Borodin

Last week to the Wigmore Hall to hear the Borodin Quartet give us two early Beethoven Quartets (Op.18 No.2 and Op.18 No.4) and Shostakovich Op.92. We puzzled about the talk about 70th anniversaries, but a quick visit to reference 1 reveals that they are one of the few quartets which I know to have an evolving membership. I have always assumed that quartets are formed during the younger years of their founding members and that, if successful, they dissolve when those same founding members retire.

The weather was not that great so we took our picnic tea at the tables and chairs conveniently placed on the pavement, outside the café at the back of British Home Stores, rather than in Cavendish Square. Onto the basement of the Wigmore Hall where we took a glass of white and were able to admire their natty succulents in glasses. Rather effective and probably less bother than flowers. Just take a small succulent out of the pot it was delivered in and pop the whole thing in an appropriately sized glass. But the flowers in the Hall proper were as good as ever, with the lead flowers on this occasion being some sort of white anthuriums.

Beethoven good, with 18.4 being as good as I have ever heard it. Perhaps the ears have settled back down after the overdose some years ago. And quite a few hearings more recently as attested at reference 2. Shostakovich rather more emotional, but none the worse for that. Quite a lot of seating changes at half time, which was unusual. Just the one phone went off during the performance, although various people thought it was OK to take pictures before and after.

Lost the race up the stairs at Vauxhall to a young man who ran the whole way. Two young ladies at the top were very scantily dressed, reminding me of the TB anecdote about a chap in there, some years ago now, in there one Sunday with his attractively mini-skirted wife, who bashed a chap who allowed his eyes to linger. It was OK for her to dress in a look-at-me fashion but you needed to be careful if you did look. Never mind touch.

Spent part of the journey home admiring the advertisement for http://www.greatestpotential.co.uk/. Going to the site today I learn that they can teach me how to build a strong passive income for future, whatever one of those is. Should I have made contact with these people years ago?

Spent the part that was spent waiting at Raynes Park trying to count two for every one second on the platform clock. That is to say one, two, three, four and so on, with my 2n falling on their n. Not too bad up to my twenty or so, but after that I could neither manage the simple mental arithmetic nor get in two numbers to the second. I had noticed before that my speed at counting numbers in my head is pretty much constrained to my speed at counting them aloud - and I can only suppose that counting in my head needs to go through most of the motions of counting aloud. Which means that, generally speaking, things slow down as the numbers get larger.

PS: it took me a while to run down the name of the lead flowers. I eventually asked google for images for 'large white tropical flowers' and came across something warm but not right but which got me to anthuriums. Learning on the way that you do not get an online picture catalog of the flowers available from even fancy Mayfair florists.

Reference 1: http://borodinquartet.com/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=18.4. Blog search not good at sorting out all the variations on Beethoven, Opus, 18 and 4.