Month: June 2020

FoodCycle’s Spiritual Home In Rossmore Road & Other Tales, 24 June 2020

Nearly 40 years ago, around about the time I went off to university, Graham Greenglass and I would occasionally swap mix tapes, as young folk in those days oft did.

Graham (left with tickle stick), Ros, Alan & Paul – spring 1979

On one of those tapes was the quirky song, Rossmore Road, by Barry Andrews. I loved that song and listened to it (along with its companions) a great deal in my early months at Keele.

If you’ve never heard it before, click the YouTube below and you might well be transfixed. If you have heard it before, I suspect that you have already clicked the link without waiting for my edict.

So, imagine my delight when Janie and I were instructed, for our next Marylebone FoodCycle gig, to forsake the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady on the junction of Lodge Road & Lisson Grove, which had previously always been our starting point. Instead, we were to start and end our gig at St Paul’s Church, Marylebone, on Rossmore Road.

Jenny (left), Curate Ali & Me at the Church of Our Lady the week before
Worra lorra grub! Church of Our Lady the week before
Dumbo The Suzuki Jimny piled high
Returning to Rossmore Road after the gig…
…specifically, returning the temperature controlled box and temperature checking apparatus

Of course I have walked and driven past Rossmore Road hundreds of times on my way to Lord’s. But this was the first time I had ever actually had an appointment on Rossmore Road. I mentioned this fact to Curate Ali, who, surprisingly, previously had no idea that there was a cult-status song about the road in which her parish church is located.

But it’s not all about Rossmore Road.

Janie and I have had one or two interesting occurrences and adventures over the past few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago we needed to go into the congestion zone, south of the ring-road. There was a contraflow just outside the block we needed to get to for our drop, so (contrary to Janie’s entreaties) , I insisted on driving around the block and walking the food around the block, rather than causer a possible obstruction, even for just a few minutes. Sometimes our drops can take some time.

Doing the more southerly Marylebone drop

In the course of that simple walk around the block, three different, unconnected people stopped us at various junctures to quiz us about our face guards. It was as if such things had not been seen in that part of London before! It felt really weird.

On progressing to our next drop, the road we wanted to use was closed for some unknown reason (there are SO MANY road closures in the parts of London we are serving for FoodCycle just now), so we were trying to navigate our way around those narrow Marylebone Streets while working out what to do without the help of the sat. nav. which was blissfully unaware of the road closure.

A car came down the road the other way, quite quickly, making it impossible for either car to get through without a convoluted “dance” of reversing and manoeuvering. The other driver hollered at me aggressively. Janie leant across with our FoodCycle permission letter to let him know that we were doing charity deliveries and could do without his aggression. I finished off the interaction by saying…

…behave yourself…

…which Janie told me afterwards might well have come across as a little bit passive-aggressive. Tough.

As we drove around the block looking for an escape route, a car came the other way.

It’s him again…

…said Janie.

Looks nothing like him…

…I said…

…100% sure it is him, he’s just hanging his head in shame, so he looks a bit different…

…said Janie.

We’re delivering to all sorts of interesting people on these rounds. One thing they almost all have in common is how grateful they see for the help FoodCycle are giving them.

And it’s not just the Marylebone round that we’ve been doing; we also do the East Acton gig quite often.

Janie with Richard (aka Friar Tuck – at least that’s what i have decided to nickname him), Alannah & Francesco

But next week we’ll be at Rossmore Road again – I can hear that dreamy saxophone refrain from the start of the song; it’s become an earworm for me again some 40 years after its first appearance there in my ear:

At Odds With Janie Over Tennis, 14 June 2020

Janie and I have been back on the modern tennis court now for a month or so.

Oh Joy – We’re Back On The Tennis Court, Boston Manor, 13 May 2020

Real tennis, an indoor sport, is still a hope rather than an expectation in this time of Covid.

