pumpkinstrokemarrow

I was half way round the clockwise Horton Lane walk this morning when I saw what I would have taken for a buzzard had I been in the country. It looked bigger than a crow if smaller than a buzzard, with long wings with ends a bit pointed for a buzzard and with flight alternating between a lazy flapping and soaring. So probably a hawk of some sort, probably not a buzzard. RSPB identifier can do no better than suggest it might be a sparrowhawk.

Don't think the sighting was a product of the few glasses of Marsannay taken the evening previous, but I come back to that in a minute.

For a complex of reasons and despite the rather dull weather, we decided that yesterday afternoon was a good time to go and see how the spring bulbs were getting on at Hampton Court. Decided further to park in the station car park, rather than in the court itself, so that we got to Bridge Road for tea and cake, rather than the Tilt Yard - a perfectly decent and convenient place but not quite the same as a proper caff. So, found a car parking slot right next to a ticket machine. Climbed out of the car, all set to pay the flat fee of £5.50, to find that the machine never took card or note and was not taking coin. Unlike the machines in the Court which reliably take all three. I suppose the semi privatised Court can afford to throw taxpayers' money at fancy machines while the fully privatised railway is much more careful. Slightly irritated and looking around for another machine, when a lady just leaving presented me with her ticket. It would have been rude to refuse, so for once in a while I committed a minor crime.

Sneaked out of the car park, over the bridge and on into the wilderness where the daffodils were just starting and looking rather good. Very peaceful on this weekday afternoon (Friday) with very few people about. Just the ticket for slightly frayed nerves. Round the wilderness twice then along the east front and into the formal garden, where we partook of the symphony in green under the dull cloud. I have noticed before how the dull cloud seems to bring out the best in the green. The paler carp just about visible in the round pond. Rounded off the visit with a peek at one of the sunken gardens, the one with the squat topiary animals, which provided a surprising amount of colour with the beds full of pansies, daisies and polyanthus.

Back across the bridge and into Bridge Road, where we were not able to buy our Arbroath Smokies as the chap who sold them has moved, we were told to somewhere south of Guildford, so rather too far for the odd smoky. Nor were we able to buy a NYRB. Which was something of a surprise to me as I thought that a dinky shopping street like Bridge Road would be just the place for people who read that sort of thing, perhaps in one of the many cafés. Notwithstanding, the same informant told us that it was dinky enough that it rated a two page spread in the day's Evening Standard, something we were unable to confirm as the only Standard yielded by the station's litter bins was soiled with someone's leftover lunch.

But Lancelot's was alive and well. Didn't take one of his cigars, but did take a small piece of Montgomery cheddar (a little dry, but good) and a bottle of something called Marsannay, from Trapet Père & Fils, for around £25 - maybe twice what I am accustomed to paying in Sainsbury's or Waitrose. Very good it was too, quite unlike anything I have ever drunk before. Red, but only just opaque, unlike the red wine I usually drink. And while I could not describe the flavours or the palette, let alone the nose, I could, for once, see the point of the high flown language that sometimes appears in restaurant wine lists. All that stuff about a hint of whortleberry riding on the back of a fizzle of rosemary.

Closed with tea and cake at the bridge end of the road. Mine was a sort of Bakewell Tart, but a wedge from a round, rather than an individual tart. Icing a bit thick, but not bad.