Jamming in Richmond. Samphire Hoe!

My breakfast music of today is Michelle Nadia's, the girl I met jamming with Devon Joubert in Richmond last night. I haven't yet checked out his music on the Net.
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Ho ho ho! Picture of the day from Samphire Hoe!

A suicidal sheep?

People and places of London and Sheen

Dashing to work! So much not written here...
First of all, yesterday I managed to get to Kentish Town from Sheen where I worked all day. It was nice to travel with a friend. We found The Lion and The Unicorn Theatre just in time to order our drinks at the pub downstairs. The tickets were waiting for us, left by darling Emma Vansittart whom soon we were to watch on stage:
                                     
The play is on till December 6! Hurry up!
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Today I was back in Sheen again and here are some pictures to document my lunchtime walk:
Before I even got to the milestone on the crossroads, I met 'The Coolest Father Christmas in The World' who got a job with the funniest butcher in Sheen and surroundings:
 


 
As you can see above, I encountered a couple of Polish Santas. They were promoting Polish food, including bread, honey, cold meats, pickles and other preserves, and were kind enough to pose especially for me:
                            
Thank you! Wishing all the success under the new management!
I took two small pieces of rye bread for my colleague at Sheen shop by the garden shop. She loved it. Not surprisingly. It is very good.
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Now I will add a picture of a very old and pretty cup and saucer:

It must be special if it costs 45 pounds at a charity shop despite being slightly cracked.
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As usual, I met many interesting people at both Sheen Octavia shops.
One woman told me about her colleague from St Thomas Hospital who organised a pilgrimage kind of trip to Taize in France for a group of friends and really special and spiritual experience it was from her. She brought this pendant from there, but could not remember the story that goes with it:


I also talked to a woman who works at Kew Gardens and told her about my friend of many years, Teodora Gadjanski, an avid natural garden designer who is now training in Permaculture and working on her new website. Another woman joined us and revealed that, although born in England, she can speak Polish as her parents settled here after the WWII. They lived in a refugee camp and it wasn't easy... I'd love to have an opportunity to talk to her again. During my long wait at the bus stop on the way from work I talked to someone else. The man told me that his mother was from Vienna and his father met her when The British Army were stationed there.
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When changing buses at Richmond, I listened to a couple jamming with Christmas tree in the background:
 
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Mind you, yesterday I was in Sheen too, before the theatre!
The granny doll would make great gifts for my Grandmothers, but they are both long gone...

The curtains were huge and heavy. We put them out before I went to help at the other Octavia Sheen. There a customer came in search of... curtains. I told him where to go. He got them and the other pair as well.

 Knitted reindeer and a reflection of the only pub in this part of Sheen:

Upper Richmond Road, near the milestone:

Here you can check your 'butcher's vocabulary:

The dog called Eva was told to sit by his Master. I guess I could have asked the man his name.

On the shelf with bric-a-brac I picked a figurine of a woman who didn't look like a saint, more like a highway (wo)man. It had a name: Anne Bonny. A customer told me it wasn't a woman of The Wild West, but she couldn't recall much about her. Fortunately, dear Wiki is here to help.
No clue what's going on in this picture. Do you?

 Stopping to take these two pictures cost us a 20-minute wait for the next train to Waterloo...  I hope my nephew will say that it was worth it... ;-)

Martyrs, lunatics, workers and Poor Man's Earl

When you come to Stratford by tube and you want to get to the High Street, you go through the shopping centre. Emerging, to your left you see a church behind the fence. The church area is the last remnant of Stratford Green. In front of the church there is a monument to the Catholic martyrs, burnt on stake during the Marian persecutions (during the rain of King Henry VIII daughter, remembered as Bloody Mary, not without reason...).


The memorial and was built in the 19th century and paid for by public subscription. The opening ceremony speech didn't encourage reconciliation between Protestants and Catholics. A newspaper commented on it:
"Language of this sort is better calculated to wound the feelings of many good people than to break down barriers that already too effectually divide the different denominations." (Wiki)

Lord Shaftesbury was strongly involved in many social and political reforms. He reformed the lunacy laws having visited many mental institutions on behalf of a special committee he represented. Here is what he found at the Bethnal Green madhouse called The White House:

The patients were chained up, slept naked on straw, and went to toilet in their beds. They were left chained from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning when they were cleared of the accumulated excrement. They were then washed down in freezing cold water and one towel was allotted to 160 people, with no soap. It was overcrowded and the meat provided was "that nasty thick hard muscle a dog could not eat".  (Wiki - click here to read more about the man of whom one of biographers wrote: "No man has in fact ever done more to lessen the extent of human misery or to add to the sum total of human happiness".)
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No time to write about a train engine seen at the exit from the station, nice people at Newham College, a good man who sold me delicious apples although he was already closing the stall for the night and a mysterious old building in the state of serious disrepair.

