Month: October 2022

Pass Time With Good Company, With “All Good Sports” For A Few Days, Mid October 2022

Rohan “Candy” Candappa & David Wellbrook

Violets & Fatt Pundit With Mark Ellicott, Simon Jacobs & John White, 17 October 2022

For some reason we were all being too grown up to take photos, but this was a special get together reuniting people who had all known each other at Keele for one reason or another.

I had re-engaged by e-mail with Mark Ellicott during the latter stages of the pandemic while writing my “Forty Years On” series, not least to compare notes over Princess Margaret debacles, a cricket match for which I got picked for the craziest of Ellicott-induced reasons and more recently some exchanges over playlists (or, as we used to call them, mix tapes) from 1982.

Mark Ellicott (right), next to Neil Baldwin of Marvellous fame, 2016

In particular the musical aspects intrigued Simon Jacobs, who wondered out loud to me why I hadn’t set up a get-together with Mark.

Simon, in 2019, trying to make a silk purse out of my (then) sow’s ear voice

Actually, John said something similar when I shared my Mark correspondence with him when we met up in the summer. I had no excuse, so I felt duty bound to act.

John questioning my judgement with his eyes and body language, August 2022

I booked a table at Fatt Pundit in Berwick Street and chose Violet’s as a suitable close-by bar for us to meet for a pre-dinner drink.

I played tennis at Lord’s – a draw at singles seeing as you were going to ask – before hot-footing it (via the flat) to Soho.

I arrived at Violet’s, grabbing a table – just inside but suitably quasi-open to the street – about five minutes before Simon arrived. From that vantage point, we observed Mark walk straight past us and then four or five minutes later he returned having got as confused as everyone else by the Berwick Street door-numbering. John arrived fashionably but not ridiculously last.

We had a good chat and a drink at Violet’s before heading a block or two up the road to Fatt Pundit, where the food was excellent and the chat got even better.

A few comedy moments with the sweet waitress whose high-pitched voice is possibly in a register that none of us, given our advancing years, could hear. But the menu was pretty-much self-explanatory, so a mixture of sign language, reading the menu and common sense allowed us to order a cracking good meal.

It was a really enjoyable four-way catch up.

Goldmine With Rohan Candappa & David Wellbrook, 18 October 2022

This gathering was originally conceived in Soho when Rohan and I met for dim sum a couple of months ago:

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

It was basically a “barbeque meats challenge” based on my assertion that the Queensway specialists therein, especially Goldmine, are better than those in Chinatown.

It turned into a small-scale Alleyn’s School alum thing. David Wellbrook, being Wellbrook, needed to join in the challenge, not least because Queensway is an alma mater of his where he attended the University of Romance (his wife used to live there when they were courting).

We tucked into plenty of barbeque meats, diverting briefly at the start and end of the lunchtime feast for some dim sum, just in the interests of science.

At school Rohan Candappa was always known as Candy, so it was with great mirth and merriment that David spotted “Candy World” across the street.

Rohan Candappa’s world

After lunch, we retreated to my flat where I showed the lads my centennial family relic, on what was, after all, its century day.

Hamsters v Dedanists At Hampton Court Palace, 20 October 2022

Almost everything that needs to be said about this match is contained in my match report on the Dedanists web site – here…or perhaps best to read it from the scrape here, scraped before the current piece drops down the running order.

For those who don’t like to click and/or who don’t want all the tennis detail – here is an extract:

“It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall,” said your intrepid reporter to Carl Snitcher, having braved the 3.5 mile high-pass journey from Notting to Primrose Hill in just over 35 minutes.

“There’s a bad moon on the rise,” agreed Carl, gnomically.

We arrived at a rain-soaked Hampton Court Palace in the nick of time; just as well, as your intemporal reporter was playing in the first rubber. Some might argue that our arrival was actually “worse than two”, but a more substantial discrepancy soon revealed itself; the marker’s sheet was showing a lesser handicap for the Dedanists than the sheet that James McDermott & I had been sent.

In order to avoid a major diplomatic incident, James & I acquiesced to the lesser handicap, yet still somehow contrived to win our rubber, albeit narrowly…

McDermott hitting, me watching

On finally staggering away from the court, your incognizant reporter picked up a message that the Prime Minister had resigned. “That’s the second Liz whose expiration has been announced while I was on the real tennis court in the space of six weeks”, I mused, having been informed of the late Queen’s demise by Tony Friend while I was on the Lord’s court.

I thought I might be the tidings-bringer this time, only to discover that most of the group had learnt the demise of Liz Truss some 45 minutes earlier.

