Bifana

London was calling last week, with various items on the wish list. Maybe I could visit Moen's of Clapham Common to get some white pudding. I did go as far as ringing them up to make sure that they sold the stuff, which they did. Albeit, the plastic wrapped cylindrical sort from Scotland. Maybe visit Borough Market and see if the stall there was still doing rabbits for a tenner. In the end I decided for a more modest expedition to Vauxhall to see if I could find the bifana noticed at reference 1.

BH offered a lift to the station, which I accepted on this occasion, passing but not capturing a trolley on the way.

Then just before my train came in, I spotted this drain cover on the country end of the platform. Further evidence - if any such be needed - of our collective failure to pay for infrastructure maintenance?

Snoozed on the train, waking up just before the train pulled into Vauxhall, proper commuter style. The brain was on the case, even if it was idling, was mostly offline.

South Lambeth road alive and well, with even a hint of blue sky to brighten things up. Not that it lasted that long, with cloud and light rain soon settling in. Wellingtonia No.107 maybe twenty five yards to the left, inside the railings. It did not occur to me at the time, that by taking another snap from the same angle as that at reference 2, I should be able to make some assessment of growth in the intervening couple of years.

On my way back, I asked some young men loitering under the street art who it was. Not a clue.

Google did rather better.

With the supplementary telling me the name of the artist, but not that of the subject. Perhaps withheld on the grounds that the artist had not asked his permission? But I think that the associated post on Facebook is suggesting that he is a member of the large Portuguese community in the area. Maybe they will know in the Estrela next time?

Note the fancy trim to the brickwork. A testimonial to the affluence of the area at the time this housing went up.

For the gardener Tradescant, for whom the street is named, see reference 3.

While this street appears to be named for the village just to the south of the now fancy seaside resort called Southwold, a village where they once sold fine kippers. Probably no more. Maybe the builder (or his banker/backer) came from the area?

Said by Edge to be the beach at Walberswick. Plausible, if tedious to check. Maybe the builder shipped his sand from the beach to Vauxhall Pier?

Getting near the Canton. The sort of planting that the gentry have brought with them to Romsey Town in Cambridge - although the streets there are rather narrower and the houses smaller. Started life as blue collar rather than lower white collar. Complete with a handsome Labor Club, opened as I recall by Ramsey MacDonald. Check: Copilot agrees with me.

Took a pint of Harvey's Best at the Canton, with a free copy of the Guardian thrown in. I learned that, despite the foodified interior, there had been a bit of a rumpus on the terrace outside the evening before. Furthermore, someone had pinched a large number of the light bulbs, presumably not suitable for domestic use at all. The verdict was that they would reappear at the large Sunday boot sale at Nine Elms a couple of days later.

Making my way back to the Estrela, past the launderette (not so many of them about these days, although BH made occasional use of them here in Epsom until fairly recently), I paid a second visit to the nearby pop-up art gallery. A place which has extended the front room downstairs into the cellar in an imaginative way.

The trestle table below. About the same size as the one I made for al fresco dining, but built on slightly different lines. See reference 4. Finding the better snaps that are available is left as an exercise for the reader.

A sample of the art upstairs. An updated, photographic version of the painting noticed at reference 5? Which I might say is still face to the wall, in the study, awaiting action. I rather like it, but don't really have anywhere to hang it. And it needs reframing.

Back at Vauxhall, there were no red spots for sold. There were some people in a basement office, but they did not trouble me: maybe they could tell at a glance that I was not going to flash the plastic. Still and all, not at all clear how they made a living. How did they pay for the refurbishment, how do they pay the rent?

And so to the Estrela, where they could indeed offer me a bifana, served with chips. About the size of a burger and chips, but made with proper bread, rather than the stuff burger bars use. Being pork, perhaps more a relative of our own bacon sandwich?

Far too big for two of them to be appropriate, so I continued with a small dish of a pork and broad bean stew. Very good it was too. Much later on, BH explained that she had learned from some foodie/heritage programme on television that you could use the liquor from tinned broad beans as a substitute for egg whites in some recipes, possibly meringues, possibly a left-over from rationing in the 1940s and 1950s. Later still, she corrected herself to chick peas. A culinary curiosity, nevertheless.

Gemini agrees that it works, and that it probably would work with broad beans too, although your meringue might not turn out very white, if that was what was wanted. This liquor is known as aquafava. Sadly, however, he also says that the word was invented in the US, quite recently, in a veggie context, and it is not as Portuguese as it sounds. So the Estrela would probably not know about the stuff. Not a wartime rationing thing either.

It continued to rain outside, while the television was offering more or less continuous coverage of floods in Portugal, luckily inaudible. But see reference 6; clearly still a live issue: '... Climatologist Pedro Matos Soares links the current storm train to a south-shifted Azores High that funnels depressions straight at Iberia. He argues Portugal has entered a “new flood regime” where once-in-25-year events may now occur every 4–5 years...'.

After all of which I made my way back to Vauxhall Station, where I was taken in hand by a very vivacious and attractive young lady, perhaps around 20, chugging for the people snapped above. I explained that my telephone did not talk to that sort of thing in the streets, but that I would make a donation when I got home. More vivacity, in the course of which I learned that that meant she would not get a commission. So I bunged her a tenner; I thought that she had more than earned it.

To be found at reference 7: not the same as the people noticed at reference 8, but operating in roughly the same segment of the market.

I have not contributed yet as the 'donate' button takes me into uncharted territory and the initiative looks to be some kind of company rather than a charity. Need to take a bit of time to poke it around a little, to build a little trust.

More overdue maintenance at Raynes Park. But on the upside, there was some ephemera in the platform library and there was a display of hazel catkins on the other side of the rails. A display which failed to snap very well.

Home to capture a trolley, just for a change, from the top of the passage leading down to the Rio Grill and the High Street. The grill which has recently reinstated fish and chips, although we have yet to give it a go. A smart clean trolley, an E212 from Wanzl, returned to the M&S food hall.

The odd errand in town, after which I thought that a taxi was in order.

The haul. The UK version of the National Geographic, that sometime staple of dental waiting rooms. A railway map & timetable for Taipei. Some kind of a fruit and vegetable catalogue for children from the same place. The last two of possible educational value.

A fat magazine from same, to which I shall return shortly.

A co-op shopping bag from outside the Estrela.

Last but not least, two pasteis de nata (aka custard tarts) from the Estrela. BH is rather keen on them and these ones are pretty good. They did not last very long.

PS: BH took her first dose of prednisolone yesterday evening. Not the stuff snapped above. Early indications good: maybe it really is a magic bullet.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/01/pork-sandwiches.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/wellingtonia-107.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/03/goat-stew.html.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=trestle.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/09/trolley-967.html.

Reference 6: https://theportugalpost.com/posts/portugals-rivers-brace-for-floods-evacuations-closures-and-safety-tips.

Reference 7: https://kharisinitiative.co.uk/.

Reference 8: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-wonders-of-ebay.html.