Month: February 2022

Revives For Fives, An Afternoon Of Hard Ball At Lord’s, 28 February 2022

I have been plotting for some time to revive the game of fives (specifically the variant known as Rugby Fives) within my orbit. My fives heyday was when I was at Alleyn’s School in the mid 1970s. Only a small sample of my documented exploits have yet been writ on Ogblog, including the account of my latterly-award-winning quarter-final appearance against Johnny Eltham during my sporting annus mirabilis of 1974/75.

An Uneventful Day Playing Fives, 9 June 1975

Anyway, I started to hatch a plot several years ago – 2018 when at Falkland Palace playing real tennis, to be precise – where Ewan Lee informed me that he was teaching his pupils to play fives on squash courts. The slightly different size and colour can be compensated for with a special ball, he told me. Squash courts are good for fives and vice versa. It occurred to me that Lord’s, with two squash courts, might be a very good place for fives.

Let’s not talk about why it took me three-and-a-half years from idea to actual plan and fruition. Let’s just talk about the fruition.

Early in 2022, I ordered a selection of fives equipment (several sizes of gloves & inners, plus a couple of those special balls) as a donation for players at Lord’s to share. Most of the gloves were “white-labelled” but you can buy, for a few bob extra, gloves labelled for the old school, so I treated myself to a personal Alleyn’s pair.

What would Mr Tindale have done? What would Mr Banson have done?

The equipment arrived 25 February and I had a provisional arrangement to have an initial go with Jack Clifton (one of the real tennis pros) and Janie on Monday 28th February.

What a glorious day it was.

I had arranged to play real tennis at 14:00. Janie and I arrived a little early for that session, enabling me to show her the (very) basics of fives for quarter of an hour or so before my game. It transpires that 10-15 minutes is sufficient for the addiction factor of the compelling game that is fives to kick in. Janie said she’d practice on her own for a while and come and watch the tennis a bit later. She did show up to watch the tennis for quite a while, but not before she’d warmed up her hands a fair bit for fives.

After I’d come a close second (which seems to be my regular placing post-Covid) at tennis, Jack, Janie and I had a good introductory knockabout on the fives court.

Jack took to the game very quickly indeed – I’d suggest that anyone who is a natural sportsperson for hand-eye co-ordination ball sports should be able to pick up fives and find pleasure in it rapidly.

Janie’s new-found addiction was slightly mitigated by her concern for her hands and fingers when playing a hard-ball game. As a podiatrist, she does need fully-functioning hands for work and worries about even the slight bruising that is inevitable (especially at first) even with padded gloves. I remember a similar conversation when she tried wicket-keeping.

Jack and I tried a couple of short games before the former returned to the pros office to do some work. “But for you, this too is work”, I said, but to no avail. Janie and I played for a while longer, while waiting for the next pair of combatants to finish their tennis match, as I had semi-lined up one of them to have a go at fives.

Graham Findlay, an Old Fettesian and increasingly handy real tennis-player, had previously told me that he used to play rugby fives at school. I should have guessed that he would have been very handy at the game; he’s very handy at games.

Both of us were able to boast an interval of 40 to 45 years since we had last played fives.

You can just see Graham in the background checking out the fixture list

Janie volunteered to watch and shoot some hand-held video from the squash court viewing gallery.

The first three clips show the progression of our warm up and refreshing our memories about the rules.

I had remembered the serve rule, but forgotten that lefties normally serve from the other side
Graham claims not to be remotely into it yet, then plays a classic leftie’s winner
Graham practices some serves from the left-hand side of the court

The next three clips show some highlights (or should I call them lowlights?) from our match: A Very Old Fettesian v An Alleyn’s Very Old Boy. Hold on to your hats:

The first rally of the match and Graham is unquestionably “too good”
Graham goes 3-1 up, Janie advises and I somehow scramble a winning rally
At 3-2, Janie advises some more and I pull off a classic shot to confound a leftie

We should draw a veil over the rest of the match. After all, fives is a quintessentially good-natured, sporting, fair-play game. It’s not about the score. It’s not about winning or losing. I’m sure, dear reader, you understand my points…or shortage thereof.

