Little case: The second day

We woke in the Wellington Hotel on the morning of the second day to well steamed up windows. That is to say the double glazing units of the primary windows, rather than the panes of the secondary glazing. But I am pleased to say that we had not overheated during the night; the system had worked, despite our not having spotted any way to control it.

Down, in my case, to a substantial breakfast. BH went for something rather healthier, sticking with two eggs - properly poached - and, I think, avocado on toast. Avocado being something that I very rarely eat myself - and never have done. Not sure why, but I think it is something to do with the texture rather than the taste. Or perhaps the brain thinks that the combination of the two is inappropriate?

To be fair to my health, I did start with some slices of pink grapefruit - a new to me way of serving the stuff, which I usually take by the half. But the slices did well enough, as did the small dried figs I took them with.

We also had a lot of screens round about; it was, after all, a sports bar. But from where we were sitting, they were not intrusive.

I did not go out for a newspaper, despite, for once, there being places to buy newspapers within very easy reach, so we talked about the day to come instead. The first possibility to be discarded was a visit to a new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. The second was to simply walk across the road and take a train to Epsom. Instead, it being a bright sunny morning, we decided to walk to London Bridge and take a train to Epsom from there. 

Noting in passing that we were sat in chairs which I had last used in the margins of a visit to Windsor for some royal event or other, a visit during which I remember meeting some below stairs members of the Household in an old public house near the castle. Also passing slots on the pavement reserved by chalk marks for particular camera teams. Also passing the barracks of the First Battalion of the First Foot Guards, presumably a very serious outfit in the class hierarchy of the army. Search of the archive fails to turn it up, so it must have been before I left the world of work.

Despite all the stairs, we had not brought our stuff down to breakfast, so up the stairs to collect our stuff and admire the wall decoration above the bed head. I think both pages and pins were real, albeit knocked out in some workshop. I thought it rather neat, although not to the extent of remembering the names of any of the books involved.

We also noticed that they do not bother to paint the roofs of London buses red anymore. Partly, I suppose to save on the red paint, but also to allow the bus identification to be painted black on white on the roof, in the way of a police car. Or, for that matter, a Sainsbury's delivery lorry - for which last, see reference 9. But who is going to read these numbers? A satellite, a police helicopter, a drone?

Houses behind the hotel, presumably built for the working classes, rather like those of Romsey Town in Cambridge, although these ones were a good bit older. Million pounds a pop now?

Onto the Bernie Spain gardens, last noticed at reference 2. BH was very impressed. And I did manage to activate Google Images on this occasion.

Onto the embankment, where we had lots of joggers, male and female, all shapes, sizes and speeds. But the groups were generally uni-sexed rather than mixed. One supposes that they live in the flats that have sprung up all over this part of London and maybe some of them are health workers from Guy's, not far away at all. Maybe they jog between Guy's and St. Thomas's as need arises, the two hospitals being part of the same team these days. A team which also, as it happens, includes Harefield.

A couple of bench sits later and we were at the replica of the Golden Hinde, where we found a street cleaner who like to decorate his barrow with found children's toys. Rightt we have a heritage tree stump, we thought oak gifted by somewhere in Kent, with most of the tree having already been used for restoration work.

My rather careless snap of the stump did not include the label, so clearly a job here for Gemini. But one on which, for once, he went badly, if plausibly, astray. 

His first effort was that the tree was one of the Preston twins and that the timber had been used for deadeyes and blocks - for which I dare say elm is very suitable. Deadeyes can be seen at reference 4. However, it is clear from reference 3 that this stump is not one of the twins, being far too small.

His second effort was hawthorn, specifically the unusual hawthorn described at reference 8. Gemini even goes so far as to talk of its two-foot diameter.

I then turned up the story at reference 7 which was much more the sort of thing that I vaguely remembered - wind-fall oak from East Grinstead. And his third effort was quite a decent story built around that.

But a reminder that Gemini will still make stuff up with a straight face, rather than admit that he has not got enough to go on. Odd though that he seems to be able to find out stuff about the right answer - after you have told him what the right answer is. Maybe he only digs deep into his datastore when pushed: too much demand on the servers to be doing that all the time.

Onto a busy Borough Market where we bought two small rabbits from the fish stall. To which I shall return in due course.

Plenty of foreign tourists, some young people who looked as if they had come up from the estuary part of Kent. Including two more young ladies in full war paint - for which it seemed a little early in the day but one can only suppose they knew what they were doing.

