Salt-Water Moon at Finborough Theatre

January 27 is my birthday so it is a day for treats. I booked Salt-Water Moon at Finborough and then built the day around that.

First stop was Victoria and Albert for mid-morning coffee and cake and a little perusal. The (free) display Re:Imagining Musicals in the hard-to-find Theatre and Performance section was the main attraction and, as always with Victoria and Albert, there was a lot else to enjoy along the way.

Then it was a walk up to Kensington Palace to take advantage of my Historic Royal Palaces membership. It was my first visit there and quite probably my last. There is not a great deal to see there and now I have seen it.

The rest of the afternoon was largely spent killing time in pubs with a couple of slow pints in The Hereford Arms and Courtfield before heading to Cafe du coin where I always eat before going to Finborough.

Salt-Water Moon is, apparently, a Canadian classic which with Finborough's reputation was enough for me to choose it as my main birthday treat. It also helped that I had seen the two actors, Bryony Miller and Joseph Potter, before.

Salt-Water Moon was a will they, won't they story of two young ex-lovers reunited after a significant break during which time both their lives had changed significantly, though just how much they changed was a little hard to work out due to his constant embellishment, retraction, restatement and denial.

During the reunion he was animated, physically and verbally, while she was constrained and precise. She was clearly in charge but he did not realise that.

Incidentally, in a similar play, Talley's Folly, which I saw at The Cockpit in October it was the man who was in charge though the balance between the two was more equal then.

It was the rollercoaster dialogue between the two young people that gave the play its purpose and its heart. I have been watching a lot of chess recently (Tata Steel Masters 2023) and it was a little like that with lots of to-and-fro during the competition and all possible outcomes still in play until the end when a clear result was reached.

The play benefitted from the intimacy of Finborough, we were only a couple of metres away from the actors, and the simplicity of the stage which had just a bench for them to sit at and a starry night sky for them to look at.

Salt-Water Moon was a gentle swim in other people's emotions and was just the treat that I was looking for.

Morveren at Baron's Court Theatre

I have several sweet spots when it come to theatre and "Drawing on Cornish mythology, Morveren is centred around a hidden coastal village where women make the rules and no one has to shout to be heard. " certainly hits one of them.

It helped that I like the cosy atmosphere of the subterranean Baron's Court Theatre. It helps even more that it is subterranean because it is under a decent pub, the aptly named The Curtains Up, where I had a good soup and some mushroom croquettes before heading downstairs for the show.

There was a lot going on in Morveren, it was a tale of returning, female empowerment, tragedy, succession, commercialisation, rituals and mermaids.

These tales were told through three women spanning four generations (grandmother, mother and daughter). The grandmother was steeped in the history of the village, the mother returned for business reasons and her young daughter was enchanted by the sea.

Morveren moved smoothly between the harsh modern world and the sort of fantasy seaside resort that Rupert the Bear always went on holiday to and this enriched the story telling immensely.

To pick just one line to try and make this point, when addressing the villagers the daughter calls herself Mancunian, Cornish, British, Asian and a mermaid.

The plot was fairly simple but the meat of it was the various discussions between the three women as they explored their shared history and the possibilities for the future. And the more we learned about the village, its past and its inhabitants the more interesting it got.

Morveren promised an enchanting and unusual tale, which is exactly what we got. 

A 25km stroll to Waterloo

The walk to Waterloo is one my regular companion and I do several times a year so the only planning required was to agree what time to meet at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park. We set that as 9:30am so that meant we both had to leave our homes at 9am.

The route is simple, we take the path around Richmond Park (because that is where the path goes), exit from Roehampton Gate, head for the river at Putney and then follow it to Waterloo.

We walk this route because it is a good length, 25km, is easy walking, there is plenty of interesting things to see and it is always changing through redevelopment.

The two highlights this times were the large blocks of flats being built across the road from the waste transfer station in Smugglers Way, Wandsworth and the recently opened Battersea Power Station site.

 

Battersea Power Station was interesting and quite busy too, Not all of the units are open yet though many/most are. These are a strange mix of the expected upmarket shops and some unexpected chain shops, e.g. Paperchase. We were looking for somewhere trendy to have a coffee and walked past both a Starbucks and a Pret before we found Paris Baguette which while a step up from the other chains still had a chain feel about it.

The former turbine hall is impressive in scale and the decorations are a nice touch. It is just a shame that they have filled it with what looks like a standard shopping centre.

The other disappointment was that the path in front of Battersea Power Station is still not open so we had to head inland and around another area is impending development. Unfortunately going around things is a feature of Thames Path on both banks.

