Time, gentlemen

THE Hand & Racquet sits in Whitcomb Street, just behind the National Gallery in London. A good position, you might think, with tourists passing. A good name, too, recalling a now-vanished tennis court from Charles II's day. It was painted a fashionable dark navy some years ago, and acquired hanging baskets of petunias. Those have gone now, as have the windows, eclipsed by plates of steel. The painted sign is fading. The brass windowsills, which once promised “Superior Salads” and “Homely Fare” are turning a patinated green. Nothing fresh, animal, vegetable or mineral, has featured here in half a decade.