Month: April 2024

But What Of The Third Dumpling?: Consternation In Carnaby, Dining At Donia With John White, 30 April 2024

“Get over it? How could I possibly get over it?”

It’s been a while, what with one thing and another, since John White and I have had a dinner and catch up…just the two of us.

It was time to put that matter right and through the trusty services of this Ogblog, which some consider to be a fifth emergency service, we ascertained that it was John’s turn to choose the restaurant and my turn to burst into tears when the bill is presented.

Looking a little shot to pieces – in truth at the Yoko One last week

John chose Donia – a modern Filipino place in Kingly Court, just off Carnaby Street.

Great choice, it was. We both really enjoyed our meal.

Donia is an up-market take on street food, with an ample opportunity to share many dishes.

We tried, from the menu linked here:

  • Chicken Offal Skewers
  • Adobo Mushroom Croquetas
  • Sea Bream Kinilaw
  • Prawn & Pork Dumplings, White Crab
  • Black Tiger Prawns, Fermented Plum Broth
  • Lamb Shoulder Caldereta Pie
  • Jasmine Rice
  • Corn Tart (dessert)

We washed that down with a bottle of Austrian Riesling (absent from the on-line wine menu, I notice).

We nearly chose the oysters, but as we were just one day away from the months with no Rs in them, we thought better of it.

All was going swimmingly well, until the portion of dumplings arrived.

Three dumplings to be precise.

Three absolutely succulent, delicious and tempting-looking dumplings.

The following dialogue ensued:

JOHN: Oh dear! Typical! A portion of three for two people to share.

WAITER: You’ll just have to fight over the third one.

ME: Do you have any boxing gloves?

WAITER: I think so, I’ll check at the back and bring them with the rest of your dishes.

Matters took a darker turn when the portion of three Black Tiger Prawns arrived -[did you see what I did there?]

WAITER: A portion of three prawns.

ME: Have you found the boxing gloves?

WAITER: No, can’t find them.

John and I were then briefly and thankfully distracted by the need to sing “Happy Birthday To You” to the nice Filipino gentleman at the next table to us, having been set up for the performance by the Irish partner of the birthday-nik.

This is exactly the sort of thing for which I have been taking singing lessons with John’s daughter, Lydia, for the last four years:

Hitting The High Notes With Lydia White, 5 May 2020

John & I talked about many things, not least our very different experiences of revising for our finals 40 years ago…or in my case finding extraordinary ways to avoid doing so. John basically put his head down for 12 weeks after being elected as a sabbatical, whereas I…didn’t. I only mentioned two of the three pieces linked below over dinner, as this first of them – relevant to John and other friends for many other reasons, was un-writ until the next day:

Hitsville USA: The Story Of Motown, An Appointment To Listen At Keele January to March 1984
How Not To Revise For Your Finals At Keele, Part One: The Start Of The Easter Holidays, Early April 1984
A Tale Of Procrastination In Two Cities (And A Campus): How Not To Revise For Your Finals At Keele Part Two, Late April 1984

All too soon it was time to pay. It was at this juncture that matters took a potentially violent turn. While reaching into my pocket to get out my gadget…

…the smart phone which doubles as a payment card for goodness sake. What did you think I meant? And stop sniggering at the back…

…I dropped John’s new business card (or should I say card for his new business) on the floor. These days, contact details are mostly exchanged through QR codes and links like this one, but never mind.

John was apoplectic with faux rage and challenged me to a duel in Hanover Square.

I had visions that I needed to say yes in order to prevent the beautifully appointed Dania restaurant ending up looking like the scene below.

I realised afterwards that John’s Hanover Square challenge was merely a device to encourage me to walk in that direction with John, after dinner, where he could pick up the Elizabeth Line and I could pick up the Central Line.

In any case, surely John knew that there is a clear sign on the boundary of Hanover Square that reads, “no duelling, unless it is the first day of the month, with an R in it”.

Health and safety gone mad, but don’t get us old gits started.

