Saturday, August 13, 2011
Visiting
Two visits to Hampton Court in three days this week. On the first occasion to the inside to see the gardens which were in tip-top condition. Over the road to lunch in a new to us Italian flavoured sandwich & light lunch sort of place, drawn in by their advertising their gluten friendliness - which meant that FIL could have a roll with his salad. Service a bit slow but grub good. Visited the wine shop across the road from them to see if they had any Chambertin, something I have been curious to try ever since reading in a book by M. Rambaud that it was the favourite wine of Napoleon 1er, and which for some reason I had quite wrongly thought to be a white wine. Wine shop man explained that Chambertin was rather thin on the ground and very expensive, too expensive for either of us. But he did have a very good Gevrey-Chambertin which he thought was a substitute that I could afford, which I could, just about. At £27 a pop, a bit more than I usually pay for the vino. I shall report on how we find it in due course.On the second occasion, just a stroll down the river - Hampton being the nearest convenient place for us to do that - then back over the road for tea and cake, oddly failing to find the Dish Café which we had found and liked on 15th May. Have they changed the layout so that we did not recognise the place?
Yesterday to Tooting to make sure that it was still there after the week's disturbances. Off the train at Earlsfield to find two young men in some sort of uniform and large motor cycle helmets issuing someone with a parking ticket and who appeared to be driving around on L plated scooters, for all the world like pizza delivery men. I prefer my enforcement officers to be in proper uniforms - something which even the police do not always manage these days. Plus they ought to have removed their helmets to write out the ticket.
Carried on down a quietish Garratt Lane, but the quiet may just have been that it is the school holidays so the lane was not full of children leaving school, as it usually is when I visit. Only came across one shop which had felt the urge to install shiny new shutters.
Demonstrated my solidarity with Broadway Market by buying two more Jamaican cucumbers - short fat jobs - and was pleased to find that Pandith Ganapathy was still taking on new patients. A bit further on came across two large policemen with blue cannisters strapped to their legs. On enquiry it turned out that the cannisters were nothing more sinister than water bottles. We also learned that they were part of a contingent which had been bussed down from Newcastle and who were being put up at some police training facility in Gravesend, so they had plenty of time sitting in buses. A bit further still came across two more policemen, from Tooting this time, who claimed that a lot more policemen had been sent down from Newcastle than were really needed. Aha think I, a wheeze to help the Northumberland police accountant balance his troubled books out of HMT emergency funds.
As promised on 5th August, took a further peek at the interesting floor of the Antelope. I think the brown squares really are some kind of mahogany. Sort of thing which ought to be a listed floor, but I did not think any of the young team running the place would have any idea at all about heritage flooring so I did not enquire. Good pint of Tribute and a good pork pie though. A pub which sells a pork pie without feeling the need to drape bits of salad and potato crisps all over it. Brilliant!
Interesting find at the Wetherspoon's Library, in the form of 'Répertoire IV' from Michel Butor. A chap of whom I had not previously heard but who appears to be some sort of high brow cultural essayist. From Les Éditions de Minuit on very cheap paper and with very cheap illustrations; not something I had associated with this particular publisher, certainly not in 1974 when this book was printed. There is a book plate in the book saying 'EX LIBRIS UNIVERSITATIS BRISTOLLIENSIS' and a stamp further on saying that the book had been presented to the British Library Document Supply Centre on 15 April 1986. Something else of which I had not previously heard. One of the essays with title 'Les sept femmes de Gilbert Le Mauvais' caught my eye so, as a dabbler in Proust, maybe I will start with that one. Then after that I can have 'La spirale des sept péchés', which does something with Flaubert, in whom I also dabble. Very high class books you can get in Wetherspoon's. Much better than your average charity shop.
Back home to TB, in time to join in a lusty rendering of 'Happy Birthday' at the sixtieth birthday party for one of the stalwarts. Plus a bit more pork pie while I was at it. As it happens, the previous day, watching a Bollywood version of the Othello story, we had been amused to have 'Happy Birthday' in English in a film which was otherwise in one of the Indian languages, presumably Hindi. Would people who speak Hindi at home really sing 'Happy Birthday' in English to our tune?
# posted by Jim @ 5:46 AM 
