In memoriam

In the second half of last month we attended the funeral and wake of the long time friend noticed at reference 1. Lambeth crematorium, off Garrett Lane, near St. George's Hospital, and then the Estrela, of South Lambeth Road. This last being a place he had known since it opened, getting on  for forty years ago, and where he and I had taken many meals. One of which, from near ten years ago, selected more or less at random, is noticed at reference 2.

I think that before being the Estrela, it had been some kind of more or less moribund junk shop.

We were with another friend of the same generation and since we were passing through Tooting Broadway, it seemed appropriate to memorialise a third friend who had died some years previously, by visiting the Wetherpoon's there, a place where we had spent quality time over the years. The art work snapped above may not have been there forty years, but it may be more than thirty. Odd that it has not been swept away in one of their regular wash and brush-ups: maybe it is a piece of Wetherspoon's heritage, the place possibly being among the first ten of his London houses.

The unusual antique clocks on the platforms at Tooting Broadway tube station also survive, supplied, as I recall, by the New York Self Winding Clock Company. A recollection which is confirmed by reference 3.

We were sufficiently lazy to flag down a passing black cab to get us from Stockwell to the Estrela. The driver did not know the place, but he did know the Tate Free Library opposite, a place which has provided me with computing services from time to time and for which I still hold the card. Not known to Bing, but Google turned it up fast enough. Plus the image above.

References 

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/for-life.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/07/pubs-down.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/01/cheese.html.

Reference 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR10Od1cLaM&t=46s. Chopin, Op.9, No2.

Reference 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VbMEP0L2Fg&t=14s. Schubert, 'Du bist die Ruh', D776.