February 2019 – Page 2 – Ian Louis Harris

The Rohan Thing, My Short Performance Piece As Part Of Rohan Candappa’s Inaugural Threadmash, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2019

When Rohan was organsing this evening, he sent round a note asking us to “pencil in” this date.

Now I’m not one who is naturally disposed to doing what I am told…

…so I joined the small band of pencil-resisters and informed Rohan and others:

I have written “Rohan Thing?” in big letters in my diary, in ink. If my inflexibility in the pencil verses ink aspect deems me ineligible for the event, I quite understand.

Rohan responded:

Ian, it’s mainly your hat that I’m inviting. But, apparently, it can’t make it without you wandering about underneath. As for ‘Rohan Thing’ – that makes it sound like you’d met me at a party the night before, but can’t remember my surname. Despite all this, I still want you to come along.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking that I am buying time here, in a rather pitiful way, by quoting Rohan’s witty remarks while avoiding actually telling a story of my own.

Well, y…

…NO! Not at all. But that bant does form part of my story.

Let’s start with Rohan’s initial reference to my hat. Now it seems to me, that Rohan was, rather obviously, dropping a heavy hint that he wanted me to tell the story about the day I bought this hat.

And in many ways it is perfectly understandable that Rohan should try to coax me, kindly, gently, directorially towards telling that story. Because it is a darned good story. Within three minutes of buying this hat, from Lock & Co. in St James’s, in early June 2016, I was afforded the opportunity to accost Boris Johnson while he was on his bicycle and had to stop for me at a pelican crossing on The Mall. I waved my real tennis racket at Boris – an implement which, I have subsequently been told, has the unfortunate look of a sawn-off shotgun when in its archaic canvas bag. It wasn’t my intention to seem quite so threatening. Oh well.

Here are some of the items for you to peruse

Anyway, I let Boris know what a knob he was being by supporting Brexit, endangering our economy and potentially causing geopolitical mayhem. My noble gesture was temporarily cathartic for me but ultimately, it seems, futile for the nation and the world.

[Click here for the full story of that Boris Johnson day]

I could milk that anecdote into a full blown dramatic…or perhaps I should say tragi-comic recitation…

…if I wanted to…

…but as you know, I’m not one who is naturally disposed to doing what I am told…

…or even what I am kindly, gently, directorially coaxed towards doing…

…so I’m not going to talk about the June 2016 hat.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the trousers I bought four weeks earlier. These red trousers.

I made an emergency trip to the Retro Clothing Exchange shop
at 28 Pembridge Road in Notting Hill Gate, to try and find an appropriate pair of trousers for a 1960’s party. Actually it wasn’t for any old 1960’s party. It was for my wife, Janie’s party.

The likely source of the party trousers was the basement of that retro shop. Despite its change of purpose within the “Exchange Empire”, I recognised the space immediately as the old bargain basement of Record and Tape Exchange.

[On with Sisters Of Mercy]

I inhabited that basement a great deal in my youth. Initially and several times subsequently, those visits were with my Alleyn’s School friend, Paul Deacon.

It was probably the pull of Record and Tape Exchange and my resulting familiarity with Notting Hill Gate that drew me to move into that part of London ten years later, almost exactly 30 years ago, when I was ready to find my own place. A most fortuitous draw, as I have been profoundly happy living there.

Now as some of you might know, I indulge a retro-blogging habit, writing up my diaries and memorabilia in the form of a life blog going back as far as I can go. Ogblog, I call it.

So, when I got home with my bright red retro trousers, I did a diary trawl of my 1970s second hand record shop expeditions, in order to Ogblog those memories.

Paul Deacon and I first succeeded in visiting that shop in late April 1978. I bought several records which had a profound effect on me. Most memorably from that first batch, a CBS sampler album, The Rock Machine Turns You On, which had, amongst other treasures, Sisters of Mercy by Leonard Cohen. I remember the hairs on the back of my neck standing up when I first heard that track. I played it over and over again, to the irritation of my parents who wondered why I was hell bent on playing “such dirgy stuff”.

[Click here for the story of that first visit]

But the dusty and musty smell of the 28 Pembridge Road basement actually reminded me most about a visit some three months later, during the school holidays, not with Paul, but with a young female known as Fuzz.

[Off with Sisters Of Mercy – On with Me & Mrs Jones]

You might recall that Rohan thought the term “Rohan Thing” appropriate for someone you met at a party whose second name had evaded you. Of course, back in 1978, when we were 15/16 years old, it was not uncommon to get rather friendly with someone at a party without ever finding out their second name.

But I must confess that Fuzz, with whom I’d had a gentle squeeze at Anil & Anita Biltoo’s party a couple of weeks before she and I made that July 1978 Pembridge Road visit, has a unique place in my junior romantic canon. Because I don’t think I even found out Fuzz’s real first name, let alone her second name.

How we arranged that “date” at Pembridge Road is a bit of a mystery now…but nowhere near as much of a mystery as her name. “Everyone calls me Fuzz”, is, I think, as far as I got, name-wise.

But in other ways, Fuzz and I got a little bit further. I was on the lowest foothills of learning about romantic entwinement that summer, but I had discovered tonsil hockey a few months earlier and was quite keen to practice that sport when the chance presented itself.

During one of the quarter breaks in our tonsil hockey match at Anil and Anita’s party, I inadvertently overheard Fuzz excitedly telling her pals, that…

…I blush to report this…

…words to the effect…

…I was the best tonsil hockey player she had ever encountered.

[Off with Me And Mrs Jones]

Now please bear in mind, folks, I went to the sort of school where the only feedback you got from games masters, even if you were one of the best sporting boys the school had seen in years, was a phrase such as, “you’re uncoachable”, delivered with a clip around the ear…

…and I was far from being one of the best sporting boys the school had seen in years…

…I was one of those boys who would try hard at sport, but whose abundant enthusiasm could not compensate for my dismal shortages of athleticism and talent.

Not that my school sporting career was completely devoid of success. Oh no. Three years earlier I had, famously, defeated the mighty John Eltham – who was certainly one of the more sporty boys – in the fives quarter finals of 1975. I even have a “winning quarter-finalist” trophy emblazoning my drinks cabinet, a trophy mysteriously uncovered by a certain Rohan Candappa, as evidence of that victory.

(Click here for the story of that famous victory)

But my point is, I was not used to hearing encouraging sporting words at all and I had, until that juncture, the low confidence of a novice in the matter of tonsil hockey. My previous experience at that sport (otherwise known as French kissing) could, in July 1978, have been counted on the fingers of one hand. Possibly even the finger of one finger. But I was hearing it on good authority that I was already up there with the very best exponents of the sport globally. Wow.

Of course, it occurs to me now that Fuzz’s prior experience of tonsil hockey might have been as limited as mine, or even less so, making “best ever” a somewhat meaningless comparative term. Oh well.

What Fuzz might have thought of my sartorial talent back then is lost in the mists of time, but it is very unlikely to have been good news. Baggy flared jeans and a yellow PVC waterproof garment, which my youth club friends teasingly described as “Ian’s Banana Jacket”. Little did those folks know that I was, in fact, a proto leader of the yet-to-be-formed gilets jaunes movement. The non-violent, social justice, French chapter. Not the Neo-Nazi English chapter that likes to describe centrist Tories as Nazis. But I digress.

Anyway, back to my date, on a hot day in late July, with Fuzz, in the bargain basement of the Record & Tape Exchange shop where, years later, I bought these red trousers. I suppose I became engrossed in my gramophone record searches and it seems that Fuzz became overwhelmed by the mustiness and dustiness of that Notting Hill basement. Fuzz fainted, banged her head while collapsing and needed to be revived by worried staff in the shop.

But apart from that, young Mr Harris, how was your hot date?

Reflecting on this ill-fated first (and perhaps unsurprisingly, last) date with Fuzz, I realise that it could have been a truly disastrous incident. Had Fuzz lost consciousness and needed attention from the emergency services, I might have had some explaining to do to the other type of fuzz when trying to assist them in identifying the young woman and notifying her next of kin. I don’t think the answers “Fuzz” or “Thing Thing” would have gone down terribly well with the fuzz.

Roll the clock forward again to May 2016, the day I bought these retro red trousers and a month before I accosted Boris Johnson while wearing this hat…

…I wrote up those 1978 Record and Tape Exchange memories on Ogblog and corresponded with Paul Deacon over the next couple of days, tidying up and expanding some of the text.

Paul emigrated to Canada some years ago now, where he now pursues his career as a voice-over actor, music archivist and part-time DJ.

As an aside to our e-reminiscing, Paul asked me if Janie and I had listened to his weekly broadcast on The Grand At 101 lately, which is available on-line. I had to admit we hadn’t. The show is on Saturday afternoons in Ontario, therefore Saturday evening in the UK. Janie and I are almost always out on a Saturday evening.

But, as luck would have it, our Saturday evening plans that weekend had, for practical reasons, been switched to Sunday lunch. So I told Paul we’d tune in. A few other old school friends also tuned in that evening and we had some fun with Paul, messaging in obscure requests for shout-outs and spins.

Paul then messaged us to say that John Eltham (yes, he of the historic fives quarter final in 1975) would be joining Paul at the studio “any minute”. I was aware that John Eltham was due to visit Paul, but I hadn’t twigged that the visit was so imminent, let alone that day. Then another message from Paul:

John’s here now! He’s just told me about the Rohan Thing…

Now, at this juncture I probably should explain that “The Rohan Thing” back in 2016 was not the same “Rohan Thing” as The Rohan Thing we are all attending tonight. “The Rohan Thing” that John Eltham and Paul Deacon were talking about was the monologue, “How I Said ‘F*** You’ To The Company When They Tried to Make Me Redundant”, which Rohan had piloted at my company’s office earlier that year and which he was preparing to take to Edinburgh as his first Edinburgh Fringe show.

Thus we learn that there is more than one Rohan Thing. Indeed, there are many Rohan Things.

And as for my red trousers, you must be wondering whether they worked with my 1960s party get up?

Well…

[Remove hat and jumper to reveal bandanna, party shirt, CND medallion and don the CND whacky specs]

…the red trousers were a groovy happening thing amongst many groovy happening things at that party, man. Peace and love.

Footnote: At the end of the evening, Rohan ceremonially handed out a lengthy thread to all who had performed, to symbolise the thread of story-telling that leads from Chaucer through Shakespeare and Dickens to our evening and evenings beyond.

Ben Clayson captured that moment and has kindly consented to me publishing a Photoshopped version of his photo here – (not that Ben knows it at this actual moment, but if the photo is still here when you look, then he probably has actually consented):

David Wellbrook’s Performance Piece At Rohan Candappa’s Inaugural Threadmash, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2019

David Wellbrook (standing) loudly performing, Rohan Candappa (seated) quietly reading

Many thanks to David for allowing me to publish his performance piece as a guest piece on Ogblog. The version below is not only a thoroughly enjoyable piece, but it also explains the context to Rohan’s show, which means that I don’t have to write that bit.

The story in David’s performance piece is not included in David’s delicious short book, My Good Friend, which I tried and failed to review on Amazon much earlier this year:

My Good Friend by David Wellbrook, Starting My New Year With A Rejection, An Appeal And A Kurt Denial, 1 January 2019

Anyway, here is David’s Threadmash piece on clothing:

From my perspective, it all began with a photograph that I had stumbled across whilst clearing out some old stuff a few months ago. It was taken in 1978 at Chris Grant’s sister’s wedding and depicts four young men for whom the word “fashion” was no more than a theoretical concept to be explored by others.
The excellent Rohan Candappa, author of numerous best-selling titles, and now Edinburgh Festival stalwart, decided than an evening of story-telling, with a theme around fashion, would be a good idea, upstairs at a London pub on a wet Tuesday evening in February.
And lo, it was so. There we all were. Nine of us, with stories to tell.
Rohan decided that I would go on first. “You’re the Status Quo of our Live Aid extravaganza,” he assured me, giving my left buttock a gentle squeeze.
“Whatever you want,” I replied, “whatever you like.”
And so, with my “just-in-time” reflections, this is what I said:
Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen. Hopefully you all have an envelope. (I had handed out a number of envelopes by this point.) Please resist the temptation to open the envelope just yet because my piece is entitled “The Story Behind the Photograph” and indeed within that envelope, almost as if it was planned, is the photograph in question. Now, you may find the photograph amusing in it’s own right, who could blame you, but you will have no context and in this instance, context is important. As the famous Italian philosopher Rigatoni Tortellini, once said, and I believe I’m translating from the original Hebrew, “Contexti esti importanti.”
I might have just made that bit up.
Anyhow, The Story Behind the Photograph:
Rohan has dragged me…invited me along here this evening to talk to you about the thorny subject of fashion and how, in the wrong hands, these hands, it can all go cataclysmically wrong. As you can tell from my underpants, I take fashion very seriously. I always have and I suspect I always will.
But where to begin? Marianne was seven years older than us and by a strange quirk of arithmetic and no one having died, she still is seven years older than us. Marianne is also my mate Chris’s big sister. (It was fortunate that Chris was in attendance as I now had someone to blame). My mate Chris has two big sisters and Marianne is the bigger of the two. Certainly in terms of age. She’s seven years older than us as I think I might have mentioned.
But what has this got to do with fashion you may ask?
(I waited a few moments at this stage and as if by magic, everyone shouted:
“BUT WHAT HAS THIS GOT TO DO WITH FASHION?”)
Well, since you’re so kind as to ask, let me explain. Marianne decided to get married. To Alan. I had met Alan several times before and despite originating from north of the Watford gap he seemed like a decent sort of chap. He, Marianne and Chris had managed to get me drunk a year earlier, and at the tender age of fifteen, had dumped me on my parents’ doorstep, had rung the doorbell, and had FUCKED OFF. Not that I bear grudges you understand.
With their nuptials fast approaching, I was invited to Marianne and Alan’s wedding (an expression of guilt if ever there was one), along with Chris’s three other friends, Ben, Nigel and Paddy Gray. Chris may very well have more than four friends, but I’ve never met them.
So, and my point is, at sixteen years of age, what to wear to the wedding of someone seven years older than us? I’m obviously looking at this from a singularly personal perspective, and I’m sure Ben, Nigel and even Paddy Gray suffered an equal number of sleepless nights dwelling on the same dilemma.
I didn’t own a suit, other than the suit I wore to school. I didn’t own a dress either, and although I could drag up quite impressively, to wear a dress I didn’t even own at someone else’s wedding, seemed a little self-indulgent. No one wishes to upstage the bride now do they?
So, what to wear? I went through my wardrobe and having come out the other side, concluded that there was very little of interest in there. C.S. Lewis had promised so much and yet had delivered so very little. At this point I would normally insert a scathing joke about Brexit but I fear I would alienate 51.9% of the audience. If I haven’t already.
So, like most 16 year olds vexed by a matter of clothing, I turned to my parents. Unfortunately, they had already left the room, and so I had to wait a good three or four hours before they came back in again.
“What’s up with you?” they said realising that I was still there.
“I’m worrying about Chris’s sister’s wedding on Saturday?” I cried.
“I have simply nothing to wear.”
In all matters costumery, my parents would often defer to Mr. Schindler. Mr. Schindler was a family friend who owned a gentleman’s outfitters. He was a kindly old man as I recall with a beautifully waxed Hercule Poirot moustache, and a lisp. Mr. Schindler bore his speech impediment with a stoicism that was no doubt forged by his own wartime heroics, and, you know, much like his more illustrious namesake, Oskar Schindler, I’ve always hoped that someone, someday would make a film about Schindler’s lisp.
(There was some genuine laughter at this rather contrived gag, but the groans of comedic pain knocked me onto the defensive).
Look, (I said), this is a cracking joke. (I feigned disgust at the lack of appreciation for such a beautifully crafted punchline). In 2009 I did this joke at the Cheltenham Womens’ Institute and, you know, one woman fainted she was laughing so much. This is possibly the funniest joke in the whole piece. Umm…I might have peaked early just so you all know. It may be all downhill from here…
(I cracked on)…
Anyway, not entirely trusting the wise words of Mr. Schindler, I decided to have a ring around. With a phone. We didn’t have texts in 1978. We had Teletext which was altogether something quite different and we had telex which had a similar number of letters and also an ‘x’, but we didn’t have texts. So, the phone it was. I rang Ben.
(Ben, by the way, was sitting in the front row, and could clearly see where all this was going).
“What are you wearing on Saturday?” I asked. It was a sensible question to start with as it was the only reason I was ringing.
Ben ummed and aahed a bit and then said: “Probably my blue leather jacket with Chelsea tie to match.”
I briefly considered Ben in church with nothing on other than a blue leather jacket with Chelsea tie to match and so I very quickly rang Nigel.
“Light brown three piece suit in wool,” he replied to much the same question as I had thrown at Ben. Nigel was probably the sensible one amongst us four, which kind of speaks volumes for the rest of us.
I rang Paddy Gray. “Pad the Lad”, announced that he would be wearing his big brother’s work suit because the wedding was on a Saturday and his big brother didn’t work at the weekend. I wasn’t at all sure what Paddy’s big brother actually did for a living, but prayed he wasn’t a professional clown, a waitress or the rear end of a pantomime horse.
None of this actually got me any further but it wasn’t really until Friday lunchtime that I began to panic. Mr. Schindler had tried to fob me off with a blue pinstripe suit which he assured me would look really good for work if I was ever kicked out of school early. Mr. Schindler clearly new his clientele.
I went through my wardrobe again and much like my previous journey there was no lion or even a witch, but what I did find was a brown and white striped shirt with white collar, a huge velvet brown bowtie, a pair of green synthetic flared trousers and some brown cowboy boots. Put all this together with my fawn coloured print jacket and they’ll still be speaking about me in forty years time, I thought.
I put it all on. It looked horrendous. “Perfect,” I decided. But actually, there was still something missing.
I rang my girlfriend.
“Can I borrow your school boater for tomorrow’s wedding?” I asked.
“Of course you can,” she replied, clearly either very much in love with me, or not worrying one way or the other whether I looked like a complete cock or not.
So, come the big day, there we all were. Chris looked me up and down and shook his head, not for the first time and certainly not for the last. “Have you been experimenting with the old wacky backy?” he asked.
“No,” I replied, “this is all my own work.”
The wedding, by contrast, went off without incident. Ben’s blue leather jacket with matching Chelsea tie escaped unhurt, Nigel’s light brown three piecer survived unharmed, and Paddy Gray’s big brother’s business suit caused no major international terrorist alert.
Not that that could be said for my brown and white striped shirt with white collar, huge velvet brown bowtie, green synthetic flares, cowboy boots and printed jacket. The boater, which I had chosen to wear at a jaunty angle, proved to be something of a hit however and I’m led to believe that many of the guests were heard to comment on my bravery in wearing such an outfit in public.
Now, many of you here this evening, will question the veracity of what I’ve been talking about. Particularly those of you that know me. I have in the past been accused of exaggeration, of hyperbole, of low perbole, and indeed all manner of perbole. But somebody took a photograph that day, and so in those envelopes is evidence, evidence ladies and gentlemen of the jury, of a young man’s desire to shock, to stand out from the crowd, to present himself as a fashion icon for the 70s; a match for such luminaries as Mick Jagger, Bryan Ferry and Arthur Mullard. Feel free to open the envelopes and marvel at the vestmental mayhem.
(Envelopes by this point had begun to open and a mixture a gasps, laughs and general disbelief filled the room).
How I was ever allowed out of the house dressed in such a fashion remains a mystery to me. I suspect social services cannot be alerted retrospectively particularly after forty years and so I’ll need to cope with the emotional fallout in my own way. But all is not lost. As you can see from the photograph, there appears to be a shaft of sunlight cascading down from the heavens illuminating my bowtie, and so I shall have to console myself with the knowledge that at least somebody up there loved me.
Feel free to keep the photo. Use it as a bookmark. A coffee table coaster. Show it to your friends and neighbours and use it as a warning against ignoring the advice of old men with lisps and recreational drug use.
Thank you all very much.
(I made an exaggerated bow and exited stage left, to raucous applause and a general relief that it was all over).