We got to Waterloo almost spot on 2pm which means that we covered the 25km in five hours which included two coffee breaks. A decent walk at a decent pace.

A gentle 32 km loop

If a plan is vague then it is easy to stick to and today's walk had a pretty vague plan, and that was to hit the canal at Brentford and to take it from there - which I did.

I like walking along that section of the canal because the Brentford end is still changing, it quickly becomes rural and is interspersed with industry. And what's not to like about a place called Dead Man's Bridge?

An expected highlight was the series of locks in Hanwell and they lived up to their expectation, as always, though it was noticeably harder to walk up them rather than down them which is my more common route.

Not long after that I hit Three Bridges (road, rail and canal) and decided to hit the road and to turn west towards Hounslow where I deliberately took a road I had not walked before across the top of Osterley Park.

Following the park round to the south took me into Lampton where I had been before; PokemonGo leaves a simple trail of places I have been which makes it easy to head in new directions.

After Lampton I hit Hounslow town centre and out of a mix of curiosity and wish for a cafe I walked east through the long town centre. It was interesting to see the different mix of shops but the only cafes were of the Costa sort and were busy so I walked on.

Thinking of a route home I decided to head for Whitton and as I got nearer to familiar territory the harder it came to find a new route and so I gave up on trying to find one. I did find a good cafe in Whitton though and was able to get a flat white and a generous slice of carrot cake which, at about 4pm, probably constituted lunch.

From there I took a pretty direct walk home simply because there was nowhere else that I wanted to go.

The vague plan finished at 32km in just over 7 hours and I was very happy with that.

Walking to Embankment

I wanted to go for a longish walk today and made a late to decision to follow The Thames Path on the north bank for a change. I had been that way before but only once or twice whereas I go along the south bank a few times a year.

The only decision after that was where to hit The Thames and (for reasons) I chose a scenic route through Richmond Park before hitting the familiar Barnes Railway Bridge.

I was not sure how far I was going to walk, that would depend on things like the weather which held the possibility of rain, but I knew that once I got past the Fulham bend I would always be in easy reach of a District Line train home.

Another part of my basic plan was to take some photos, something I do not normally do usually because I am walking with somebody else who would not necessarily appreciate indulgent stops. The success or otherwise of this is shown below.

The final part of the plan was to listen to some radio drama that I had downloaded on BBC Sounds and this worked very well and I was in the good company of Miss Marple, Charles Paris and Dr Who.

Beyond Hammersmith the territory was little known to me and so was a constant source of interest. There were a lot of very grand new developments in Fulham and Chelsea and a highlight was seeing a new one under construction at the former Lotts Road Power Station.

From Vauxhall things were familiar again and after a brief stop for brunch (at 3pm!) at Cafe Society I made the final decision on my plan and that was to walk as far as Embankment where the District Line touches the river bank.

I got there just after 4pm having taken just over six hours, including breaks, to walk the 28 km.

It was an immensely successful walk all round and now the only problem is what to do tomorrow!

 

I had intended to take more photographs but in the end I only took these five.

My main issue was that even a simple photo takes some time to compose to do it justice and some time more to post on Instagram and that was time out from a walk that I was really enjoying.

I also did not want to take any photos close to home.

The former Harrods Furniture Depository is one of the few landmarks on the Barnes side and seemed like a good place to start the photographic record.

I toyed with the idea of taking a picture of Hammersmith Bridge but the angles did not work and I walked on.

Albert Bridge,much further along in Chelsea, was more obliging.

After several years of redevelopment the Battersea Power Station site is now almost complete.

Sadly, while the shape of the old building can be determined, the beautiful proportions have been ruined by the two side extensions.

The chimneys remain but that is not enough.

I will be walking the south bank again soon and may get the chance to go inside in which case I hope that some of the grandeur of the former interior has been retained, as it has at Tate Modern.

I took the photo of the cluster of buildings just upstream of Vauxhall Bridge mostly out of nostalgia.

When the flats on the far left were built the development very much faced the river and it did not cover the whole site. Lambeth Council had offices on the far side, facing the railway, and I visited there a few times.

At that time there was only one tall building in the srea, the tallest one in the middle, and that had been approved by John Prescott, then Deputy Prime Minister, after being refused by Lambeth Council.

I took this picture of Elizabeth Tower mostly in amusement.

That area was thick with tourists with lots of people taking photos of the tower and clock faces so I thought that I would join in.

Destination Horniman Museum

The simpler a plan is the more likely it is to work and this was a pretty simple plan; walk to Horniman Museum trying to use new routes where possible.

