In many ways the smaller number is a shame, but it was nice, on this occasion, to have a single conversation between a group of five of us. I felt I had a proper catch up with everyone who was there this year, whereas sometimes I feel I didn’t really get to speak with some of the attendees.
Booking Bill’s is an interesting, different experience each time now. This time they seemed happy to take my booking for a largish group of people (I’d estimated eight) many weeks in advance, but I did get a shock when I was sent a reminder in late April for our 30 April booking. I checked my original e-mail from Bill’s and was relieved to see that it correctly said 30 May. I quickly got on the blower to Bill’s. Something about computer systems going awry, but not to worry, we were booked in for 30 May.
The booking all worked fine on the night. Even our reduced numbers proved non-problematic, as Bill’s had pushed two tables together for us and were able to recycle one of those tables when our last minute reduced numbers came to light.
We reminisced, perhaps a little more than usual. I think I might have got a half-confession out of Linda about the 1978 apple pie bed incident:
Linda’s guard, most unusually, must have been down, perhaps as a result of her having had a cocktail earlier in the evening before arriving at Bill’s.
Linda, Liza, Mark and Sandra all work in education and/or care professions, so I found myself a fascinated listener to a conversation about several sign languages and their diverse educational benefits.
When I discovered that Mark is now back in London, at Deptford Green School, I initiated a conversation about non-turf cricket pitches and my Trustee role at the London Cricket Trust…
…Mark agreed that it would be most helpful to his school if there were to be cricket facilities in Deptford Park. I said I’d see what I can do.
Then we returned to our reminiscing and concluded that we’d all like to see many of our old BBYO friends again, but in particular we should try to track down Barry Freedman who was, in so many ways, the driving energy behind our group in the early years.
I’m not quite sure how I got nominated and voted onto the non-existent committee in the role of “Tracking Down Barry Freedman Officer”, as I don’t recall leaving the table or the conversation at that stage of the evening.
My friends assured me that the instructions for my mission, should I choose to accept it (not that I could refuse it, seeing as I’d been elected nem con, in absentia), had been provided on a tape recording which, together with the tape recorder, had now mysteriously evaporated:
My friends wished me luck.
I said I’d see what I can do.
As usual, it was a really enjoyable evening with a great bunch of people whose company I enjoy with renewed relish at these annual gatherings. But the next gathering might need to be sooner than usual, if I can pull off an implausible mission.
Is a selfie with loads of people in it a groupie? If so, thanks to Mark Phillips for the groupie.
Yet somehow we hadn’t got round to it. But when Janie announced that she was, unusually, seeing patients in town on the Friday afternoon/early evening ahead of the Bank Holiday weekend, that seemed a perfect opportunity to try the place. It was, not least because I was able to get a table on a Friday evening at reasonably short notice.
We chose to try the three course Robata Omakase set and believe me that was plenty of food for both of us. Brace yourselves for food porn photos, mostly courtesy of Janie:
The starter thingieThis sweet waitress explains the sashimi element of the meal to me. She seemed thrilled to learn that we had been to Japan reasonably recently.Once it had been explained, we could and did indulge.A more bulky member of the waiting staff served the grills on great big stone blocks. The grills were served with some sushi on the side – an unusual touch?
Janie and I both thought the food was really excellent and for sure the best meal of this kind we have had outside Japan. The ambience was a little soul-less, but to be fair such places in Japan tended to have a similar, “mall-restaurant” type ambience.
We were both really pleased to have tried the place at last and the meal got the bank holiday weekend off to a very tasty start.
Janie took some more photos; you can see them all by clicking the link below:
Unusually this year, the first Lord’s County Championship match of the season didn’t work out for me and Charles “Charley the Gent Malloy” Bartlett to have our traditional early season meet, but this second match did, so we arranged to spend Day Two of the match together.
A Cunning Plan: Tuesday 14 May 2019
Actually I was able to attend for the latter part of the first day. My cunning plan was to get my work out of the way, drive over to St John’s Wood Road around 15:00 – it is almost always possible to find a Ringo parking place at that hour, drop off my tennis kit ahead of tomorrow, get some reading done and watch some cricket in the sunshine.
The cunning plan worked.
I briefly popped in to the pavilion and chatted for a brief while with Colin, before going in search of some warmth in the spring sunshine of the Mound Stand.
Barmy Kev joined me briefly in the Mound Stand that afternoon before going off to speak with more important folk than me:
Borrowed from Barmy Kev’s Facebook posting – Click the picture to see that posting.
As I left Lord’s that evening, I ran into John Lee from the Leicestershire committee, who was on his way to try to find his hotel on Sussex Gardens, so I was able to give him a lift there and have a chat along the way.
