The main plan was to have a tapas meal at Barrica. Janie and I were perhaps inspired by the tapas at Providores a few weeks earlier, perhaps we were all inspired by Charlie’s suggestion that some of us might be eating more than others of us due to various lunchtime arrangements.
Anyway, we met for a drink first of all at the trendy MyHotel just the other side of Tottenham Court Road. It is now (2022) called MyBloomsbury. I went with some trepidation as, some months earlier, I had taken coffee there with Mary, debriefing after a meeting nearby. A miscommunication meant that both of us thought the other had paid and we had both walked out without paying. I discovered the inadvertent wrongdoing only come expense claim time at the end of that month.
I thought openness and transparency would be the best approach, so on arrival I informed the waiter of the mistake on the previous occasion and said that I owed the place for a couple of cups of coffee.
The waiter laughed nervously and told me not to worry about it. I think he thought I might be a dangerous lunatic.
Still, the place is indeed trendy so cocktail hour had the right buzz and the right sorts of drinks. I enjoyed a dry white wine as per usual.
Barrica’s food was pretty good, authentic Spanish tapas, although it seemed a bit crowded and noisy (I guess it was a Friday evening) compared with the other excellent tapas places I had previously tried around that area.
Janie and I were supposed to go with Hari and Mawju, both Sri Lankan people we know, Hari from the Lloyd’s bank in Ealing and Mawju from the Atari-Ya Japanese fishmongers (long story, don’t ask).
Also don’t ask why Mawju didn’t turn up and didn’t call to excuse himself or return his ticket.
Anyway, we had a very pleasant day at the cricket with Hari, who loved our picnic and we loved the cake he brought from home as his offering. It all sounds a bit TMS commentary box, doesn’t it? In some ways it was.
The match had been badly rain-affected the day before so we got an elongated day on the Monday. England did very well to turn a seemingly nailed-on draw into a possible winning position by the end of the day, although we had a sneaking suspicion that it would end up a draw anyway.
…what could be a more fitting conclusion than a late night concert at the Wigmore Hall?
Back then, I used to describe Lord’s and the Wigmore Hall as the last two places on the planet where stewards refer to me as “young man”.
Now (as I write in late 2017) I’m afraid that not even the stewards at those two places call me “young man” any more.
But I digress.
This was a lovely short concert of Paco Peña and friends making glorious music together.
I’m pretty sure that Janie picked me up and whisked me back to Sandall Close after the concert – this was our penultimate weekend there. Another story.
Unusually the first day of a Lord’s test match on a Friday.
That day I went with Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett, Ian “Iain Spellright” Theodoreson and Mark “Uncail Marcas” Yeandle.
The following extract from my e-mail to Mark and Chas the day before reveals the expectation of a very hot day:
Weather looks set fair for tomorrow.
Please could you both bring plenty of water with you. I’ll have my hands full and Ian T was muttering about “fancy juices” as his contribution to the soft drink side of things, but I think we might all need good old fashioned (still) H2O. Especially given the weather and the picnic I have planned.
Don’t forget your booze rations also – as if I had to remind you about that!…
Mark threatened (and saw through his threat) to bring some Frittenden strawberries with him. His strawberry offering the previous year had gone down an absolute treat. If you look closely at the picture of Charles below from that report, you can make out the colour and shape of a Frittenden strawberry. The 2011 batch was delicious, but I believe the 2010 batch was “peak strawberry”.
Click the photo or the link below to see that May 2010 match reported in full
A few years later there was a potentially ugly fruit incident, as Ian and Mark were reunited with me at the test on the same day. Mark brought famous Frittenden strawberries while Ian brought a giant bag of plump cherries that he had been unable to resist en route. This competitive soft fruit showdown could have been very bloody indeed, but it mercifully led only to MAD (mutually assured delectation):
Back to planning for a very hot June day in 2011. Chas wrote back threatening to soak me in factor 30 sunscreen.
I don’t recall the exact nature of Ian T’s fancy juices, but I think they might have been the flavoured water variety, which does work rather well on a ludicrously hot day.
Ian T seems to specialise in weather extremes when he comes to Lord’s with me. Our 2014 visit (which will eventually be published on King Cricket, I believe) was one of the hottest days I ever remember at Lord’s and Ian nearly melted.
I suspect that I was quite careful with the booze, because I was going to see a late night concert of Paco Peña at the Wigmore Hall after stumps. I suspect that all of us were a bit careful with the booze, partly because it was a very hot day.
I do recall this one, despite the heat, being an especially enjoyable, dreamy day at Lord’s. England were hot off the back of an away Ashes win and had even won the first test of the summer the previous week. What could ever, possibly go wrong again for the England test team?
