Janie and I were so pleased to be invited to this Crisis event – a thank you to us 2021/22 Crisis At Christmas volunteers. I wrote up much of our volunteering experience at the time – click here or below.
Our extended volunteering for several weeks into January was unfortunately foreshortened (although only by one shift) when I tested positive for Covid after what should have been our penultimate shift. Which meant we hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye properly to several colleagues.
Reunited with Tracie & Connie
Further, we had heard such great things about the outcomes from this year’s Christmas initiative, we were keen to learn whether the new delivery model would be repeated in 2022.
Tristia and Matt express thanks and bring positive news ahead of 2021
Janie and I wondered whether we might also run into Kathy & Caroline from FoodCycle at this event, as we knew that both of them do Crisis, although we hadn’t shifted with either of them at Christmas. Almost as soon as the speeches finished, those two sought us out:
Caroline & Kathy “soughting” me outNot sure what Mike just said, but no-one, least of all Mike, seems pleased in that instant It wasn’t all bearded, long-haired, bright-shirt-wearing hunks named Ian
We had a very enjoyable time. Afterwards, Janie and I treated ourselves to a shawarma supper takeaway from Ranoush. It would have been rude to walk past the place on the way home, after all.
A Prize Dinner – Kitchen At Holmes, 29 July 2022
Free to choose whatever we want
Back in the mists of time – before we did our 2021 Crisis at Christmas volunteering, I went to a really charming Baker Street Quarter Partnership event, which was, in part, a fundraiser for Marylebone FoodCycle…
…and won a dinner for two courtesy of Kitchen At Holmes in the fundraising raffle.
Janie and I had not got around to booking that evening, as I pointed out every now and then when I stumbled across the envelope/voucher in my in-tray. We agreed that we really shouldn’t push the “valid until November 2022” deadline and that a summer Friday evening out rather than in would be a treat for us.
This meal certainly was that.
Please explain the difference between chanterelles and girolles, Genaro.“It’s like this…”
Genaro looked after us extremely well throughout the meal.
The food looked amazing and tasted just as good. We photographed the food like a couple of youngsters.
In fact, if it is culinary eye candy you are after, you can click the link below and see all the foodie pics we took:
Janie started with the lamb kofte, depicted above, while I started with a tuna tartare dish. Janie then moved on to fish – sea bass, while I enjoyed a veal steak. The chunky chips were a delight for us to share, as were the carrots & purple potties, also depicted above.
Of course a raffle is all luck but, as the organisers said at the Baker Street Quarter Partnership do all those months ago, it was really nice to have FoodCycle volunteers win one of the high-end raffle prizes
Our deserts – we sort of feel we got our just ones
Janie and I were super excited ahead of this one. During lockdown Janie had taken to fine art and had been reading up on graffiti art/street art. This Alternative London street tour, with an opportunity to try out some spray can art at a workshop afterwards, seemed like a very good idea, so I snapped up a couple of tickets for an alternative Friday afternoon off.
Gary was the geezer we rolled with
We were part of a group of 12 to 15 people, most of whom were tourists from outside the UK and very few of whom seemed to come from anywhere near Janie’s and my age range. Unlike my visits to Lord’s lately, no-one addressed me as “young man” on this afternoon.
Janie and I went mad with our camera-phones. We took nearly 140 pictures between us and if you want to flick through them all, unedited but in time sequence, this Flickr album (here and image below) has the lot:
I’ll pepper this account with some highlight pictures, which should give you a reasonable idea.
The Walking Tour
We started in Fashion Street, where there were many superb street art works, including this one, which had recently acquired its tears and farewell messages:
The above two pictures also Fashion Street, with moving stories to go with them
It also dawned on me that we were walking streets (and due to walk streets) close to the locations I have recently been researching regarding the early years of my mother’s Arkus/Markus/Marcus family in London. More on that later.
Some of the most spectacular street art in the area emerged during (or just after) lockdown, when artists needed an outlet for their outpourings and many building owners presumably thought, “why not?”:
Extraordinary and exceptional skills needed to produce works like these
We wandered a bit further east, around Princelet Street…
Janie was already getting funky with the art, snapping Princelet Street through the looking glass
We then wended our way to the open space around the old Truman Brewery, where a great deal of street art and graffiti art resides.
Lots of symbolism…Banksy himself had a hand in the car……Gary tried to explain some of it to me – it reminded me a bit of situationismThis concrete sculpture was simply stunning
Then back along Hanbury Street..
In Hanbury Street, Gary pointed out the utterly compelling Libreria bookshop and then didn’t stop to give us time to have a look around – you cannot do things like that to me!