A Great Day Although The Picnic Partially Went Pear-Shaped: Wednesday 15 May 2019
I rose early to prepare the picnic and set off for Lord’s soon after 8:00 in order to play tennis at 9:00. I used the rucksack that DJ kindly gave me last year, as that is an ample size for a picnic for two…
…except that I didn’t think about relative softness and hardness of items in the various compartments and planted a bag containing Chas’s pears (Green Williams) towards the bottom of the rucksack.
Other Species Of Pears And Bagels From A Previous Visit To Lord’s
Charley’s fussiness about his pears is a matter of some legend and a yet unpublished piece that should appear on King Cricket at some point in the next few years.
Infuriatingly, I had procured and ripened the bag of pears to perfection for this visit, but they got badly bruised in the rucksack. Message to self: put pears in a protective fruit box next time.
Chas threatened to go public about my pear preparation going pear-shaped, but I decided that the best way to prevent the risk of blackmail was to come clean myself. Now Chas will have to decide how to deal with the other side of the “mutually assured destruction” information unholy bargain we had with each other. It could get as messy as that bag of bruised pears.
Anyway, I played quite a good game of tennis (won) and spotted, as soon as I got off court, that Chas had messaged me to say that he was in the vicinity ridiculously early. I suggested that he make haste to the gate where I could get him into the ground with his voucher before I showered and changed. This ploy worked well.
In the morning, we braved the traditional back/backside ache of the pavilion benches. John Freer from the visiting Leicestershire group spotted us on those benches and came out for a pleasant chat. Peter Moore also chatted with us for a while. Chas and I didn’t get around to the picnic (apart from nibbling some cashews) until we got around to the Mound Stand in the afternoon.
Apart from the pear debacle, the picnic was a great success. Poppy-seed bagels with Alaskan smoked salmon, Prosciutto and Parmesan cheese sandwiches on sourdough, a fruity Riesling and several sweet treats – the latter arranged by Chas.
There were some large school groups sitting quite close to us – very well behaved but autograph hunting like crazy – especially from Nick Gubbins who was fielding down our way and patiently worked his way through a long queue.
At one point in the afternoon Dawid Malan (out injured) wandered around the outfield and stopped to chat with us briefly. Some of the junior autograph hunters asked him who he was and/but seemed minimally impressed that he was the Captain of the team. Only some sought his autograph; still Dawid handled the matter with great dignity and willingness to please the junior crowd.
As always, the day just flew by and it seemed like a blink of an eye after meeting that Chas and I were parting company again.
I watched tennis for a few minutes to let the crowd and traffic die down before Ubering home.
A Random Ramble Around Lord’s: Thursday 16 May 2019
When arranging that visit, I mentioned in passing that Middlesex were playing at Lord’s that day and that I could show John around the place properly if he was interested. His previous visit had been to watch tennis only:
Anyway, John said he would really enjoy that, so after the concert we legged it to Lord’s, where John reckoned he could spare 90 minutes to two hours before heading back to do some work.
I gave John an informal tour of the pavilion, which I think he really enjoyed, stopping most of the way through the tour to take some refreshment and watch some cricket on the sun deck, at Janie’s favourite spot under one of the turrets.
While chomping and drinking coffee there, John informed me that, although he had no pedigree in cricket whatsoever, his grandfather, Hector Ireland, had been a leading light in Widnes Cricket Club in days of yore, to such an extent that a bar in the club is named the Hector Ireland Room:
I explained to John that, while I like to pretend that the Harris Garden at Lord’s is named after my grandfather, the truth of the matter is that I have no cricket in my ancestry at all, so I felt that John’s so-called remote cricketing pedigree was trumping mine big time.
We completed our informal tour in time for John to get away in a timely fashion, I hope.
After saying goodbye to John, I then returned to the pavilion to join the Leicestershire visitors in the Committee Room. John and Penny Freer were in there, as was John Lee and also new Chairman Roy Bent, together with a smattering of Middlesex hosting folk.
Postscript To John Random’s VISIT To LORD’S
In August 2021 John visited Widnes CC and reported the event to me with the following charming words and photographs:
…I finally managed my pilgrimage to the Hector Ireland Lounge of the Widnes Cricket Club, Hector Ireland being – as I think you know – my grandfather; as opposed to the one [George Corke] who had a honeymoon in London and Paris. That was a generation earlier. I was so proud and happy to see his name memorialized on the plaques and his photo still above the bar. I was shown such a warm welcome by men who knew him even though he died fully fifty years ago. I even watched some cricket.
The Match Was Poised, But…: Friday 17 May 2019
I returned to Lord’s again early that morning; a long-planned appointment with the tennis court. In fact, I ended up being press-ganged into playing two hours, from 9:00 to 11:00, which is a bit of a mad idea for playing singles at my age, but there you go.
John Lee had threatened to come and watch me play real tennis for a while before the cricket started and saw through that threat. Afterwards, he reported that he had been baffled by the tennis at first, then after a while decided that he understood it, then after a few more minutes realised that he hadn’t understood it.
Meanwhile, I played quite well that morning and then, after changing, joined the small remaining group in the Committee Room for the rest of the morning session. A few overs had been lost to bad light but the forecast was hopeful for the rest of the day.
Nevertheless, I realised that I needed to get some work out of the way to relieve the pressure from the first half of next week, so went home at lunch, resolving to return for the lasts session of the match.
Sadly, the drizzle started as I arrived back at Lord’s around 16:00 and that last session was much curtailed, turning an interestingly poised match into a draw. David Morgan joined us for a while during that stop-start session.
It was probably Leicestershire who had the most reason to feel aggrieved by the rain, although a couple of quick wickets would have turned the match back Middlesex’s way. Infuriating that a poised match ends that way, but that’s cricket.
It was nevertheless very enjoyable company with which to pass the time at the end a few days of cricket intermingled with work and other activities.
The themes for the festival and from the 12 May concert continued in this charming lunchtime concert by Improviso – namely ideas around cross-fertilisation of musical ideas across countries/continents, plus the use of improvisation as part of the musical fabric in the Baroque period.
I thought this concert might appeal to John Random, who enjoys these lunchtime concerts when we are both available for such. In fact the timing worked so well for us that John was also available to join me at Lord’s for a while after the concert.
While I was striding my way towards Smith Square, a voice to the right of me said “hello Ian”; it was John Friend, taking lunch in a cafe I was passing. Sadly I couldn’t stop to chat with him, but the irony of running into John Friend while on my way to utilise my “Friend of St John’s” rights to lunchtime concerts was not wasted on either of us.
The concert was lovely, with some unusual works as well as some familiar pieces.
Below is some of the Mecmûa-i Sâz ü Söz played in the traditional Ottoman style, rather than the Wojciech Bobowski adaptation which was played by our Improviso quartet.
I cannot find any examples of Improviso playing the pieces we heard at this lunchtime concert, but they do have several lovely examples on their website – click here, including the Castello sonata, embedded below:
John and I had, in fact, enjoyed seeing Johan Löfving perform before – just a few months ago, at such a lunchtime concert…
…but the addition of three more musicians in Improviso, rather than just the duo, enabled each of the musicians to show their individual and collective talents superbly.
Below you can hear the charming Blavet sonata we heard, on this recording performed by Jed Wentz:
Below is the allegro from the Telemann Trio Sonata we heard, but performed by a different young quartet, Ensemble Tolmetes:
In addition to the several pieces listed on the programme, Improviso also improvised a La Folia, very energetically and beautifully I might say. This, for me, felt like a full circle, as Jordi Savall and his pals had performed a couple of La Folias on the Sunday.
Below, a very different La Folia interpretation from any that I saw this week, but an exceptional one by Jordi Savall, family and pals:
But returning to Improviso, they are a very talented young quartet who seem to take great pleasure in making music together and in explaining what they are doing to a rapt audience.
To round off this Ogblog piece, here are Improviso performing William Byrd’s charming tune, John Come Kiss Me Now, demonstrating their style of improvisation:
Janie and I have seen Jordi Savall with his various Hespèrion colleagues several times over the years and have bought quite a lot of his recordings. To the extent that we are fans of anyone, we would consider ourselves fans.
Yet I had always assumed that Jordi was pronounced “Yordee” and not, as we learnt at this event, “Geordie“. Haddaway! Yes, really.
How did we find out? Because there was a short interview session an hour ahead of the concert, hosted by Robert Heason, who tossed a couple of open-ended questions at Jordi who then got on with the business of interviewing himself.
Gobby crack an’ all
It was actually really interesting to hear Jordi explain his way of thinking about early music and performance. He comes across as a very learned but likeable man who wears his expertise lightly. His comments on improvisation and the folk origins of serious music were especially interesting.
When the “conversation” ended, there was still nearly half an hour until the concert. We thought we’d take a picture of the instruments on the stage…
…but then almost immediately Jordi returned…
…and warmed up his fingers for a while on the stage…
Then we went to get some refreshments
“Gi’s a drink I’m gyezend, our lass”, (or words to that effect), said Ged.“Are ye in a fettle, pet?”, (or words to that effect), asked Daisy
We saw “the nice couple” from the front row of many concerts previously reported, sitting a few seats away from us during the talk, but when we returned to our seats it transpired that their booked seats for the actual concert were right next to ours this time. Nice.
…but not with Xavier Díaz-Latorre, who I don’t think we’d seen before at all. His guitar and theorbo playing was excellent.
Below is a really nice video that shows Jordi and Xavier’s skills, though not one of the pieces we heard:
Below is some Jordi viol solo work, including some pieces we heard:
The entire concert is due to be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 5 June 2019, so enthusiasts can hear everything we heard.
It was a really interesting and lovely concert. It is always a treat to see Jordi Savall and his pals perform. And now we know to pronounce the name “Geordie”, which is very important.
After saying goodbye to the nice couple…
…aw’s clamming, as was Daisy…
…so we picked up some shawarmas on the way home, to round off a very enjoyable evening with a tasty supper.
Gosh, this Irish play, which has done well at the Abbey and in Edinburgh before finding its way to London, got me and Janie debating the issues robustly for most of the weekend.
The play is basically about a teacher’s attempt to help a young boy, Jayden, who is struggling in class, while the parents have separated and are struggling with their relationship and the needs of their children. The play is a tragicomedy – some scenes are genuinely funny, but the underlying sadness of the situation is the prevailing emotion.
The acting was very high quality; Will O’Connell, Sarah Morris and Stephen Jones are all three fine Irish actors. The latter two, who play the parents, also play 9 year-old Jayden and one of his female classmates. It must be very challenging to switch from parent to child mode many times over in one performance, but these two do that well.
The class of the title has, in my view, a double meaning; not only the classroom in which the entire play is set but also the social class difference between the teacher and the families whose children he teachers. It is that class divide, in my view, that drives many of the events that occur in the play, both on stage and also offstage.
We were really impressed and very pleased that we have now seen this play. We read about it when we were in Edinburgh last year and couldn’t get tickets to see it at the Traverse, so were delighted to see it scheduled at one of our beloved local theatres, The Bush, this spring.
I saw several bits of cricket matches in the first 10 days of May, squeezed between lots of work, real tennis and other activities.
Wednesday 1 May 2019: Radlett & Lord’s
Originally, I had planned to block out that day for cricket, but I needed to fit a client meeting in mid to late morning, so had all-but abandoned the idea of seeing cricket that day.
Then I got a message from Fran to say that she and Simon were packing their sun cream, tee-shirts, thick winter coats, galoshes and brollies with every intention of going to the match come what may.
It also turned out to be a week for me being press-ganged into extra real tennis at Lord’s, so after I had stayed on court for an extra hour the day before to get some doubles experience, one of the pros asked if I could be a late stand-in at 20:00 on 1 May for a tough singles.
So the combination of the Fran message, the timing of that tennis press-ganging, together with some favourable weather and an interesting match position…
…persuaded me to jump into Dumbo to join Fran and Simon for a few hours at Radlett, where Middlesex were hosting Somerset, before driving home via Lord’s.
So, I got home from my client meeting, had a quick bite to eat while watching the closing overs of the Middlesex innings on the Chromecast/TV and then jumped into Dumbo who “rode like the wind” to Radlett. We arrived just after 15:00.
Dumbo wasn’t very impressed with the large public field in which he had to park – his previous visit, to a second team match, enabled him a parking space with a bit of a view.
I, on the other hand, was pretty impressed by the scale of the enterprise and how well organised the outground team seemed to be on a match day. Very friendly and helpful.
Having learnt from our rather chilly experience in the shade last time, Fran and Simon had grabbed some excellent seats on the sunny side. It was one of those “layers of clothes” days, on which I ended up in rolled up shirtsleeves when the sun came out and then donning my thick jacket, scarf and hat by the end of the match after the sun had gone in.
It was really pleasant to sit watching cricket with Fran and Simon again – they are very knowledgeable cricket followers; there was plenty to discuss in the matter of county and international cricket since we’d last met. Oh, plus catching up on our other news of course.
Middlesex took its time to take the last wicket and I had almost decided to give up on waiting to be sure to get out of the car park and back down to Lord’s in good time, but the trusty satnav kept insisting that the journey wouldn’t take long against the main flow of rush hour traffic.
So I did stick it out to the final ball and we did find it surprisingly easy and relatively quick to get out of the car field – the stewards operating very efficiently to keep the funnelling out of the ground decorous.
So Dumbo and I got to Lord’s nice and early. Moreover, as a special treat for Dumbo, it transpired that there were no functions on that evening so he was allowed to park in the Allen Stand gap and look out onto the field of play.
Don’t tell Dumbo that there was no cricket on; I’m not sure he noticed.
Dumbo and I returned to Lord’s for tennis on the Friday morning (3rd) when, very unusually, Dumbo was again allowed to park in the Allen Stand gap, as a result of works vehicles blocking the way to his regular Car Park No 6 spot. Actually the above photo was taken on the Friday morning.
I had long-since pre-arranged a tennis lesson on this morning, so rumours that I was having the equivalent of a “naughty boy net” after our somewhat bruising visit to Middlesex University at the weekend are simply not true. Fake news. Perhaps I shouldn’t have spread those rumours myself in the first place.
Anyway, I found myself at two major cricket grounds on the same day for the first time ever, I think, as a result of being asked to attend a somewhat last-minute ad hoc London Cricket Trust meeting with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), for which the only convenient venue was the Oval, where England were supposed to be playing a one-day-international against Pakistan.
