Old Chablis & old pix

It was a damp, mild day and the snow of the day before had nearly vanished. The cones and tape around the new trees at Epsom Station had finally been cleared away, with their place taken by a cherry picker which, it looked all too likely, would knock the odd branch off one. At which point a goods train rumbled through, pulling a load of the wagons you might put sand or ballast in, a sufficiently rare event that the ticket office clerk denied that I could have seen such a thing. He thought I must have mistaken it for one of those contraptions which cleans, or perhaps checks, the lines.

From there to admire a large picture advertising Scottish beef on the platform, which was all very well but which had far more fat on it than is easy to get from a butcher: all the rib beef I see is far too lean, which is a pity. A good blanket of fat does wonders for the texture of the lean and one does not have to eat it. Although I rather like the fat when it has gone crisp & brown and most of the actual fat has drained out of it.

Pulled a Bullingdon at Kennington Lane Rail Bridge, the Vauxhall Cross stand failing me, and pedalled up Vuaxhall Bridge Road to get well tangled up in Victoria Station, to finally park up in Cardinal Place. From there but a short walk to the Queen's gallery to see photographs from an expedition to the eastern Mediterranean in 1862 and a gold themed assembly from the royal collection.

The photographs, all or nearly all albumen prints of 9 inches by 11, and all or nearly all very good, mostly architectural, but a few of exotic guards laid on by the locals and a few of a not very impressive looking HRH the Prince of Wales. I was struck, I think for the first time by the nearby and more usual meaning of POW. I was also struck by a lot of the buildings being not that unlike western European buildings and not that strange at all. With, I suppose, Venice and Constantinople being bridges between the two.

You get a pleasing crispness with some old photographs, and with a lot of arty black and white photographs, that is lost with the move to colour.

The gold assembly was interesting, including, for example a coronation girdle which illustrated the old meaning of belt for girdle, nothing to do with ladies' foundation garments. In this particular case a sword belt for the sword of state. Also a picture which told of a custom whereby suitors for a young lady, in this particular case the Virgin Mary, carried light staves or wands, the losing suitors publicly breaking their staves when the winner was announced. Also a small picture by a chap called Duccio.

Through Green Park, where I was accosted by two young ladies who claimed to want direction to a tube station, to quite a decent café somewhere in St. James', perhaps in Duke of York Street. Small but select and serving a fine big beef roll, only slightly marred by their insisting on a side salad.

On to M&S at Green Park where I found that one could buy fresh coriander, but not sage, wet or dry (see reference 1). And so to Hedonism to check out their white wines. We found that there were tasting arrangements in the basement where, by purchase of a key card one could sample from a bank of maybe twenty wines. We coughed up £9 for which I got about a tablespoon of a very fine Chablis. Upstairs to inspect a bottle there, to find that it would cost around £150 and was from a chap called Ravenau, a chap whom we were told had a firm grip on all the better Chablis. We were also told that being an old Chablis meant that most of the acids had been burned off, thus accounting for it tasting of German wine. It seemed rather an expensive way to get the German taste, so I settled for a bottle of actual German taste, a gewürztraminer from the Alto Adige, a brand which I have had before. Plus, for old times sake, a very small bottle of very strong whisky from Blair Atholl, which came in what looked like a medicine bottle and which turned out to have a rather oily taste which I was not that keen on.

I wondered who bought the very large bottles of wine, holding maybe as much as ten gallons. They would have been quite heavy for one person to manage, so perhaps the footballers and oligarchs who buy such things also buy a special cradle or crane from which to pour it. Or do they hire a bevy of former Miss. Universes for the job? I think they come with muscles.

Wound up at the Running Horse a bit further up the street, which I am pleased to say still sells pork pies, now on a plate rather than a slab of slate.

After all the excitement, it was perhaps just as well that I was paced up the 65 (give or take) stairs at Vauxhall by a young lady. And I did not lose count on this occasion.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/fooderies.html.