Cheese and so forth

Towards the end of July, having had to make do with butter on my bread - or supermarket cheese - we made it into town to get some real cheese from the Neal's Yard people, Covent Garden branch. A Saturday morning.

It being hot, the decision was to drive to Ewell West and take a train from there. Where we were greeted by their rather complicated signage about how to pay for parking: all slightly confusing because my telephone sports an app for both Apcoa Connect and RingGo. I opted for this last, which seemed to work without bother.

Rather more impressive were the planters outside the station proper. The ticket office clerk explained that they were nothing to with him; somebody else turned up in a van to look after them, presumably every day when it is hot. I didn't notice any cunning contraption for piping the water in. Contractors rule, even in railway station planters!

He also pointed out that my senior railcard had expired in March - and no-one, on either side of the jump had noticed in all that time. I paid the full fare to be going on with, and when I came to renew it when we got home, it did not back-date it to the expiry date of its predecessor, and there did not seem to be an option of that sort. So just a very modest fine for my misdemeanor and my new card turned up in a few days - having declined the telephonic option. All very efficient.

Onto the town platform, where there were plenty of sparrows in the bushes, of various sorts. At the very least, young/old and male/female. Just a few blackberries and I forget whether we partook.

Down to the Northern Line (after something of a walk) at Waterloo to find some more blackberries. The bourbon people are on the case. Maybe we will remember to check that the poster comes down as the season draws to a close.

Tesco's on the case too. I had thought that it would be a fruit flavoured squash, further flavoured with whisky, but it seems that it is a good deal closer to whisky than that. I am also reminded of the hefty discount you get on alcohol with a loyalty card, something that I had noticed in the big Tesco's on the Isle of Wight. I haven't checked, but it seems like a bigger discount than BH gets with her Nectar card at Sainsbury's.

Strolled up from Charing Cross to find these new-to-me crowd control barriers - which looked expensive.

It seems that the area around Seven Dials had been cordoned off for some sort of gender flavoured festivity. To which end a large disc of fake grass had been planted around the Seven Dials column itself. It was still a little early, but people were clearly gathering, mostly holiday makers by the look of them.

Lots of security people milling about and, by the time we left the area, quite a lot of people in fancy dress. Some holiday makers, some not.

Sufficiently early that the cheese shop was only just opening as we arrived. Added a spot of Gubeen to my usual Lincolnshire Poacher.

Followed by a visit to the nearly new cafe next door, a place called 'Buvette', a name which I recall coming across on Dartmoor as the brand of a livestock water fountain. Here, the presentation of the rather small croissants was entertainingly elaborate: note the little container, contrived with half butter and half jam. And some of the offerings came with what looked like silver plated accessories. But then there was a party of what sounded like Islington people sat just across from us.

Following up on Dartmoor this afternoon, initial search of the archive failed to find the water fountain as I did not go far enough back, but Gemini was on the case and could tell me all about them, with the beginning snapped above. And I was now able to run down reference 4. Memory not deficient on this occasion.

Next door to Buvette, we had a shop which appeared to be selling handbags and craftworker (aka artisanale) leads for dogs, which seemed an odd combo, so we went inside to find that the dog leads were actually accessories for the hand bags. We didn't ask the price.

From there to Fabrique in Earlham Street for a chunk from one of their fine loaves, one of their big flat loaves, rather than the more brick shaped loaves, handy for the toaster. Sour dough maybe, but good. It did very well later with the Gubeen.

We decided to cut across to Holborn to pick up a bus to Waterloo, happening across this pile of rubbish, not really very far from the fashion quarter at all.

Gemini again. I remembered blocks of likely the same age, somewhere between Marylebone Lane and Baker Street, with the balconies and walkways street-side, rather than running around an inner courtyard, as here. And as in Maigret films from Budapest, masquerading as Paris. Gemini was quite fulsome on this subject - his story involving fire engines - so there must be a lot of heritage and architectural stuff out there on the Internet. We failed, however, to track down the flats in question. But then, there are a lot of blocks of flats in that general area, some of them quite grand. Something for next time I am in the area.

No.243 to Waterloo from where the plan had been to take lunch in the Halfway House at Earlsfield. In the event, on the spur of the moment, we got off at Vauxhall and headed over to the Estrela, opposite the Tate Library. This last being necessary for the bus driver to know where we wanted to get off - it being far too hot by now to think of walking. Luckily a nearby passenger knew all about it.

Snapping the vandalised but otherwise pretty new Arterio train on the way. I dare say it is quite hard to secure large railway yards in the quiet hours. Determined people will get in.

And while we are on trains, we had come across 'Thames Racer' earlier in the day, first noticed about a year ago at reference 7. While most of the Arterio trainsets do not have names - with a driver once telling me that none of them did. Gemini explains that I had got it slightly wrong, with just half a dozen being so named, part of a publicity splash intended to smooth over the rather late arrival of these trains in service. One of them was 'The Jockey' - and Gemini had no trouble explaining why this one never made it to Epsom. A slight to the town, nonetheless: perhaps I should raise the matter with our busy MP, perhaps giving her a bit of light relief from her usual constituency fodder.

