It’s Not All Black And White: Meet-Ups With Annalisa, Jilly Black & John White, Mid-October 2023

John-Boy Forking Madeleine In Jikoni

Annalisa Redux, Lunch At Antalya In Bloomsbury, 17 October 2023

As part of my Ogblog project, I am writing up events of 25, 40 & 50 years ago from old diaries and records. A few weeks ago I wrote up Annalisa’s wedding from 25 years ago…

A Long Weekend Near Dumfries For Annalisa de Mercur’s Wedding, Then Sharrow Bay For Afters, 12 to 15 September 1998

…and thought I should make a concerted effort to reconnect with Annalisa. I was able to track down Charlotte, Annalisa’s sister, with relative ease. Charlotte put me back in touch with Annalisa, and the result of all that was a very pleasant, long lunch at Antalya Restaurant.

We had a fair bit of catching up to do, so many years having passed, yet in many ways it felt a bit like catching up after two or three months, not two or three decades, except that the news had a longer span, as it were.

We’ve resolved to try not to leave it 25 years again. Given the entreaties from my other two mid-October gatherings (see below) that they would love to see Annalisa again, I suspect that we’ll find a way to make it a considerably shorter interval next time.

Jilly Black & The Peculiar Matter Of “Rachmaninov Pulling Nudes”, 20 October 2023

I have for some while been helping Jilly to digitise her family photographs from an assortment of different types of negative, transparency, printed pictures and the like. This occasional project hit the temporal buffers over the summer (not least because Jilly’s chosen days tended to end up as train strike days), so was in need of revival.

I more or less expect to receive a note from Jilly explaining why she will be arriving later than the appointed hour (never really a problem for me, given that we are working on this project at the flat), but on this occasion the WhatsApp message gave me pause for thought:

I had to clean an extremely dirty oven and have a coffee…[something about almond milk]…and some Rachmaninov pulling nudes at the same time

I read the message twice, concluded that Jilly must have taken leave of her senses and hunkered down with whatever it was that I was doing for another hour or so before her revised expected arrival time.

Just before Jilly arrived, another message:

OH NO! It was supposed to be “Rachmaninov Preludes”, NOT “pulling nudes”

As I kindly and considerately put it in my reply:

Ha ha. That’s going straight onto the blog at the next available opportunity.

Jilly blames the technology for that verbal mishap, which I must say seems, in truth, entirely reasonable. Annalisa will no doubt have a quiet chuckle to herself about that, as I had been banging on about how much more reliable these technologies have become in recent years…which they have…but when they get it wrong, oh boy can they get it wrong!

Anyway, as always, a very pleasant lunch and afternoon with Jilly, during which we not only digitised quite a lot of her non-standard family negatives but Jilly kindly helped me to identify the locations of my family pictures from Sicily nearly 50 years ago, as Jilly did some tour-guiding there “back in the day”.

John-Boy Forking Madeleine At The End Of A Fine Meal At Jikoni, 24 October 2023

Dinner with John is always long overdue, because if we were both in town more often and had more time on our hands our get togethers would be far more frequent.

Actually our previous gathering had been all four of us (including Janie and Mandy), which was supposed to have been five of us, but Pady Jalali had to cancel her visit.

Dinner At Pahli Hill Bandra Bhai With John & Mandy White, 23 June 2023

It was John’s turn to choose and he chose really well with Jikoni. A really charming place with friendly staff and excellent grub.

We ate:

• Burrata, Bitter Leaves & Figs (with Roasted Muscat Grapes, Pomegranate Dressing)
• Wild Mushrooms on Toast (with Curry Hollandaise, Autumn Truffle)
• Roasted Hake & Clams or Butternut Squash Moilee (with Coconut Chutney)
• Kuku Paka, Sukuma Wiki (with Saffron Rice)
• Paan Madeleines (see headline picture)

I hadn’t realised, but Bella (John & Mandy’s younger daughter) is really into cooking now, both as a hobby and latterly at work. John spotted the Jikoni cook books and decided to treat Bella to one of them.

Ravinder Bhogal (the chef/proprietor/author) took the trouble to chat with us and make a personalised dedication to Bella in the book, which I thought was a charming touch.

Lenny Henry was in the restaurant that night. John reminded me that we had seen him in person before, when he performed at Keele during our sabbatical year. I was able to claim a far more recent sighting – in May when Janie and I went to see Lenny Henry’s excellent one-man play, August In England.

As always with John, the evening flew by and on this occasion we found ourselves the last people in the restaurant. We realised once we spotted that the staff were oh-so-discreetly clearing up around us!