A couple of street trees more or less opposite the old Guy's hospital, looking well in their spring clothes in the bright light of the middle of the day.

And so to London Bridge Station and home to Epsom.

PS 1: mastic based trim does not always look as neat and slick as intended.

PS 2: my million pounds a pop was a bit wide of the mark. But one and a half seems rather a lot. How many people are young enough and rich enough to want to pay that for that?

PS 3: note for the record: there is a snap of the ticket entitling us to a 15% discount should we visit the Wellington Hotel again. Presumably in the reasonably near future - although some vendors are a bit careless about turning these promo codes off.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/little-case-first-day.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/korean-lights.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Twins.

Reference 4: https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/news/2019/elms-helm.

Reference 5: https://www.classicboat.co.uk/articles/sir-francis-drakes-golden-hinde-restoration-and-reconstruction/.

Reference 6: https://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/shipshape/projects/golden-hinde-london.

Reference 7: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMGA8bVTalJ/.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Thorn.

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/horseshoes-preliminaries.html.

Some local history, not

At reference 1, we went to stay at the Wellington Hotel at Waterloo. This (Sunday) afternoon, after posting reference 1, I thought I would try and find out something about the building, about which we had heard various stories from various people.

In sum, I didn't do terribly well at this - but what I did do was hiding, in plain site, in the snap above, taken from the hotel's website. I suppose to get a good story one would need to go to the local records office, something like our Bourne Hall Museum, if there is such a place covering Waterloo.

To start with, neither Bing nor Google were very helpful, but they did turn up references 2 thru 4. Reference 2 was a hotel in nearby Vincent Square, but the wrong one. reference 3 was a bad review of the hotel and reference 4 was a good review of the hotel.

Next stop was Gemini. His first effort turned up various interesting facts with some bearing on the matter. I quote:

The current building is a quintessential Victorian public house. One of its most notorious historical "claims to fame" dates back to 1891. The pub was a known haunt of the serial killer Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, also known as the "Lambeth Poisoner."

Historically, there was a physical rail link that crossed the road right next to the pub, connecting the main [South Western] line to the South Eastern Railway. While that track was removed long ago, the structural "squeeze" it created gives the Wellington its narrow, towering character.

WWI/WWII Usage: During the World Wars, many large buildings in the Waterloo "buffer zone" were requisitioned. It is highly probable that the upper floors or the large cellar were used as an emergency casualty clearing station (infirmary) for soldiers arriving at Waterloo Station from the front, given its location literally feet away from the platforms.

The 1950s "Reset": The 1950s date likely refers to a significant re-opening or renovation following the Blitz. The area around Waterloo was heavily bombed, and many buildings stood derelict or were repurposed for emergency services before being restored to their original use in the post-war "Festival of Britain" era (1951).

The mural of the Battle of Waterloo on the ceiling, while appearing "historic," was actually commissioned much more recently (around the time the Eurostar began running from Waterloo in the 90s) to lean into the building's name and heritage.

Next stop was the map department of the Scottish National Library. Presented in what follows in date order, rather than in the order I turned them up.

1842. Waterloo station (south west) present, but not as large as it is now. The line from London Bridge to Charing Cross (south east) is missing altogether. South is away to the west at Victoria, all this being the private sector confusion which gave us Clapham Junction.

1870 or so. The line from London Bridge to Charing Cross has arrived, and there is a connecting line from what is now the low platform numbers at Waterloo, the ones from which, as it happens, one gets trains to Epsom. The new station on the other side of Waterloo Road was called Waterloo Junction, now Waterloo East. A connecting line which appears to go right through what is now the Wellington Hotel.

1895. Waterloo Station shown in three divisions: north station, central station and south station. With more platforms off to the left, possibly the Windsor connection. Connection from the central station to the southeastern line all present and correct, eating up a large chunk of what is now the concourse area in front of the platforms.

We also appear to have two public houses where the Wellington Hotel now stands, one on each side of the connection. Gemini suggests that the one to the north was probably the original 'Wellington' while the one the south was probably the 'Lord Hill'. He suggests that this Lord Hill was the Waterloo one to be found at reference 6, very much in keeping with the naming of public houses for national heroes.

1944. Connection now gone, in part because of the arrival of the Waterloo & City Line which did something of the same job. The black strips to the right of Waterloo show the Waterloo East platforms and the (foot) connections.