Anyway, this was no time to ponder the fate of shambolic politicians – it was time to tuck into the pies before they too were to become a footnote in history. A positive footnote in the case of the pies of course – once again a delicious choice of
• Chicken Ham & Leek;
• Steak & Ale.

Bread and cheese (yes please) and two species of yummy desert that self-discipline allowed me to avoid, along with the jolly wines on offer…

Pictures by Tony Friend

There’s no better way to lift the spirits on a gloomy, worrisome day than a day of pastance with Dedanists and Hamsters. Symbolically, as the nation’s political shenanigans moved on to its new phase, the heavy clouds and rain of the morning had lifted to reveal a gorgeously bright, sunny evening as we all left.

“So foul and fair a day I have not seen”, said Carl, gnomically, as I dropped him home.

“Pass time with good company”, I replied.

The Only Known Relic Of Grandpa Harris Reaches Its Hundredth Birthday, October 2022

This summer, while taking a voyage around the Harris Family’s earliest steps in the UK…

A Voyage Around My Harris Grandparents & Uncles, Summer 2022

…I was acutely aware that we only have one actual relic of Grandpa Harris: the large certificate of honour depicted in the headline picture. We do not even have a surviving photograph of him – he died in the early 1940s – all such things were disposed of when Grandma moved out of the family home (104 Clapham Common Northside) in the 1960s.

I suspect that the certificate only survived because of its religious significance and the lingering, somewhat superstitious sense that such a thing should not simply be destroyed.

It lived at the back of my dad’s shop for at least a quarter of a century – then it lived in our Woodfield Avenue attic for another quarter of a century.

Mum nearly (accidentally) gave it away when dad died, but I managed to rescue it thanks to the good offices of Michael and Tessa Laikin who in any case hadn’t quite believed that I wanted shot of it, even if mum did.

It was in a pretty shocking state by the time I took it to Janie’s favourite picture framer in Bayswater, who declared the artefact to be on the verge of disintegration and recommended a specialist restorer to preserve it and bring it back to life before framing.

Several weeks and several hundred pounds later, it has pride of place on the hall wall in my flat.

The stunning, large certificate (60 x 45 cm unframed, 75 x 60 cm framed) commemorates my grandfather being honoured in the synagogue as Chatan Torah on the festival of Simchat Torah on 14/15 October 1922 – now 100 years ago. Or, in Hebrew calendar terms, 17/18 October 2022 is exactly 100 years after the event.

As it happens and by strange coincidence, Janie and I found ourselves on 15 October this year just around the corner from 14 Manette Street, which is the building which was, back then, the West End Talmud Torah & Bikkur Holim Synagogue.

I couldn’t resist the urge to walk around the corner and photograph the very building on the very 100th anniversary of Grandpa’s honour:

14 Manette Street, Soho as snapped by me, 15 October 2022

Religion isn’t my thing, but it was my grandparent’s thing and this honour would have been one of the most notable moments in my grandfather’s (relatively short) life.

That Soho synagogue – the West End Talmud Torah and Bikkur Holim was a rather fascinating and controversial thing, if Gerry Black’s Living Up West book is anything to go by (which it is…go buy it if you are interested). He describes it as an

orthodox and shtetl-like shule [synagogue, where comparatively] …the service, rabbi, and fervid atmosphere were more typical of the heim [the old country].

This shtetl style apparently emanated from the “larger than life” Rabbi at the place, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Ferber, who hailed from Kovno (Kaunas) – which is, coincidentally the Lithuanian part from which my mother’s Marcus family hailed.

There are some wonderful passages in Living Up West about that Rabbi; I do remember my father talking about him as a formidable figure, even though my father was still quite small when the family moved away from Fitzrovia/Soho. Intriguingly also, the book reports that, by 1926, the congregation had grown so large that they needed to hire The Scala Theatre in Charlotte Street for overflow services.

Living Up West also has an astonishing, detailed account in it about the 1930 AGM and elections in that community that

…were on the point of coming to blows…

…Ultimately the meeting broke up in chaos and confusion.

I am minded to write more about that strange community, not least because those detailed accounts include the names that appear on Grandpa’s certificate.

But at the moment, 100 years on, we get more than enough such chaos and confusion from a more southerly part of Westminster. In any case my purpose today is really to commemorate my Grandpa’s big day in 1922.

Marvellous by Neil Baldwin & Malcolm Clarke, @sohoplace, 15 October 2022

It’s not every day that Janie and I go to the opening night of a west end run that is itself the opening night of a brand new theatre. In fact, @sohoplace is the first new build theatre to open in London’s West End in the last 50 years, making this quite possibly a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to attend such an event.

In fact, this world premier production of Marvellous was first aired at the New Vic in Newcastle-Under-Lyme earlier this year, to rave reviews which are touted in big letters on the @sohoplace website, where information about the autumn 2022 west end run can be found.

Marvellous is based on the true story of Neil Baldwin (click here for Wikipedia entry), an uncomplicated, happy soul who, in 1960, wandered through the gates of Keele University as a local teenager and found a safe space there to bring his dreams to reality. Those dreams mostly involve football and/or meeting famous people. As a result, Neil has been honoured with a British Empire Medal, freedom of the cities of Stoke-on-Trent & Newcastle-Under-Lyme, an honorary degree from Keele, plus, first (and possibly best) of all, since 1968, honorary life membership of Keele University Students’ Union.

Neil never had a formal role at Keele, neither staff nor student, whereas some of us actually did the “hard yards”…OK they weren’t all that hard…for our accolades. I arrived at Keele 20 years after Neil’s teenage adventure started and was still there five years later when we (by which I mean the Students’ Union) voted at a UGM to deem 1985 The Neil Baldwin Jubilee Year. I find myself juxtaposed with Neil in the Concourse article reporting that meeting:

UGM Report: “Neil Baldwin Rules OK”, Concourse Juicy Bits, February 1985 Part Four

Reading the above article, it seems that Mark Ellicott, who was the Speaker at that 1985 UGM, curtailed the discussion on the proposal to name 1985 “The Neil Baldwin Jubilee Year” at Keele, by suggesting that anyone who might vote against the proposal would be:

a nasty individual.

I suspect the proposal was approved by acclamation.

Mark might remember. Coincidentally, I am due to see Mark on 17 October (just two days after seeing the show) and additionally coincidentally he is now running the Outernet music venue just opposite @sohoplace.

Indeed, it is through my sustained Keele connections that Janie and I ended up @sohoplace on the opening night, having spotted on the Keele alumni FB postings that the show was transferring to the West End. I managed to grab a brace of good seats for the opening night, which felt like the right thing to do. Why wait any longer than that?

We got to @sohoplace ludicrously early. We wanted to have a look around this new theatre, which we did, but you don’t really need best part of an hour to do that.

Still, we got to chat with some of the lovely staff at this new theatre who were “beyond excited” about their opening night and some of them were even more excited than that when they learnt that I had known Neil at Keele all those years ago. I told them to expect a fair number of Keele alums during the run, because Keele alums are a bit like that.

We really were ludicrously early

We enjoyed our ludicrously earliness in the charming new space, until the theatre bell went. At that point, of course, our carefully chosen end seats (we’re seasoned theatre-in-the-round types, me and Janie, e.g. at The Orange Tree Theatre, so we know to go for those) meant that we had to make way for more or less everyone.

The place seemed pretty full, possibly completely full, as the show was about to begin. I think I spotted Malcolm Clarke himself in the audience (he’s a big fella) but other than that I didn’t recognise any Keele alums, although I’d guess there were a few others there.

What should I say about the play and production itself?

The play is, in a way, an adaptation of the BAFTA-Award-winning film Marvellous (2014), which was itself a post-modern biopic about Neil’s extraordinary life, in which Toby Jones played the part of Neil, while Neil himself also appeared in the film.

The conceit of the play is that six actors have gathered to workshop/depict Neil’s life, only to be interrupted by “the real Neil” (actor Mike Hugo, whose voice was unerringly Neil-like). Some of the actors are seeking meaning and metaphor from Neil’s story, threatening at times to declaim profound monologues, while “the real Neil” finds ways to steer the telling as a rollicking, fun-packed yarn.

Thus the Keele graduate (along with my broad-based-foundation-year-underpinned education) in me would describe the piece as a post-postmodern (or perhaps I should say metamodern) bildungsroman exploring the life and times of Neil Baldwin…

…whereas Neil would no doubt describe it as:

a funny play about me, to make people happy.

There are no shocks or unexpected plot twists in this play. Indeed the play version has straightened out the time-line of Neil’s life, whereas the film was deliberately vague about time-lines, darting back and forth in time on occasion. This “story straightening” makes the play much easier to follow but in some ways over-simplifies.

For example, the play’s timeline implies that Neil went off to the circus in 1980 and returned to North Staffordshire at the end of the 1980s. The truth of the matter is that his circus career, which the play rightly depicts as an environment in which Neil was repeatedly subjected to mistreatment, must have been a stop-start career with quite lengthy periods of return to his family home and Keele throughout the 1980s – certainly the early to mid 1980s when I was at Keele.

But that is detail.