Graham wondered afterwards what Dr Colin Niven (a former teacher of his at Fettes and a former Head at Alleyn’s) would make of it – would he cheer for Fettes, Alleyn’s or just give three cheers for the sport?

I’m also interested to see if we can arrange rematches of classic Alleyn’s fixtures. Johnny Eltham – are you reading this? It’s been a while, Alan Cooke & Rohan Candappa, how’s about pulling together four for doubles again? I even wonder whether Chris Stendall and/or Jumbo Jennings might be up for it, if anyone can track them down.

BRING IT ON!

Z/Yen Staff Christmas Lunch 2021 (Covid-Delayed), Watermen’s Hall, 11 February 2022

There was simply no way we were going to let a global pandemic totally ruin our Z/Yen staff Christmas gathering for two years.

OK, we had to do without completely at the end of 2020. OK, the Omicron wave made it impracticable to persevere with our original date – 17 December – in a week where everything else was also postponed or cancelled.

But we were determined that this would be a postponement, not a cancellation. Those fine people at Watermen’s Hall, together with the rather wonderful The Cook & The Butler people who do the catering there, came up trumps with an early opportunity for us to regroup in mid February.

They kept very quiet about their choice of menu ahead of the day, perhaps because it was full of nice surprises and treats, some of which might well have been late decisions.

More than just sound good, that five course meal tasted really good too, with excellent choices of wines to wash the food down.

We did almost everything we had planned for the original event, including our traditional Secret Santa. The picture above shows my table. The one below the other Z/Yen table, capturing the moment when Peter discovered that he had received the best Secret Santa ever – a massively extendable diagrammatic representation of the central part of the River Thames.

Given the setting of Watermen’s Hall, this present couldn’t be bettered and it did the rounds of the room several times.

The only problem with Peter’s Secret Santa present was that Juliet couldn’t contain her pleasure at how well the gift had gone down, exposing herself (as it were) as having been that particular Santa.

For some reason, by way of contrast, no-one has owned up to giving me a tin of Senior Moment Mints.

The picture below depicts Charlotte and Bikash chatting about their spoils while Michael addressed the assembled throng – a loyal toast I think.

There are a few other photos – you can view them all on Flickr if you click here.

One thing we chose not to do was sing the 2021 Z/Yen Christmas song. Linda did bring it along, as it had been all ready to go back in December 2021. But we chose not to proceed with singing it, as the entire meal had been changed and we can’t even “trail slothfully back to Lothbury” any more.

Still, I thought I should still publish the “unused canticle” for completists of my oeuvre to collect, debate and savour like connoisseurs, at their leisure, in the privacy of their own metaverses.

I think we drew the long straw with the February 2022 menu, personally.

After such an enjoyable meal and conversation, not wanting the afternoon to end, most of us retired to Jamies St Mary’s to continue the discussions over a few more quiet glasses – such is the City early evening on a Friday post-pandemic.

Did we solve any of the world’s problems? Well, you know what we Z/Yen folk are like. It might take a few weeks for the fruits of our discursive labours to come through, but watch that space.

Liberty Redux: Dinner At Zahter With John White, 10 February 2022

So many events postponed and cancelled before Christmas. Then Janie and I spent the Christmas period doing Crisis and stuff. Then, just around the time I was supposed to start doing nice stuff again, towards the end of January, I went down with the mildest of mild doses of Covid, requiring me to isolate again and cancel out my social engagements.

I was really looking forward to seeing John for the evening. He had chosen a new restaurant that has had rave reviews: Zahter. It read and sounded wonderful. Here’s a link to the website.

But so used to cancelation had I become, that, around 16:30, rather than simply looking forward to spending the evening with John, I became convinced that John would call any second to cancel the evening.

