We are big fans of Mamet and also big fans of the Almeida, so Janie and I were really looking forward to this one.
We indeed got a fabulous production, wonderfully well acted, directed and produced. But we were less sure about the piece itself.
Of course with Mamet you get more twists and turns than a country lane. Of course you get even riper language than an expletive-filled debate at our place after Janie and I have both had a bad day. And of course, with Richard Bean in the driving seat for the play script itself, you get some lovely stage devices and coups de theatre.
But the piece itself, based on a 1980’s Mamet film script, seemed surprisingly slight and it was unusually easy to predict the twists. I suspect the film worked better, but I haven’t seen it.
Still, with Alleyn’s School alum Nancy Carroll heading up a pretty impressive cast, plus Django Bates providing the atmospheric jazz music, it was an entertaining evening to be sure. Janie enjoyed it thoroughly, but also claimed she let the plot wash over her.
I was really taken with this play and production by the excellent Bruce Norris, about racial tension in a Chicago neighbourhood across the generations. It is witty and thought provoking in equal measure, tackling difficult topics with clarity and sensitivity.
Superb cast and this style of play marries well with Dominic Cooke’s style of direction.
Janie liked it too, but was a little less impressed than me.
It got rave reviews, west end transfer, revivals and all sorts – deservedly so. So you need to look through the reviews in the following link – click here – with care and choose the ones dated around September 2010 to see reviews of the actual production we saw – but you might want to look at reviews generally – in which case dip away with reckless abandon.
Janie’s diary suggests that we had a gathering in Sandall Close with Kim, Micky, John, Mandy, Lydia & Bella, but I think that idea fell through in the end. We might have had Kim & Micky over for a casual supper, but possibly not even that happened in the end.
14 August 2010 – The Boundary With Anthea & Mitchell
We certainly did have dinner with Anthea & Mitchell the following week, at The Boundary. Janie remembers a superb platter of fish. Janie remembers that we took drinks after dinner on a rather splendid roof terrace. We both recall that all of us thought the place very good – indeed I thought it so good that we ended up booking it for Z/Yen’s Christmas party four months later.
I also remember that we enjoyed a lovely evening in the company of Anthea & Mitchell.
21 & 22 August 2010 – An Ironic Weekend Of Kinesiology
Janie did a weekend Kinesiology course with Lisa Opie. The irony comes from me forgetting to cancel our tennis court and therefore using the slots to try and teach myself how to serve left-handed.
Note to self: don’t overdo an extreme movement such as the tennis serve using a shoulder that you have never previously used for that purpose.
Suffice it to say, Janie got a lot of practice using her kinesio tape (other therapeutic taping methods are available) on me in the aftermath of her course and my excesses.
Forearmed is forewarned – a few months later in India strapped up for cricket
24 August 2010 – A Net With Charley the Gent, Then Dinner At Seventeen
It took a review of the e-mails to find evidence on this one. Here is Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett’s take on the evening:
I am a complete mess this morning i am so unfit. It was great to have the net but to get some real benefit from it i do need a better level of fitness. My bowling disappointed me, felt ok about my batting and tonking you around the park. Your bowling is better, well at least somewhere the the timbers, your batting well anyone could hit my bowling at the moment. I need a return, maybe october sometime? Thanks for the meal it was very good. Best to all Chas
The meal was in Seventeen, by Royal Oak. Still there and still well regarded nearly 10 years on as I write in April 2020 – at least it was pre-Covid. Strangely, I do recall the meal being good but I have never returned there. I guess I am spoiled for choice in Bayswater and it is normally just a tad off my beaten track.
28 August 2010 – Day Three England v Pakistan Lord’s Test
A birthday treat for me at Lord’s with Daisy. I believe we were in the Upper Edrich for this one or it might have been the Upper Compton.
The match had been weather affected the first two days, so England were still accumulating their first innings runs at the start of the day.
With grateful thanks to Dan Steed for the pictures
There could be a fierce debate among the Heavy Rollers as to whether this match qualifies as a Heavy Rollers event at all.
The match was scheduled to start on a Friday and half of Edgbaston was a building site for this match, so most of the rollers chose to absent themselves this year. Also, Anita was in hospital recovering from an op, so I think David & Dan were unable to join us the evening before the match.
Anyway, the Edgbaston party comprised four diehards: me, Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett, David and Dan Steed.
Chas’s e-mail to me, cc: Dan & David after the event provides some evidence:
Just a quick note to all and thanks for a great day – so lucky with the weather.
