pumpkinstrokemarrow

Pushed on into Clerkenwell Road which did not have much commercial character any more. No small businesses doing obscure light industrial things, although there was a supplier of janitorial equipment. But once in Old Street things got more interesting. Lot more housing and a lot more small shops, including some with a Vietnamese flavour. Lot more people smoking in the street. A former Salvation Army Hostel. A former orphanage. And at the corner of City Road and Old Street the very grand and red Leysian Mission. From what I can glean from Mr G., the place was very grand inside too, including a full scale theatre, and had been built for the Wesleyites in 1903. Somewhere along the way the place fell out of ecclesiastical hands into commercial hands and is now the Imperial Hall. Not altogether clear whether it is hotel, flats or both. Can't include a picture here as they all seem to be copy protected. No doubt I could drive through the copy protect if I gave it a bit of time.

Back to St Luke's church which looked as if it had been burnt out at some point, then unfrocked and expensively rebuilt as an out-house for the LSO. Very nice chamber music venue it was too, slightly marred for me by the use of Y-columns to hold up the new roof - a stretched version of those used to hold up the wobbling bridge connecting Bankside with St Paul's. I find them rather ugly.

Music by Mozart - the K428 string quartet and the K581 clarinet quintet - provided by the Elias Quartet with Michael Collins in support with his Yamaha clarinet. We didn't get to find out whether he was any relation of his Irish namesake. His clarinet did really well in this particular space - rather better than when we heard him in the Wigmore Hall the other week (see January 28th). And we wondered about the group dynamics of a quartet containing two sisters and two unrelated gents.. Altogether an excellent concert - and at £9 a pop very reasonable. They look to have a good chamber programme, so I must keep an eye on them.

Needed to calm down a bit, so retired to the neighbouring Wetherspoons where they had an Adnams Festival on and offered a choice of half a dozen or so brews from Adnams. Being of mature I concentrated on just the one. And for a treat we had a barmaid who seemed to be talking the language of 'East Enders' as her mother tongue. We were very restrained and did not seek the autographs of the quartet who turned up after a while with various hangers-on, presumably on the same errand.

Afternoon rounded off by meeting a young French family - the daughter with the properly French name of Celeste - getting off the tube at Clapham North where they were visiting friends for a holiday. I did no better than suggest they visit Clapham Common, not thinking until afterwards that I should have recommended the Indian and other restaurants of Balham and Tooting, which are probably much better than anything they have in that way at home.

Green alkanet (see February 28th) at Raynes Park alive and growing, although it looked as if it had been a bit set back by the recent frosts.

PS: what are the proctors of St. Andrews playing at? I had thought of it as an ancient and respectable place supplying courses in Land Management and Fine Arts for real and wannabee royals. But the front page of today's DT tells me that they have awarded an honorary degree to the man that broke the bank at Monte Carlo, aka Shredder Fred. I thought Cameron's crowd did not believe in rewarding failure.