August 2022 – Ian Louis Harris

A Voyage Around My Harris Grandparents & Uncles, Summer 2022

27 All Saints Road – possibly where it all started after “the boat”.

Following my 1921 census and street trawling research in the spring, which, with enormous difficulty, discovered my Harris family disguised (through erroneous transcription from hell) as the Rossiter family…

Meet My Father – Teodoro Rossiter, The Truth Uncovered, 24 April 2022

…my cousin Angela Kessler (née Harris) leapt in to the research fray and started uncovering all manner of wonderful stuff about our family’s earliest steps towards and in the UK.

Let’s start with the family legend that my grandfather Harris (aka Herz aka Hescha) set off for America but ended up in London due to a relatively minor infection/illness on arrival at Ellis Island that resulted in him being turned away from the USA.

On the above document Angela found Herz Russinov on a ship’s manifest setting off from Hamburg 6 May 1911, but clearly not for a USA destination as this is not a USA manifest. Left hand column just over half way down, record 518, listed as a 22 year old shneider (tailor).

Angela also found Hersch Russinov on a USA bound ship out of Rotterdam on 12 May 1911. He’s third from bottom on this manifest, listed as a “Hebrew” from Vilnius, aged 23. It states that his occupation is tailor, that his wife’s name is Hesha (Grandma Anne’s real name) and that the wife hails from Minsk province. This ticks our family boxes.

Uniquely on this page, no destination in USA is listed for Grandpa Hersch. Instead, in very small print, you can see a stamp that says “hospital” and “discharged” just above the hand-written word “tailor”. This does seem to prove the family legend.

One intriguing aspect of the boat records is Grandpa’s stated age; 22/23 years old. For the 1921 census and subsequent documents he had added 6 or 7 years to that age. It seems unlikely that he would have pretended to be younger than he really was for the journey, unless there was some financial/regulatory incentive so to do. It seems more likely that he added a few years subsequently, perhaps to suggest more gravitas and/or experience than was actually the case. Either way, “naughty Grandpa, cousin Angela caught you out”.

Cousin Angela also found traces of our family’s early years in London, before my father’s arrival, via birth records, in 1919. For example, Angela found the following directory entry in a 1915 trade directory:

Just in case that isn’t good enough for you to prove that this is “our” Harris Russinov, she also found her father (Alec) and our Uncle Manny in the following School Board register:

These records (around 20 rows down), which we believe to be Pulteney Street School, show seven-year-old Uncle Alec there between April 1915 and October 1915. He was previously at Lancaster Road School, near All Saints’ Road.

In early January 1916 Uncle Manny, not yet five, is removed from Pulteney Street and switched to Marylebone. Intriguingly, that Schools Board record says that Uncle Manny had attended no previous school, but the following record suggests that Uncle Manny had a very short stay at Lancaster Road School as a four-year-old.

At the time of the Pulteney Street School Board records, our family address is stated as 13 West Street, which, as Angela’s detective work ascertained, is now Newburgh Street (near Carnaby Street). Possibly Uncle Manny’s January 1916 school switch to Marylebone coincides with the family moving to Upper Marylebone Street.

It was time for me to take a stroll.

27 All Saints’ Road is, at the time of writing, Amanda Thompson Couture, despite retaining (presumably due to planning laws) the old Treggs Grocery sign. It seems to me, if retaining old signage is the rage, that the Treggs sign itself should be excavated to see if there is a Harris Russinov The Chandler sign underneath.

It is interesting that a tailor would have a go as a chandler during the Great War. I suppose there was not much business for a tailor at that time, with the men almost all away at war.

I suspect also, with the family moving around at that time, that it was struggling somewhat to settle. Still, it was a surprise to find the family in Notting Hill so early in their time in the UK. I have always thought of Notting Hill as MY stomping ground.

Above is Uncle Alec’s (and very briefly Uncle Manny’s) Lancaster Road School – now a Virgin Active Health Club.

