A person with a watch knows the time. A person with two watches can never sure what the time is.
But the “two diaries” bit seems to work out OK in this instance, with the old diary showing my Christmas activities and the new one showing that I started my “work during Twixtmas” tradition long ago.
25 December 1988: Ma Pa and G Jenny for tea, Benjamins for dinner. Stayed Ma and Pas.
Thinking about the logistics of all this – I think mum and dad must have picked up Grandma Jenny in Surbiton, brought her to my flat for tea (possibly the first time they saw Clanricarde Gardens and in Grandma Jenny’s case quite possibly the only time). At Doreen and Stanley Benjamin’s in Putney we were possibly joined by Jane and Lisa and one or both of their respective beau’s/future husbands if they were around at that time. Also Doreen’s mum, Jessie Jackson, would have been there if she was still with us in 1988.
26 December 1988: Lunch at Ma and Pas returned home early evening
No record in either diary of what I did on the bank holiday Tuesday nor the Wednesday. Perhaps I was so knackered by the activities of the preceding few weeks that i simply took the opportunity to work soft and play soft.
The diary marking SCF for 29 and 30 December shows that I went to Save The Children Fund in Camberwell those two days.
If you simply go by my diary notes, I spent the ten days in the run up to Christmas eating and drinking that year. What’s changed/who knew?
I’m going to be a bit light on details with several of these:
Thursday 15 December: Went over to Bobbies for dinner
I’ll guess that there were other people involved, but the diaries are silent on the matter, beyond the above information
Friday 16 December: Went to Ma and Pa for dinner
One thing I do remember about this visit was me gently but firmly letting mum know that, now that I’d moved to Notting Hill, I wasn’t suddenly going to be making Friday evening visits for family dinner a regular thing.
Saturday 17 December: Driving lesson. Annalisa came over for meal in evening
That was my second driving lesson in Notting Hill (I’d had one the previous Saturday). I think that meal I cooked for Annalisa that evening might well have been the first time I cooked for someone other than myself at Clanricarde Gardens. No idea what I cooked for her. There are some Thai recipes on my jotter but I can see, from the context of the other notes, that those were jotted after Christmas, probably after I discovered Tawana.
Monday 19 December: Driving lesson in evening.
My instructor in Notting Hill Gate was a gentle fellow. I remember his girlfriend (or wife) was an orchestra musician from East Germany and he spent much of our chatting time railing against the Honecker regime, little knowing how close we were to its demise.
Tuesday 20 December: Bobbie came over for meal in evening
This might well have been the first time I cooked for Bobbie at Clanricarde. This will have been a meatier affair than cooking for Annalisa and/but probably a simpler meal being an after work job rather than a weekend job.
Wednesday 21 December: Radius lunch in afternoon. BHMC [Binder Hamlyn Management Consultants] & drinks after work
I cannot remember exactly who Radius were, but I am guessing that they were a software supplier. That week, and the week before, I had switched away from Save The Children Fund (who wanted me to return to do most of my assignment in the new year, after their massive Christmas Appeal surge was over), so I joined colleague/mentor Lars Schiphorst at Holland & Holland. My guess is that I was brought in at that place to look at the financial/accounting systems aspects of a project long since forgotten by all involved.
Thinking about Lars, who, despite having to tolerate teaming with me on that assignment and others, went on to be a good friend for several years at Binders before he emigrated to Australia…I wondered if it would be possible to trace Lars 30 years later.
Lars Schiphorst – ludicrously still recognisable/barely changed all these years later.
Friday 23 December: Pub lunch with BHMC mob – little work after
The thing I remember most about that lunch was chatting with Geoffrey Rutland, RIP, who was especially friendly, welcoming and helpful with advice. He also turned out, strangely, like myself, to have been a former scholarship boy at Alleyn’s – although in his case a few years earlier.
Actually I remember everyone at Binders being friendly and welcoming that December – I felt quite at home in that firm quite rapidly, despite the fact that I knew I had been recruited as canon fodder in a turf war between a handful of partners.
The headline captures the text from that Wednesday and that one sentence tells much of the tale.
The so-called lunch was at The Bleeding Heart that year. It is still a top notch place. Writing 30 years later, although I don’t go there all that often I have been quite recently:
Michael Mainelli had clearly made a special point of locating me near to his place. He conducted a rather unsubtle sort-of interview over the hours of the event. I had been hired despite Michael, not by him nor under his auspices, but while he was away on holiday for a week, somewhat in contravention of his request to the other partners not to hire anyone while he was away. So he was checking me out big time those first few months. History suggests I passed the test.
