First stop Wigmore Hall, to adjust a recent purchase, to find them shut & boarded up for a summer refurbishment.
A quick swing through Debenhams to take in their excellent shop dressing. The 'Sun' as opposed to the 'Mirror', as it were - with the latter having been made to seem very drab since the appearance of the former.
To John Lewis to replace our recently broken butter dish, to find that they had the very thing, in the very colour. A bit pricey, its predecessor having been a second or a car boot or something, but at least we now have a butter dish.
To Crombies to get a back-up pair of braces (see reference 3 for the originals), rather less pricey than I was expecting. They may even have been having a sale. But, sadly, they did not have a pair identical to the first pair and I had to settle for something similar.
And so to the 'Windmill' of Mill Street for lunch, notable for its pie club and which I had, occasionally used in the past for a smoke after work, while on my way to some rendez-vous further north. See reference 2. Not clear whether or when there had been a windmill in the street. Was the name of the pub just a take on the name of the street, perhaps the one time site of some other kind of mill, perhaps a water mill on some tributary of the Thames? My steak and kidney pie, while looking a little overcooked, turned out to be very good, with the little jug of gravy provided (so that you could adjust the moistness of your pie to your own taste) being just the ticket. The only catch was that while the place was quiet when we went in, it was busy when we left, our table being rather dominated by four elderly hurray-henries on the next table, who appeared to have been students together in Cambridge in the distant past and who were now into oily things in places like Albania. They were also into money and loud voices. All rather tiresome. Just keep hold of the pie, which was good.
From there we had thought to go to the Royal Academy, the older part fronting on Piccadilly, but wound up in the newer part, built in what had been the gardens of the older part. Hence Burlington Gardens, named for the third earl of that name. A newer part which contained an architectural exhibition in one of the grand first floor rooms which was both interesting and free, an exhibition which demonstrated, inter alia, that not all modern buildings were designed by fashionista architects with their eyes on their egos rather than their commissions. The occasion being the European Prize for Urban Public Space, being a biennial initiative of the Centre of Contemporary Culture &c. from somewhere near Barcelona. I was pleased to see one of the tickets going on about the need to balance the need for paying access by the public with that for the preservation of delicate ecological balances, the preservation being paid for by the paying access. A trick which is not always pulled off. In which connection we wonder what damage the arrival of fashionistas (mentioned, I think, in yesterdays' Guardian) will do at Dungeness, a place which we rather like as it is.
I also have dim memories of the days when the building used to contain ethnographical stuff. Seagoing war canoes, masks and shrunken heads. No idea where they are now.
Leaving the architecture, we continued towards Piccadilly to catch a bus, but were snared on the way by Mr. Southeran, whose old-style bookshop is illustrated above. Complete with old-style attendants inside, reminding me of the Petty Cury Heffer's of my youth. They investigated but failed to find any Kraszewski, claiming that their shop had never ever stocked anything by him. But at least they were surprised as I had been to find out how many books he had written. See, inter alia, reference 1. I consoled myself with some antiquarian postcards which were, being realistic, about what we could afford in such a place.
Two buses later we were at Waterloo and on a train to Guildford. Emerging at Epsom, we found that the three volume catalogue from Next, first spotted on the way out, was still there and now sits beside me as I type. It is a big production, in three handsome A4 volumes, two hardback, altogether much, much grander than the catalogues knocked out by Argos, and it is not at all clear on what basis they might be distributed. To the convenors of 'Next' parties, which are, one might suppose, the Surrey equivalent of the more affordable 'Tupperware' parties they have elsewhere? What were they doing, more or less in their original box, underneath the front shrubbery of West Hill House (gmaps 51.334183, -0.275074)? Had the recently privatised post man simply got tired of lugging the thing about?
Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/the-jew.html.
Reference 2: http://www.windmillmayfair.co.uk/.
Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/splice-mainbrace.html.
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