During the course of all of which, I had further discussions with Gemini. This included a further diversion concerning the famous platform on wheels:

The line you see on the 1870 map was a single-track link built in 1864. It connected the London & South Western Railway (Waterloo) to the South Eastern Railway (Waterloo Junction, now Waterloo East).

The Movable Platform: This was one of the most eccentric pieces of Victorian engineering. Because the track cut across the pedestrian route, they used a "movable platform" on wheels to let people walk between stations when no train was passing.

Some confirmation of all this is to be found at reference 5. And another diversion about another criminal called Buster Edwards, who at one time kept a flower stall opposite the Wellington, now a fast food stall. Very high counter to deter other kinds of criminal activity.

Eventually it occurs to me that I ought to take a proper look at the present building in Street View. With the result that I tell Gemini that:

'I have now taken a look at the hotel in Street View. Starting from the north, the river side, we have Alaska Street, under the viaduct taking the lines from London Bridge to Charing Cross. Then an older red brick building with stone trim, the northern half of what is now the Wellington Hotel. Then the link part of the Wellington Hotel, under what was the rail link between the two stations, itself under what is now the footbridge from Waterloo Station to Waterloo East Station (formerly Waterloo Junction). Then a newer, rather different building, but also red brick with stone trim, the southern half of what is now the Wellington hotel. The bar at ground level runs across both parts, but I think the two parts of the hotel upstairs are served by separate stairs'.

To which he responds with his summary of all this.

Oddments

Gemini was quite relaxed about the missing word in the first sentence, which should have read 'were the platforms at Waterloo Station renumbered at some point after 1900 or so'. There was enough redundancy in my language for him to work out what I was on about.

I suppose the lesson here is that one does not need to take too much trouble with crafting one's questions and comments, as one might with a human interlocutor. He does not (yet) pay any attention to that kind of thing.

The hospital/infirmary story I had picked up was probably not right. The cellars of public houses were often used for the storage of corpses and there was a substantial first aid station built under the part of Waterloo Station opposite the two public houses, but neither of these last were ever designated as a medical facility. However, they might well have been damaged and then used for various other purposes at the time of the Second World War, going back into combined alcoholic service as part of the 1950's Festival of Britain.

Gemini closes by telling me all about the considerable local history resources available for this part of London, some of which are online. Plenty of places to go digging, should I be so minded! Perhaps I really will find myself at Brixton Hill - reference 7 - before too long. A road which I once used to know quite well - usually from a bus, sometimes on a bicycle and less often on foot.

Conclusions

Gemini remains a bit shaky on geometry, but does pretty well considering, even if I did not get to quite where I wanted to be. Not to be taken neat, but a fine study aid.

And I would have got there a lot faster if I had started by looking at the buildings as they now are, rather than grubbing about in old maps, fascinating though these last are. I have always been rather keen on maps and atlases and still own quite a few of both, OS online and gmaps notwithstanding.

The monolithic appearance of the Wellington in the opening snap does give me some excuse, blotting out, as it did, any thought of it having once been two buildings rather than one.

An interesting grey area is the boundary between the stuff that Gemini knows about and the stuff that he can actually get at. So he knows about the National Archive at Kew, but I don't think that he can see the catalogue, never mind the records. A probably fast developing area is his aforementioned grip on geometry and images generally, rather than the written word. From where I associate to the early days, perhaps those of his ancestor Bard, when his arithmetic was pretty shaky - not something I have tested recently.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/little-case-first-day.html.

Reference 2: https://www.buildington.co.uk/buildings/3138/england/london-sw1p/71-vincent-square/the-wellington-hotel.

Reference 3: https://beerahoy.wordpress.com/2018/06/30/wellington/.

Reference 4: https://www.theunfinishedcity.co.uk/2019/11/wellington-hotel.html?m=0.

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

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowland_Hill,_1st_Viscount_Hill.

Reference 7: https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/libraries-0/lambeth-archives.

Little case: The first day

Since the plague we have been doing very little in the way of evening outings. Notwithstanding, back in 2025, I clearly thought it was worth giving it another go, the pull being a set of Beethoven quarters from the Elias Quartet - not something we get to hear too much of at lunch time concerts. Op.18, No.6; Op.135;  and, Op.59, No.2. Possibly rather a lot for one sitting these days, but one could always leave at half time. And one could always stay over at the Wellington at Waterloo, of references 2, thus shortening the evening by more than an hour. In the end, that is what we settled on doing.