Anyway, Janie and I threw ourselves into playing modern tennis (or “lawners”, as some real tennis types call it) with abandon. Unfortunately, this switch from “nuffing” to “every day” did not seem to please Janie’s arm. I don’t suppose lugging heavy grub bags for FoodCycle has helped much either:

Ged & Daisy Go South On A FoodCycle Made For Two, 2 May 2020

Anyway, point is, Janie is rehabilitating and we felt the game needed a bit of evening up while Janie’s arm gets better. I proposed using the handicapping system which we deploy as standard in real tennis. Janie, now steeped in the ways of real tennis, received the idea with alacrity.

Now, I know what some readers are thinking. “You can’t use the real tennis handicapping system for modern tennis”. “Doesn’t work”. “Serving whole games each messes up the system”.

I have heard all of those arguments before.

But here’s the thing.

In the very early days of modern tennis, the game was absolutely played on handicap, or “odds” as handicapping was known back then; to the same or arguably to a greater extent than in real tennis. And yes, the odds/handicaps work absolutely fine in modern tennis.

What’s a bisque?

We’ve had a lot of fun trying different handicaps. When the injury was still quite bad and Janie’s play unpredictable, we used moving (sliding) handicaps on a steep gradient. For example, Janie would receive 15 for the first game, but if she lost that game she’d receive 15 and I’d owe 15 (start on -15) for the next one. If she won that game we’d go back to receive 15, but if she ended up two games down we’d progress to receive 15/owe30 and so on.

Now that Janie is almost better, we’ve tried a fixed handicap of owe15, which comes close to evening up the odds. But we’re enjoying more using a shallow moving handicap, where we start at owe 15 and adjust by one notch if either of us wins two games in a row. So if I go two games up the handicap goes up to receive 15, if Janie wins two in a row in goes to level.

Anyway, it does mean that we have been having some really close matches and have both been enjoying the contest despite. Now that Janie’s arm is almost better, we might even start playing level again, although a little bit of moving handicap does keep the match tight even if one of us is not performing at our best for whatever reason. It might even become part of our regular playing conditions. For sure, playing one point at 40-40 enables us readily to progress through a whole set in the 50-55 minutes we now get due to the “social distancing dance” we need to do with the previous and subsequent court-users.

Meanwhile I have been fascinated by the research I have been doing into the history of the tennis scoring system and the use of odds/handicaps for many centuries. I have found a wealth of material on-line, including some wonderful old books written by some extraordinary old characters. Meet Eustace Miles, for example.

In short, I have discovered that several of the game’s creation myths are…frankly…myths.  Further, the reality is more messy, complicated and fascinating than many of the myths. I am planning three short pieces for the real tennis community on the following topics:

  • Ancient origins of the tennis scoring system;
  • Variety and evolution of tennis odds/handicaps – from esoteric to algorithmic;
  • 150 years of symbiosis in the development of real and modern tennis rules and odds/handicaps.

Catchy titles, huh? Watch this space, folks.

Folks?

Where’s everybody gone?

They must be in here somewhere!

Travel To The Very Edge, ThreadZoomMash Piece, Performed At “The Virtual Glad”, 10 June 2020

The Beechwood Hotel, renamed The Lakeside Hotel, prior to closure

I shouldn’t be here this evening. I should be in Edgbaston, savouring the build up to the first cricket test match of the summer. It’s an annual gathering with good friends I met through The Children’s Society; we started our Edgbaston tradition more than 20 years ago.

It’s OK. I’m glad to be here with you. I like being here, in virtual ThreadMash or ThreadZoom or ZoomMash or whatever we’re calling it now…

…with you.

It’s just that I wouldn’t be here at all, but for the virus.

I’d be travelling.

Rohan has asked us to write about travel.

Rohan has advised us, “let’s do this without any pictures or music”. He didn’t say, “this advice is not a request – it is an instruction”, but he could have done.

Anyway, for me, the instruction, “write about travel”, is not a difficult one. I have travelled a lot and have been writing up my travels on Ogblog these past few years. 