In the few moments I grabbed in the shop, the attendant spotted my Middlesex CCC shirt and engaged me in conversation about that as well as books. I’ll have to go back, I suppose.
At the end of Hanbury Street, we were on the corner of Spital Street, where my Great Uncle John (Johnny) lived and worked as a cabinet maker at the turn of the 20th century.
On Heneage Street we rather liked the Up Yours street art piece.
Multi sport facility – well streetWe SO nearly ended our tour prematurely in there
Then back to Brick Lane…
Kill The Cat
…more or less completing a circuit before ploughing south towards Whitechapel.
A wonderful, almost new, symbolic piece by an artist of Bangladeshi origin
We said goodbye to the few walking tourists who had chosen not to try some spray can art – the rest of us ploughed on towards the Hessel Street studio.
A Brief Arkus/Markus/Marcus Family Tour
We walked along White Church Lane and then past Back Church Lane – the latter (No 132) being the residence of my Great Uncle Max & Great Aunt Leah Markus at the time of the 1901 census – just a few years after Max arrived in London and while he was still labouring in the tobacco industry and dreaming of returning to his chosen profession – violinist.
Modern buildings & street works where 132 would have beenGreat Uncle Max c1900
When Max first arrived, in the late 19th century, he lived at 1 Matilda Street, where the rest of that enormous family (including my grandpa) still resided in 1901.
No longer there, Matilda Street has been absorbed by council housing buildings on the block just south-west of Gary’s Alternative London studio…
Of course I hadn’t yet got around to taking that stroll (I spend so little time in the City these days) and it hadn’t occurred to me that we might be close by, when I booked this experience.
But let us return to Whitechapel and spraying paint around.
The Studio Session
Gary made us all mask up and glove up (thank goodness) and then taught us how to spray paint on walls/boards rather than ourselves (useful skill, that, when spraying paint).
These pictures taken just before we all masked and gloved up
Keeping us away from the stencils until we had “mastered” the basics, we were charged with making a rectangular base and graffitiing our names. This, even I could do quite well.
Quite well, although my street art name should really be Ged
Even the use of the larger stencils was within my skills grasp with relative ease – the trick being to spray enough but not too much.
It was the attempt at some detailed lettering with stencils that confounded me, with more red paint on my fingers and blotching that corner of my masterpiece than actually communicating words. I wanted to spray “Media Kills”, but I think I’ll stick to the keyboard for such detailed messages.
Janie chose, instead, to “give it large” with the visual imagery, absorbing some of the existing images into her own creation, which, I am reliably informed, is very street.
So there you have it – Janie shows big idea talent at this art medium while I scratch away thinking that words are necessary in all cases.
We’d had a wonderful afternoon. Although we haven’t travelled to far-flung locations now for years, this experience transported us in far-flung cognitive ways.
And for those who think that the words are unnecessary for this experience, there’s always the Flickr album with all the pictures from the day:
These days I’m far more likely to visit Lord’s to play real tennis than I am to watch cricket; or at least to play real tennis AND watch cricket. But this rare week had me at Lord’s three times to watch cricket without playing tennis.
England v India ODI 14 July 2022
The first of the visits was for the one day international (ODI) between England and India. I don’t much go to ODIs these days (World Cup in England year excepted of course) but I had planned to take Ian Theodoreson to the test match in 2020 (until Covid scuppered such plans) and the most suitable date for a rescheduling was this particular ODI.
Ian has had a tendency to choose what turns out to be one of the hottest days of the year for his visits to Lord’s with me. He did so four years ago...
…which might be connected with the choice of dates in mid to late July.
Anyway, this 2022 visit was Ian’s first in one of the wheelchair enclosures, a factor that at least allowed the opportunity for me to meet and host Sally Theodoreson for the first time, which was an absolute pleasure, plus an opportunity for the MCC to demonstrate one of the things it seems able to do very well indeed , which is to look after wheelchair visitors.
Actually, as it turned out, this day was far from the hottest day of the year – Janie and I had that “pleasure” to come at Lord’s a few days later, but still we were grateful to the stewards finding us some shade from which to view the match.
I made the substantive picnic – being smoked trout bagels, ham and cheese sandwiches, dry salads in cups plus plentiful fruits, not least some giant strawberries that were as big on flavour as they were in size. Sally and Ian brought the other items that make a picnic sing – savoury & sweet nibbles plus a very glug-able Shiraz wine.
A very enjoyable day, albeit a very long one for Ian and Sally, motoring up from Somerset and back on the day.
The Hottest Day Ever, Middlesex v Sussex Day One, 19 July 2022
Daisy awaiting the start of play, on the sundeck, having bagsed a parasol – yey!