I do also remember Peter Flory (who was my mentor on the Save The Children Fund project) “going off on one” afterwards, because he thought it inappropriate for Michael to grill me in that way at a staff party. It is my first proper memory of meeting Michael, although he is pretty sure we had a quick chat a couple of weeks earlier, when I first arrived at Binders.
I think I might have endeared myself to William Casey at that event too, by recognising and praising his choice of wine, Chateau Musar, which one or two less knowledgeable folk had been sniffy about, imagining “cheap Lebanese wine”. Oh no, this is (and was then) top notch stuff and a good food match too.
It clearly was a very lengthy and boozy affair. I remember little else about it. I would love to hear from others who might remember some factoids about hat particular occasion. We lunched at the Bleeding Heart for Christmas several times.
Obviously I was better from my 48 hours of food poisoning by the Saturday. I’m pretty sure I went in to work on the Friday and then a full weekend of activities.
Now I have had written complaints from Jilly already about my handwriting, so the above page is only for artistic effect. Here is the entry for the Saturday:
Saturday 10 December: Driving lesson & Orpheus Descending With Jilly & Annalisa Party
There – that wasn’t so challenging, now, was it?
I remember really liking this play and production. What a fabulous cast.
They made a film based on that Peter Hall production with some (but not all) of the cast we saw in it. Here is the trailer for that movie – far more melodramatic looking than the stage production I remember, but still it should give you some idea:
For that particular evening, I’m sure that the original idea was that Bobbie would join me to see this play/production. But when she had to pull out for some reason, it made a great deal of sense for Jilly to act as sub, especially as we were both invited to Annalisa’s party and were given leave to be fashionably late arrivals.
In truth, I cannot remember specific details of this particular party at Annalisa’s place in Hinde Street, but her parties were always popular, always lavish in hospitality and always late nighters. At that time, just a couple of years after Annalisa had finished at Keele, I suspect it was a very Keeley crowd that night.
As the diary says, on the Sunday, I:
…went to G Jenny with Ma & Pa…
…the next day, quite probably a little tiredly and sore-headedly. But Grandma Jenny no doubt wanted to know all about my new flat and my new job, so I’ll guess that I was centre of attention that Sunday afternoon.
For those with limited ability to read clear, plain handwriting:
Monday 5 December: Started at SCF [Save The Children Fund] today.
Went to HCJA [High Court Journalists Association] dinner with B [Bobbie] in evening
I recall that HCJA dinner being rather good. I think we heard Joshua Rozenberg speak on that occasion.
M&P [Ma & Pa] return
Went to Mum & Dad for dinner (Italian)
There is a notebook page that is somewhat of a confession, or perhaps even incriminating evidence about that evening:
Well, I’m pretty sure that mother would have WANTED to be relieved of some tea towels rather than have me do without. I’m 99% sure mum voluntarily gave me the towels and that she declined to have me replace them.
Anyway, let’s not cast blame around here, but I did eat mussels that evening (perhaps a mistake) and I was tripping out on tiredness after several weeks of relentlessly pushing myself.
Wednesday 7 December: Laid up with chronic food poisoning
Thursday 8 December: Stayed off work again today
Thus, the bloke who had only previously taken time off work sick once, when he was grounded for letting flu turn to bronchitis, was now off sick in his first full week of a new job.
Saturday 3 December: Much sorting to do re flat – went to see Single Spies in eve – B came back to mine
My appointments diary informs me that my Zanussi washing machine was delivered to the flat that morning. I remember going for my first local shopping expedition after the machine arrived.
I am fairly sure that it was on that very first Saturday’s shopping spree that I found myself face-to-face with Van Morrison on the traffic island which divides the north from the south side of the Bayswater Road. We exchanged glances. I nodded, in as much of a “cool, nodding acquaintance” manner as I could muster.
I remember thinking that the Van encounter proved that I had really arrived in a hip, happening place – I was going to be rubbing shoulders with Van Morrison and people of that sort all the time from now on. Well, to some extent I suppose I have got to meet quite a lot of such media folk in the neighbourhood since, but that traffic island encounter with Van the Man was, sadly, a one-off. “No Van is an island”, I suppose.
Single Spies is actually two Alan Bennett plays: An Englishman Abroad and A Question Of Attribution. Both are about the Cambridge Spy Ring. The first of the two plays had been knocking around for a few years before this production – it is primarily about actress Coral Browne’s encounters with Guy Burgess. The second play was about Anthony Blunt’s role as art advisor to the Queen.
I thought the production (Single Spies, I mean, not Twelfth Night) was very good and said so in my notes. I’m pretty sure Bobbie liked the production too. I think we might have eaten at the National that evening – I can’t believe that I was geared up to cook yet at Clanricarde.