As for 13 West Street, aka Newburgh Street, that building remains – majorly repaired perhaps but not replaced – and looks rather splendid now:

I don’t suppose the burgeoning Harris Russinov family occupied all of this premises, but who knows? There was a war on and perhaps they were engaged temporarily to “shop sit” for someone.

Now that I have disambiguated Upper Marylebone Street and New Cavendish Street numbering, I can confirm that the Harris Russinov family then took up residence at 4 Upper Marylebone Street, which is now 162 New Cavendish Street. Another building that appears to have been majorly repaired relatively recently, leaving its Fitzrovia slum days far behind.

Our guess is that the family settled there around 1916 and for sure they were settled enough by the end of the Great War to start expanding the family again. My dad was actually born in the above building on 11 August 1919.

Having only got to know them as middle-aged folk, it’s hard to imagine the Harris brothers as babies and/or mischievous school kids.

Dad: “I took that colour photo, so there!”

A Short “Birthday Break” With John & Mandy White At Whatley Manor, 24 to 26 August 2022

Invited into the kitchen at Whatley Manor

For several months prior, we had eagerly awaited our joint birthday celebration trip. We had long since abandoned the idea of having a party for the joint 60th, deciding instead to celebrate, as we have done several times before, as a group of four.

Prequel: Dinner With John At Dai Chi, Soho, 11 August 2022

Every great epic movie or three has at least one prequel these days. In any case, John and I felt that we are so out of practice with fine dining, we simply owed it to ourselves and to the girls to have a rehearsal in London earlier in the month.

Hence an evening at Dai Chi. I think John had seen this super review in the Guardian (or similar), as it was his turn to choose.

That miso aubergine and gooseberry dish was to die for…or to Dai Chi for I should say.

A very enjoyable evening indeed. Or, as we put it to the girls solemnly, “we had indeed done our boot camp training to prepare for the culinary trials to come later in the month”.

The First Afternoon & Evening At Whatley Manor, 24 August 2022

The girls had done a magnificent job of conspiring ahead of this trip. John and I knew that something…some things…were on their planning boards, but felt we owed it to them and to ourselves to just go with the flow.

As it turned out, the first “event” for me and John was a “surprise” visit to the spa, where we enjoyed a glass of wine in a hot tub prior to full body massages.

The hot tub had so many buttons and knobs it took us most of the half hour to work out how to operate the thing. Once we had sunk our glasses of wine and soaked in the tub for that much time, we were both a bit dazed and confused. John almost forgot his glasses and I almost forgot my flip-flops. Considering that neither of us had more than one or two incidentals about our person, that was a pretty high forgetfulness rate.

The massages were excellent (the place has a top notch spa) which got both of us into thoroughly relaxed mode.

But I was not so relaxed as simply to buy the idea that Whatley Manor is a 17th century building, as one of the receptionists had suggested. In fact the building is mostly 19th century and the “mock Tudor” extension is 20th century. Worse yet, the place was originally called Twatley Manor. Hats off to the marketing folk who thought that Whatley Manor would sell better as a name.

it’s a lovely manor, whatever it’s called and whenever it was built

John and I enjoyed the late afternoon sunshine after our massages while the girls were too polite to come and find us, but soon we were reunited and got ready for the “easy-peasy” Grey’s Brasserie meal we had arranged for the first night.

Mandy & I both went for the pork. Mandy’s plate colour-co-ordinated with her rose wine

Janie went for the duck – it was all delicious grub, oh yes it was

In honour of my mate Philip The Bold, Duke of Burgundy, we treated ourselves to a bottle of Domaine Faiveley Mercurey La Framboisière 2019 that first night and jolly gluggable it was too.

John had begged Mandy not to arrange cake and “happy birthday singing” in a public place – thank goodness – so Mandy & Janie had conspired to arrange cake and an opportunity for “happy birthday singing” in a private place – in the living room mezzanine of John & Mandy’s suite:

So symbolic – 60 illuminated by two candles

The cake was seriously yummy death by chocolate.

Day Two – During The Day, 25 August 2022

The chocolate cake desert had perhaps been overkill, as we had each been given a mini chocolate cake and candle which Janie and I enjoyed as a pre-breakfast treat the next morning.

Breakfast was of course excellent – we went full English that first morning – then we realised that the scheduled good weather for our trip was being interrupted by a couple of hours of drizzle and rain. I suggested that we defer our scheduled walk until that was over – about 12:30.

We walked from the hotel – across Easton Grey bridge (over the Avon) around to Foxley and then on to Malmesbury. I’ll let the photos tell the tale of this charming walk.

Checking the cricket score from Old Trafford, not weather or directions

Then the Foxley longhorns let us know what they thought too

John can see an excellent long cut back to the manor – Mandy and I talk him out of it.

A brush with an emu at a farm just outside Malmesbury

The Old Bell Hotel, Malmesbury, possibly the oldest in England

We wandered around the town, thought about walking home, then called for a cab when we realised that we wanted to be fit and awake for our big dinner tonight.

The Big Dinner At Whatley Manor, 25 August 2022

We won’t talk about John’s “poking himself between the eyes” incident before he came down to dinner, because that would be unkind, especially as he didn’t even need to confess to it given that his specs covered the tiny gash. I tried the concussion test on John, which he failed, but we concluded that he’d fail it under any circumstances, so that was OK.

After drinks in the lounge, head chef Ricki Weston (above) invited us into the kitchen for our first few nibbles and a chat.

John & I listening intently to the descriptions of the first two nibbles

Janie wandered deeper into the kitchen with her camera-phone

Then we sat down at table for the rest of the nibbles and the main dishes. At this juncture, it was out with the camera phones big time. We weren’t going to eat the hell out of this feast – oh no – we were going to photograph the hell out of it.

We also drank well. John treated himself to a glass of 2018 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru ‘Les Petits Clos’, Jean-Noel Gagnard, honouring my mate Philip The Bold to a greater extent than I might choose. Janie and I tried 2018 Rielsing Kabinett ‘Abtsberg’, Maximin Grunhaus as our white. Then the three of us who were not, like Mandy, sticking with Provencal rose, shared a bottle of Catalan wine – 2016 Priorat ‘Martinet Bru’, Mas Martinet.

We all staggered back to our rooms after a wonderful evening.

The Morning After And Home, 26 August 2022

We’d had a wonderful time. We were all suffering a little the next morning, having become unaccustomed to long evenings of eating and drinking.

We mostly went a bit lighter on breakfast, although John still went for bacon and black pudding, claiming it to be lighter than my cereal and yoghurt!

After breakfast and check out, we met up in the grounds and strolled around those before heading home.

OK, so birthdays are meaningless milestones of decay…

…but there’s nothing meaningless about enduring friendships. We’d had such a great time – it was so special to spend that much prime time celebrating the birthdays with close friends.

If you want to see all the pictures – trigger warning – there are more than 250 of them – the Flickr link here and below takes you to all of them:

Dim Sum At New Loon Fung In Chinatown With Rohan Candappa, 2 August 2022

Are you a fan of dim sum?

…asked Rohan, while we were messaging each other to make the arrangements for a lunchtime meet up.

Is the sky blue, is the Pope a Catholic, do bears shit in the woods and is a pig’s arse pork?

…I felt like replying, but instead I sent Rohan a link to the Ogblog piece about my first ever dim sum experience, so long ago it was before I had even met Rohan…whom I met when we started Alleyn’s School in September 1973:

From Yan Chow (Or Do I Mean Yang Chow?) In Streatham To Dim Sum In Soho, Chinese New Year, Probably February 1972

In that case, let’s meet at 12:30 in the middle of Gerrard Street.

Great, I thought, this will be my first visit to Chinatown for years and I miss the place.

My childhood memory of trying dim sum for the first time must be my favourite anecdote about dim sum in Chinatown, but I do have another treasured memory on that topic.

In the mid to late 1990s, while working with the late, great Professor Mike Smith, we found ourselves nearby and decided to continue our discussions over a dim sum lunch. Studying an extensive card, I wondered whether Mike had ever tried duck tongues – a dish I had tried before (I think in Hong Kong) and rather liked. Mike said he was up for anything and thus we ordered, amongst several other things, a portion of tongues.

On tasting the anatine delicacy, Mike freaked out.

Oh my God – they’ve got bones in their tongues! Ducks have bones in their tongues! Uggh.

Even after we agreed that the bone-like core of the duck’s tongue was probably hard cartilage rather than bone, Mike was too discombobulated by the discovery to eat any more of that dish…

…which, to anyone who knew Mike well, proves that he was seriously discombobulated. Indeed, Mike told the “dim sum discovery that ducks have bones in their tongues” story to anyone who’d listen for ages after the event.

Returning to 2022, I wondered whether Rohan had chickened out (or should I say ducked out) of picking a venue, but it turned out he had a specific venue in mind all along: New Loon Fung. As we entered, I was pretty sure this was the same venue as the Mike Smith tongue incident all those years ago. Seeing duck tongues on the menu pretty much confirmed my theory – you don’t see those on the menu in many dim sum places in London.

I told Rohan the story. Of course he agreed we needed to order some, along with the several other things we both wanted to try.

Perhaps the waiters had a sense of foreboding about non-Chinese people ordering a delicacy so quintessentially Chinese as duck tongues. The restaurant was heaving by the time we placed our order, almost exclusively with people who were visibly Chinese or at least of Chinese origin.

We asked a couple of times for the tongues, once it was clear that all our other dishes had long since been delivered. Eventually our portion came:

*Duck got your tongue, Rohan?* He sure doesn’t look 100% sure

We “toasted” Mike, each of us with a tongue on our chopsticks, Rohan tried that one tongue, then he deferred the rest of the plate to me, leaving me in a similar position, plate of tongues-wise, as I had been in 25 or so years ago with Mike Smith.

I’m old enough and ugly enough now that I don’t do anything I don’t want to do…

…said Rohan, when I pressed the point, just to be sure he wasn’t simply deferring my chosen delicacy out of politeness.

I guess I might be on my own in the matter of liking the duck tongues dish – I recall Janie not much liking it either.

Rohan and I chatted about many things, including how most of the eateries we knew from the old days had gone from Chinatown – New Loon Fung being a rare perennial. I think it was known as Dragon Phoenix “back in the day”, but it looks and feels like the same place of old.

After parting company with Rohan, I took a stroll around Chinatown, confirming that most of my old haunts had vanished.

Strangely and most coincidentally, I got an e-mail from Michael Mainelli about 48 hours later asking me if I could recommend a place in Chinatown for him and the family to go to after a show – all the places he remembered had closed down since his last visit.

I was able to provide some helpful advice. Really I should put the time from my afternoon off onto my timesheet as R&D for the business. Only joking, only joking.

Guest Contribution: Mark Ellicott’s Response To His Summer 1982 Mix Tape

Mark Ellicott more recently (actually 2016)

In response to my “forty years on” piece about a mix tape Mark made for me in 1982…

Informal Contemporary Music Subsidiary Course At Keele In The Summer Of 1982, Tutor: Mark Ellicott

…which is probably worth reading before reading the following response…

…Mark responded with some fascinating reflections of his own about that music “forty years on”, along with his thoughts on what the follow-up mix tape should have been. I shall try to replicate that “thought-experiment mix tape” within this guest piece.

Ah Ian,

Every one of those tracks still gets a regular airing in my household! For me they have never aged because I’ve never gone through a prolonged period not listening to any of them. Anything by Grace Jones in that early eighties period always brings back memories of six in the morning in Freehold Street, Newcastle in the spring and summer of 1982 after a night at the 141 Club in Hanley with the likes of Anna Summerskill, Mark Bartholomew, Vince Beasley and Jan Phillips, amongst others. Invariably all of us stoned / tripping and / or speeding. The ‘Nightclubbing’ album just tailor made for the wee small hours after a long night out just as everyone was coming down. It was THE album I most associate with that crazy summer term when I went through that cathartic metamorphosis!

The Grace Jones version of ‘She’s lost control’, originally by Joy Division, on that tape I made you was one of the more eccentric covers I’ve heard. Back in 1994 I had the good fortune to meet the great lady when she was booked to play at The Fridge in Brixton. It was touch and go whether she’d make it onto stage - she was several hours late I recall before the show eventually started - but I did ask what had prompted her to cover such a track by such a band. It transpired she knew nothing about the band, knew nothing about Ian Curtis’s suicide and had merely heard the original track before deciding there and then to do her own version. It ended up as the B side to her single ‘Private Life’. She was rather horrified when she found out about Curtis’s demise and that the song was about epilepsy - a condition he suffered from.

The Roxy Music track ‘Both ends burning’ (from 1975) is etched into the memory because of their performance on Top of the Pops promoting it. Bryan Ferry dressed up as a GI with an eye patch dancing awkwardly as two heavily made up women, also dressed up in military garb, swung their hips behind him - looking vaguely glassy eyed in the eyeball department.

‘Violence Grows’ by the Fatal Microbes was always being played by John Peel. The singer was 15 year old Honey Bane, a schoolgirl who’d been signed up on the strength of her already provocative stage performances. This was a howl of rage from a time when there really didn’t seem much hope for young people as unemployment skyrocketed. Her indifferent tuneless vocal delivery for whatever reason just resonated.

‘Atmosphere’ by Joy Division arguably my favourite track released just after Curtis’s death a fitting tribute to the man’s genius. He was only 23 when he died - just imagine what might have come later on in his career had things been different. I wonder how ‘Blue Monday’ by New Order might have sounded had he gotten his teeth into it. I still recall John Peel announcing his death on air and playing ‘Atmosphere’ and being quite shocked. No one then could have imagined the cult status they would 40 plus years later enjoy.

‘Typical Girls’ by the Slits just a wonderful piece of pop-punk-reggae by the original riot girls. Ari Up the singer (alas she died of cancer some years ago) was John Lydons (nee Rotten) stepdaughter. John married Ari’s mother Nora, a German heiress, back in the eighties. It’s a track that despite its 43 years of existence still sounds like it could have been recorded in 2022.

Mark then went on to suggest a follow-on mix tape:

Had I made a second tape for you that year it would have undoubtedly included the following. All from that 1982ish period. 

‘My face is on fire’ - Felt
‘Fireworks’ - Siouxsie & the Banshees
‘Temptation’ - New Order
‘How does it feel?’ - Crass
‘Torch’ - Soft Cell
‘The back of love’ - Echo & the Bunnymen 
‘Second skin’ - The Chameleons
‘Persons unknown’ - Poison Girls
‘Hand in glove’ - The Smiths
‘Treason’ - Teardrop Explodes
‘Requiem’ - Killing Joke
‘Dead Pop Stars’ - Altered Images
‘Alice’ - Sisters of Mercy
‘Eat y’self fitter’ - The Fall
‘Painted bird’ - Siouxsie & the Banshees
‘Let’s go to bed’ - The Cure
‘Capers’ - The Birthday Party
‘Nightclubbing’ - Grace Jones
‘The look of love’ - ABC
‘Being boiled’ - Human League
‘Pissing in the river’- Patti Smith
‘Walking on thin ice’ - Yoko Ono

OK, let’s give that mix tape a go. I have really enjoyed listening to these tracks and hope readers enjoy them too. Many thanks, Mark, for your kind note and further selections forty years on.