A Bruising Night At the Theatre: Cougar by Rose Lewenstein, Orange Tree Theatre, 2 February 2019

We booked to see the Saturday preview of this one more or less as soon as it was announced – it looked right up our street from the rubric – click here for that rubric.

Sort of chamber play, sort of about big global issues, some top quality, familiar (to us) names in the cast and crew…

…not least Chelsea Walker whose work as a director had impressed us recently with Yous Two at the Hampstead Studio and Low Level Panic at the Orange Tree – click here or below for the former which includes a link to the latter:

Yous Two by Georgia Christou, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 20 January 2018

One thing I had forgotten about Yous Two was our beef about the set and the resulting sight lines. Strangely, that indifference to audience concerns was replicated in the set of Cougar.

The designer, Rosanna Vize, has designed the sets for a great many plays we have seen recently, as a click through to her Ogblog tab reveals. Her sets are always imaginative and only occasionally impede the audience – in the case of Cougar both physically and visually. The ushers asked us not to walk on the set as we entered the auditorium, but we needed either to walk on the set or stomp on a couple of audience members in one or two places – we went for the set.

Back to the play – here is the trailer:

The play is basically about an increasingly chaotic, globe-trotting relationship between a forty-something woman who is a big cheese, professional environmental expert and her twenty-something lover/paramour. It is a short piece – about 75 minutes long.

An interesting and intriguing play in many ways. The power woman comes across as a rather one-dimensional monster at times, yet her self-centred, ego-fuelled behaviours would seem less monstrous and more nuanced if the gender roles were reversed.

The cross-over between the global issues around climate change and the domestic issues of excessive consumption of resources (real and emotional) pervaded the piece rather well. The short scenes jumping forwards and backwards in time seemed more like a device to maintain the sense of chaos and confusion than an essential structural device for the (straightforwardly linear) story.

If we were being hyper-critical, Janie and I agreed that the female role is perhaps over-written and the male role under-written. Rose Lewenstein more or less owns up to that in the interesting programme interview. Well acted by Charlotte Randle and especially Mike Noble.

Anyway – amongst all this – why have I described the experience as bruising, I hear you cry?

Well, in one chaotic scene, the young man smashes a camera, which I imagine is supposed to break on the stage but not spray everywhere…but spray it did – with the lens (an 18mm-55mm beastie, seeing as you asked)…

…flying at me, striking me on the shin. Ouch.

A few minutes later, in another chaotic scene, the young man who has a couple of walk-on, walk-off moments (I assume Ryan Laden, who is thanked in the programme) ran off the stage in the dark, crunching into the same leg as he ran. Ouch again.

Janie wondered if I was OK. I felt a bit like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “Tis but a scratch”…

…although my equivalent phrase was, “Tis nothing – I play hard ball sports”.

When we got home after the show (and after dinner at Don Fernandos) Janie offered to put some arnica on my bruises.

Oh, that is a big bruise…

…said Janie, admiring a bruise on my left leg.

That’s one I picked up playing real tennis last week. The new bruises are on the right leg,

I said.

I’m sure the cast and crew will work on those production issues between now and press night. It would be well worth going to see this play/production if you read this piece in time – it runs until 2 March 2019. Perhaps best not to book the front row for this one, though, unless you are as brave as The Black Night or a Mountain Lion (Cougar).

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: