauxhall and from there onto Clapham Junction where we found that all the new roofing on platform 11 made playing the aeroplane game more or less impossible. And so to home.