The Lamb and its snob screens

Our train to London was terminated at Maidstone owing to a broken rail and signalling problems up the line. The train returned past Bearsted to Ashford where we caught the Javelin High Speed Train to St Pancras arriving in London an hour later than expected. Some delay compensation there I expect.

We were going to Royal Festival Hall in London to see Kate Rusby’s Christmas Concert which is always a very enjoyable event and this time was no exception. The whole band, all 11 of them came on for their encore dressed as various items of a Christmas dinner. The inflatable turkey was by far the most hilarious followed by the pig in a blanket.

This year we booked early enough to get good seats rather than being in the Gods peering around seas of heads. The Festival Hall is massive and not, in our opinion, well designed for seeing the stage easily.

The weather wasn’t kind but we strolled around the Georgian parts of London taking in Bloomsbury ending up for a pint at the Lamb pub on Lamb’s Conduit Street. The street itself has nothing to do with Lambs and more to do with a gentleman called Lamb who paid for a water conduit to be built in 1564.

The pub was frequented by Dickens and latterly by the poet and author Ted Hughes. Another of its claims to fame are these etched snob screens few of which, apparently, are left.

Snob screens shielded the well to do from the working class drinkers in the public bar and from the bar staff. Susan is doing a fair impression of a snob.

I may not be able to visit journals tonight owing to just 9% charge left on the phone. Just enough to post this blip. The extra is of Villiers Street which leads from Charing Cross to Embankment.