An Unexpected Evening At The Barbican During Which I Heard Sibelius, Met Rita Frank & Experienced Driving In Dense London Fog, 12 November 1989

My log records the following:

Amazing evening – although the programme seems to be lost. Jilly had left two tickets for me at short notice. I gave away the spare ticket at the door, to Rita Frank. I drove her back to Marge’s place in Hackney via everywhere due to mega fog – I had just passed my driving test & didn’t even know where the fog lights were. Rita busied herself dancing in her seat to my hippy tape. Friendship founded.

All I can recall of the concert is that the centrepiece was a Sibelius symphony. I think Sibelius 5 but it might be 2. I’m struggling to find more details, although more details must be available somewhere if I search hard enough…

…update! I have subscribed to a newspaper clipping service and found this:

Concert seen 12 November 1989 Sun, Nov 12, 1989 – 44 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

…so, as I said, Sibelius 6. Plus some Prokofiev and some Debussy.

Jilly was working at the Barbican at that time and would occasionally hand down tickets to me. Usually with a little more notice than on this occasion. I told Jilly that I’d struggle to find a date for a Sunday evening concert at such short notice but that I’d like to see that concert (whatever it was). Her view was that it was better to place one of the tickets than neither.

When I got to the Barbican and collected my tickets, there was a queue for returns; mostly couples and small groups. I announced that I had one spare ticket and was happy to give it away.

Two middle-aged women started bickering with each other, the first trying to refuse and the second telling the first that she really should take the ticket.

Seems that I’m your date…

…said the American woman, who I learnt was named Rita Frank and lived in New York. Her friend, Marge lived in Hackney and was (I think) an academic. Marge, being a generous soul, was happy that the expedition had at least ended up with her visitor/guest getting to see the concert. Marge went home.

Rita was charming company for an evening at the concert hall. She clearly was not very familiar with London, though, so I sensed she was a little daunted by the thought of travelling back to Hackney alone.

I had my car with me, having fairly recently (that summer) passed my driving test. I offered to take Rita back to Marge’s house, handing Rita my car copy of the L0ndon A-Z map book (remember those? No sensible Londoner drove without one.)

As we emerged from the Barbican Centre, I saw that a heavy fog had descended. Really heavy fog.

“Oh, London Fog”, said Rita, “I’ve heard all about these…”

Of course, I’d heard about them too, but by 1989 they were extremely rare, such that I don’t recall ever having seen quite so much fog in London before…or since.

“Oh wow”, said Rita, grabbing one of my cassettes from a pile, “The Happy Tape…that sounds great. Can we listen to The Happy Tape?”

“Actually, it’s called The Hippy Tape”, I said.

“Even better”, said Rita.

The Hippy Tape was a superb mix tape – or in the modern parlance and in its current incarnation – is a superb playlist. It comprises these beauties:

Turn Turn Turn, The Byrds
Bluebird, Buffalo Springfield
Nashville Cats, Lovin’ Spoonful
Rock’n’Roll Woman, Buffalo Springfield
Purple Haze, Jimi Hendrix Experience
Let Us In, Speedy Keen
Ballad of Easy Rider, The Byrds
Keep On Truckin’, Donovan
White Room, Cream
For What It’s Worth, Buffalo Springfield
I Feel Free, Cream
May You Never, John Martyn
Somebody To Love, Grace Slick
Meet Me On the Corner, Lindisfarne
Moonshadow, Cat Stevens
Alabama, Neil Young
The Needle and the Damage Done, Neil Young
White Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane
Magical Connection, John B Sebastian
The First Cut is the Deepest, P P Arnold
Crazy Love, Van Morrison

I most certainly hadn’t driven in fog before. I knew that there was such a thing as fog lights, but I had no idea what they were or how to operate them on my spanking new, first ever, car. (A red Renault 19, seeing as you asked).

My inadequacies in the fog lights department were exceeded by Rita’s inadequacies in the map reading department…

…in any case Rita seemed more interested in grooving to The Hippy Tape, which is great driving music in conditions where you can see and know where you are going…

…but not so great when you are trying to navigate neighbourhoods you don’t know as a recently qualified driver in dense fog.

My “sense of direction inadequacies” are a matter of legend. The sat nav could have been invented just for me, but in 1989, in the absence of knowing where you are going and in the absence of a helpful map reader and in the presence of dense fog…

…we simply drove around and around the mean streets of the East End for ages, until a mixture of borderline adequacy and luck got us to Marge’s house in one piece. A near miracle, frankly.

Marge turned out to be charming company too. Also a fairly practical sort (compared with me and Rita), who was able to fortify me with coffee and give me some sensible, simple directions to get back to somewhere I vaguely knew and from whence I could take a straight road in the direction of West London.

Meanwhile, it transpired that Rita was not just a New Yorker, but lived on the Upper West Side, very close to the apartment I was, coincidentally, being lent for a week, just over a week hence. Rita was most insistent that I get in touch when I got to New York. Her daughter, Mara, would be off college that week (Thanksgiving week) and would be delighted to act as my informal guide to New York.

At the time, I thought Rita was simply being super polite and that I would probably just “touch base” with her when I got to New York…

…besides, I imagined that 20-year-old Mara might have other ideas about the joys (or otherwise) of showing a random Londoner around New York…

…but in fact Mara and I became very good friends, not only while I was in New York for a few days…

My First Visit To The USA Part One: New York, c19 to 22 November 1989

…but subsequently when she came over to London to study for a while, the following year. I shall write up those later episodes presently.

Little did Jilly know that she was kicking off such a wonderful sequence of events when she offered me those Barbican tickets at short notice!

Thanks, Jilly.