I considered relating to you the tale of me and Janie jumping the border between Laos and Thailand at Chong Mek, then blagging our way out of Thailand again. Don’t try that stunt at home…hmm.

I thought you might relish hearing about the occasion when, in Nicaragua, I put my naviphobia aside  only for us to end up marooned in a boat on the Pacific. We survived that one as well…obviously.

Or, I might have stuck with the theme of cricket – after all I should be in Edgbaston this week, not here – and tell you about the weird day when I was press-ganged into commentating live on a cricket match in Jagdalpur, Chhattisgarh – a tribal state in the central plains of India. Janie and I were all over the papers and cable TV for that one.

But no.

Sod it.

I should be in Edgbaston right now and the minor matter of a global pandemic is not going to stop me from going there.

Birmingham might not exactly be an exotic location, nor is it a remote location, but going to Birmingham IS travel.

I’m going to Edgbaston and I’m going right now and I’m taking you lot with me…

…to the very worst hotel I have ever stayed in.

Late May 2006. Most of our gang, known as The Heavy Rollers, who together had savoured the 2005 Edgbaston test, a match that will forever be part of Ashes folklore, were to be reunited as a group for the first time since that match.

We knew that 2006 was to be different. 2005 had marked the end of our early era, which had enabled us to base ourselves at the Wadderton Conference Centre, the Children’s Society place in rural Worcestershire, just outside Birmingham. David Steed, who was one of our number in the Heavy Rollers, ran the place and lived on site. The Children’s Society was pleased for a bit of income from guests in the quiet summer period and it was mighty convenient and pleasant for us, with a suitable garden for pre-match cricket antics.

The time that Charley “The Gent Malloy” chased a cricket ball down the Wadderton slope, only to realise too late that the incline was too steep for a graceful deceleration, such that he went…how do I put this politely…arse over tit, into a heap at the bottom of said slope…remains as much part of Heavy Rollers folklore as the classic 2005 Ashes test match.

But I digress.

Late May 2006. Wadderton had closed permanently that winter. Now David Steed, bless him, ran Wadderton wonderfully and was subsequently a superb host at his Birmingham house. But he possibly wasn’t the best judge of a hotel unseen. Cheap and near the ground seemed sufficient criteria for him. An e-mail came:

Accommodation is confirmed as previously written about and subsequent telephone chat at Beechwood Hotel on the Bristol Road approx. 200 yards from the main entrance at Edgbaston…no deposits required…

The subsequent inquiry identified Nigel “Father Barry”, our de facto leader, as the other side of correspondence that clearly lacked the investigative skills, penetrating questions and due diligence that such matters deserve.

Thus the term “each with private bathroom”, did not preclude each of us having to toddle down a corridor to get to our nominated ablution booth.

“Private”, I suppose, did not necessarily mean “en suite” in this Beechwood world. Nor did it mean anything more than a tiny, decrepit shower cubicle. I recall some very inappropriate jokes about Zyklon B from my companions during conversations about those ghastly, disgusting showers.

The place was clearly used mostly as a sort-of social services half-way house for people who were having a multitude of difficulties. I took detailed notes about my alarming next-door neighbour, who I discovered heavily tattooed, talking frantically to himself and pissed…at six in the evening. At least he called me “young fella” when he greeted me warmly. We had a bizarre conversation or two.

But the most bizarre conversations were with Tom; I hesitate to use the title, “manager”, who tended to sidle up to us in the bar/common parts areas of the hotel and bend our ears with tales of his roller-coaster and/or imagined past. I made some fragmented notes:

I was a millionaire at 21…a multi-millionaire at 24…lost it all at 33…I’ve been out with Miss Jamaica, Miss Bromsgrove, the lot. I had an Aston Martin – would cost about £125,000 today…Do fast cars while you’re young, young man, you won’t fancy it once you are your dad’s age….I made a million when a million was real money; when a million was really a million…

In a more modern era, we would never have ended up there. At least one of us would have looked at TripAdvisor to check out the Beechwood Hotel. But back then, such web sites barely existed. The earliest on-line review of the Beechwood Hotel is on holidaywatchdog.com, TripAdvisor’s UK predecessor, a year after our stay; Spring 2007.  There are six reviews on that site, before the hotel was closed down in 2009 and became a squat for the Earth First Social Justice Permaculture warriors.