Ian, special thanks for your generosity, so much appreciated, I will look for an Essex match within the next few weeks and also let you know about the face off at lords when I have that date!
David, Thanks fro taking us to the Hospital to see Anita, so pleased she is recovering well – keep me posted
Dan, don’t forget the link for the photos.
I will research the matches for next year. To include Edgbaston, Lords and the Oval, so far it looks to be India and Sri Lanka.
Regards
Charles.
PS – just thought I would mention it that I did say England needed 400 in the first innings, so not to bat again, its gets boring being so right so often!!
We stayed at Harborne Hall and my records show that my generosity extended to a meal at Henry Wong‘s on the night before the match – I think just me and Chas.
I recall that, before dinner, Chas and I visited Anita in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which was brand new that summer. She was in good spirits while recuperating and was in superb spirits when we saw her again, in more convivial circumstances, the following year.
As for the cricket, I recall Edgbaston looking quite sad in its building-site-fulness and the Day One crowd was quite sparse.
We were in exile in the RES Wyatt Stand, some distance from our normal seats in the Priory Stand (subsequently a few blocks round in the Raglan Stand).
I also recall many locals (including Dan) griping about the prices that year – they felt that Warwickshire CCC had failed to notice the unattractiveness of this match in the circumstances and still tried to charge “Ashes prices”.
Not the best Pakistan performance we’ve ever seen
I’m not quite sure how Chas’s point about England scoring 400+ is vindicated by the ultimate scorecard, click here, but he must have known what he was talking about at the time.
Shilpa Patel, Alec Stewart, Michael Vaughan and Jonathan Agnew all furiously debating whatever it was that Charley the Gent might have been going on about.
Here’s the note from Dan in response to Charley’s note:
Few photos from the building site – didn’t take too many! The score board ones say it all really. Great day, apologies its taken me a few weeks to send.
Ian/Charles, Take care all and see you again next year at the Oval…….hopefully?!!
P.S. Ian, forgot to give you your Z/Yen cap back – if you need it let me know your address and I will post it?
I never got round to asking for my cap back. I wonder (in April 2020, nearly 10 years later) if it is too late to ask?
We were invited, as friends of the Royal Court, to a pre theatre reception and a chance to see this play by a young writer coming through the young writers’ programme.
In truth, we don’t need much encouragement to support the young writers; we go to a lot of the young writers stuff upstairs anyway.
But it was nice to be asked.
We enjoyed the drinks. Got tapped up by the development people just a little and then enjoyed the play.
Not the most sophisticated play ever to come out of the programme, but the piece has some real punch and is most impressive when you consider that Anya Reiss was only 17 when she wrote the play.
Another day of county championship cricket at Lord’s that needs a bit of explaining.
Michael Mainelli and I had formed a bit of a tradition that, each year, we’d spend a few hours at Lord’s watching first class cricket and chatting strategically/laterally/crazily about our business, Z/Yen.
In earlier years, before such sessions took place at Lord’s, we called them “Stiermerde sessions”, not that bullshit came into it…of course it didn’t. Once such sessions were at Lord’s, we called them “Stumpfmerde sessions” instead.
Michael must have enjoyed it because his e-mail that evening included:
Great Stumpfmerde and thank you…
My response included:
Indeed I have cleared my e-mails and shall down tools. But I couldn’t do so before scribbling and uploading today’s match report.
Very enjoyable day. And productive Stumpfmerdwise and bookwise too.
Oh, and you really did miss lots of excitement by leaving early – 6 wickets in the last hour, five of them to the youngster Toby Roland-Jones who is the product of your charming neighbour’s brother at the Middlesex Academy. What a happy coincidence!
I must say that it had completely escaped my memory that I witnessed that exceptional breakthrough performance by Toby Roland-Jones on a Stumpfmerde day – in my mind I would have completely separated the two events.
Jez and Sarah were soon to get married – which was a near-perfect excuse for a team evening that didn’t involve tennis or cricket. Outrageous.
Mary, Linda & Gordon
Linda Cook, our social-secretary-in-chief, organised an evening of wine tasting at the office (through her brother Gordon) followed by crazy golf in Devonshire Square, which was “a thing” in the City, that summer of 2010.
Libations aplenty, bound to improve the results when blind tasting and playing crazy golf: Linda, Gordon, Michael, me.