Medley

My friend Emma Vansittart is in the Warehouse of Dreams at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre till Dec 6th. I hope to see her onstage tonight, public transport permitting.
What if someone invented shoes that would make us hop and leap like a squirrel?


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Luckily, we got to the theatre in time to see the play using traditional transport: own legs, a train and a tube!
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The day before I saw a new item delivered to The Transport Museum in Acton:

 It arrived just as we were leaving this cafe opposite Acton Town Station having had a surprisingly satisfying lunch. My piece of cod was fresh and tasty and so was my friend's jacket potato, both served with salad and followed by tea.

In Stratford we were greeted by Robert, dressed in red from top to bottom. I forgot what this hue of red is called though...

Turkey Day and bird walk

Happy Thanksgiving to the Stars and Stripes nation!

I took this picture in Richmond when changing buses.
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On receiving my weekly feed of London events from Ian, I noticed something ideal for the man I met in Fox Wood last week:

Monday, 1st December
9:45 AM	Tick and Twitch (Barnes) Get your 2015 bird list off to a flying start! During this one hour walk, our warden will help you identify as many bird species as possible.

The end of mushroom story. In Putney.

Dear Faithful Readers,
I owe you this post or you may worry that you won't read anything else from me. Ever. As you know, having written here yesterday, I was to cook and consume The King OF Mushrooms. And so I did!

I took a picture of a semi-product: the chopped and cooked mushroom. Having prepared and served the meal, I immediately joined my friend at the table, and the dish found its way into our tummies in no time, not even thinking about photography. SORRY! Mind you, I had a busy working day that involved a long commute and some interesting encounters.

As a 'bonus', I'm adding a few of today's pictures from Putney:

I had a long unplanned walk there when I got on the wrong bus assured by both the driver and a passenger at the front that it was the right one to get to Putney. When I realised the bus turned right whereas I expected it to go straight on I approached the driver. To my remark he replied that he'd said 'Yes', because he was going to Putney Hill which is Putney and I didn't specify which Putney I wanted  to go to... Just as well it wasn't raining then.
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I rarely edit pictures as you've probably noticed, but just had to fiddle a bit with this one. Shame the ring was too big...;-)


I like the little Octavia shop in Putney. Yesterday we had a proper ladies pleated skirt in pristine condition. One customer was thinking about getting it. She decided to come back later. I warned her what may happen. She took the risk. As you may expect, soon another woman came in to look for skirts. She chose two and on seeing the tartan one, she almost jumped with joy. All three were perfect size and length for her. She didn't need to try them on. She told me she was a very busy woman and looking after grandchildren didn't fill much of her precious time. This lady pursues her hobbies: does flamenco and Egyptian belly dancing twice a week! She has no time to spare. Otherwise, she would design her own line of clothes for women of certain age: long sleeves, covering the knees etc...
:-)

Mushrooms and woods post

Not a half an hour drive from my place, going west, we found ourselves in Ruislip Woods where my friend used to bring his children while successfully  shaping them into sensible and responsible adults. Good of him!
Woods? It means mushroom! I saw them everywhere. Not so much the edible ones that I know though, most of the time. I know people eat the young puff mushrooms (the second picture). Supposedly they resemble truffles in taste. I wouldn't. Maybe because of the folk name they have in Polish... I'm too polite to tell you, don't even try asking!
 
 

 
 
 

 
 

 

This mushroom was hiding from the world under the fallen oak leaf. When you looked from the side you could see it. This made my friend wonder how mushrooms pull the leaf on top of their cap to hide...
 
He removed the leaf for a moment so I could take a picture:

We saw lots of different mushrooms, but it wasn't until we came to a clearing in the middle of the wood that I found one that I could put on the plate. My friend dashed past it. He is not a 'mushroom seeker', but there it was! The KING OF MUSHROOMS was waiting for me amidst the brown oak leaves! My first boletus on English soil! This's how my trophy presented itself at first sight:
 
After dancing with joy, like the Red Indians when they caught a buffalo, I carefully pulled the noblest of  seps from the ground so as not to destroy the spawn and set off to look for its siblings. No luck.
Instead, I encountered one of the mushrooms of 'you only it it once' variety:
Beware of those!


My boletus was waiting for me on a bench by a picnic table:
 

Then I noticed something. You can see it too if you enlarge the picture below. I am talking about the little mushroom literally growing from the table!

The English climate is so mushroom friendly, that you can seat at a table and wait for your mushroom to grow in front of you!

The last mushroom I photographed before  my camera got exhausted was this one, with a cap funnily flipped over. Cap straightened, the shroom was more presentable, don't you think?
 

The mushrooms and the beauty of nature was so absorbing I was often at risk of a close encounter with the muddy ground.  See what the path looked like, often much worse than that...

A few of my walking friends (and a biking one) from Skarzysko would be in their element there!;-)

Now have a taste of the sights I enjoyed this afternoon: