Several coincidences today, all revolving around a certain Mr John Thirlwell. Let me explain.
John plays real tennis at Lord’s. He and I have previous:
I turned up to play him in the morning. On arrival he greets me with the phrase:
I ran into someone who knows you the other day. Knows you from the gym or something. When real tennis came up in the conversation, he asked if I knew you.
But the really strange coincidence about that encounter was that, John told me, it was at Grace Road, Leicester, at a Cricket Society bash…
…do you mean day two of the Leicestershire v Middlesex match?…
…I asked, explaining that I was actually in the next room (the Committee Room) all day while they were in the function suites:
Three Days In Leicester Mostly For Cricket, 20 to 22 June 2018
Yes. Now that IS a weird coincidence.
John and I fought out a tough, some would say bitter, battle, which ended in a draw, once the nonagenarians, who were next on court, separated us combatants who, by that time, were (naturally) screaming, punching, wrestling and biting. It’s a gentleman’s game, real tennis. In fact, I stayed on for the nonagenarian doubles that day and almost managed to keep up with the oppo for an additional hour.
Later that day, once I had recovered from two hours of combat (and done a spot of work), Janie and I took dinner at Delamina in Marylebone, ahead of a rather unusual-looking late night concert at the Wigmore Hall.
We thought the food in Delamina was superb – I had a seriously posh kofta dish while Janie had a seriously posh take on turkey shawarma – but the place was very noisy on a Friday evening and the service, while admittedly delivered by universally sweet staff, was poor.
We stretched our legs and got a chance to have a conversation that we both could hear, by walking the long way round to the Wigmore Hall. While strolling, I told Janie about the strange coincidence that John Thirlwell (whom she had met at the Middlesex University Real Tennis match) had been in the next room to me all day at Leicester.
Before entering the concert hall itself, I popped to the Wigmore Hall loo. There I saw a gentleman who looked remarkably like John Thirlwell. No, he wasn’t a gentleman who looked a lot like John Thirlwell; it WAS John Thirlwell.
“This is bonkers”, I said, “you’re blooming everywhere” – to which John could only smile and agree. Thus Janie and I chatted with John and his charming companion Maggie before and briefly after the concert. John is not a Wigmore Hall regular – he had simply seen this concert listed and thought it looked interesting and different.
I often say that Lord’s and the Wigmore Hall are the last remaining places where I get addressed as “young man”. I wonder whether that sort of thing was the causal link for John Thirlwell visiting both places on the same day as me. Joking apart about fierce combat; it turns out that John is actually jolly good company, both on the tennis court (which I knew already) and also in the concert hall.
Anyway, the concert was the David Orlowsky Trio, described as jazz meets world music meets klezmer – click here for the Wigmore Hall resource on the concert.
Click here for a general link to resources on The David Orlowsky Trio.
Here’s a snippet from a promo for an early album:
Here is one from a collaboration with Avi Avatal, whom we saw saw at one of these Wigmore Hall late concerts last year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLo-NQsIvVU
A collaboration much like the fusions in Delamina’s food, now I come to think of it.
Here is one of the pieces, from the latest David Orlowsky Trio album, which they played for us at the Wig:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrDBrUkv0Qw
Or try this tiddler, which the Wig used to promote the concert we attended:
We thought the music was wonderful fun; a mixture of smooth jazz and the sort of dance rhythms that central and eastern European music does so well, not least when klezmerised.
Janie and I sat next to an aficionado of the group who told us, sadly, that the trio is due to split soon after a mere 20 years together. Perhaps they feel it is time to pursue other projects. They are all virtuoso musicians; David Orlowsky himself utterly exceptional on the clarinet but really all three were excellent.
Quite a day; I hope John Thrilwell enjoyed his day as much as I enjoyed mine.
So I go to a meeting last night – an interfaith song project – in a Georgian house in Mile End (that alone surprised me) and a gent of a similar age said to me ‘We’ve met before – probably at a Lord’s event’. And indeed he seemed vaguely familiar. Later in the evening as we were chatting about cricket I mentioned the Cricket Society at which point he said ‘It was Leicester’. So another coincidence at Grace Road. Turns out he’s the Bishop of London’s interfaith person so, dear Ian, you’re only 2 or 3 steps of separation from Bishop Sarah.
The coincidences keep rolling in, so perhaps it is unsurprising that we learn, today, that we (John Thirlwell and I) have been selected to represent the MCC as a doubles pair in next week’s match against the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC). You couldn’t make it up!
I do a fair bit of work with the Church of England, John, so have very few degrees of separation from most of the bishops and archbishops. This Ogblog piece provides but one example: http://ianlouisharris.com/2011/06/15/lunch-at-lambeth-palace-followed-by-the-school-for-scandal-by-richard-brinsley-sheridan-barbican-theatre-15-june-2011/
Naturally I shall report on our partnership against the HAC once it is done. It might be a very tough match – I suspect they’ll be wheeling out their big guns against us.