Most importantly, the play tells its mostly heart-warming, comedic tale with verve and light-hearted spirit. The production is excellent and the performances were mostly pitch-perfect (did you see what I did there with a football pun?).

I was especially taken with Suzanne Ahmet’s depiction of Neil’s mum (Gemma Jones’s film shoes being hard ones to fill) and I commend Gareth Cassidy’s comedy timing, in particular when depicting characters with a huge variety of accents, sometimes having to change articulatory-tack at alarming speed.

Yes, some of the comedy tended towards slapstick or pantomime style, but this is the story of Neil Baldwin, a man who spent much of his career as a clown. The sillier aspects of the play were well-bounded and skilfully delivered. Oh yes they were. Oh yes they were.

Best of all, the audience was absolutely carried by Marvellous on that opening night and I sense that almost everyone left @sohoplace feeling happier than they felt on arrival. As the man himself would say,

that’s marvellous.

Josquin’s Legacy, The Gesualdo Six, Wigmore Hall, 10 October 2022

The Gesualdo Six photo by Sprague-Coolidge, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Gesualdo Six is a wonderful Renaissance choir. However, I had a numerical problem with its promotional material when I first saw them in 2018…

Fading: The Hour Is At Hand, The Gesualdo Six, St John’s Smith Square, 28 March 2018

…which seems to be unresolved despite my pleas. The publicity material for The Gesualdo Six regularly shows seven people.

I’m not really one to talk, having recently been part of a six-person works-outing winning quiz combo known as “The FS Club 7”. But readers, many of whom are early music lovers, will surely know that the name is not a numerical claim, but a pun on the early music (i.e. some of it released even before the turn of the 21st century) pop combo, S Club 7.

But it is not my purpose in this piece to “bring it all back” in the matter of S Club 7’s ancient exploits, but rather to assess the wonderful world of Josquin’s Legacy, as sung by The Gesualdo Six.

While Josquin’s mostly late 15th century music formed the core of the concert, there were also pieces by his contemporaries, Jean Mouton & Antoine Brumel, plus several works by lesser known composers who followed a generation or so later.

It was a mixture of sacred music (both new and old testament liturgy) plus several regret/deploration pieces commemorating the death of fellow composers or patrons.

Here is a link to The Gesualdo’s promo vid for the album which this concert was surely (in part) aiming to help promulgate.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall concert programme.

The concert was a BBC Lunchtime concert, which, if you are reading this within a month of the broadcast, can still be heard on the BBC Sounds App – here.

The Wigmore Hall also streamed this one, so you can watch and listen here.

This was Janie’s first opportunity to see/hear The Gesualdo Six live and she was much taken with the group.

“The Gesualdo Six: great with singing, not so special when it comes to numbers.”

Not too bad a tag line.

The Mysterious Motet Book of 1539, Siglo De Oro, Wigmore Hall, 8 October 2022

The concert and talk were partly promoting this album – naturally we obliged on the day.

We attended this very tasty lunchtime concert and pre-concert discussion.

The noon-time discussion was between Patrick Allies, the artistic director of Siglo De Oro and Dr Daniel Trocmé-Latter, the academic whose work on the context and musical transcription of this “Mysterious Motet Book of 1539″initiated the project.

I found the information about the development of part books as printing became widespread in the Renaissance and the distinction between Protestant and Catholic liturgical music at the time of the Reformation fascinating.

“Cantiones quinque vocum selectissimae,” CRIM, accessed October 8, 2022, https://ricercar.crim.cesr.univ-tours.fr/items/show/3366

Less convincing, to me, was the “mystery” aspect of the project, the conceit of which is, if I might paraphrase, “why might a publisher such as Peter Schöffer the Younger choose to publish a music book of Latin liturgical songs from Milan…in Strasbourg, which was, by 1539, a strongly Protestant town?”

It is well documented that King Ferdinand of Germany granted Schöffer a specific privilege to publish these works. Further, as Daniel Trocmé-Latter himself states in his book on the Singing of Strasbourg Protestants, Schöffer dedicates the publication to Ferdinand with a glowing dedication listing the King’s many titles and exalting him. It seems reasonable to guess that King Ferdinand wanted Schöffer to publish this work in Strasbourg and that Schöffer might have received some favour or favours from the King for doing so.

Keep King Ferdy onside for goodness sake

I was most excited when I worked out that King Ferdinand I was the great-great-great-great grandson of Philip The Bold, whose musical adventures I had been scouring and talking about only a few weeks ago:

Philip The Bold: Wine, Tennis & Song – A Performance Symposium First Presented At The Real Tennis Society Conference During The World Championships,  Prested Hall, 13 September 2022

Much like his illustrious Burgundian ancestors, Ferdinand seems to have been interested in tennis as well as music. Ferdinand was also evidently impressed by Milanese cultural style in several ways, not just liturgical music. He was also, reputationally, a conciliator between Protestants and the Catholics in his lands.