A visit to T.K. Maxx by way of preparation. The dimensions of this little case were not that much less than those of the Victorinox case of reference 1, but the thing as a whole was much lighter, more suitable for an overnighter.

Walked to the station, passing an older trolley from M&S on the way, arriving what should have been just in time for our train, the 17:19, to find that it only exists in the form of the 17:39, so we had something of a wait. The 15:19 and the 18:19 exists, so some quirk of the rush hour timetable.

A small flock of what I took to be coal tits in the bushes across the town rails. Coal tits which were seen off by the arrival of a magpie.

A young man opposite us in the train appeared to be comparing his photocopied version of  'A midsummer night's dream' with the version on his telephone, and making a small number of notes in very small writing on the photocopy. He also had ear plugs in. We wondered what exactly he was up to, but did not like to ask. It had the appearance of some kind of study assignment, but what kind exactly?

A mass of white blossom along the way, to the west. Stoneleigh or somewhere like that. Whitethorn to the right but what was it to the left?

Google Images took my hint the wrong way at his first attempt.

But did rather better on his second. I had wondered about clematis, although the Clematis montana that I used to grow on the allotment had yellow flowers. However, Google proper turns up Clematis montana 'Grandiflora' aka Old Man's Beard from Sutton's - so maybe his colleague was right.

Interesting cloudscape to the west, complete with low flying sun and strobe effects when one shut one's eyes. A few aeroplanes, but no twos.

Just two young ladies in full war paint when we arrived at Waterloo, this being early Friday evening.

We had time to check-in at the Wellington and leave our case, where the bar was busy but where we were taken in hand by a very pleasant bar maid. A very decent room, up on the third floor. Another of the little coffee machines which we had first come across the week before - but this time the kettle was to hand and BH left the machine alone.

The view, complete with secondary double glazing, of a sort which one does not see that often these days. I installed some in our house in Cambridge back in the 1980s - a 1950s house with galvanised steel window frames, all the thing at the time. Not as smart as that snapped above.

There was a very noisy band set up just outside Waterloo Station. Presumably some people like it - while we were consoled by the thought that they would be long gone by the time we got back, which was indeed the case.

A very retro switch, a switch went goes up and down for on and off rather than round and round. But we did not escape the tricky wiring of all the many lights which seems to be a feature of hotel rooms and holiday cottages. I never got the hand of that in our cottage at Holne, Forestoke Linhay, despite visiting the place quite a few times.

Interesting tread covering on the lower flights of stairs. Don't remember when I last saw such a thing, inside or outside a building. A matter to which I shall attempt to return in due course.

In any event, there were quite a few steps - BH made it just over sixty - so I was glad enough that we had opted for the little case.

Onto Bond Street and Olle & Steen, where we took an open beef sandwiches. Plus, in my case, some kind of sugary cake, visible top right.

The sandwich was on the right lines, but the same amount of beef would have been better spread over two slices of bread and it would have been better if there had been a good deal less mayonnaise. Better still, only today we were in an establishment, to be reported on in due course, where they provided the mayonnaise in a little jug, in the manner of gravy at Wetherspoon's. A much better solution altogether.

The cake, perhaps involving some kind of fig and cinnamon based filling, was indeed far too sweet. Perhaps it is the sort of thing people eat in the winter in countries that get properly cold - which the south of England does not. At least not very often.

Onto the Hall, where for once in a while, something had gone wrong with the flowers, Perhaps one of the front of house staff had attempted to repair the display.

But nothing wrong with the Elias String Quartet who did us very well. I would only say that either they or I drifted off a bit for the second half of the second work, Op.135, but everything was spot on after the interval. A fine concert, well worth the effort of getting there, after hours, as it were.

Back to the Wellington where I took a short pint of fine London Pride, which made a change from the bottled stuff I usually make do with these days. Unusually, I was tempted to buy a bag of crisps, something I do very rarely indeed,

Then, rather to my surprise, I did not fancy a second pint, despite all the salt in the crisps. And too proud to ask for a half!

PS: the Quartet (at reference 4) get twenty hits on the archive, the first of which turned out to be Norbert Elias, which was quite wrong. But there was reference 3, from 2012. To my memory's credit, I had wondered whether we had first come across them at Dorking. As it happens, remarks about cold winters above notwithstanding, an occasion with snow - and with the 18.6 to be heard on this outing. How many times have they played it in the fourteen years since?

References

Reference 1:  https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/big-case-second-day.html.