I also learn the 'Arterio' is the brand name given these trains by Southwestern Trains; they are called 'Aventra' by the manufacturer, foreign, naturally, even if the assembly happens somewhere up north. Something to do with Waterloo being the heart and the lines being the arteries. But it is still irritating that they use the 'A' word so much, along with all the other irritating drivel which comes out of the ceilings of these trains.

And so to the Estrela where we started off with the traditional bread and olives. Deu le Deu was absent, so I had to settle for something else, a something which I had taken before and was entirely satisfactory, as it was on this occasion. Muralhas de Monção, as noticed at reference 8. And they remembered about my penchant for white room being cool but not cold.

Rounded of with some cod-fish stew. Very substantial it was too; with the result that I couldn't manage one of their passion fruit puddings, back on the menu for once in a while.

Sadly, they were down to their last custard tart, so I could only get one to take out, rather than the three intended. BH is rather fond of them.

The art gallery next door, noticed from time to time, looks like it had gone down. Last time I passed, I remember their being some kind of a Noah's Ark like boat in their interesting basement, but I have yet to lay my hand on it.

The two units behind the telephone in the snap above. Estrela (complete with a shiny new 'wait here to be seated' sign, unnecessary on this occasion) to the left, the fine fish & vegetable shop to the right.

Bussed it back to the station, where the lifts were out of action, so the long walk up the stairs to our platform. Otherwise an uneventful journey home with our bread and cheese. Apart, that is, from spotting Wellingtonia No.107 as we passed Vauxhall Gardens - for which see reference 10.

A memorable outing.

PS 1: while penning this, I was interested to see at reference 6 that:

'... They wear GoPro cameras on their heads or the latest Meta smart glasses with built-in cameras. They are paid about $100 extra per month to record all their work and their videos will be used to train future AI-powered robots to do exactly the work being done in the factory, owned by Indian textiles group Texworths...'.

I associate to a textile chap in a train, in the 1980s, telling me how we were selling all our textile machinery and textile knowhow to various places in southeast Asia - after which we would be finished. They would start doing what we got away with doing for a century or more. And so it came to pass. Not that there is much to be done; the winds of change are too strong. Or are they? Maybe we need to get a better grip on this sort of thing.

PS 2: our two garden thermometers have now turned up, as previously advertised. One for him and one for her. Giving readings within a degree Fahrenheit or so of each other. Mine is now in the study, where it has been recording a steady 80°F, more or less the same as the jam thermometer. And it still is at 21:00. I don't feel that hot, so maybe one does not feel the heat as much as one gets older, just suffers from the effects, like dehydrating.

I worried about the eyelets for hanging, had I pressed the wrong button in Amazon, but they turned out to be folded down the back when I got them out of their packages. All was well.

PS 3: the Noah's Ark objet d'art. Not previously surfaced as it was such a bad snap. I couldn't deal with the reflections from the window.

Awful know-all this Gemini chap. But taking a look at reference 9 now, perhaps it is just as well I didn't make it inside.

PS 4: Wednesday, 05:45: the downstairs thermometer reports 72°F, the upstairs one 78°F. This despite the downstairs windows having been shut, and a fair number of the upstairs windows having been mostly open. Notwithstanding which, it feels cool upstairs. Must be the slight draught coming in from the presently cool outsides. Maybe all there is something in all that weather talk in the winter about wind-chill.

References

Reference 1: https://www.nealsyarddairy.co.uk/. For cheese.

Reference 2: https://www.husson.eu/. For crowd control, and for playground equipment. From Lapoutroie. They didn't think to tell me that this was in northeastern France; for this I had to go to gmaps.

Reference 3: https://buvette-london.com/.

Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/10/parke.html.

Reference 5: https://fabrique.co.uk/. For bread.

Reference 6: The AI threat to India’s IT jobs machine: The country has bet big on tech services but disruption is coming - Chris Kay in Bengaluru, Krishn Kaushik, Financial Times - 2026.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/poacher-day.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/03/cheese.html. Yet another cheese day.

Reference 9: https://thewhitepube.co.uk/texts/2026/vinegar-piss/.

Reference 10: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/wellingtonia-107.html. No.107.

Reference 11: https://www.dominicwatson.art/. The artist. Lots of nice pictures of his work, mostly looking to involve recycled timber. I associate to another chap into rubbish whom we came across at the White Cube in Bermondsey. Finding whom is left as an exercise for the reader.

Reference 12: https://www.traceyeminfoundation.com/. There is also a link to Dame Trace, whom I now know has her very own foundation. Very establishment, if a bit US flavoured: they are very hot for foundations. This one to be found at Margate. Farage land?

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