Still, if the purpose of promoting this music as “a mysterious publication” is as conduit for wonderful concerts and premier recordings of several of the pieces form the motet book…bring it on! It’s a thriller.

Here is a link to the concert programme.

The music in the concert was lovely. Janie and I both loved it. They mixed and matched between motets from that 1539 book and some more familiar, later pieces, e.g. by Byrd and Tallis, by way of contrast and comparison, which worked well musically.

Siglo de Oro don’t put much in the public domain, but the sample below is downloadable from the website plugging the album, so you might as well hear Johannes Lupi: Apparens Christus below before you click through and buy the almum.

Lovely, eh?

Enough rabbit from me – it’s time to eat some dinner and listen to that lovely CD we bought as we left the Wigmore Hall.

London Cricket Trust 2022 Awards, Southwark Park, 4 October 2022

To Southwark Park – not to queue for a Royal view, but for the London Cricket Trust Awards 2022.

The event was held four weeks later than intended; not deferred for the Royal mourning, but because 6 September, the original date for the event, was a rare “cats and dogs rainy day” in the 2022 London summer.

We now have 62 live cricket facilities in London parks, with 15 more on the schedule to be ready for the start of the 2023 season.

We had a planning meeting in the Southwark Park Pavilion before the public event.

Ed Griffiths and his team had produced a glorious carrot cake for the awards event, emblazoned with 62 flags to represent the 62 sites already implemented.

Ian Moore of the ECB looks happy, but Arfan Akram of Essex looks concerned

I spotted Arfan’s concerned look and realise that the cake was oriented 45 degrees askew from the direction in which the symbolic Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Surrey flags were pointing.

I reoriented the cake, much to everyone’s relief.

We also discussed our plans for expanding the London Cricket Trust universe over the next couple of years, including a fairly major incursion into Crawley, Sussex (at Sussex and the ECB’s request I hasten to add).

Crawley is the 33rd London Borough – remember where you heard it first.

Then to the awards evening and some exhibition cricket on the Southwark Park pitch – a six-a-side match between Southwark Park Cricket Club and Southwark Park Cricket Club – the clever money was on Southwark Park to win.

This particular batsman was a “six or out” sort of character, who heaved a couple of big shots our way and then missed a deceptively straight ball and got cleaned up. The bowler was so surprised by his own achievement, he even looked to the umpire for “the finger” on a clean bowled

Then Ed Griffiths initiated the awards ceremony, in some ways apologising for the lack of “Grosvenor Hotel / Dorchester Hotel” glitz and glamour, while at the same time celebrating our more down to earth style and purpose.

Ed letting rip about our love of parks ahead of posh hotel ballrooms

Max Holden of Middlesex, one of the eight cricketer-ambassadors from the four LCT counties, attended but somehow managed to evade the cameras at the event.

I am delighted to report that the emblematic carrot cake was properly oriented in the refreshments tent by this stage of the evening.

Then the awards.

Chris Whitaker, the Kent Trustee, presented an activation award to Richard O’Sullivan of Teach Cricket, in particular for his work with Bexley Grammar School.

Then Sophie Kent (our Surrey Trustee…just to avoid confusion) presented a Local Authority activation award to the Royal Borough of Kingston-Upon Thames for activating five sites in 2022:

Cricketer-ambassador Bryony Smith picked up the award on Kingston’s behalf

Then Jawar Ali, our Essex Trustee, presented a site award to Grassroots Trust for their work at Seven Kings Park – a site that has gone from strength to strength since we had our first launch there, exactly four years ago:

Finally, it was down to me to award the Local Authority of the Year Award to Enfield, for the superb cluster of four sites implemented in the spring of 2022 in the Edmonton (south-eastern) corner of Enfield – Pymmes Park, Jubilee Park, Ponders End Park and Church Street Rec – neighbourhoods with many people but (until now) almost no public cricket facilities:

Tim Harrison collecting his award from your truly

Given the 14th century origins of Pymmes Park, I did consider bursting into 14th century song, but at the vital moment I felt a wave of pre-minstrel tension, thus sparing the ears of the audience.

Recycling should apply to comedy material as well as cricketing materials

The evening was a great opportunity to meet up with those we see regularly as part of our cricket charity work along with some of the (usually) unsung heroes whose hard work actually makes the stuff we plan happen.

62 sites is great news, but we aim at least to double that figure, which will mean lots more work, as well as more enjoyable events like this one, over the next few years.