We had planned to meet up with Fran and Simon at Lord’s that day, after first visiting (ironically, give Fran’s now former profession) the dental hygienist first thing. In the end, Fran and Simon gracefully withdrew from the plans and we resolved to give the match a try, but we were very much aware that the forecast was for the hottest day since records began. We suspected that we’d only stay until lunch.
Actually it was pretty pleasant up on that deck during the first session, although everyone was wondering why Tim Murtagh had chosen to bowl on the hottest day ever, so some of the Middlesex regulars were getting a bit hot under the collar.
Don’t I look cool considering it was the hottest day EVER?
I wanted to show Janie the view from the top of the new Upper Compton, so we wandered around that way, bumping into one of my tennis pals, Russ, with whom we chatted for a while as the temperature rose.
We didn’t stay up top for long – the view was great and the shade welcome but the breeze was almost non-existent by 2:00 and it was getting seriously hot.
We went home to swelter in the discomfort of our own home for the rest of the day, still wondering what Middlesex had been playing at choosing to bowl.
Young Men At Lord’s, Middlesex v Sussex Day Three, 21 July 2022
But in some company the phrase seems even more sarcastic than usual. For example, my third visit to Lord’s in a week, when I met up with young Jez Horne, who came to work as a summer intern at Z/Yen in the summer of 2005 and stayed for nearly 10 years…and Jez’s six-year-old son Nathaniel.
As it happens, I originally met Jez through Middlesex cricket. In fact, now I come to think of it, I conducted his internship recruitment interview while playing catch on the outfield at Southgate in the interval between innings of a Middlesex v Gloucestershire Sunday League match, 17 years ago.
Jez did a lot of serious numbers work with Z/Yen – scoring the charity cricket matches was the least of it
Returning to 2022, Jez and I agreed to meet up on this day while Jez was introducing six-year-old Nathaniel to the joys of Lord’s. It was a very enjoyable experience for me to witness a young child’s wide-eyed wonder at all the different viewing points and places we could show him there. Nathaniel had previously visited Radlett and Hove, which are both lovely grounds, but not, until that day, had he seen Lord’s.
Our circuit started in the Warner Stand, took in a photo-opportunity or two in the Grandstand, then we watched from the very top of the Compton Stand (from whence Nathaniel was sure the land below was flat and not a hill, as I kept asserting), then the lower Compton Stand (at which point Nathaniel changed sides and agreed wholeheartedly that the cricket field is indeed a slope) and then, before tea, the Upper Allen Stand.
We met plenty of people on our trek, including Barmy Kev, Russ (who was again wending his way home after tennis) and Fletch, who shared some thoughts on the “bowl first” decision with us.
Just before leaving home, I had found a small Virgin Active gimcrack beanie ball on a shelf, which I thought might come in handy…and it did.
Just before tea, as I started to wonder whether the little fella was ever going to run out of energy, we tried playing catch with him using that beanie ball. He struggled at first but within just a few short minutes he was getting the hang of it and catching far more than he was missing.
Come tea, Nathaniel wanted to see “Grandpa’s Garden”, as I tend to call the Harris Garden. (Well, Grandpa Harris WAS a gentleman of Marylebone, albeit not THE Lord Harris of Marylebone Cricket Club fame). In the garden, Nathaniel devised a game of catching and tag that might, to the untrained eye, seem to have the rule complexity of real tennis combined with the rule-adjustability of Mornington Crescent. The use of a hat to catch the ball would have met with particular disapproval had an MCC stickler for the laws of cricket witnessed the game.
Soon after tea, that energy lull finally occurred, so I said goodbye to the actual young men and reverted to being a “relatively young man” in the pavilion watching the remainder of the day’s play.
In there, somewhere
I had been due to play tennis early evening, but after messing up my right arm the day before on the modern tennis court, I had to gracefully withdraw, so spent a few minutes after stumps watching my would be fellow combatants play, before ambling home feeling very content.
In the past decade, Janie and I have been incredibly lucky scoring good tickets for Wimbledon in the ballot. Many good days, including quarter finals days and semi finals days. But until now, we have never attended a finals day.
It seems to be my year in this “finals” respect. A few weeks ago I was able to report a first in the matter of me getting to a final playing tennis, albeit the real variety and albeit at Queen’s:
Much as the Queen’s tournament described above was a mixed doubles affair (in that case, mixed ability i.e. handicap doubles), I am talking about Wimbledon’s new idea to hold the Mixed Doubles Final on Ladies Semi-Final day.
In truth, it wasn’t until a couple of days before we went that it occurred to me that I had inadvertently scored a brace of tickets for a finals day. It was a nice surprise when we found out. It became even more of a pleasant surprise when we learnt that Neal Skupski & Desirae Krawczyk would be appearing in that final.
