Month: July 2010

Middlesex v Surrey Day 3, Lords, Stumpfmerde & MTWD Match Report, 30 July 2010

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.

http://www.cricketnetwork.co.uk/main/middlesex-ccc/s66/st161035/surrey-completely-clerihew-cornered

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!

Just in case anything ever goes awry with the MTWD website, I have scraped that strange match report to here.

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.

Here is a link to the Cricinfo scorecard for that match.

I’m glad I spotted the star quality that evening. Neville Cardus would not have spotted it better. Nor would Cardus have reported in clerihews.

Jez Horne & Sarah’s Pre-Nuptial Party, Z/Yen, St Helen’s Place, & Devonshire Square, 28 July 2010

Photographs with grateful thanks to Monique Gore

This was a super evening with the Z/Yen team.

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 seriously
Janet, Sonia and Alex studying the wines
Gathering for results time at the wine tasting
Chiara, Steph and Simon Mc look on in horror at my inept crazy golf
Chiara and Steph soon recover their composure
Ben dwarfs the Palace of Westminster while Mary & Sonia look on
Monique, 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:

Jez's Party 012

L’écrit du Cri, Ensemble Clément Janequin, Wigmore Hall, 24 July 2010

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 link for the album L’écrit du Cri: it includes several cris by modern composers as well as Renaissance pieces.

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.

Middlesex v Sussex, Uxbridge, Party At End Of Day Two Plus MTWD Match Report Day Three, 22 & 23 July 2010

Uxbridge Cricket Club and Ground

This will take a bit of explaining, as the match report I wrote for the Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD) website – click here to see that – is a sequence of haikus.

(If anything by chance happens to MTWD, that article is scraped to here.)

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:

When Janie And I Jumped The Border Into Thailand At Chong Mek And Then Blagged Our Way Out Of Thailand Again, 19 and 26 February 2001

But I digress.

The haikus describe Day Three in superb detail – here’s the link again – but just in case you want to know more, here is a link to the Cricnfo scorecard etc.

It seems the real drama was to unfold the next day.

There aren’t many websites upon which the groundsman might report the day’s proceedings in fine style, but MTWD managed to secure the good services of Vic Demain for the Day Four match report – click here for that report. A thumping good read.

Z/Yen Cricket Pairs Tournament, Kensington Memorial Park, 19 July 2010

The 2010 manifestation of Z/Yen cricket was steeped in logistical difficulties, if the extended e-mail correspondence is anything to go by.

Initially we were due to play on 11 July with Children’s Society folk at Bentley, as we had done the previous couple of years…

Ian Harris Invitation XI v Charles Bartlett Invitation XI, Bentley CC, 20 July 2008

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.

But before the evening, there was a great deal of too-ing and fro-ing regarding the nature of the tournament and who might play with whom. In the end, the pairings and rules uploaded here, designed and crafted by Jez Horne, became the tournament.

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.

How do I know that Simon was a winner? Now & Z/Yen tends to record these matters and the result of this event was thus recorded.

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?

The Day Garfield Sobers Watched Me & Z/Yen Play Cricket, Lord’s, 30 June 2009

etiquette by Ant Hampton & Silvia Mercurliali, Gate Theatre @ Gails Portobello, 19 July 2010

This seemed like a really fun idea.

Autoteatro.

A short two-handed piece set in a cafe, pairs of people go to a cafe to perform the piece themselves, through the use of headphones and props provided.

The Gate Theatre picked up on this piece and arranged for “performances” at Gails in Portobello – click here for Gate resource on this.

Janie and I loved the idea of this. As we had arranged a Z/Yen cricket evening in a North Kensington Park on the Monday evening, it seemed a good idea to have a go that afternoon.

Here’s the “programme”:

We enjoyed the piece.

Here is a search term that digs out more on this piece and on Rotozaza, the production company that does this autoteatro things.

Andrew Lawrence, Riverside Studios, Then Dock Kitchen, Ladbroke Grove, With Nephews Paul & Scott, 17 July 2010

Originally this evening was set up with Paul and a young woman named Holly. But Holly was off the agenda some time before the evening came round and Scott elected to come down to London to see us instead.