John sometimes struggles with multi-clause rules, so I am reliably informed that he turned up at Hanover Square the next morning, 1st May, with his second, expecting me to do likewise and duel with him.

Naturally, I’ll now live in dread of 1st September for the next four months. Still, hopefully we’ll get together before that. If our next get together includes Mandy and Janie, I expect that the duelling challenge will be long forgotten by 1st September.

Last year all four of us at peace in Pahli Hill

Joking apart, it was a really enjoyable (and peaceful) evening, as always, with John.

Oh No! We Made An Exhibition Of Ourselves At The Tate Modern, Yoko Ono, 24 April 2024

More mummy than a Tutankhamun Exhibition

On a freezing cold Wednesday afternoon, Janie and I hiked to Bankside to see the Yoko Ono Exhibition.

Here is a link to the Exhibition Guide.

We liked the participation elements of the show and threw ourselves into those with reckless abandon.

Mucking about inside a black bag…or rather, “performing Bag Piece” as I should properly describe it, seemed like my idea of fun…

…until I realised that I needed to get up again and get out of the bag…

Rescued by a helpful exhibition steward who also kindly consented to being photographed

Janie seemed more at home in a black bag

Then on to an exhibit where you can draw (and/or photograph) your companion’s shadow on the artwork.

Some wags might suggest that I look better in the shadow than in real life

A rare opportunity to vandalise an art work with both a hammer & the artist’s consent.

Has Janie missed me while I was messing with the art works?

Then on to the refugee boat piece for some more graffiti art

Janie was then horrified to learn that our next contribution to Yoko’s art required us to eulogise our mothers.

Oh crikey!

Let’s work on this one together

Result

Bottoms

I think I’ll play white

More messages of peace even in the lobby outside the exhibition

And in the new swanky bar on the river side of the Tate Modern…

…a message in a bottle of ginger beer.

We enjoyed our afternoon. Shame about the rush hour journey home, saved by dint of using the Elizabeth Line westbound instead of the Central.

All The Bs: Biber, Benjamin, Byrd, Bach…& Brett – Brett Dean Concert, Wigmore Hall, 20 April 2024

“Don’t mess with my partitas, mate!”, Heinrich Biber

Hmmm, we were neither of us sure about this one. We really enjoyed bits of it, while spending some of our listening time hoping for certain pieces to end.

My bad in choosing it.

Here’s a link to the Wigmore Hall stub for the programme we saw. If that ever fails, you can find the pdf programme here.

I guess my eyes were caught by the names Biber, Byrd and Bach, without twigging quite how much contemporary composition we were also to hear. I also spotted that Lawrence Power and Sergio Bucheli were involved – we had very much enjoyed their lunchtime concert last year.

Imitations: Lawrence Power & Sergio Bucheli At The Wigmore Hall, Plus Other Activities, 24 April 2023

Queenslander Brett Dean comes across as a genuinely nice bloke who surrounds himself with musicians who like to play with him. His compositions, though, borrow from well-known composers and tunes, deconstructing and reconstructing them in ways that could only please ears wired differently from ours.

Brett claimed that the music in his concert spanned the 16th to the 21st century, only omitting the 19th century. I would dispute that claim. His “some birthday” piece of 1992 is a sort-of variations on the tune we know as “Happy Birthday To You”, which was first published in 1893 as “Good Morning To All” in “Song Stories for the Kindergarten” by Patty and Mildred J. Hill. While the Hill’s copyright is famously disputed, that tune is surely 19th century.

