Modigliani

The snap above being a rare attempt at a photo using the Camera app on my laptop. Hand left, Cezanne right. House of Père Lacroix, 1873. Framed in the days when Blackman Harvey had a shop at Seven Dials, across the road from the 'Crown', not far from what is now Neal's Yard Dairy.

The occasion being a trip to the Wigmore Hall hear the Modigliani Quartet give us Beethoven's Op.130, with the Op.133 finale. A name which appears seven times in the archive. Two of the seven were not relevant, but reference 1 was them at St. Luke's, back in 2023, when St. Luke's was still regularly offering programmes which interested me and I was still good for the ride from Waterloo to the bacon sandwiches of Whitecross Street. Well not exactly, as on this occasion, for some reason I now forget, I seem to have travelled via Balham.

Started the day with some Emmenthal which I had bought from a stall in Epsom market from a chap who might actually have been French. At least to the extent that, when I put in a word or two of French, I got a lot more back than I could manage. Emmenthal mild, the way I like it.

A warm start from the Eclipse car park. 

A fine strong blackberry shoot coming out of the bank on the town side of the passage under the railway.

Google Images agrees, although he introduces the idea of possible confusion with the raspberry, which I had thought quite different - and nowhere near as vigorous. But I now know that the genus Rubus includes all sorts of berries as well as the common blackberry. So maybe some blackberries can be confused with some raspberries. For which see reference 3. Also that the primary, first year shoots, like this one, carry their leaves in groups of five, which I had not noticed before. While the secondary, fruiting shoots more often carry their leaves in groups of three. Something else to look out for.

Then even warmer because our train, coming into Epsom from town, could not be bothered to go the couple of hundred yards up country needed to get back to the right platform and so we had to change platforms at rather short notice. But a plus was that the irritating computer announcements were absent from the ceiling of our carriage.

From time to time I notice the serious, vintage buffers which are still to be seen at Waterloo - although they can't have been used for many years. On this occasion I noticed some buffers at Wimbledon from the people at reference 2. Odd that I had not noticed them before. Not quite in the same league as the ones at Waterloo, but these ones might even have been active. A German company. I wonder if anyone in the UK still makes such things?

I also noticed a lady bowling along the platform at a smart pace, in what looked like a white surplice with black trimmings. I assumed that she was heading for duty at a Christian establishment.

The tunnel at Oxford Circus which sometimes has very flashy advertisements and sometimes gets very hot. No flashy advertisements, no people and not hot on this occasion.

The Salvation Army band sounded if it was present a little to the west of the exit, possibly across the road from their Temple, or whatever they call their places. I am sure that there is one along that part of Oxford Street.

Took our tea, decaff and toast at All Bar One in Regent Street - where the staff seemed to be getting to know us again. Best toast in town and very reasonable too.

A small tree outside, in a small pot. It looked healthy enough, so one can only suppose that it gets regularly watered.

Outside the new Japanese restaurant in Margaret Street. This being around 11:00 on a Sunday morning. I think we noticed the other day that the box plants left were looking very sad, dead even. Maybe victims to the same pests which have carried off so many of our box plants back in Surrey.

On a utility box in Cavendish Square, dated the day previous. Maybe at 05:00 in the morning, but they had been in the sun for a little too long for us.

A little further along, the builders were back in the space that had been used as a yard for works in the area for a long time. Lots of large pipes and so forth.

While in a square proper, a striking plant. White leaves or white petals or what? Not much doubt in Google Image's mind that: 'the tree shown in Cavendish Square is a Kousa dogwood (scientific name: Cornus kousa), also known as the Chinese or Korean dogwood...'. The white leaves are called bracts, otherwise modified leaves, and the pink tips come with age. We shall keep an eye on them.

The Modigliani did us well too: both they and I were on form for this fine - monumental even - piece.

From there to lunch with the Caprini brothers at Waterloo, the people at reference 4, managing to get past the Wellington without entering. Half lobster linguine for him, huge sea bass for her. Plus some of their white bread, well above average.

The linguine was fine, with plenty of prawns, shell fish and so forth, of one sort or another, but I remain of the view that lobster is a bit overvalued compared with crab, certainly in the shack in Bembridge Harbour where both are available. See, for example, reference 5.

Taken with a drop of white, as at reference 6. For once, Bing turned up the source, as well as a whole lot of retailers, on the key 'Tarra Noa Vermentino di Gallura 2024 Saraja'. Plus a data sheet which was more informative than I was expecting. Probably rounded off with a drop of the house grappa.

Lots of fancy dressing walking by outside, no doubt brought out by the hot weather. Plus some singing.

The former public house, for which I have named the Eclipse car park opposite. RingGo goes for something different, the Eclipse having vanished before they were invented.

Presumably a fire for each of the eight end rooms. The middle rooms have to look after themselves.

PS 1: St. Luke's possibly being an example of a venue which can get funds for capital spending - which it did not seem to particularly need, at least not as far as lunch time concerts were concerned - but cannot manage the current spending needed to put on decent programmes any more. I suppose the argument is that mainly middle class classical music buffs should pay their way and not expect to be subsidised by the taxpayer at large.

PS 2: presumably, somebody has already written a book of social history about how oysters and lobsters moved from being staples for the poor to luxury foods. And cod is heading in the same direction.

Salmon is a bit different, once being extremely cheap in the Pacific north west. Reasonably cheap in medieval England, with there being plenty of salmon rivers, but then steadily getting more expensive, more of a luxury food. And, like cod, overfished. Then they started to farm them on a large scale and prices came down. 

Gemini explains that cod is farmed, to some extent, but that it is difficult and expensive - two of the problems being that the cod are apt to chew through the netting of their pens and escape and that young cod are all too likely to eat each other. All in all, hard to compete with the price of regular cod. Whereas wild caught salmon is expensive and farmed salmon is relatively cheap.

I followed up with a quick price check with Sainsbury's. Salmon seems to be in the range £20-£40/kg, while cod is more like £10-£30/kg. So while there is some overlap, salmon still looks to be the dearer fish. But there does seem to be a niche in the market for luxury farmed cod...

PS 3: not relevant to the foregoing, but a bit later on, while watching television, I remembered about the giant killer crabs which were in the news a few years back. Silence since. Gemini tells me a long story about how they are being managed by the Norwegian. To the north east, they exploit them commercially, to the south west they fish them to near extinction. The point being to stop them getting into the cod breeding grounds around the Lofoten Islands. They never really made it down to the UK; that was a false alarm. And anyway, they like it best in cold water, below 4°C to 5°C.

The red pin marks the spot, the islands that is. Maybe I will check this one out in the morning.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/modigliani.html.

Reference 2: https://www.rawie.de/en/.

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

Reference 4: https://www.4fratellicaprini.co.uk/.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/07/nunwell-clockwise.html.

Reference 6: https://www.saraja.it/site/en/vino-dettaglio/id-9-item_title-tarra+noa.html. 'It talks about granite, about cork trees and warm silences, from the generous intensity of this land. It is gallurese, sapid, vertical and persistent. It is Vermentino di Sardegna'. So there.