From memory, dinner at the Dock Kitchen had always been on the agenda for this event, but once the dramatis personae changed we thought that some light entertainment before dinner might go down well.

So we booked an hour of stand up comedy at Riverside Studio 3: Andrew Lawrence. He turned out to be pretty good. Stand up comedy is not usually Janie’s thing, but the young men (all three of us) enjoyed it – as did Janie really. This was more thoughtful and less obvious than a lot of stand up.

Then we hot-footed it to the canalside at Ladbroke Grove/Kensal Road to try Dock Kitchen, a pop-up restaurant that had popped up the previous year and stayed around for several years.

It was a really good meal to round off a really good evening.

A Day Of Neutral Test Cricket At Lord’s, Australia v Pakistan Day Three, With Paul Deacon, Mat & Tim, 15 July 2010

Paul Deacon, taken a few week’s earlier at England v Bangladesh

The Pakistan cricket team had just started their 10+ year sojourn following a terror incident in their homeland. England hosted a couple of neutral tests and I was keen to sample the delights at Lord’s.

To join me that day, Paul Deacon (this was to be his last hurrah of test cricket before he and his family went into self-imposed exile to Canada) along with Mat and Tim from the gym.

This was the second of two farewell treats for Paul, the first being England v Bangladesh a few week’s earlier:

England v Bangladesh Day 2, Lord’s, 28 May 2010

Paul clearly enjoyed himself at the neutral match but did not take (or at least did not post) any photos on the second visit. The headline picture and the one below are from the Bangladesh day.

But Paul did write this:

Hi Ian


just to say another big thank you for a fantastic day at Lord’s.
Thoroughly enjoyed it. A nice tumble of wickets today!

Will fix a time for us + partners to meet up for a meal. Do you like Indian? Chinese? Thai? Or all 3 on one plate even?

Paul

In the end it took us some years to get together family-wise but it was worth the wait when we did:

A Day With The Deacons, Music Exchange & Lord’s, 8 August 2017

If by any chance you want to know what happened in that particular cricket match – here is the scorecard. Day Three had left the match poised.

Il Siglo D’Oro, The Cardinall’s Musick, Wigmore Hall, 12 July 2010

Wigmore Hall on-line rubric doesn’t go back quite this far, but I have lifted the following text, which is also in the programme, from www.concert-diary.com – click here:

Il siglo d’oro – the Golden Age – was the name that Spaniards gave to their great flowering of music in the 16th century. Spain brought forth some of the finest writers of the age and the Virgin Mary was a popular subject with all of them. Francisco Guerrero was known as el cantor de Maria. Much of his highly characterful music was dedicated to the Virgin, from well-crafted four-part pieces to the more splendid double-choir numbers.

This fascinating exploration of music from 16th-century Spain sets Guerrero alongside his contemporaries and colleagues Morales, Esquivel, Vivanco, Alonso Lobo and the brightest star of all, Tomas Luis da Victoria.

The idea of this concert sounded great to me but not so great to Janie (or at least not for a Monday night in those days), so I made a rare trip to the Wig on my own that Monday night.

I was glad I did. This was a lovely concert.

Here is the programme:

The Cardinall’s Musick have preserved a review of the concert – click here.

 

Through A Glass Darkly by Ingmar Bergman, Almeida Theatre, 10 July 2010

I am a huge fan of Ingmar Bergman films, not least Through A Glass Darkly – click here for IMdB link – so we were very excited about this stage adaptation at the Almeida.

BTW, I reviewed the movie on IMdB down the page here – way back in 2002 (when I saw value in reviewing such movies as so few people did!).

Anyway, we went to the opening Saturday night at the Almeida.

I’m not normally one for stage adaptations, but Bergman himself had granted stage adaptation rights for this film alone, so it is fair to assume that the great man himself could visualise a suitable staging.

Here is a link to the Almeida resource on this production.

This little video about the production is really interesting:

https://youtu.be/4HRrBnj7RKs

This stage adaptation worked really well at the Almeida. Superb cast, brilliantly staged and directed.

Here is a search term that will find reviews and stuff – click here.

We really enjoyed this production. I can’t honestly say that you get much from the text that goes beyond the movie script, but seeing this chamber piece close up, live, was an unforgettable experience and did add to this great work.