On which occasion, the train journey to Vauxhall scratched two of my current pet-hates. First, there was a young lady eating apples big, right in front of me. She also had a plastic tub and spoon by her feet, presumably once the receptacle for some kind of salad and then the receptacle for apples cores. It seemed likely that she was going to leave the tub when she left. Crime one, conspicuous eating in a busy train. Crime two, adding to the food litter on the train.
Which leads onto the second pet-hate, all the litter on trains, a large proportion of which arises from people dumping their free newspapers. While I can see that it might well make commercial sense to dish out advertisement rags for free, the dishers out are free loading on the train system in the sense that they don't have to put up with or clear up all the resultant litter. On the credit side, the punters are getting a cheap read, of sorts anyway. Perhaps one half of the solution is to make the dishers out charge, just as the dishers out of plastic bags have just been made to charge. Bearing in mind that these last had all the machinery for charging in place, so making a charge was not a big deal, which is not the case in the case of the newspapers. And the other half is the installation of large wire bins on station platforms and a serious bit of commuter re-education. Dumping your paper in the train is not cool, dumping it in the large wire bin is. I think they do something of the sort on commuter platforms in New York, with in their case the idea being to recycle real newspapers, to leverage up the amount of read per paper. But near enough the present requirement.
Onto the Wigmore for Beethoven trios, including Op.1 No.2, presumably logged as the second piece that the great man ever had published. Quite remarkable for one so young. The trio was new to us and trios they played were also new to us, both individually and as a genre, but were very good nonetheless - even if, reading the programme notes this morning, I find that most of the musical - not to say musicological - subtlety passed right over my head. Maybe I will do better on a future occasion.
The piano was tuned in the interval, which tuning made me wonder whether places like the Wigmore Hall always have a duty tuner, whether there is a roster of duty tuners like the roster of duty chemists, or what. And while that was going on, I made the acquaintance of a blazer sporting member of the Ladies' Stage Golf Club, a club which plays out of Sunningdale. I made some play of having lived in a road called Sunningdale, one of a clutch of golfy roads leading to the exclusive Eaton Golf Club in Norwich, only known to us for the unofficial provision of childrens' toboggan runs when there was snow. The lady in question took herself more seriously than she took me, so I did not get to find out what her qualifications for joining such a society might have been. So half a luvvy in the great game of luvvy spotting. See reference 1.
Checking with google this morning, I can only turn up reference 2, where there is no particular mention of ladies and where they are said to play out of Richmond rather than Sunningdale. Perhaps my lady was a former member. On the other hand, they headquartered in the well known 'Salisbury' in St. Martin's Lane, still quite a respectable boozer, despite the presence of both holiday makers and food. Membership not restricted to full stage luvvies, with all kinds of odds and sods let in, provided they can claim some connection, which might explain the non-recognition.
I also notice this morning that ticket sales only cover about 60% of the costs at the Wigmore Hall, leaving a large hole to be plugged by donations and grants - with these last presumably falling off badly. Which led to a search for the accounts which led me to reference 3, which answered, at least in part, the piano tuner question.
On the way out, we decided that the Oxford Street lights look quite well now that the big shops have dressed for the occasion.
For once in a while, took refreshment at the 'Half Way House' at Earlsfield, having just missed the Epsom connection at Vauxhall. Wine fine, but BH not pleased with the upstairs wallpaper. Modern humour not her thing at all, associating from there to the rather gross humour once favoured for their wallpapers by the Firkin chain, once the lessees of the 'Marquis' in Epsom.
PS: I eventually got to the proper accounts of the Wigmore Hall via the charity number, via the Charity Commission. Accounts which show it to be an organisation with a turnover of the order of £6m a year. So quite a modest operation in the scheme of corporations and football clubs.
Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/luvvy-spotting.html.
Reference 2: http://www.thestagegolfingsociety.co.uk/.
Reference 3: http://wigmore-hall.org.uk/concert-promoter-information/13-general-information-for-concert-promoters-2015-2016/file.
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