It was a horribly rainy day and I thought it unlikely that there would be any cricket at all, but heck, I wasn’t really there for cricket, I was there for a meeting. Still, the way to get us in to the ground on a big match day was to provide us with comps, so I did have an OCS stand ticket for a rather good balcony seat.
Strangely, as there were no rooms available for the meeting, we ended up on the top level of the OCS stand having the meeting on outdoor (albeit covered area) tables and chairs. Even more strangely, the rain stopped and some play was possible for just over an hour, which coincided almost exactly with the hour we spent meeting.
Some people in the meeting must have been making very profound points, because as soon as they had finished their sentence the crowd oohed and aahed – especially if the speaker was talking during one of Jofra Archer’s overs. I didn’t manage to time any of my pearls of wisdom to coincide with an ejaculation of crowd noise, sadly. Perhaps my pearls of wisdom are not so spectacular after all.
After the meeting, AccuWeather told me that there might be 15 minutes or so before the next short but heavy rain storm, so I thought I might as well make full use of my comp for three or four overs before heading home.
A rare glimpse of sunshine on a very wet dayAs seen from the OCS Stand 2nd tier balcony
I did well, thanks to AccuWeather, as I managed to get home between showers too.
Friday 10th May 2019: Lord’s…Just Lord’s
Just one cricket ground that day? What was the matter with me?
Still, one ground, two purposes; real tennis and cricket. I had arranged to play real tennis on the Friday afternoon long since, with no expectation that Middlesex might have a home draw at Lord’s in a knockout tournament. After all, it is several decades since Middlesex has had one of those, so it hardly falls into the “expectation” category.
I watched the start of the Middlesex v Lancashire match on the TV at home, while having lunch. My plan, which worked well, was to head off for Lord’s in Dumbo at around 14:30, enabling me to put Dumbo onto a four-hour meter near the ground and then not have to worry about him for the rest of the afternoon/evening. Plan worked.
So I watched about 30-40 minutes of cricket before getting changed for tennis. Janie (Daisy) informed me that she’d probably arrive while I was playing tennis, which she did.
Daisy tried very hard to distract my opponent, Stuart, with sledging and left-field questions, but seemed better able to distract my concentration than Stuart’s. All the more so when she was joined in the dedans gallery by Dominic and Pamela…followed soon enough by John Thirlwell. The more they tried to help me with their crowd noise, the more they seemed to help Stuart.
Actually it was a very good, close game of tennis, which I lost very narrowly and felt I’d done well to stay that close, given how well Stuart was playing.
Meanwhile, by the time I got changed, Middlesex were in all sorts of trouble and it looked as though our evening watching cricket might be severely foreshortened.
Still, Janie hunkered down with some wine and nibbles up on the top deck…
…then soon after John Thirlwell joined us.
“And how are you today?”“Better than half-a-yard”
James Harris (no relation) got Middlesex infeasibly close to the 300+ target having been 24-5 at one point, but (as I had suspected throughout the innings) it wasn’t quite enough to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Still, it was a very pleasant couple of hours of cricket watching and chat. Janie and I rounded off the evening by picking up some of our favourite Chinese grub from Four Seasons, Queensway on the way home.
This short play has done well at Edinburgh since 2015 and is now finally being brought to London at the Barons Court Theatre.
It is a dystopian play which envisages a British government imposing a 140 word per day limit on every citizen. The play, centred around a couple, moves backwards and forwards in time, covering their relationship before and after the enactment of the draconian “hush law”.
I was kindly invited to the press night in my capacity as a blogger; not the very first time I have been asked but the very first time I have accepted such an invitation.
I thought both of the performances were excellent and the play well directed.
I can understand why aspiring performers and directors might want to work with this play. It provides an opportunity to show off their talents, not only with the use of words but also movement and non-verbal communication.
There are some very clever touches in the writing too. Sam Steiner clearly has a decent grasp of language and tempo for drama and comedy.
My problem, which I found insurmountable, was with the central conceit of the play. Not even our lousy political leaders nor the lousier nutters who aspire to lead, could conceivably enact and/or enforce a blanket law restricting speech in this way. The scenario, when set in a dystopia that looked and felt very much like now, was simply unbelievable.
I could have bought into a future surveillance society that tags, monitors and restricts the use of language amongst a subset of citizens who are deemed to have transgressed the law in some way. Some nations are not far from that today. But the blanket restriction on communication just seemed utterly implausible and impractical.
So, try as I might to sit back, go with the flow, suspend my disbelief and enjoy watching two very talented young performers…
Charlie Suff and Jemima Murphy – both very talented
…I found myself, Alan Partridge-like, constantly wondering, for example:
How does a government, that today cannot even persuade a reasonable proportion of its citizens to put smart energy meters in their homes, suddenly wire up every home and public space to police the number of words each citizen uses?
What happens if someone exceeds the word limit?
Are citizens fitted with chips to prevent them from speaking or are the cells full of verbal transgressors?
