pumpkinstrokemarrow

Near miss on a Bullingdon yesterday, clocking up exactly 30 minutes to get from Vauxhall to the Strand, finding on the way that all three stands near Trafalgar Square were full, this being around 1800 on a Friday evening. I also learned that getting across Victoria Station from Vauxhall Bridge Road to Buckingham Palace Road is quite a performance if one wants to stay on the road. Maybe it will get better when the current round of road improvements has improved.

From the Strand to the 'Maple Leaf', a Canadian theme pub, the name of which I vaguely remember coming across before. Very crowded and noisy with downstairs toilets decidedly retro.

One of the internet reviews of this establishment commented that the poutine was rubbish, poutine being a word I have come across before. Both blog and google search say that my only use of the word was on February 19th 2007, but my recollection is that it came from reading a Fred Vargas story, part of which was set in Quebec and which Amazon France tells me that I bought in 2009. I was impressed that I was able to get at my Amazon history so easily, but puzzled about the poutine. Maybe the memory connections for this word have got muddled up.

Next door was a restaurant called 'Steak  & Co' but which had a number of what looked fancy hams hanging in the window. More puzzled. From there past the 'Lamb & Flag' from where the the crowd was spilling out of the pub, down the alley and almost into Garrick Street. Far too crowded for a non-alcoholic refreshment, although in the dim and distant past they used to do very good bread and cheese at lunch time. So onto St Martin's Lane where I found a nice quiet café, Fernando's I think, where I was able to have a ham sandwich with a bottle of still, room temperature water without mood music. The waitress was slightly puzzled that I should want warm water but trotted off to the store to get one just the same. Ham sandwich came on ready sliced bread, but with the slices maybe half an inch thick. Presumably the factory bread answer to all this baguette and panini stuff - and fine for a ham sandwich. Ham thin but decent.

Onto to the Duke of York's to see 'Jumpy', a tale of angst concerning the response of a couple of middle aged couples to the extravagant doings of a just under (sex) age daughter, the pull being Tamsin Greig as the mother. As it turned out, a rather drab & dreary tale, rather too long, far too much bad language, a lot of thigh and some humour. A minimalist set, decorated in white satin finish emulsion, balanced by loud and unpleasant music between scenes: there may have been significance in this last but it was quite lost on me. Some rather heavy handed gestures towards the femmy movements of the 1970's. Some rather heavy handed moralising. An incestuous play in that two of the adult roles were luvvies. I have noticed before that some luvvies seem to love writing luvvies into their plays and other luvvies seem to love playing the resulting luvvy roles; a love which goes back at least as far as the bard and even our own 'Midsomer Murders' is mildly infected. Females OK (I particularly liked Seline Hizli as Lyndsey), juvenile males OK, adult males somehow rather irritating, not sure why. The experience was not improved by sitting in range of vent blowing out cold air - and I had no scarf to provide comfort for the neck.