Heritage one

We thought yesterday (Tuesday) to take our first heritage trip of the year, with the first thought being Hampton Court Palace, a place which, as well as having fine gardens, also runs to a good range of all-weather facilities.

Having been caught out once in the past, I thought to check and found that the place was not open. From a place which used to be open more or less every day of the year, perhaps they have moved to an operation where accountants measure revenue by day of the week and month of the year. Dynamic opening times.

Next stop, Polesden Lacey, the gardens of which were open even if the house was closed.

Where we were able to open proceedings with the by now traditional tea and scone - in a very quiet cafeteria (fashioned out of an old stable). Just a sprinkling of customers, mostly pensioners like ourselves and a sprinkling of caterers, most of whom looked like they had not long left school.

The scones were not bad for a café, albeit made with some odd flour, perhaps something organic it being the National Trust, and not as good as the scones we had bought the day before from Gail's.

Noting in passing that I believe that the National Trust is one of the few outfits operating visitor attractions which still do their own catering, a belief which is confirmed by Gemini this morning. Hopefully I will get around to checking properly a bit later: I think it is easy enough to turn up their annual reports, which is probably as good a place to start as any. 

In any event, I dare say the big catering contractors have not given up hope; that they keep knocking on the door with free lunches and fact-finding missions.

On to the formal gardens where we found out why it was so quiet. It was cold with a cold wind reaching many parts. What comes of being up in the downs. There were probably more gardeners out - probably all volunteers - than visitors. Mostly ladies, mostly rather younger than the visitors.

There were some spring flowers, but not many. We had been greeted on arrival by a bed of daffodils and there were a fair number of snowdrops, large and small. A few winter aconites. And, oddly, this solitary clump of irises. Which served to remind us that a bit later in the year they usually have a fine display of rather larger irises, a display which we usually manage to miss. I also seem to be much better at noticing our failures to see these irises than our successes - but see reference 1.

Home to a fine trio of (Craster) kippers from Waitrose, previously noticed and one of which is snapped above. Three of them do the two of us quite nicely.

Other stores only do them filleted and shrink wrapped. Not worth bothering with at all. Hotels, which used to offer them for breakfast, are now just as bad.

I then remembered coming across a fake public house in Mayfair which sold kippers. I poked around for it for a while, until, all else failing, I went to gmaps, where I found the place, at reference 2, in seconds. No kippers on the menu that I could see today, but there were kippers back in 2024, as noticed at reference 3. I get there in the end - even if I never managed to visit the place to see if they really were kippers or some caterers excuse for same. I had intended to.

Maybe the sort of people that do fancy gastro pubs in Mayfair are no keener on kippers than the much more average punters who do supermarkets in Epsom.

Our kippers were rounded off with plums from Sainsbury's. But have a care if you are tempted: at this time of year they seem to alternate between big dark plums (as above) or rather smaller, paler plums. The latter do not stew very well, not tasting very plummy at all. But I dare say they would do well enough as part of something more complicated.

PS: a pricing error from Abebooks, something they manage from time to time. Date apart, maybe ten times the proper price. Much easier to go elsewhere than to try for a correction, as there was plenty of choice. Prompted by a review of a new translation in the new-look TLS, previously noticed.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/beans-with-polesden.html.

Reference 2: https://theaudleypublichouse.com/.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/fake-171.html.

Reference 4: Le Chat - Georges Simenon - 1967.