Culture, and clashes thereof

Superb Prom last night at the Royal Albert Hall.  The main draw was Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade, since it's one of Martyn's Desert Island Discs.  It opened with Ravel's Mother Goose suite, continued with a curious and humorous modern Finnish piece (the conductor and soprano soloist were both Finns) and included also Szymanowski's Fairy Princess songs.  The house was pretty well-filled, so the atmosphere was really good.  We sat in the stalls just behind the cellos, so couldn't hear them very well (because the cellists were between us and them) but we heard the rest of the orchestra very well.  The chap on the timpani was having a splendid time, and another percussionist played, incongruously enough, the triangle and the gong.  I don't suppose the two are played at the same time very often ....

The N°9 bus helpfully plies between Charing T and the Albert Hall, and is served by the new Boris buses: first time we've used them.  They are electrically powered from a battery pack, with a diesel genny that kicks in when the batteries need charging, so they are quite a restful way to travel for much of the time.

We had an early supper at the Café Rouge behind Horrid's so, as we were there early, we first took a prowl round Mr Fayed's bazaar.  The French have a useful word for it: dépaysé, which combines literal and figurative meanings of the concept of being distant from one's native heath.  Well, we sure felt dépaysés in there and in the immediate environs.  The shop was rather short of indigenous custom, and I got rather fed up of being expected to dodge out of the way of people shoving pushchairs, texting, and not feeling the need to look where they were going.  As I looked out the window of the café, the passing vehicles were 80% Benz, and the rest split between Royce, BMW and Range Rovers.  The peace was shattered by two or three matching Lamborghinis, the driver of one taking a long time making a pig's ear of parking it.  Gulf state number plates.  At the corner door of said Emporium stood two Kuwait-registered Royce Phantoms. I make no further observation.

I have to report that our fellow anglo-saxon Kent residents failed to distinguish themselves on the train home.  There was one party of young oiks and oikettes, who mercifully got off at Orpington, having sat with their feet up on the seats - another good reason not to travel first class, since that's where they sat.  Worse was another group, quite well-dressed and old enough to know better, roaring, staggering drunk and objectionable.  They, alas did not get off at Orpington.  We love public transport in principle, specially when one of us gets it free or discounted, but the train from London is not a lovely place to be late in the evening at the weekend.