Started off to find that that chipped bark noticed on the new trees at the station (see reference 2), had been trimmed back and the plots had been topped off with the same pea shingle - of a very uniform variety - does it come from a machine rather than a beach? - that they had used for the first attempt. The what might have been described as stoma finished watering pipes had also been trimmed back and capped off flush with the shingle. Was it all part of the grand plan or did some inspector not like what he found and so got the contractor back?
For once in a while the Bullingdon part of the TFL site is down, so I am unable to confirm my hiring, but it went from Grant Road East to South Lambeth Road, the first time that I have used this latter stand, clearly visible at gmaps 51.481896, -0.124609, if not at TFL. Just outside the interesting BT building, about, I believe, to be demolished on the mistaken grounds of its being a sixties eyesore. Notice also its interesting roof, to be seen in satellite view. A slightly wet journey and light not too good for cycling, being neither light nor dark, but the thin green over-jacket served well, at least to keep the wind and rain out.
The once grand Riley's Billiard Hall on Wandsworth road was looking even more forlorn than usual, it having had its fascia stripped off. I should have stopped to see what was going on.
Arrived at Luso's to realise that I had forgotten to bring my filofax, in which I had written down the name of one of the wines I had bought on the last occasion and rather liked and which I now know was Foral de Évora. A second reason to merge the heritage filofax with the shiny new telephone, the first being the calendar. But I did think that the label involved a large bird so tried to find it that way, but failed completely. There were some birds but the best fit to what I remembered was not quite right, quite apart from being on a bottle of red rather than on a bottle of white. The young lady hovered, concerned, perhaps more because I might not make a purchase at all than because of my bird. But she need not have worried as I took a bottle of João Pires Branco from Setubal Peninsula of Portugal, not a snip at £9 as the internet claims it can usually be bought for £5.
On to the Estrela to recover from the excitement, to take a bacon sandwich (satisfactory but not anything like as good as the regular, English-style one from Whitecross Street), and a half of Dão, my first knowing attempt at this particular sort of vinho. And, better than the sandwich, it was very satisfactory.
And so home, to be entertained on the way home first by a young lady, done up to the nines with a very short skirt, black tights and high heels. Not a particularly pretty girl, but certainly dressed to be noticed. Dressed well too. And second by a couple of young ladies, perhaps sisters, perhaps in their twenties, very comfortably & quietly chatting about I know not what. Presentably rather than flashily dressed; much more my sort of thing for closer acquaintance - with my interest lying in the contrast between the flashy and the comfortable. Third by a gent. who was very dressed for cycling with waterproof over trousers with hi-vis yellow straps round his ankles, waterproof jacket with hi-vis tabard - but with no helmet, which I thought odd. I could be smug, now having graduated to helmets, and I even had mine with me. Despite the rather odd comments from some neurologist recently about how they are a waste of space. A neurologist who might mend heads but I fail to see how he can contribute much to the debate about cycling helmets; his information might well be expert but it is also anecdotal. No big picture.
Them dealt with, I turned my attention to a glossy magazine called 'Loving your Home' from Haart, the front cover of which was decorated with an image of a rather odd looking chap called Llewelyn-Bowen, but who, as the BH explained when I got home, does some makeover show for ladies on the telly. Furthermore, the magazine had an unpleasant smell about it; the covers were OK, but the insides were not and it was not a good plan to get your nose too close to them, which I did as I did not have my reading glasses with me. The up-side was that I learned that for the price of our house in Epsom we could still buy something, albeit a touch smaller and with a much smaller garden (if any) in Tooting, should we want to get ourselves nearer some better class subcontinental restaurants or a bigger hospital than we can manage in Epsom. Indeed, I am told that for quite a range of medical eventualities one is carted off to St. George's right away, not even passing through A&E at Epsom. Touch wood, this will not arise.
I then got to thinking about how it would be convenient to have a map of the Bullingdon stands on my telephone. So off to the TFL site, at that time up and running, to find that while they do maps, they do nothing in the way of pdfs or anything else to put on your telephone. So I ask google and he comes up with one from some other outfit and I get that onto the phone in no time at all. But I now find that it has the same problem as Ottawa maps did on the previous phone: you can load them up OK but the Acrobat reader takes ages to zoom into the place you are interested in. It seems to have to rebuild the whole map every time you change the zoom. And unless you are very careful and stroke it in just the right way, it thinks you want to go back to the beginning again and you have to start over. While if you are in the part of the telephone called maps rather than the part called docs, the one map I have, a rather good freebie of the whole of the UK, works just fine. But this last does come at 500Mb rather than the 3Mb of the pdf, so maybe the former includes some trickery which makes it work properly.
Report on the bottle from Luso will follow in due course.
PS: the map I had thought was just of the UK now seems to do the whole world. Wonders never cease - but will there be some nasty blip on my bill from O2? The sort of thing you read about in the press, with monster teen-age generated charges arriving on the parental bill.
Reference 1: http://lusowines.com/.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/an-italian-job.html.
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