All six reviews give the Beechwood Hotel one-out-of-ten: “awful”. One reviewer takes pains to point out that the system doesn’t allow their preferred score of nought-out-of-ten.

Rohan said, in his instruction, “I think the words you use will create much more vibrant pictures than anything that can appear on a screen”. 

But in the mode of that great traveller, Dominic Cummings, I shall now break the spirit if not the letter of Rohan’s guidance, by using the words of others, those six unfortunate holidaywatchdog.com reviewers who followed in our footsteps, rather than my own words, to complete the painting of those vibrant pictures. One extracted quote from each victim:

  • “This hotel makes Fawlty Towers seem like luxury.”
  • “I really cannot believe that places like this are allowed to operate.”
  • “This hotel should be condemned on health and safety grounds!”
  • “I do not recommend this hotel to anyone if you have standards”.
  • “Hell hole!”. 

And my personal favourite, the final review, from August 2009:

“Please stay away – I have stayed in 100s of hotels and B&BS all over the UK – this one has to be the worst by a long way… DO NOT STAY THERE, you’d be better off in a cardboard box.”

The Beechwood Hotel Garden and Roller.
With thanks to Charles Bartlett for this picture.

Editing George And Edith Corke’s Honeymoon Diary With John Random, May/June 2020

Seymour Hicks & Ellaline Terriss – not George & Edith

In May 2020 John Burns (aka John Random) sent me an electronic transcript of his great-grandfather’s honeymoon diary, from June/July 1901. The picture above shows John with that anique artefact.

I suggested the idea of upping it as a guest piece on Ogblog and hence a fascinating mini-project was born. Here’s the thing:

Protected: George And Edith Corke’s Honeymoon Diary, 27 June To 11 July 1901

There are some truly charming touches in George’s diary. I absolutely love the fact that he couldn’t describe an escalator at Earls Court on July 3rd, presumably because he hadn’t seen one before. He refers to the thing as

Endless staircase lift. You stand still and it takes you to the top for 1d.

By 10 july in Paris, though, he’s mastered these things and merely describes:

Moving staircase.

Another interesting thing is slight changes in tone as the holiday goes on. Firstly there are increasing mentions of money, especially after 4 July when they:

Called at Paris Bank re more money. 

Perhaps the trip to Paris was an afterthought and/or perhaps they realised that they were spending more than they originally planned.

George’s notes get pithier as the trip goes on, especially when in France where the touring (I think with Thomas Cook) reads incredibly intense and therefore quite tiring I imagine. I know the feeeling from my own travel logs.

George & Edith’s wedding took place on 27 June 1901. That was the day after the original intended date for Edward VII’s coronation, which had to be postponed due to the King’s ill health. The coronation’s postponement was announced 24 June.

George and Edith’s wedding might have been arranged at fairly short notice, although their wedding party as described seems quite large and their subsequent honeymoon quite complex for a rush job.

One additional piece of evidence is the baptismal record for John’s grandmother, Dorris:

That date is just 36 weeks after the wedding day. Dorris apparently went to her grave believing herself to be a premature baby whereas John’s mother never bought in to that explanation.

The truth of that matter is lost in the mists of time.

What survives is a truly charming diary, written with great clarity and a lack of pomposity.

Below are some more detailed notes and thoughts about the content; some arising from conversations between me and John, others arising from subsequent research.

27 June 1901 – late in the day George & Edith arrive at “37 Bedford Place, Russell Square, which is kept by the Misses Dobson.” That place is now (in 2020) The Grange Clarendon, a boutique hotel. How boutiquey it was in 1901 I cannot tell, but I don’t think that Bloomsbury was anywhere near as up-market then as it is now.

