Postscript

I have never troubled much with Nietzsche, having consigned him to the nutter hole, probably quite wrongly.

But I was struck by this quote, included in an article in a recent NYRB. A fitting postscript to the Kiefer exhibition of the post before last.

Also a variation on the theme of Ecclesiastes, which I bring up from time to time. See, for example, http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/sonia-o.html.

The missing tent

The elaborate tent mentioned in the last post, which I did not get around to posting at the time, that is to say the 22nd August.

Anselm Kiefer

Off to the Royal Academy on Wednesday to see the new exhibition by Anselm Kiefer, of whom I had not heard before the day.

Started off with in-train entertainment from a couple of chaps with regional/affordable accents discussing the tensions between the sales and installation teams, for, I think, ventilation equipment manufacturers. It seems that the sales chaps were always underspec'ing the jobs to get the work, leaving the installers without all the bits and bobs they needed to do it. I related to contracting to government, where the whole idea of the contractors is to make most of their profit out of modifications to the contract after it has been signed.

Continued at the stand at Grant Road East from where I made it to South Lambeth Road, a first in the sense that I had never used this last stand before, in about 15 minutes.

Being a little early I called in the Tate Library there where the staff were most helpful, all set to let aliens use their computers, had one been free. As it was I caught up on the news in the Guardian. On by 88 bus to Lower Regent Street, entertained on the way by a talkative lady, of about our own age, who was able to explain why the engine on the bus seemed to keep stopping - the answer being that the bus was a diesel electric, perhaps a scaled down version of a railway locomotive, with the noisy bit cutting out whenever the bus stops for more than a few seconds. Possibly, according to Wikipedia, a Wright Pulsar Gemini HEV, but I have to say that I found Wikipedia, for once, with room for improvement on the subject, despite their domination of the airwaves on the subject.

And so to the Royal Academy to be greeted by the submarines illustrated, a striking start tot he Kiefer. It had also been declared to be winter and the tent and café noticed on my last visit (http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/a-touch-of-geometry.html) had been put away for the duration. On into the exhibition, in what must have been the Academy's main exhibition space - a large suite of large, well lighted and handsome rooms. I dare say I have been in them before, but I cannot think when. The Academy had done Kiefer very well, with their large rooms fully up to displaying his mostly large work. I was very taken with the large multi-media paintings, maybe 8 feet by 16 feet and maybe up to a couple of centimetres thick what with all the stuff stuck onto to them. A German, very much our own age, of the immediate post-war generation and very into death and destruction. A sense of desolation pervaded most of the paintings, although some of the smaller water colours were a bit brighter. I associated both to our own John Martin and to the pre-war German expressionists. I shall be back to take another look.

I also associated to the Phyllida Barlow exhibition at the Tate Britain (see http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/an-older-trace.html) which seemed, in retrospect, very shallow compared with the, in some ways comparable, work of the German,

Afterwards to the Frego of Swallow Street, next to the fishmonger there, for their interesting yellow cheese cake, said I think to be of Brazilian flavour. Rather good, so I shall be back there too.

Closed the outing with a hop from Chapel Place, Marylebone to Concert Hall Approach 1.

Reference 1: for John Martin see http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Huge,+queer+and+tawdry

Bread escape attempt

I mentioned the great rise of the 271st batch on 8th September. Today I offer the outside view of the the 274th batch.

The rising of which prompted an early get away from the Bill's of the previous post, my being alarmed that the dough might actually start to drip into the rest of the airing cupboard if I left it much more than its usual 4 hours.

My alarm stemming from my expectation of the sort of uxorial explosion which such dripping onto the ironing might have given rise to. Far worse than anything that might arise from my leaving before the coffee.

A visit to Bill's

A restaurant called Bill's has popped up in Epsom, across the road from Wetherspoons (formerly the heritage Assembly Rooms, patronised by the likes of Pepys) and across the lane from the newly reopened Albion (formerly the haunt of assorted racing & betting types. Magistrates' Court once held upstairs).