How do the very young and the demented fit in with this law?
Are you allowed to write anything down?
If rudimentary eye-contact communication is permitted, why not use actual sign language?
…and so forth.
Mark Ravenhill was sitting opposite me (Barons Court Theatre is a rather sweet and cosy three- sided affair in the basement of The Curtains Up pub). I couldn’t help wondering whether he too was going through such unwanted Partridgean thought processes. Ravenhill’s recent play The Cane, which I thought excellent, takes a scenario about corporal punishment well beyond likelihood, but not so implausibly as to be distracting from the drama.
The other excellent play that came to my mind was Constellations by Nick Payne, which did a very similar style of jumping backwards and forwards in time through short scenes. But the Nick Payne progressed the audiences understanding and the unfolding of a plot, cleverly, despite the constant time shifts. Lemons, unfortunately, felt to me like a series of repetitions that provided no additional enlightenment after about 30-40 minutes and no resolution to the story of the protagonists.
Nevertheless the scenario and the performances got me thinking quite a lot about the issues raised; in particular, at a micro level in the relationship. How the word limit became a bugbear in itself when the lovers returned from work with a large or tiny quota of words remaining for the day. Yet, in scenes from before the draconian law, the couple quite often didn’t want to talk about important matters anyway. And in one comedic scene, presumably a weekend day, they chose simply to waste their quota singing along with a recording of Baggy Trousers by Madness.
This did make me think about the genuine issue of scarcity in our lives and relationships which is, I would argue, time, not words. This parable about restricting the use of words is really a metaphor for the way we use and abuse our scarce time together in relationships.
Which is all good – all the more reason for me to baulk at the implausible scenario when the political and interpersonal points might have been made through a more plausible variant. My inner Partridge just cannot stop chirping about this.
Would I recommend this play/production. For sure, if you like to see fresh talent performing, this is well worth seeing. And if you can suspend belief better than I am able, then you might truly be bowled over by it.
The question “where do I begin?” in the matter of a love story is, I suggest, a rather uninteresting question. Almost all love stories start when the lovers meet. OK, the story might have a short preamble to set the scene, such as the almighty punch-up at the start of Romeo and Juliet, but basically love stories start when the lovers meet. Simples.
So before I
begin the short love story I have prepared for you, I want to explore two variants
of the “where do I begin?” question:
Firstly – where did “where do I begin?” begin, in
the context of the film Love Story.
Secondly, I
want to explore the question, where…or
rather when…does love begin?”, which I think is a rather more intriguing
question. My attempted answer also informs the rather regular style of love
story with which I shall briefly conclude.
So, where did “where do I begin?” begin?
Francis Lai
had written a score for the movie Love Story, including the tune Theme From Love Story.
The Paramount
Movie people felt that the Theme needed a lyric and commissioned Carl Sigman, a top lyricist
at the time, to turn that theme tune into a song.
Sigman initially
wrote a schmaltzy lyric summarizing the love story depicted in the film, with
lines such as:
“So when Jenny came” and
“Suddenly was gone”…
…you get the
picture. But Robert Evans,
the larger than life producer of Love Story, hated Sigman’s original attempt at
the lyric; in particular fretting that the “Jenny came” line was suggestive.
According to Sigman’s
son, the great lyricist was furious at being asked to rewrite the lyric, throwing
a bit of a hissy and threatening to withdraw from the project. But the next
day, when Sigman had calmed down, he told his wife that he would try again. But,
“where do I begin?”, Sigman asked. “That’ll do”, or words to that effect, replied
Mrs Sigman. Thus, at least apocryphally, the famous line and song title was
born.
But the
question I really want to explore before I tell you my little love story is where…or rather when…does love begin?”
I believe that
people tend to rewrite their personal romantic histories somewhat, often
attributing a “love at first sight” narrative to, for example, the story of
meeting one’s life partner. But that attribution is made with the benefit of
hindsight.
Let me
illustrate my point with a slightly less emotive example. Falling in love with
a house.
I quite often tell the tale of my viewing our house in West Acton, at the behest of my then girlfriend, now wife, Janie, who had already seen it. I reckon I had been inside for no more than 30 to 40 seconds before I concluded that I could imagine Janie living out the rest of her life in that house, possibly with me in it too. In the vernacular, I fell in love with our house at first sight. We bought the house. Janie and I love that house. Noddyland, we call it.
The Noddyland Threshold
But supposing
the Noddyland house story had not panned out as it did. My offer might have
been rejected or the survey might have found an insurmountable problem with
that house. Or we might have been guzumped by David Wellbrook or some such
person who knows a fine house at a sensible price when he sees one.
Janie and I
would have resumed our search for a house and we’d no doubt have found another;
we might have liked or even loved that other house…
…but I would
not have looked back on my initial visit to Noddyland as a “love at first sight”
story. We might have mused about whether we’d have been happier “at that one we
liked the look of but didn’t get”. We would not have used the term “love” about
that house at all.