But no cancelation call was forthcoming so I off I set to Foubert’s Place; a location I hadn’t visited in years…OK, I’ve barely visited any Central London locations in years…but in the matter of this location, many, many years.

Here is a scrape of the menu the night we went.

The service was excellent – explaining the menu – from which we chose a selection of cold and hot mezes to share, rather than choosing any main dishes.

We tried:

  • Atom – a chilli yoghurt dip – a bit spicy for my taste these days;
  • Fava – a broadbean based dip very much to my taste;
  • Karides Guvec – tiger prawns in garlic butter;
  • Manti – meatballs which they kindly did for us without the walnuts.

After, as advised by Jay Rayner in the Guardian (in cahoots with countless others), we tried the baklava and agreed it was the best we’d ever tasted.

Did John look happy?

Did John look happy?

Smashing meal, it was.

A quick look at the Liberty clock on the way home, although it sadly was not an appropriate time to see the movement of the moving bits, unless we were willing to wait around for quarter of an hour or so…which we were not.

A super evening.

Taking A Liberty

The Glow by Alistair McDowall, Royal Court Theatre, 5 February 2022

Our first visit to the theatre for quite a while. The Covid pandemic stopped us in our theatre-going tracks back in March 2020.

Indeed we nearly missed out on this one. I had booked for us to see a preview on 22 January, but the week before the Royal Court wrote to me saying they had to cancel the first few previews due to…you guessed it…Covid.

I called to see if we could get decent seats to see the play relatively early in the run. I spoke with a helpful-sounding Royal Courtier on the phone.

Now let’s see. You were booked in seats E9 & E10 for the preview…

…I can offer you E8 and E9 exactly two weeks later, the evening of 5 February.

Problem solved, I thought. But mischievously instead I said:

…but E8 & E9 is not the same thing as E9 & E10.

I heard a gulp at the other end of the phone, so I thought best to put the poor fellow out of his misery quickly.

…joking! Problem solved.

Ironically, as it turned out, no-one sat in E10 on the evening itself and someone rather tall was sitting in front of E8, so we did, in the end, occupy E9 & E10.

But that’s not so weird a story, whereas the play is a seriously weird story. Here’s the teaser:

Here’s a link to all of the on-line resources at The Royal Court website.

I thought the play was wonderful and awe-inspiring. A sort-of pastiche of scary folk tales and fables, a sort of exploration into perennial abuse of women through the ages and the meaning of autonomy.

Alistair McDowall’s plays are a bit like that. Janie and I both absolutely loved Pomona…

Pomona by Alistair McDowall, Orange Tree Theatre, 15 November 2014

…whereas The Glow split our jury, as had X – the other McDowall we had seen at the Royal Court some five years ago. Janie found elements of The Glow disturbing and was disconcerted by the extreme time-hopping involved.

Janie was not quite as disconcerted as the young woman who was sitting in front of us, who nearly jumped out of her skin at the coup de theatre that signalled the end of the first half of the play. The young lady told us after the play that she had recovered herself and enjoyed the play as a whole.

Kate Wyver in the Guardian gave the play/production a rave review.

As did Sam Marlowe in The i...

…and Sarah Crompton in WhatsOnStage.com

Whereas Nick Curtis in the Standard is less sure about it…

…and Lloyd Evans in The Spectator votes it “the worst production of all time”, which only supports my general view that the very best6 plays/productions to some extent at least divide the critics.

This search term – click here – will find you plenty more reviews, including those above.

My own praise for the fascinating play also extends to the superb cast. Ria Zmitrowicz was truly excellent in the lead, ably supported by Rakie Ayola, Fisayo Akinade and Tadhg Murphy. Vicky Featherstone sure knows how to direct and produce this sort of play – who knew?

Not the easiest watch for those easing their way out of the pandemic, but if you want to see a full tilt piece of spellbinding theatre, The Glow might well do the job for you. It certainly did so for me.

I