Maybe the fourth or fifth restaurant on this particular site in the 25 years or so that we have been in Epsom, so we shall see how they get on, whether they beat the average.

We had a good meal. The place seemed quite busy for a Monday lunchtime and the staff were very pleasant & friendly, always a plus in such a place.

Only marred in my case by the texture of the hamburger of the house. It was cooked as I asked, moist but not oozing red; they seemed genuinely concerned to get that bit right. But the burger was rather firmer than I like. As with salt beef, I like it loose rather than firm, although in the case of salt beef, loose seems to be unobtainable in these days of television chefs. We are awash with culinary professionals, not to mention executive chefs, but one cannot get a simple bit of loose salt beef. On this occasion I did not get a loose hamburger and I wondered whether it was due to the burgers being cooked from frozen, or perhaps reheated from frozen. My evidence being that BH does a meat loaf which, on a good day, is loose when fresh, but is invariably firm when one eats the occasional left overs cold.

Décor enhanced by strings of dried red peppers of various sorts hanging from the roof. Large red peppers drying to a dark brown while small red peppers, aka chillies, drying to a dark red.

The web site (http://bills-website.co.uk/) says that the chain kicked off in Lewes in about 2000 and that they have now got as far as branches in Epsom, Exeter and Cambridge, to name but three. One of our waiters said something about each branch doing a variation on the theme, rather than just slavish copying of the central template. Is the place a franchise operation rather than a restaurant operation?

Google turns up a franchise called 'Tiger Bills' which is clearly wrong and a rather unkind review from Tripadvisor (not a site I use so no idea how reliable or helpful it is) which thought that the right Bill's did involve franchise and that expansion did involve dilution of quality, always a problem when a good idea wants to move from small & local to large & national. I associate to a gang called Pierre Victoire which used to operate from a small site near where the Epsom Bill's is now, a gang which started well in Edinburgh, grew too fast and collapsed. Although I see from the 'Scotsman' that as of 2010 'it was one of the UK's most famous restaurant chains before its spectacular collapse 12 years ago. But now the flamboyant French chef who left a trail of debts when his Pierre Victoire restaurant chain went under has relaunched the brand'. Did the relaunch fly? Will 'Patisserie Valerie' go the same way?

Maybe it is like 'Autonomy' (see http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Autonomy for a not very helpful mention). You have a good idea, build it up a bit and then flog it to some big outfit with lots of cash while the going is good. Put your share of the loot into some nice safe investment and sit back for a well earned rest. Let the big outfit take the strain.

Not just Longmead Road

From time to time I report the appearance of white egrets on the Longmead Road and I find this morning that they get something similar in Ontario with this one popping up maybe 50km northeast of Stratford, Ontario, the place where they have a thriving & ongoing tribute to Stratford, Warwickshire, the one upon the Avon.

I think the red stuff might be reflected sunlight rather than something dodgy in the water.

Courtesy of the weather network.

Dasychira pudibunda

BH spotted the very striking caterpillar of one of these moths on our back lawn early this morning, otherwise known as the pale tussock moth. Alerted by the newspaper, we first thought of the oak processionary moth but google rapidly disabused us of this idea and then the search term 'yellow furry caterpillar' brought up the right answer. And along the way I have also learned that the processions are a threat to humans, not to oak trees, as I had thought.

Google also did well even earlier this morning. I had discovered the hard way that my new HP laptop does not have a break key, that is to say when I wanted to break into a running Excel program. The search term 'HP laptop break in' took me to an HP help forum where various people had encountered this very problem and one of them suggested 'Ctrl + Alt + Fn + Pause', which did indeed work for me too. A bit more fiddly than the 'Ctrl + Brk' I had before, but I can live with that. Apparently the trouble is that the pause key is also the (right hand) shift key, and the rule built into the keyboard for other reasons is that shift is more important than pause, so you have to indulge in trickery to make the keyboard realise that you really do mean pause rather than shift.

Why on earth did HP find it necessary to make the change? Don't they know about not fixing things that ain't broke?