But let us start from the beginning of a truly magical day.
We like to get to Wimbledon reasonably early on such a day to see some smaller court stuff before the grand event. On this occasion we managed to get to the Wimbledon campus about 11:45, giving us nearly two hours to take a look around.
Mili PoljicakKilian Feldbausch
First up we wanted to see, on Court 12, the infeasibly named Kilian Feldbausch of Switzerland against the equally infeasibly named Mili Poljicak of Croatia.
Goran Ivanišević also wanted a look at the Croatian lad
We’d missed the first set, which the Swiss lad had won convincingly, but Mili turned it all around in sets two and three, looking very convincing indeed. News update: Mili went on to win the entire Boys tournament.
Mili Poljicak: crazy name, crazy guy – remember where you heard the name first.
Next, we wandered across to No. 2 Court to take a look at a young American named Liv Hovde against a German girl named Ella Seidel.
Liv HovdeElla Seidel
Liv Hovde played really well to win her first set and indeed (it turns out) went on to win not only the match but the entire Girls tournament.
It transpired that we were sitting very close to Liv’s coach, whom Liv was ignoring throughout the set, so we tried to engage him in some motivational pleasantries as we departed, but he did not seem to be an especially communicative chap. Alejandro Garcia Cenzano he’s called, which, together with my new-found Rossiter family connection, made me think of this corny commercial – click here.
Remember where you heard the name first…Liv Hovde I mean.
Next, we popped in to No. 3 Court to see a few minutes of Czech girl Linda Klimovikova against promising Brit Jasmine Conway.
Linda Klimovikova Jasmine ConwayNo. 3 Court has a tasty view of Members & Centre
We saw Jasmine win the first set, by which time we needed to get across to Centre Court for the start of the semi-finals. A steward asked us why we were leaving so soon. We explained. He said…
thank you for slumming it for a while with us here on No. 3 Court,
…which I thought was pretty funny.
On the way to Centre Court we ran into Mats Wilander, Àlex Corretja & Barbara Schett; Daisy was keen to snap them.
First up, Ons Jabeur against Tatjana Maria. Those two are incredibly close friends, by all accounts, which made their embrace and the interview with the victorious Ons after the match especially moving.
Snacking on nuts and fruit only gets you so far at this stage of the day – it was “out with the trout” time:
My classic smoked fish sandwichesElena Rybakina serves to Simona Halep……and vice versa
Elena Rybakina, surprisingly (to us) blew away Simona Halep. Meanwhile, Matthew Ebden, one of the Mixed Doubles finalists, had only just finished his Gentlemen’s Doubles five-set-epic semi-final on No. 1 Court, so while he got some well-deserved rest, the authorities laid on some Invitation Mixed Doubles to keep the crowd entertained.
Mansour Bahrami serving
Todd Woodbridge & Cara Black verses the evergreen Mansour Bahrami and Conchita Martinez. Some people love this exhibition stuff. I tire of it quite quickly and in any case needed to move my legs and butt, so I decided to go for a stroll after a short while.
On my stroll, I watched the end of an Under 14’s girls match between young Brit Isabelle Britton and young Algerian Maria Badache.
It did not go well for Maria. Isabelle looks very promising.
Then on to Court 8 to see the end of Arabella Loftus (GB) against Marianne Angel of Mexico.
Arabella LoftusArabella and Marianne
By the time I got back to Centre Court, the Old Git Doubles was also close to the handshake moment and we started to feel the buzz for the Mixed Doubles Final.
Neal Skupski, Desirae Krawczyk, Matthew Ebden & Samantha Stosur warming upEbden serves to Skupski
Those enormous strawberries all had to go.
Soon enough came the winning moment – Skupski & Krawczyk were to be the champions.
It was a long day – over all too quickly. Daisy snapped the headline picture and the one below as we left in the late evening sunshine, which sort-of sums up the Wimbledon vibe.
The above picture is somewhat deceptive, as only two members of the Trio are permanent members, the singer in the centre of the picture, wonderful though she might be, is Torunn Østrem Ossum, not Jorunn Lovise Husan.
They are supremely talented singers who fill that hall with a wonderful sound and a charming vibe. They sing with smiles on their faces. They make supremely difficult singing look almost effortless. It really was a joy to see them again.
This concert was based on their latest album, Solacium, which is centred around traditional Norwegian and Estonian-Swedish lullabies and hymns. It includes some modern works by Anders Jormin, Andrew Smith and Marianne Reidarsdatter Eriksen, all of which felt very much in keeping with the early music nature of the programme.