Reference 2a: https://www.wellingtonhotelwaterloo.co.uk/?partner=8163. What does partner mean in this context, given that the house is branded for Fullers? We did learn that the land is owned by the railway, unsurprising given that what used to be the entrance to Waterloo East is adjacent, now a bistro or something.

Reference 2b: https://www.wellingtonhotelwaterloo.co.uk/. Reference 2a is what one gets through Bing, but this version works too. A puzzle for another time.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/02/adventure.html.

Reference 4: https://eliasstringquartet.com/.

Late arrival

The current bottle of Salad Cream being near empty, we thought to look in the bottom cupboard for the next one - and pulled out the bottle snapped above -  which looked a bit odd - and which turned out to have a sell-by date of December 2023.

It looked odd in that it appeared to have separated a bit and to have gone a slightly odd colour. We thought about turning it into the food mixer and giving it a good stir: after all, the bottle was still sealed and the contents were probably not decaying, not being eaten by fungi, bacteria or anything else of that sort. A bit of re-mixing, a bit of re-aeration - re-animation as it were - and all would be well.

In the end, we decided that that was rather a lot of bother and had another go in the bottom cupboard, which turned up something rather more recent. The contents of the first bottle now destined for the compost heap.

Slight lapse of stock management: maybe it had got hidden behind a jar of long life chutney.

Primrose petals

In one of the beds between the car park and the railway station at Hampton Court yesterday, I happened to notice, perhaps for the first time ever, that the five petals of primrose flowers, at least on the plant that I spotted there, were deeply lobed, heart shaped - in the way of the leaves of the spotted burclover, noticed at reference 1.

A fact confirmed on a second outing, later the same day in a front garden near where we live in Epsom.

And then again today, in our own back garden.

So maybe they all do it. Certainly the ones at reference 2 do - even if the purple flowers are better from this point of view than the yellow ones. I also learn that the flowers of any one plant come in one of two forms, pin and thrum, and it takes two to tango. Or, in botanist speak, the flowers are hermaphrodite but heterostylous. Which might be accurate, but is a little confusing for the beginner.

As we used to be told rather too often, we learn something new every day.

PS 1: I wonder now whether the mechanisms for generating hearts in leaves are anything like those for doing the same in petals? From a growth point of view, are petals just modified leaves?

PS 2: then waking this Saturday morning, I wondered about wood engravers. I can only put my hand on foxgloves, but Google turns up the Mackley engraving included above from a teaching resource about flowers and natural selection.

While I could put my hand on this print copy of a Poole engraving. So they had both looked a good deal more carefully than I usually manage - which is what I had expected.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/more-trivia.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primula_vulgaris.

Group search key: hca.

More fish cakes

Yesterday was a day for baked haddock, trimmed with a little onion and tomato, served with various boiled vegetables. The haddock was from Sainsbury's, was described as naturally caught and lightly smoked - I find that I like the flavour and firmer flavour that this light smoking gives - but, notwithstanding, there was enough fish and potato left for fish cakes this morning.

That is to say, mash up the skinned fish, the onion, the tomato and the baking liquor with the left over potato. Stir in an egg. Fry in a little rape seed oil. No spices or herbs or anything of that sort. Once again, as noticed at reference 1, not very neat, but tasty.

This led onto a discussion of recipes for fish cakes and most of them were rather more complicated than this one. While BH claimed that she used to bind her coley fish cakes with a little white sauce and then dust them with flour before frying them, as mentioned at the end of reference 2. 

I was rather dubious about this, but when we got through the more modern cook books to the trusty Radiation Cook Book, we found that fish croquettes could indeed involve white sauce. Not sure about the anchovy essence though.

Maybe the lesson for me is that I will make two cakes rather than one and maybe try dusting with flour, all this to facilitate turning.

PS 1: at reference 3, I mentioned the story at reference 4 and its adaptation with Rupert Davies. I have now finished reading the story again and find that the adaptation did not stray that far, just hammed things up a bit more than I like.

More interesting, I find that in the story, Maigret gets a confession out of the very proper young lady - but then walks away from what is not his case - he only got involved in it through a family connection to the perpetrator - and leaves her, as it turns out, to more or less get away with murder, to gainful employment in Paris. Although she leaves a bit of a mess behind her in Givet, with her sister dying of shame shortly before she was due to take her vows as a nun and with her brother taking to the bottle having got married to his cousin as planned, but having failed as a lawyer. The weakness of the brother having been the cause of all the trouble in the first place.

