Entertained on the train by a middle aged, white & balding man (gentleman would be overdoing it a bit) have a very loud conversation into his telephone. Very loud, unintelligible and so very irritating, and interminable.
Off to get one of the last bullingdons on the ramp at Waterloo (Waterloo Station 3) and have a smooth run to Hinde Street, with just one traffic violation (having failed to find a convenient right exit from Oxford Street), with enough time to have a quick peek at the Poussin in the recently refurbished grand gallery of the Wallace Collection, where I found it looking much better than it had, just about a year ago, in the smoking room downstairs (see reference 1). Rather smaller than I remembered, but a fine picture with a tightly wrought composition, the geometrical aspects of which seemed uppermost on this viewing. Best seen, to my mind, from about 3 metres, with a bit of movement to vary the angle and focus. Fortunately the gallery was fairly quiet so I was able to indulge myself.
From there no more than a short walk to the Cock & Lion for a little something before the off, where I was interested to find an ancient picture of an establishment called 'Dirty Dick's', once, it seems, a world famous wine bar, which is not at all how I remember the place from the eighties. And so to the Wigmore to hear two young ladies from the former Soviet Union (Misses Kopatchinskaja (violin) and Leschenko (piano)) give us the Mozart K454 and the Enescu Op.25 violin sonatas. The Mozart was well enough but not quite what I was expecting, while the Enescu, unknown to me, was rather good, exciting even. The violinist certainly was. Perhaps the fact that the violinist came from Moldova gave her access to Enescu which she did not get to Mozart. I had the thought that Romania was quite near Turkey, had indeed once been part of their empire, and was so, perhaps, open to influence from the musical east in a way that Vienna was not.
We got two encores, one, Cage's Nocturne for violin & piano and the other the Elite Syncopations. Not too sure about this last, but I see this morning that there is precedent from Perlman & Previn on YouTube.
Interesting young lady sitting immediately in front of me, sporting a great mass of wavy red hair and the sort of profile which the Pre-Raphaelites went in for. I was reminded of Rossetti's Monna Vanna, the rather splendid jigsaw of which I gave away, undone, towards the end of my jigsaw phase - although to be fair, it was of the 1,000 piece variety which I only ever did on high days and holidays, when the trestle table was allowed out. See reference 3.
The intention had then been to sample the Cantonese at Newport Place or to buy a map of the Mourne Mountains from Stanford's (more properly WHS or Waterstone's these days) or both, to fail to find a stand with a vacant slot in the reasonable vicinity. Although there was a slightly too close encounter with one of those builders lorries for carrying dry goods, four axles and twelve wheels, somewhere in Oxford Street and a vacant but faulty slot in Soho Square. So all this considered, I got my hire renewed for the 15 minutes allowed for no vacancy and decided to push on back to Waterloo (Waterloo Station 1), thus completing a second leg which was almost the reflection of the first. Which would have been a first. On the way I did penance for the earlier violation by cycling all the way round the Aldwych, rather than nipping across the western neck to Lancaster Place the easy way.
On the way home on the train, I was able to admire, once again, all the brand new lighting units which have been bought in & then brought on to provide light for the overnight work on the Wimbledon Station rebuild. Perhaps the contractor only existed on paper until he got the contract. There were also a lot of plastic wrapped rolls, about the size of rolls of carpet, and the only one which was unwrapped appeared to be a sort of black plastic netting, about the gauge of the steel netting one might use to reinforce lower grade concrete floors. But what were they for in this context?
Three minor failings. Neither WHS at the station had a Guardian. At least two train announcements were made after the event they were announcing. And there was two much pepper in my otherwise decent tuna roll from Upper Crust.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/bullingdon.html.
Reference 2: Richard Beresford's monograph, published by the trustees in 1995 and still lurking on our shelves. Time for another read.
Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/christmas-special-dismantled.html.
PS: with thanks to wikipedia for the illustration. Colours not too good, but the best of the offerings at the top of the google image heap, most of which are usually small and/or low resolution.
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