My point is
that the love comes later. We tend to back-fill the story in hindsight and
imagine the love to have come much sooner than it really did.
Returning to the question of romantic love, I wonder where or when that love genuinely begins. My view on this matter has changed as I have got older. Back in the days of my very early fumblings in the late 1970s, for example The Story Of Fuzz in my inaugural TheadMash piece…
…I don’t think I thought of those escapades as love stories of any kind.
But soon
after that, once I had started having “proper, long-term relationships”…I’m
talking weeks here or even occasionally months…I considered those adventures to
be “my love life.” Rollercoaster emotions would ensue; elation at the onset or
when a romantic setback was overcome; heartache when things went awry,
especially when the upshot was that I had been dumped. I know it’s hard to believe,
folks, but one or two foolish young women made that mistake and paid the
ultimate price of losing their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with me.
But when I
look back on those short-lived, early efforts now, I find it hard to recognize many
if any of the characteristics of a love story in those tales. At the time, of
course, I thought I was falling in and out of love. But with the benefit of a
more seasoned perspective, those stories are merely a good source for comedic
interludes or nostalgia-drenched asides…
Those early
entanglements are too fleeting and (I regret having to confess) sometimes too
entangled with each other to make true romantic copy.
Contrast that
sort of juvenile jumble with…
…David
Wellbrook’s superb recitation at ThreadMash 2, about his good lady’s near death
experience and David’s intimate account of his own reaction to it. Now that
piece was not written as a love story, it was written as a piece on the theme
of “lost and found”. Yet it was, I would argue, a profound and heartfelt personal
love story. I wouldn’t attempt to emulate or better it as a love story.
But it did
get me thinking about a couple of near-death experiences Janie and I went
through, particularly the first of them.
The incident was
many years ago, in the mid 1990s, when Janie and I had been together for fewer
than three years.
Janie and I went
over to my business partner Michael and his then girlfriend (now wife)
Elisabeth’s place for a Saturday evening meal that May Bank Holiday. Both Janie
and I experienced quite severe indigestion that night; a state we attributed to
Elisabeth’s solidly-Germanic, Sauerbraten style of
cooking, combined with perhaps a tad too much alcohol to wash down the heavy
food. But whereas my biliousness passed as the Sunday progressed, Janie became increasingly
poorly and doubled up with pain in her innards.
To cut a long
and painful story short, by the night of Bank Holiday Monday, I was convinced
that the locum doctor’s relatively casual attitude to a woman doubled up with
increasing pain was insufficient and took Janie to A&E, where they
immediately diagnosed (correctly) acute pancreatitis caused by a rogue
gallstone.
As I left
Janie in the care of the kind doctor, the youngster (yes, even when I was still
a mere 33 years old, the night-duty house doctor in A&E looked like a
youngster) took me aside. He warned me that, although they thought they had
everything under control and that the odds were in Janie’s favour, he was duty
bound to warn me how serious pancreatitis can be and that Janie might not survive
the ordeal.
I drove home, alone, with that “might not survive” thought and the strains of Miserlou by Dick Dale & His Del-Tones on the radio…
…well it was 1995 when Pulp Fiction was all the rage. I can no longer hear that tune without thinking of that lonely drive home.
But the incident
brought the romantic truth home to me; Janie wasn’t just the girl that I had
been going out with for longer now than any of my previous girlfriends – nearly
three whole years. It made me realize that I really did love Janie.
In fact it made me realize that I had recognized that fact a year earlier, when I discussed the idea of me setting up business with Michael. I had said to Janie that the venture was a big risk…
…the dangers of Michael and Elisabeth’s notorious cooking for a start…that’s an unfair joke that should not be repeated or put in print (apart from the Ogblog version of this piece 😉 )…
…the venture was a big risk because we’d be taking on indebtedness and if the business went wrong I’d have to give up my flat and have little or no money for quite a while. Janie had simply said that it wasn’t really a big risk because she still had a job and a flat and that we’d get by. It was then that I knew that she loved me and that I also loved her and that she and I were committed to help each other through life’s journey for the foreseeable future.
To me, THAT is truly the stuff of “where love begins”.
Extract From Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
As for the more simple, “where do I begin?” love story; I suppose I should now tell you the story of how Janie and I met.
We met in
August 1992 at one of Kim and Micky’s parties; Kim being Janie’s best friend.
In some ways
it is odd that Janie’s and my path hadn’t crossed before, through Kim &
Micky. I had known Kim, through holiday jobs and stuff, since I was a youngster.
In the late 1980s, when I got to know Kim & Micky socially, I would see
them a few times a year at dinner or lunch parties. But I guess they saw Janie
and me as part of different circles. In any case, we were both otherwise
attached most of the time during those years.
Anyway, Janie
and I chatted quite a lot during the party and ended up as part of a smaller
group that was still around into the early evening, at which point Kim
suggested that we all go across the square and play tennis.