Maigret might not always get his man, might not always get the perpetrator to court, but I do not remember another story in which he choses not so to do.

PS 2: the Thames at Hampton Court, despite being pretty full today, did not photograph as impressively as the Meuse at Givet, as shown at reference 3. Although BH thought that it could if you chose your day and the time of day better.

I might add that the water was sparkling impressively with the sun behind it, overhead in the snap above. The sparkling is visible below the roof towards the left. Coming and going with the movement of the water. I can't recall when I last saw such a thing, but I associate this morning to swimming in a flat, calm sea - specifically off Hunstanton's north beach - and I haven't swum in the sea anywhere, let alone Hunstanton, for some years now.

PS 3: where have all the barges of Givet gone? The way of all those (rather smaller ones) which used to ply the Thames?

PS 4: I am reminded this (Friday) morning by the piece at reference 4 that POTUS does have a point. If a point which will hurt us here in the UK faster than it will hurt them: we do have to do something about the debt mountain. One might think that some real debate about choices would be healthy - but how is one to manage that in a world driven by the vagaries of social media? I associate to the book about social madness noticed at reference 6. All very depressing.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/home-cooking.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/cheese-day.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/vocabulary.html.

Reference 4: Chez les Flamands - Georges Simenon - 1932. Volume IV of the Rencontre edition. Story 3 of 4.

Reference 5: Labour’s leftward shift and the bond vigilante threat: The UK’s debt mountain would constrain a new prime minister’s choices — and could make further tax rises more likely - George Parker, Ian Smith, Jim Pickard, Financial Times - 2026.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-last-outing.html.

Sparrows

Tweeted a small flock of what I took to be sparrows, maybe as many as a dozen, not something I see much of, grazing on fallen flowers from some ornamental tree on the southern pavement of Manor Green Road.

Surprisingly tame, but they took to the hedge adjacent before I was in camera range and to the air by the time I reached the hedge.

Rather duller plumage than those snapped above, turned up by Bing. Google Images suggests that these last are Eurasian tree sparrows (Passer montanus), turning up, inter alia, this very image, but also points me to reference 1 and the house sparrow (Passer domesticus), which is very probably what I saw.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_sparrow.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_tree_sparrow.

Big case: The second day

Following the first day of reference 2, up for breakfast in the basement, complete with the higher grade table furniture which we remembered from last time.

A breakfast which was dainty rather than substantial, which was fine given that we had eaten quite late the evening before, served by a young lady dressed in black. We wondered what, if anything, she had to do to purify herself after handing bacon and such - not that, as it happens, I took bacon on this occasion.

I wondered whether these were the only stairs in the place. One might have thought that such grand houses would have had rather grander and less rickety stairs, but such were nowhere to be seen.

I had had grand plans for us to go and visit the spring flowers at the bottom of Hyde Park, a short way along from Hyde Park Corner. This scheme then morphed into a stroll down to the Kings Road, itself torpedoed by a No.49 bus to Clapham Junction turning up just as we reached a bus stop. For which our senior bus passes were ready and waiting.

Pleased to tee that the Piggies café was up and running, having been shuttered on the last occasion that I passed it.

Street art has arrived at Clapham Junction, this being the underpass which takes Falcon Road to the Falcon public house, noticed in these pages from time to time. Rather better quality than the stuff we get at home, in Epsom.

And two real tickets from the ticket office at the Station, not the paper tickets one is apt to get from Epsom. Although I do allow them to be more reliable than the cardboard ones; optical rather than magnetic,

Spiral sausages and a baguette from P&V, now occupying a chunk of the ground floor of what used to be Arding & Hobbs, noticed, for example, at reference 3. On the train, I was interested to see that their signature bag was made in Vietnam. Big case left foreground.

Quite a decent haul at Raynes Park, although I have yet to properly engage, beyond BH telling me that the McLean is a museum in Greenock and the two magazines right coming from Taiwan. Plus evidence that the botanical bookshop noticed at reference 4 is still in business.

The baguette was taken for lunch. Very good it was too. Chewy crust and open texture.

The spiral sausages taken the next day. Also very good. We did one and a half at the first sitting.

One of them in one piece.

PS 1: a correspondent tells me of a new town north of Cambridge called Northstowe. Maybe even bigger than the Wisley Acres previously noticed. But also using, at least in part, land left over from the Second World War. Not pure greenbelt, without quite being brownbelt.