I don’t think this one worked quite as well for us. Yes, there was still sparkling wit to the dialogue. But basically this play was yet another drunken gathering descending into chaos comedy.
Excellent production qualities with top notch cast and creatives, as we expect from the Royal Court, but not top drawer Royal Court to our taste.
Janie and I went to this fabulous exhibition early evening on a Friday – this notion of late opening of museums and galleries on a Friday evening was quite new then…
We had arranged to meet Anthea and Mitchell at Salt Yard later that evening. A couple of months earlier I had enjoyed a superb meal at Salt Yard with John Boy:
I recall Mitchell being there when we arrived at Salt Yard and then Anthea arriving last, in a bit of a “sorry I’m late” flap…very much in character.
But the excellent food and wine soon had everyone in a chilled and good mood at the end of the week. For me and Janie, with the fascinating cultural exhibition before the gathering too, it was a super start to the weekend.
We didn’t book much of the Lufthansa Festival that year, sadly, as the programme was excellent, but we did book this one superb concert by Ensemble Caprice.
No problem buying CDs of the music we heard at this one:
I still listen to these albums quite a lot. The Telemann is the more interesting but both are good.
We miss that Lufthansa Festival now its gone – the scaled down spring baroque festival at SJSS is a very modest affair by comparison. A shame we mostly missed out that year but at least we got to see one good’un in these visitors from Montreal, Ensemble Caprice.
Very soon after Janie and I returned from India and Sri Lanka, Janie said that she wanted to start looking for a house.
Kim was a very helpful friend in the early stages of that process, spending time going around with Janie looking at quite a lot of unsuitable properties which helped also to sharpen the mind on what might be suitable. I would not have been a patient friend for that part of the process.
I had my first sighting of the house that was to become our Noddyland home on 2 April. Janie and Kim had seen it a couple of weeks earlier, I think, but it was not so easy for the agency to get us access via the tenants, so my visit with Janie took some organising. I recall seeing a couple of other properties ahead of seeing the actual Noddyland house that we bought.
We made an offer on the house within minutes of seeing it (2 April) and I realise, looking at the diary for the next few weeks, that we managed to get the trnasaction completed remarkably quickly. At the time, it seemed to be taking for ever, but that’s “impatient me” for you.
14 April 2011 – Yet More Mock Tudor – An Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner
Ivan Shakespeare
Ivan Shakespeare was the first of our NewsRevue gang to shuffle off this mortal coil [did you see what I did there?], in February 2000. We’ve been holding gatherings in his name, usually three or four times a year, ever since.
I have little on the record about the 14 April 2011 gathering. For certain it happened, as John Random, as usual, sent out reminders and I had correspondence with him before and after the event. Not least, John thanked me for a plethora of Indian language newspapers for him to use as teaching aids.
John’s post dinner round robin note did not name names of those who attended, nor of any who did not, so it would have been some but not all of the usual suspects. In those days, we still gathered at Cafe Rouge, Clifton Road…now long gone.
23 April 2011 – Return To Noddyland
That morning we met the charming Saffari couple who were selling us the house. Janie also arranged for someone (presumably Johnny Carpet) to come and measure up so I think we all sort-of knew for sure that the deal was going through by then, although there were still some i’s to dot and t’s to cross.
There was some peculiar business about a ransom strip in front of the gate that had been put there for conservation estate purposes but which had landed itself in some sort of legal limbo which meant that, technically speaking, The Queen might have inherited the right to squat outside and deny us access to our own house.
“One is so happy to be here in Noddyland”
We didn’t discuss that technicality with the Saffari couple that day; we mostly talked about what a lovely house it is…which it is.
The next day we went to Kim & Micky’s for lunch, primarily to help Kim celebrate her birthday a few days early. I should imagine they went off to St Trop for the birthday proper. We also almost felt that we were celebrating our house purchase, but not quite, because you don’t celebrate that sort of thing until the ink is on the contracts.
13 May 2011 – Sealing The Deal With Ink & Tapas
The diary note says:
5.00 Brian Fraiman => tapas
Janie and I went to Brian’s office to scribble on various pieces of paper to make the house purchase happen. Brian declined to join us across the way at The Providores & Tapa Room, where Janie and I celebrated properly on a glorious spring evening by eating some tasty tapas and enjoying a couple of glasses of wine. The tapas int his place was a sort-of Kiwi fusion with Spanish tapas style and was very good indeed. I think Johnboy and I went there to try the restaurant proper some months or possibly more than a year later.