Here’s the oldest known version – let’s not even think about what Brett’s version looks like on the page

Anyway…

…here’s a nice recording of the first movement of Biber’s 7th parthia, which was the first piece we heard:

Janie and I both found George Benjamin‘s piece too weird for us. George kindly turned up to take the applause afterwards – turns out he’s a Londoner. Here’s a recording of it enabling you to judge for yourselves:

Byrd’s Fantasia pieces are lovely little vignettes. That segment was too short (or there were too few of them) for my taste. Here’s a nice example of one played by a consort of viols (almost certainly what Byrd had in mind) rather than violas and cello – which we heard and still sounded lovely:

The highlight of the evening, for us, was to see the young gifted harpsichordist/pianist Xiaowen Shang play with such joy and expression. For us she played Byrd’s Earl of Salisbury pavan and galliard, plus The Bells – both favourites of mine – on the harpsichord. Below, a video of her playing a lovely piece of Bach on the piano:

The Earl of Salisbury pavan is such a favourite of mine. Xiaowen played it beautifully, if a little twiddley for my taste. Below is Janie’s hand-held recording of Reuben Ard playing it on the electric virginals at Hampton Court Palace last year, for my Gresham Society event there:

Let’s not talk too much about the things Brett Dean did to Byrd’s beautiful pavan and his take on Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 6. Imagine PDQ Bach in a really bad mood, unable to make jokes.

“There’s nothing funny about feet either” (Janie, attrib. PDQ Bach)

It seemed to take an age to segue from Brett’s “treatment” to the concerto itself, which was a rather glorious and suitable choice of closing number for a concert that focussed to a large extent on the idea of two violas. By the time the concerto finally arrived, we thought we’d more than earned some ear candy.

Here’s a lovely rendering of the Bach by some sensible Dutch people who don’t mess with it:

“Is that it?”, asked Janie as the applause rang out for the Brandenburg.

“I do hope so”, I said.

“Will they play an encore?”, Janie persisted.

“I do hope not”. They didn’t.

The Harry Baker Trio, Jazz In The St John’s Smith Square Crypt, 18 April 2024

Will Sach, Harry Baker & Oren Mcloughlin, image borrowed from The Vortex, a fine venue at which The Harry Baker Trio have performed several times

To a late evening jazz concert in the crypt of St John’s Smith Square. The Harry Baker Trio. A young bunch. We’d not seen or heard of them before, but that’s our problem, not theirs.

Here’s the SJSS stub for the event. If SJSS ever mess up their stubbing or something, click here instead.

A small, select audience. A few younger people, plus one or two other tables of seasoned folk like ourselves.

Here’s a short video of the three of them playing one of Harry Baker’s own moody compositions, which we thought were rather good:

But most of the evening comprised them playing standards, the most effective of which were the livelier ones: St Thomas by Sonny Rollins, Empty Pockets by Herbie Hancock, something less well-known by Thelonious Monk and Tempus Fugit by Bud Powell.

These three know what they are doing and play without pretention and with evident joy.

We very much enjoyed our evening. Good luck to them.

Teresa Bestard Perello Visits Noddyland, 13 April 2024

We hadn’t seen Teresa quite literally for decades. Teresa used to work with me. I don’t write up much work-related stuff on Ogblog, but the following is probably my favourite story on the blog that relates to Teresa…not least because it also has cricket in it:

An Evening With Teresa Bestard, Bob Willis & Others, Albertine Wine Bar, 19 August 1997

But somewhat out of the blue, a few weeks ago, Teresa got in touch to say that she would be making a rare visit to London and the timings worked for her to visit Noddyland for tea.

How very civilised.

Janie went to work immediately on the matter of home baked cakes…

…she called Cafe 11 up the road and ordered a huge chunk of lemon cake and a huge chunk of pistachio cake.

Top method for ensuring that you offer the highest quality of baked cakes.

It was really lovely to see Teresa again, after all these years. There was a fair bit of catching up to do on where life had taken us all, but we were soon able to move on to trying to put the world to rights:

One afternoon wasn’t quite enough to solve all of the world’s problems

The afternoon whizzed by, then Teresa went off to have an early evening meet up with her son John. As Teresa said in her note this morning, which Janie and I echo:

Let’s meet up again, before the next 25 years!!!

Joe Lovano Trio Tapestry At The Wigmore Hall, 12 April 2024

To the Wigmore Hall on a Friday evening to see some jazz. Joe Lovano Trio Tapestry, to be precise. Here is the Wigmore hall stub for the event.