That said, I took a familiar route through Richmond Park to Robin Hood Gate before finding a new and muddy path across Wimbledon Common.

I do not walk in that part of London very often but to ensure that I used as many new roads as possible I walked south of the direct route and went through places that were completely new to me like Colliers Wood and Streatham Vale. These were interesting places because they were new but other than their newness there was little of interest in them. The highlights for me were a few former country mansions.

As always, the hilliness of South London was a surprise and I was breathing hard after climbing Rock Hill.

I got to Horniman Museum about 3pm, ideal for a late lunch! The cafe was ridiculously busy and I was lucky that a family left just as my coffee was prepared and I got a table. It was leaped on just as quickly when I left.

My original plan had ended at Horniman Museum and having got there I had to make one to get back. I looked at the map and the clock and decided I had time to walk the 7km or so to Vauxhall. It was only as I approached that I remembered that there was a train strike and so I needed another plan and that plan was to walk on to Victoria and the District Line.

That plan did not work that well either as there were no tubes to Richmond so I went to Turnham Green, did a little bit more walking, and caught two buses home. I arrived back something after 7pm having left before 11am.

The main section of the walk was 35km and I did almost 50k steps over the day.

I averaged 29,142 steps a day in 2022

After averaging 27,919 steps in 2020 and 26,128 in 2021 I managed 29,142 in 2022, a significant and surprising increase.

There was a fair amount of variance during the year and I managed only 24,915 steps in August and 30,977 steps two months later in October.

I have a soft target of 30k steps a day but it is easy to do only 15-20k on busy days and it is had to pull the average back up as that means walking for five or six hours in a day.

Some of the quieter months were down to Covid and other such illnesses which not only kept me in bed for some days and also gave me brain-fog for quite a few more and then I lost some of my enthusiasm for late night walks.

I suspect that I do less walking in the summer months simply because there are better things to do, things like sitting in beer gardens with friends.

I'll be very happy if I do 29k steps a day again in 2023 but it's not a firm target and if I find better things to do then that is fine too.

An argument for wealth taxes

My argument for wealth taxes is a simple one and takes just a few logical steps to explain.

The economy is not a natural thing

The economy was invented by humans initially to support trades (I sell my chickens for coins that I use to buy your corn rather than trying to bater them directly) and has grown to be the dominant political factor - "It's the economy, stupid".

The economy is unpredictable

Having created this economic monster we cannot control it. On any major issue, such as raising taxes or imposing tariffs, economists present a wide range of views on the likely outcome. This is not because economists are stupid, it is because the economy is complex (not complicated) and is implicitly unpredictable.

The way our economy works has lead to great inequalities in wealth

This lack of control means that the economy does not work well for us, the amount of abject poverty in the world is one proof of that.

While there is little abject poverty in the UK these is still great inequality in wealth. 

This chart comes from The Resolution Foundations briefing paper The UK’s wealth distribution and characteristics of high- wealth households. I say that you give them credit for the chart but I could have chosen any one of many similar charts produced by many similar organisations. It is only the basic shape of the chart that matters here.

Both ends of the scale, extreme poverty and excessive wealth, are unexpected and unwanted outcomes. We did not design our economies to produce this outcome.

We have measures in place to support those with least wealth

Politicians have introduced policies to try and support those with least wealth. These measures include things like income tax thresholds, personal benefit payments and exemption from some charges. 

It could be argued, and I would, that these interventions are too little and there is still too little wealth at the bottom end but that is not the point here, the point is there are measures in pace to try and address issues at one end of the unbalanced scale.

We should also have measures in place to address those with most wealth

However, there are few, if any, measures in place to address the issues at the other end of the scale. High Rate Income Tax is not that high these days, is fairly easy to avoid and it only addresses income, not absolute wealth.

Wealth taxes are needed to reduce the steepness of the curve.

Wealth taxes could be out to good use

It is not just about hurting the rich, the so-called "politics of envy" it is about using the money that is largely sitting in bank accounts or asset holdings doing nothing productive.

For example, the money raised by wealth taxes could be spent on the people at the other end of the scale, further flattening the curve, as well as on the obvious things like schools and hospitals.

We need a range of wealth taxes

Excessive wealth comes from errors in the economic system and a range of taxes is needed to address each of the errors and the results of them.

An obvious example would be a property holding tax and another might be a super-yacht tax. It would be easier to identify individual income sources and assets used to store wealth and to tax them separately rather than trying to calculate an individual's total wealth from all their activities and holdings.

Also, some of these taxes would be permanent, e.g. a property holding tax, while others would be once-off correction measures, or windfall taxes.