pumpkinstrokemarrow

The same issue also included moans and groans about the private finance initiative, a wheeze which came into fashion at Her Majesty's Treasury around 20 years ago. The public argument at the time was that private sector efficiencies would more than compensate for the high cost of private sector capital; the private argument was that the initiative would get capital expenditure on public works off the public balance sheet, thus keeping various international financiers happy. As it turns out, what the private sector was really efficient at was not so much actually running the hospitals and such like but, rather, at extracting money from the public sector, far more so than anyone imagined at the time and so, according to the DT, we are now saddled with all kinds of duff contracts let under said initiative. Leaving aside the fact that all their private sector friends are doing very nicely out of them thank you.

Yesterday off to London Town to be greeted at the station by a poster paid for by the Royal Academy of Arts and advertising some sculpture gig. Most of the poster consisted of a tasteful photograph of a couple of square metres of badly compacted hard core. Not altogether sure whether the joke is on them for advertising some of the rubbish that passes for sculpture these days - or on us for paying for the stuff.

Which reminds me of an anecdote about a New York sculptor in the late sixties of the last century. He had an arrangement with his quarry whereby they chopped a lump of rock out of the hillside - say half a cubic metre or so - and mounted it nicely on whatever sort of plinth was in vogue at the time and then shipped it directly to the sculptor's gallery for sale - without bothering the sculptor at all. The story went that the stuff went fast enough to make comfortable livings for quarry, sculptor and gallery; the sculptor's contribution being to assist in the creation of a brand which sold. We were not told how long it was before they were rumbled and the scam fell apart: we might be gullible but we do not like to be seen to be gulls, however ever much we might like lumps of rock au naturel. There is at least one such rock in Hyde Park, the gift, as I recall, of the grateful Norwegian nation.

Then onto the train. For the first part of the journey we were entertained by a couple of teenage lads whose idea of fun was to have a loud conversation interspersed with much inane laughter and consisting mainly of expletives drawn from a very limited store of same. I guess the idea was to shock the grown ups, so we obliged by moving to the other end of the carriage where we were entertained by a mixed couple of the same age. Slightly fewer expletives but similarly inane. Mainly about deeds of derring-do on Facebook. Something called bitch fights. They got off after a while, with their place in the sound zone being replaced by the regular announcements about the need to keep one's luggage with one and a very serious young man having a very serious mobile phone conversation about selling his car. We learned that identity theft of cars is a big issue in the world in which he moved. Or something of that sort.

Exiting at Oxford Circus we take a light meal in an Italian cafe in the region of John Prince's Street, not the Ponti's, rather the sort of small private cafe which used to be very common in central London, now largely displaced by the likes of 'Pret a Manger' and 'Bella Italia'. Then off to the Wigmore Hall for a Haydn quartet (Op. 20 No. 4), wind pieces by Janacek & Musgrave and the Brahms clarinet quintet (Op. 115) to close. With Endellion providing the strings, Michael Collins the clarinet and his London Winds the balance. I note in passing that the Endellions must be our far and away most heard quartet, over a period of probably 15 years or more with the last occasion being on or about October 13th last year. Defected once in favour of the Hagens since then.

For once the programme seemed a little unbalanced, in that although each piece was fine in itself, especially the first and the last, I took a while to adjust to the clarinet quintet after the interval. I wonder this morning whether including the two wind pieces and his London Winds in the programme was a quid-pro-quo for the eminent Collins doing the well worn - if well loved - clarinet quintet. One of the wind pieces had been commissioned by the Wigmore Hall from one Thea Musgrave. Last night was not its first outing but we were, nevertheless, honoured by the presence of the composer in the audience.

A first of a different kind was the presence of a bass clarinet among the winds, something I have never seen before. It looks like a giant clarinet, with black body and silver keys like an ordinary clarinet, but with a turned down mouth and turned up bell, like a saxophone.