I always have a sense of trepidation when I book jazz, ever since my ill-considered choice of “Free Jazz” in 2007: Cecil Taylor & Anthony Braxton on that occasion convincing me that free jazz should be so-called because no-one in their right mind would pay to hear it – click here to read all about that ill-fated evening.

I’m not entirely sure what motivated me to book Joe Lovano, as I was aware that he had some connections with that school but also with many other schools of jazz. I played a few snippets on YouTube and reckoned that Janie’s love of the saxophone would conquer all.

The first two or three minutes did not go well. In particular, Marilyn Crispell’s first few bars on the piano sounded really free, really free, really-really-really free, to me.

Were I a praying person, I would have been praying for the gig to warm up.

It did warm up.

I was more impressed by Carmen Castaldi on the drums than Janie was. He was assisted at times by Joe Lovano himself, who not only played the saxophone but also the gongs and a shaky-stick thing which defies description other than the term “shaky stick thing”. It might have been a cacho seedpod stick. I think that both of them also used some loose seedpods a few times. It all felt a bit experimental and “do what you like” at that end of the percussion section.

But heck, this trio is old enough and experienced enough to do what they like. I have said many times that Wigmore Hall is one of the few places left where stewards refer to us, without irony, as young man and young woman. But these days we rarely feel, as we did that evening, that we are youngsters next to all of the performers. No matter.

Here’s a little documentary released by ECM in 2019 when this trio started working together:

Here’s a recording of a whole live gig from 2022 in Luxembourg, some of which will sound much like the music we heard:

At the end of the evening we ran into John Thirlwell, one of my real tennis pals from Lord’s. Come to think of it, Lord’s is the only other place left, apart from Wigmore Hall, where we are still addressed by stewards as young man and young woman without irony.

“Nobody calls me alto and gets away with it”

Ivan Shakespeare Dinner At Spaghetti House, Holborn, 4 April 2024

Totally genuine picture taken on the night in question

I needed to get one more Ogblog piece in before the end of the 2023/24 tax year, obviously, so have chosen briefly to write up the Ivan Shakespeare Dinner which took place on 4 April 2024.

These gatherings of former NewsRevue writers (most of us relics from the 1990s) are a source of great joy. As Graham said at the end of the dinner,

I laugh far more at one of these evenings than I would if I paid to see almost any comedy show in town.

We’ve been enjoying these events for decades now – a couple of examples below:

Class Of ’92 Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, Café Rouge Holborn, 5 October 2017

Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, Café Rouge Maida Vale, 5 March 2009

John Random is our ringleader for these get togethers. In real life John might not be the most organised person I know, but oh boy is he better than all the rest of us put together in the matter of organising these gatherings.

As the years have gone on, it’s not just been Ivan we have been memorialising but several other “fallen” from our ranks. On this occasion, Barry brought a little memorial photograph tribute, which was lacking a picture of at least one of the fallen and which lacks room for any additional pictures. Either hope way in excess of expectation, or Barry plans to cram in some smaller pictures when the time comes.

John deferred on the quizzing this time, allowing Colin and Graham to confound us with some good quizzy offerings. Graham’s revolved around hit song lyrics, which he (and Sue) expected me to smash [did you see what I did there?] but I came up well short on that game, failing similarly on Colin’s quiz. I don’t think I am much of a solo quizzer to be honest. I work better as part of a team…

A Gloriously Quizzical Evening In The City, 27 September 2022

Anyway, Ivan Shakespeare dinners are not primarily about the quizzing, they are about mirth and convivial dining. I think I’m reasonably good at that.

Colin commented that we don’t often take pictures at these events, which I realised is true. The six of us who gathered this evening: Barry, Colin, Graham, John, Mark, and me – might never again comprise the exact group of an actual Ivan Shakespeare dinner. So obviously the event needed to be commemorated with a picture – see headline and below.

Proof…not that proof should be needed…that we are all absolutely fine.

There is no reason for anyone to question the veracity of this picture. My plea, should the gutter press start to delve deeply where they are not wanted, is to scream, “leave us alone FFS”.