There are lots and lots of photos from that evening, almost all of which were taken by Monique Gore. The story is better told through pictures than words, really.
Sarah and Jez taking the wine tasting very seriouslyJanet, Sonia and Alex studying the winesGathering for results time at the wine tastingChiara, Steph and Simon Mc look on in horror at my inept crazy golfChiara and Steph soon recover their composureBen dwarfs the Palace of Westminster while Mary & Sonia look onMonique, Flynn, Leo and Kirstan demonstrating their ball skills
The whole album, with thanks again to Monique, can be viewed by clicking the link below – there are more than 120 pictures to be seen:
I’m pretty sure we’d seen Ensemble Clément Janequin before and liked them so much we fancied another go for this concert of secular Renaissance music and modern music in that “Renaissance Cri” style. They were promoting their album L’écrit du Cri at that time; the concert was basically a performance of the album.
Here is a vid recording of the Ensemble singing Janequin’s hit cri, Les Cris de Paris:
This is not easy listening Renaissance (nor easy listening modern) music. I recall Janie being a little disappointed, awarding a low relaxation score despite the high fascination score and very high “talent” score for this ensemble, always excellent.
But I’m sticking to booking mostly sacred music from this Renaissance period (early 16th century) for Janie from now on. Ensemble Clément Janequin do plenty of that too.
But I do remember the events of the 24 hours or so in question.
In those days, Vic Demain, now the head groundsman at Durham CCC, was the groundsman at Uxbridge. He would organise a charity party night during the county championship match to raise money for a good cause – breast cancer mostly.
This particular year, I was unable to attend the cricket on the day of the party, as it clashed with business meetings of such import I can barely bring myself to read the appointments for them in my diary without trembling.
So, I decided to hot-foot it to Uxbridge after my last meeting (in Kings Cross) and arranged for Daisy kindly to collect my weekend gear from the flat and take it to the house.
That way, I could commute to Uxbridge to the party, cab it to Daisy’s after the party, commute to Uxbridge the next day (Day Three, the Friday) and have Daisy join me for the conclusion of play and a lift home.
Simples.
I recall the charity party was a good one that year. I think I might have ended up with some Middlesex memorabilia and a lighter wallet, but that’s the idea of such things I suppose.
I also remember having terrible trouble meeting up with my minicab driver, as the gate I thought would work for my collection was locked and we struggled to work out how I might get out without walking for 10-15 minutes around the ground and adjacent fields. I think we ended up with me jumping the gate, in the style of the escape Daisy and I had made from Laos some years earlier:
But that Sunday idea fell through for lack of willing participants.
We had in any case planned to have a team bonding cricket session on Monday 19 July. We’d originally planned to play in Regent’s Park, but with that location unavailable we arranged for the match to be played at Z/Yen’s spiritual cricketing home, Holland Park. That facility got closed on us at the last minute, so the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, bless them, switched us to Kensington Memorial Park instead.
I’m not sure that the locals around Kensington Memorial Park had been informed that recreational cricket had been switched from Holland Park for a few weeks. Several of the locals let their unease with cricket be known to us in no uncertain terms during the evening.
Despite handling all of constantly moving goalposts regarding the logistics of this event, there’s no evidence that Monique Gore attended that evening, by which I mean there are no photographs from it. Monique’s attendance normally meant photographs.
Back then, if no-one was there with a camera (remember those) then you might not have any photographs to show.
The headline picture depicting Simon McMullen, one of the eventual winners, was taken the previous year.
If it’s summer that means there must be some sort of Z/Yen cricket match and 2010 was no exception. We decided to play a pairs tournament this year, which made sure that everyone got a go. Indeed, Xenia Mainelli was drafted in as a last minute replacement for her mother and came a close second – and who are we to judge whether her contribution or that of Louwrens was the key to that partnership’s success.
Chiara von Gunten, fresh over from Switzerland and experiencing cricket for the first time managed to take two wickets, which is quite an achievement.
Congratulations to the winners, Jacques Malan & Simon McMullen.
Rumours of match fixing at Z/Yen cricket matches are most certainly untrue, but we can confirm that the 2011 cricket match will be won by Ian Harris in partnership with Linda Cook.
Perceptive readers might have noticed that Simon’s picture was taken at the Lord’s academy, thus demonstrating that practice pays off. Indeed the photo was taken on the day that most of us Z/Yen folk played a practice game at the Lord’s academy, as witnessed by Garry Sobers, no less. Have I ever mentioned that before?