Sunday 4 December: Went to Pam & Michael’s in eve for dinner and bridge
I wonder who made the fourth for bridge that evening? It was before my irregular social group had emerged, so it wouldn’t have been Andrea on that occasion. I’ll guess it was a friend of Pam & Michael’s – perhaps one of the Setty/Gareh family or possibly it was Ralph Glasser. The diary is silent on such details – never mind.
I’ll have walked there and back, learning that Clanricarde Gardens to Pam & Michael’s place only takes around 15 minutes on foot. Cool.
The end of 1988 was a momentous time for me. I’ll have quite a lot to write about those weeks on Ogblog.
The brace of events I am recalling in this piece, reflecting briefly on that time thirty years later, are the core happenings. I changed job and moved house within the space of a couple of weeks.
Clanricarde Gardens
A few doors down, picture linked from (and clickable to) Philip Wilkinson’s wonderful blog piece about our street
I shall write up my flat hunting experience on a separate piece in the coming weeks. Suffice it to say here that my Clanricarde Gardens flat was the first place I saw and that I liked it straight away.
It was only the fact that I had nothing with which to compare it that kept me flat hunting for several more days. I have some interesting yarns to tell about some of the other places I saw. I asked to take a second look at Clanricarde Gardens on the Thursday and took Bobbie Scully with me to help me decide. “What are you waiting for? Just take it,” is a reasonable paraphrase of her sound judgement.
By way of context, I should explain that I was renting, not buying in late 1988. Some friends at that time thought I was bonkers by not jumping on the home ownership bandwagon “before it is too late”. But then some friends suffered some serious negative equity for several years after jumping on that bandwagon when it peaked back then.
Unusually, when I decided it was time for me to buy, in 1999, it was also an opportune time for the owners to sell, so I was able to buy the flat I had been renting for over 10 years. Try before you buy.
From Newman Harris To Binder Hamlyn Management Consultants (BHMC)
Again, I shall write more in separate pieces about these events over the coming weeks.
With the benefit of hindsight, taking just eight working days off between jobs with a view to:
finding a flat to rent;
moving into that flat;
learning to drive;
seeing friends and family in relatively large quantity;
going to plenty of theatre & stuff;
doing exam marking for Financial Training to help pay for all that…
…was a little ambitious, to say the least.
I rather like my only diary note on the day I started at BHMC:
Started at BHMC today – drink at lunchtime
Frankly, I probably needed a drink after that fortnight. But what a very 1980’s tradition for a new joiner at a City firm – the drink at lunchtime.
At Binder Hamlyn (BDOC) c1992
BHMC soon changed its name to BDO Consulting (BDOC). Five-and-a-half years after I joined the firm, Binder Hamlyn “merged” with Arthur Andersen (AA) and I concluded that the latter firm would not like my hairstyle. Michael Mainelli, who had not recruited me to BHMC but with whom I was mostly working by then, felt similarly about not wanting to persevere in Andersens, although not for hairstyle reasons…
…and thus Z/Yen was born.
I don’t remember meeting Michael on that first day or two at Binders – my memory of meeting him really starts at the Christmas lunch on 14 December. But Michael is pretty sure that he at the very least spent a few minutes saying “hi & bye” to me (probably to check that I didn’t have two heads or something) before packing me off the following week on a tough assignment with Save The Children Fund…from which the rest is history.
Reflecting On Those Weeks And Events
Further, when I look at my diaries and see what else I did during those momentous weeks, I still see many familiar names and activities.
Here are just two examples.
I went to Jacquie and Len’s place for dinner with Caroline on 30 November 1988. Janie and I are going to dinner at Jacquie’s tonight (1 December 2018) and only a couple of days ago, Caroline got in touch to arrange a get together.
27 November 1988, had John, Mandy, Ali, Valerie and Bobbie to lunch
I’m still in touch with most of them and am seeing John on Monday.
Those two momentous things I did in late 1988 have in essence been sustained for thirty years and still going. Also many of the people who were central to my being back then are still there too.
So I shall soon write up the many and various events of those frantic weeks.
Some of the tales will be about characters who entered my life only fleetingly – such as Larry the Drummer, the larger-than-life character I met through the Streatham Hill Driving School people, who became Larry the Man With A Van to help me move.
But some stories will benefit from the reflections of those people with whom I am still very much in touch.
And although, if I recall correctly, Michael Mainelli and I didn’t actually meet until I had been at the firm for a couple of weeks…
…1 December 1988 was, technically speaking, the date we started working together. So happy thirtieth anniversary, Michael.
