Herald Copse

A few days ago to Nonsuch Park to see how the snowdrops in Herald Copse were getting on, a place we try to visit about this time of year every year. And we did make it last year, as noticed at reference 1.

We parked in the rather muddy car park marked by the 'P' above Nonsuch High School for Girls in the snap above - in which it took me while to work out that 'The Avenue' was indeed the right turning off Ewell Road, rather than just another road. Ewell Road having been near the end of my run to the baker in Cheam Village, which I used when I first retired. A run which eventually did the back in: must have been all that time hunched over handle bars - even though I very rarely used the drops. I started making my own bread after that and the back problems, thankfully, went away.

BH would have known without needing to check, but in her absence it took me a while to find out that despite the name, Nonsuch High School for Girls is publicly funded and not fee-paying, although it is not run by Sutton Council. Ethos looks to be very much that of the old direct grant schools. See references 2 and 3.

Worked our way down to the Mansion House (not the palace of old) and from there to Herald Copse where the snowdrops were looking well, if a little more patchy than I remember. But I dare say flowering depends on the conditions on the ground, the amount of sun and all that sort of thing.

Decided, on this occasion against tea and buns, it being too cold to be comfortable outside and no seats being available inside. There were dogs, but not as many as I was expecting, perhaps because it was a Saturday rather than a Sunday.

Back through the pine copse to check on the daffodils there and Wellingtonia No.62. To find that the daffodils had not come on stream but that the Wellingtonia looked well - in the middle of the snap above.

Close up. Just one of a number of fine trees in the copse.

Out again later to stock up on some Valentine's essentials at Waitrose. In the margins, dealing with what might have been a Bisoprolol problem by finding a small stash of pills left over from the old regime, still in date. As it happened, pills exactly half the size of the ones I am supposed to be taking now, so they would have done. In the event, the new supply turned up just in time a few days later.

Curiously, we celebrate Valentine's day on the day that he was martyred by the Emperor Claudius - that is to say 'beaten with clubs and beheaded', as reported by Wikipedia at reference 5. There is also a suggestion that he had interfered with the arrangements for recruiting soldiers, a bit of a problem at the time. One had to make an example of him.

PS 1: the spring in the not very old spectacle case, left in the snap above, has gone already, this not being the first time such a thing has happened. Leighton's might be fine opticians, but they do seem to have trouble sourcing cases that last as long as their spectacles. Or my prescriptions, whichever is the sooner.

PS 2: a bit later on, BH had occasion to be reminded of having had a breakfast in a box, somewhere in Kensington. Running the breakfast down was easy enough, turning up the not very informative reference 6. Not too long after that, I got to references 7 and 8. Probably a birthday bash built around what appears to have been our first visit to the Cadogan Hall, hearing, inter alia, Elisabeth Leonskaja of reference 9, a lady whom we (or I) have heard a number of times. The blog archive has five entries for her, including this one.

The place offering breakfast in a box is probably the block on the right in the snap above. The South Kensington end of Sloane Avenue.

I am reminded that we could manage rather more in a day in town ten years ago than we can manage now!

PS 3: I am also reminded that my edition of Chopin's nocturnes, dated 1949 (as it happens, the year of my birth) comes from the Frederick Chopin Institute in Warsaw and was edited by Paderewski, which is probably as good as it is going to get. Maybe a granddaughter will be up to the nocturnes one day.

Oddly, the English page associated with reference 10 talks of the Institute being founded in 2001. Perhaps some successor organisation. In the snap above, Chopin museum left, Chopin institute right.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/herald-copse.html.

Reference 2: https://www.nonsuchschool.org/.

Reference 3: https://www.girlslearningtrust.org/about-us.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/01/wellingtonia-62.html. Snowdrops not out in early January.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Valentine.

Reference 6: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/09/breakfast-in-bed.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/10/a-new-venue.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/10/kensington-1.html.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Leonskaja.

Reference 10: https://nifc.pl/pl/.