I had just
started playing tennis again, rather tentatively, following a particularly
nasty back injury. Goodness only knows how useless I was after quite a few
drinks at the party. But most of us had been drinking quite heavily, so I don’t
suppose the quality of the tennis was very high. I do recall thinking that
Janie was pretty good at tennis. It probably helped that she was the only sober
person among us.
Janie had
mentioned several times that she had driven to the party in her car and
therefore wasn’t drinking. After the
tennis, I asked her if she could drop me at a tube station. She said that she
would, but that she wasn’t prepared to go out of her way and that the only tube
station she’d be passing was Hanger Lane. That was ideal for me, as Hanger Lane
and Notting Hill Gate are on the same line.
Janie and I
chatted some more on the fifteen minute car journey.
Janie said
that she liked poetry.
When she
stopped the car to drop me off, I asked Janie for her telephone number.
Janie said
no.
In order to
get out of the car with my dignity intact, I took from my wallet one of those
sticky labels with my name, address and telephone number on it. I stuck the
label on her steering wheel, saying, “in that case, you can have my address and
telephone number”.
Janie thanked
me and said that she would write me a poem.
I’m still
waiting for the poem.
While preparing
this TheadMash piece, I asked Janie if she wanted to apologise for her terse refusal
that first evening and for the continued absence of my poem, some 27 years
later.
“No”,
said Janie, “love means never having to say you’re sorry”. Who could argue with
that sentiment in the matter of love story.
In
any case, Janie assures me that the poem is coming; she never set a specific
date for its production. It might end up being my epitaph.
I
look forward to that.
Meanwhile,
if this short account has left you wondering how on earth Janie and I got it
together after her initial rejection…
…well,
that’s another story or two – not for ThreadMash.
But those yarns will be linked to the Ogblog version of this piece. They involve ossobuco…
Postscript 1: For Those Readers Who Like Their Stories Circular/Complete
I realised after completing my first pass on this piece that Robert Evans, the producer who sent Carl Sigman back to the drawing board to write the “Where Do I Begin?” lyric, was the subject of a play Janie and I saw a couple of years ago; The Kid Stays In The Picture…
We love the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. We first saw them at The Wig many years ago and have seen them a good few times since, both in London and in Berlin.
We hadn’t seen this orchestra for a while, though, so we thought we’d see if we could get hot seats for this concert. We could.
In truth I was not familiar with the Handel Op. 3 Concerti Grossi; I don’t think they get all that much of an airing, being seen as somewhat composite or compilation works.
But in the hands of fine performers, such music is sheer delight, as demonstrated by this concert.
This was our third visit to The Wig in just over a fortnight. In truth, I didn’t think we’d get our preferred seats for all of them but we did. NOT a complaint.
I was reminded of both of our other recent visits for a couple of silly reasons.
The in joke from that concert was that almost everyone involved with composing that 14th and 15th century English stuff was named John.
It occurred to me that a similar naming commonality could be applied to this baroque period, with the composers, the Hanoverian English kings and this evening’s conductor all named Georg/George.
…at which we were joined by Robin Simpson, experiencing The Wig and such music for the first time. At 91 going on 92, Robin demonstrated his remarkable observational skills when he remarked, the next time I saw him, that two recorder players were listed for The Sixteen at that Pepy’s concert, but there was no sign of either of them on the night.
I couldn’t explain their absence – perhaps some passing reader can. I guessed that there was a late decision to omit the recorders, perhaps due to the indisposition of one of the performers or perhaps, on Harry Christopher’s reflection, for artistic reasons.
Anyway, returning to the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin concert, once again there were two recorder players listed, but, come the interval, there had been no sign of recorders.
What on earth is going on in the world of baroque recorder players, I wondered. Is there some sort of censorship going on, whereby recorder players are being prevented from expressing themselves? Are the recorder players being kidnapped, imprisoned or worse?
The answer, at least in the matter of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin concert, came towards the end of the evening, when Anna Fusek put down her violin and picked up a recorder, which she played (beautifully, as did every player with every instrument that night) in the Soave from Telemann’s Canonic Sonata VI. Below is someone else’s recording of that sonata.
Below is a recording of Academy of St Martin In the Fields playing Handel’s Op 3 No 1 Concerto Grosso, by which time Michael Bosch had metaphorically bonked his oboe on the head and picked up a second recorder to join Anna. Recorder mystery fully solved.
If you haven’t seen the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin before…or even if you have…the following video should be a treat for you. They are playing Handel’s Water Music, under Georg Kallweit, who also led the orchestra at the 4 May 2019 concert.
They really are a top notch orchestra. Janie and I feel lucky and privileged to have seen them several times. This Handel/Telemann concert, while not the most exciting programme we have heard them play, was just the ticket for us at the end of a day of (similarly baroque) sporting activity.
