Colin clinched the china after strivin’ for the Ivan, the beaker for the burlesque is the cup snuck by Chalice…
London Cricket Trust Dinner At Soutine, 9 December 2025
This is the second time we’ve had our London Cricket Trust Christmas dinner at Soutine after our last Board meeting of the year.
Smug and self-satisfied we are not, but we are now able to boast 118 non-turf pitch installations and 21 net system installations completed since we started seven years ago. “Way to go”, as our transatlantic friends might put it, but this is a transformational number of facilities in parks around London that would otherwise have been without.
Chris Whitaker, Ed Griffiths, Ian Moore, Sophie Kent and I enjoyed the meal and the company.
Dedanists’ Society Lunch, Lemonia, 11 December 2025
Always a highlight of the festive season, this gathering of dedicated realists provided an opportunity to talk real tennis, in contrast with my activities earlier in the week which were about cricket.
Hard ball doesn’t get much harder than this. I tried to be suitably abstemious, or at least minimally lubricated, as I also had an evening engagement that evening…
The Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, Goodge Street Spaghetti House, 11 December 2025
A slightly depleted gang gathered for the traditional seasonal Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, which has, for decades now, included a form of quizzing for the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Trophy. More recently, since the demise of NewsRevue founder and mentor Mike Hodd, we also play for a Mike Hodd memorial trophy. I won “the Hoddy” last year, which meant that it was my job to come up with a suitable game/quiz for this year’s contest.
The gang for dinner this year comprised me, John Random, Barry Grossman, Hugh Ryecroft, Chalice Am Bergris, Mark Keegan and Colin Stutt.
Barry Grossman started the game proceedings with the Ivan Shakespeare Trophy quiz. I did rather badly and Colin Stutt did rather well.
Then it was my turn to curate a game/quiz for the Hoddy. Below is the game.
Any reader should feel free to write in, ianlharris@gmail.com, and I’ll gladly mark your questions. No pressure, but Chalice scored eight-and-a-half, which was a joint top score, winning by dint of the humour bonus on one of her questions.
It’s not all about quizzes and awards, of course. Heaven forbid. The chat at dinner was lively and witty as always.
Z/Yen Seasonal Lunch, Watermen’s Hall, 12 December 2025
After a hearty hit on the tennis court at Lord’s and an even stouter Board Meeting at King William Street, the Z/Yen throng retired to Watermen’s Hall for seasonal lunch and festivities.
Secret Santa did his best to liven up the post lunch activities, despite certain seemingly intelligent folk strangely finding the idea of Secret Santa hard to understand…not mentioning any names, Bob Pay.
Then quizzing and singing. As part of Z/Yen’s journey towards net zero…in this case zero effort more than necessary…the Z/Yen seasonal quiz bore more than a passing resemblance to the Hoddy one depicted above…apart from the title and Z/Yen logos where the pictures of Mike Hodd are shown above.
Readers are as welcome to have a go and send in your questions for the Z/Yen quiz as you were for the Mike Hodd one. No pressure, but the combined forces of Juliet and Charlotte managed a most impressive nine. Questions that were too clever for their own good did not find favour with the judge, which was a bit of a disadvantage for the more-propellor-headed attendees.
As a further lurch in the direction of net zero (excess effort), I also road tested the idea of getting a random bunch of people to sing Jacobean songs, which worked almost as well with Z/Yen as it seems to be working with the real tennis community on skills nights. But that’s another story. As (will be) the attempt to get Gresham Society people singing in that manner.
Suffice it to say that the Z/Yen community was so motivated by the “We Be Three Poor Mariners” song that they danced around the Watermen’s table while singing it. Apt, I suppose, at Watermen’s.