Both gmaps and OS know about it. I also see that the Huntingdon Road on which we used to drive through Fenstanton on many a Sunday has been superseded twice. First by a by-pass and then by the A14, the trunk road up north from Felixstowe Docks. Felixstowe being, as it happens, my natal town.

PS 2: I had to check where Greenock was, and I have now reminded myself that it is at the mouth of the Clyde, on the south bank, to the east of Glasgow. Presumably a rich and important town in its day.

[Winter at Ornans by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)]

The McLean museum and art gallery is clearly a serious place, well worth a visit if one were in the area. And at least one painting by someone whom I have heard of. But a painter whom, to my surprise, is not to be found in the archive.

References

Reference 1: https://www.northstowe.com/.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/big-case-first-day.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/cheese-day.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/11/kew-part-three.html.

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

Vocabulary

[Vue de la Meuse à Givet]

A short digression, triggered by my thinking that the Davies adaptation of the book at reference 1 had strayed rather a long way from the original, even when making allowance for crushing 125 or so pages into 50 minutes or so.

This led to the book itself, where, on page 284, I find the phrase 'sa face houleuse' in the context of the Meuse in flood at night with the surface whipped up by the wind. It occurred to me that Simenon was using 'face' where we might use 'surface'.

I then get to a list of vaguely related words: face, surface, visage, figure, plan and plane. Most of which, according to 'Le Petit Larousse', mean roughly the same thing in French as in English - but with differing pattern of usage.

With the exception of a carpenter's plane which is 'rabot' in French and 'figure' which we do not much use for face in English. And a quick scan of the two pages given over to figure in OED gives lots of interesting meanings, all more or less related, but no faces.

While face itself gets around four pages. Again, all more or less related to human faces, but extending to coal faces and type faces.

PS 1: Givet is a town in France, on the Meuse, in a tongue of land sticking into Belgium, rather in the way that Malden Rushett sticks into Surrey. I think the gist of reference 3 is that its place in France was consolidated during the incessant wars of Louis XIV.

PS 2: according to Larousse, 'rabot' is derived from a word for rabbit, of which more in due course. Also a relation of our carpenter's term 'rabbet'. Possibly obsolete.

PS 3: it was also a morning when BH surfaced the book noticed two years ago at reference 4, from somewhere near the bottom of the heap on her bedside locker. I had forgotten what a bloody and complicated business the colonisation of the interior of what is now the United States was at times.

PS 4: I wonder sometimes why I find the etymology of words so fascinating, a fascination which I believe I share with my mother. While only yesterday, I was reading about a small tribe - sometimes called the Iatmul - in New Guinea at reference 5, a tribe which used to go in for noisy and sometimes violent debates in the men's house:

'... On the one hand there are men who carry in their heads between ten and twenty thousand polysyllabic names, men whose erudition in the totemic system is a matter of pride to the whole village ; and on the other hand there are speakers who rely for effect upon gesture and tone rather than upon the matter of their discourse...'. [page 126]

Plus ça change. And I have read of plenty of other tribes, from various places around the world, who were keen on words in much the same way - so my fascination does have roots. I dare say Freud had something to say about it all if the title of reference 6, turned up by Bing, is anything to go by.

PS 5: I began with Maigret so it seems right to end with him. Last night, we watched the Davies adaptation called 'A touch of pride' and I was at a loss to know from which story it had been taken. Eventually, the brain traced back from a character called Dédé to the story at reference 7 and checking proved the brain right. Whoever had adapted the story had had the neat idea of transposing this story about the young Maigret onto Lapointe, who is a youngster, unlike Davies who clearly is not. Not a problem for a writer, he can jump around in time as much as he likes - but not something that works on a screen, for a television series.

References

Reference 1: Chez les Flamands - Georges Simenon - 1932. Volume IV of the Rencontre edition. Story 3 of 4.

Reference 2: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chez_les_Flamands. 

Reference 3: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Givet.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/05/life-in-minnesota.html.

Reference 5: Naven: A survey of the problems suggested by a composite picture of the culture of a New Guinea tribe drawn from three points of view – Gregory Bateson – 1936.

Reference 6: Masculinity, Motherhood, and Mockery: Psychoanalyzing Culture and the Iatmul Naven Rite in New Guinea – Eric Kline Silverman – 2001.

Reference 7: La Première Enquête de Maigret - Georges Simenon - 1949.