Thursday, April 21, 2011
Tuesday
Being a fine warm day was clearly a day for a trot - brisk walk perhaps - around Epsom Common. The first item of interest was two places on the circular path where white fluff had accumulated on the sides of the path to the extent that it looked a bit like a rather feeble snowfall. At the first place I could not work out what was doing it, beyond deciding that there was far too much of it for it to be brushings from dogs - which, in any case, tends to accumulate around benches rather than paths - or seeds from dandelions - which does, furthermore, not tend to drift around in small clumps of down. Rather single seeds. At the second place, found that the culprit was a stand of tall slender trees with pendant green catkins maybe two inches long and up to a third of an inch in diameter. The fluff was growing out of the body of the catkins and the leaves appeared to be growing out of the base of the catkins - but they had not got far enough for them to be any help with identification. Will I remember to check in a week or so's time? Presumably an evolutionary variant on the cotton theme.
The second item was a team of what looked like young men working under the banner of the Lower Mole Conservation Trust or some such, presumably in some kind of tertiary education of an environment or ecology flavour. Now it is well known that young men like playing with internal combustion engines, they like noise, they like danger and they like making a statement which is going to annoy adults. A scrawl in red paint across the front of a bridge on a dark night ticks two boxes. Chopping trees down on the Common while the pubs are shut ticks three. So we have the team. But my vote would be, if they have to chop things down with much noise and fanfare, that they should be taken to a forestry plantation where that is the idea. Keep them out of our recreational forests. And if there are not any working forests to hand, let them troll off to mid Wales where there are plenty.
Later on in the day off to Cavendish Square to admire their tulips. We had seen a splendid bed at Polesden Lacey, planted with a mixture of bright reds, yellows and oranges with purple highlights. Very effective it was too, so we wanted to see how they had managed in Cavendish Square with their rather smaller bed, but with a similar colour scheme. A little late in the day when we got there, but pretty good. Pretty good indeed for a metropolitan square.
Beforehand, we had finally got to the linen cupboard in Great Castle Street when it was open. A rather old style shop carrying every sort of table and kitchen linen you could possibly think of, set out on sturdy wooden shelves, running around & up the walls and which may have been older than the owner, a gent. of around our own age. Plus various other lines around the edges. A regular Alladin's cave for the ladies; perhaps the ladies' equivalent of the wonderful old-speak ironmongery we came across in Montgomery once and where I bought a beautiful long handled axe. Well balanced and not too heavy, not at all like the clumsy great things you are apt to get in garden centres and builders' merchants. The only pity is that I do not get to use it enough or take proper care off it and the wedges are working loose.
Afterhand, to the Wigmore Hall to hear the Elias Quartet do Beethoven's Op. 95 and Op. 127, with a touch of Kurtág in between. The Elias Quartet which I had first heard doing the Mozart Clarinet Quintet with Michael Collins (see post of 11 March). We were sitting very near the front - row E - so the rawness, punch and verve of this young quartet was very audible. To the point that we were rather overwhelmed by the end of it. Goodness knows what sort of a state they were in. Puzzled on this occasion by their ability to make a huge shift in emotional tone after a break of just a few seconds. Calmed down with a mouthful of left-over red washed down by a dose of 'Famous Grouse'.
PS: technical beef. If I search the blog for 'Mozart' the most recent hit is something on 9 March. If I search for 'mozart' up pops the post of 11 March, despite the fact the Mozart is spelled Mozart in both places. Whatever is the so rarely fallible Mr. Google up to?
# posted by Jim @ 7:33 AM 
