Friday, June 29, 2012
Visits
Earlier this week we paid my first visit to Claremont for some time, the garden part of a house which used to belong to Clive of India and which is now a school. A house which went to some lengths to hide the presence of the many servants needed to run the place, including a sunken road which they used for entry and egress, unseen. The garden contained parkland, woodland, a large lake and a grassy amphitheatre, with an outdoor Macbeth offered by http://www.tlcm.co.uk/ for the middle of July. Ideal day for such a place, warm, languid and sunny. Note that, in common with many places of this sort, a lot of mature trees have got or are getting to the end of the line, but succession planning is good. The landscape gardens are not greatly scarred. There is also a fine cedar by the lake, a cedar which, unusually, does not appear to have lost any large lumps.
The only blot on the landscape was the absence of the fleet of large carp which used to sail the lake in search of visitor supplied food, sold in little bags express. A trusty explained that these loan fish had been brought in to improve the ecolity of the lake but it had been found that they did not go the job and the loan had to be terminated.
Then yesterday off to the North Western Reform Synagogue near Golders Green (http://www.alyth.org.uk/) for a lunchtime recital from Camille Maalawy, who appeared to be functioning as part of the bridge between the two communities of Israel. She also used her fine voice to great effect on a range of Sephardic and Arabic songs. Very good stage manner, managing to appear happy and cheerful despite the rather thin audience. Readers might like to know that I chanced upon this place by asking google for a lunch time concert, something I fancied at short notice on a whim.
Synagogue recently refurbished to a good standard, similar in appearance and tone to one of our newer low churches. Interesting display of silverware in a couple of cabinets at the back.
Golders Green, a place I have not visited for a very long time, was well and lively. Maybe half the shops were restaurants or cafés, but they managed two or three bakers in the half that was left. From one of them I took a small rye (with carraway seeds), a cholla and two sausage rolls, consumed, as it turned out, in reverse order. Sausage rolls were some sort of interesting, probably foreign, sausage wrapped up in a light pastry. Good. Cholla taken with butter was good - and gone before midnight. Rye taken with corned beef for breakfast - rather better as it turned out than the salt beef sandwich purchased the day before. This last being adequate but miles away from the Great Windmill Street offering of olden times.
PS: I have a rooted dislike for television interviewers, people whose special skill seems to be to make fools of hard working decent folk who have the misfortune to fall into their hands, so I felt rather sorry for the innocent abroad said to have been mauled by Paxo the other day. But it was a sign of our strange standards that, according to the Guardian anyway, the innocent sank to the very depths when she claimed that the government was still out to remove the structural deficit. An intention which one might have thought was entirely admirable if difficult to achieve any time soon. But I am consoled by the reflection that media folk probably pay far more attention to this sort of nonsense than the rest of us do.
The only blot on the landscape was the absence of the fleet of large carp which used to sail the lake in search of visitor supplied food, sold in little bags express. A trusty explained that these loan fish had been brought in to improve the ecolity of the lake but it had been found that they did not go the job and the loan had to be terminated.
Then yesterday off to the North Western Reform Synagogue near Golders Green (http://www.alyth.org.uk/) for a lunchtime recital from Camille Maalawy, who appeared to be functioning as part of the bridge between the two communities of Israel. She also used her fine voice to great effect on a range of Sephardic and Arabic songs. Very good stage manner, managing to appear happy and cheerful despite the rather thin audience. Readers might like to know that I chanced upon this place by asking google for a lunch time concert, something I fancied at short notice on a whim.
Synagogue recently refurbished to a good standard, similar in appearance and tone to one of our newer low churches. Interesting display of silverware in a couple of cabinets at the back.
Golders Green, a place I have not visited for a very long time, was well and lively. Maybe half the shops were restaurants or cafés, but they managed two or three bakers in the half that was left. From one of them I took a small rye (with carraway seeds), a cholla and two sausage rolls, consumed, as it turned out, in reverse order. Sausage rolls were some sort of interesting, probably foreign, sausage wrapped up in a light pastry. Good. Cholla taken with butter was good - and gone before midnight. Rye taken with corned beef for breakfast - rather better as it turned out than the salt beef sandwich purchased the day before. This last being adequate but miles away from the Great Windmill Street offering of olden times.
PS: I have a rooted dislike for television interviewers, people whose special skill seems to be to make fools of hard working decent folk who have the misfortune to fall into their hands, so I felt rather sorry for the innocent abroad said to have been mauled by Paxo the other day. But it was a sign of our strange standards that, according to the Guardian anyway, the innocent sank to the very depths when she claimed that the government was still out to remove the structural deficit. An intention which one might have thought was entirely admirable if difficult to achieve any time soon. But I am consoled by the reflection that media folk probably pay far more attention to this sort of nonsense than the rest of us do.
# posted by Jim @ 2:32 AM 