28 June 1901 – Ellaline Terriss & Seymour Hicks were huge stars back then, so George & Edith’s evening at The Vaudeville Theatre seeing Sweet & Twenty was a big deal. I have managed to find a contemporaneous review from The Idler:

Coincidentally, while I was researching and writing up these notes, Janie popped in and, on seeing Ellaline Terriss’s name, told me that she had, many years ago, treated the daughter, Betty, at her home in Richmond. I believe that this linked photograph of Eamonn Andrews interviewing Terriss was taken in that very Richmond house. The Sweet And Twenty Playwright, Basil Hood, has a fascinating, sad story of his own and the most Edwardian moustache ever!

2 July 1901 – Called at Sharp Perrins. John’s mum added a note to her transcript when the couple returned to that establishment 6 July – “(wholesalers to the drapery trade. The bride and groom ran a draper’s shop in Victoria Rd. Widnes.)” – I have moved the note to this first mention of the firm. That evening the happy couple went to see HMS Irresponsible at the Strand Theatre. There is no west end listing of cast and creatives for that production but there is a record of it opening 27 May 1901 and there is a Theatricalia entry from its Bristol transfer in 1902 – click here. Arthur Roberts is still listed. The playwright, J F Cornish, is hard to find on-line. One or two name-drops/mentions, mostly as an actor. Cornish doesn’t make the index of Seymour Hicks’s 1910 autobiography. Arthur Roberts does…once.

3 July 1901 – Military Exhibition. The entire catalogue from that exhibition is ion the public domain. You can view it on-line at Hathi Trust through this link…or this pdf uploaded to Ogblog here. John’s mum inserted a ? at the mention of Canton river, but the map/catalogue confirms that one of the attractions was a boat ride on Canton river.

5 July 1901 – the happy couple saw Emma Calvé as Carmen. John extracted a chunk of the Wikipedia entry for Emma Calvé in that topic. I have simply placed a link to the wikipedia entry in the 1901 blog – here is John’s chosen extract.

Wikipedia Entry for Emma Calvé

Her next triumph was Bizet's Carmen. Before beginning the study of this part, she went to Spain, learned the Spanish dances, mingled with the people and patterned her characterization after the cigarette girls whom she watched at their work and at play. In 1894, she made her appearance in the role at the Opéra-Comique, Paris. The city's opera-goers immediately hailed her as the greatest Carmen that had ever appeared, a verdict other cities would later echo.[citation needed] She had had many famous predecessors in the role, including Adelina Patti, Minnie Hauk and Célestine Galli-Marié, but critics and musicians agreed that in Calvé they had found their ideal of Bizet's cigarette girl of Seville.

6 July 1901 – after spending the day in London, the happy couple travelled overnight to Paris via Newhaven & Dieppe, arriving the next morning. I have located their hotel, Rapp et Duphot in the 1900 Baedeker, a book which is available in its entirety on the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) – here.

Neither the hotel name, nor the road name, Richepense are still active, but that road, now renamed rue du Chevalier de Saint George, has the Hotel Richepense at No 14, which I suspect is an enlarged version of the same establishment.

8 July 1901 – the reference to “Cook’s four in hand coach as per programme ” tells us that the Paris leg of their honeymoon was arranged through Thomas Cook & Son. I have added the 1901 brochure cover at the end of the Wednesday 10th touring, which is when it seems the touring side of things ended. I don’t believe there was a Cook’s Guidebook for Paris for a further few years, which reinforces my view that George & Edith probably used the 1900 Baedeker if they used a guide book at all.

John sent me several pictures of Edith Corke in later life. He has none of George. I chose one to illustrate the end of the main honeymoon diary but thought the others would show nicely here.

I like the cheeky expression on Edith’s face in this last one. I imagine that someone has just asked her, “was Dorris really a premature baby?”