Michael Mainelli was organising this prestigious event each year at that time. 2008 was the year of Bill Emmott, who at that time had only recently stepped down as editor-in-chief of The Economist. It was always a pleasure and a privilege to spend time with Bill and that evening was certainly no exception.
As I had met Bill before, Michael asked me to “look after” Bill ahead of the lecture. Interestingly, Bill asked me if anything big had happened that day, as the world economy was in the midst of a financial crisis at that time and he wanted to be sure that hew asn’t wrong-fotted by events ahead of his talk.
We really liked this play. It was funny and interesting.
It’s one of those verbatim theatre jobbies. Alecky Blythe went round talking to prostitutes at “the parlour” and pulled together a play about them based on their own accounts.
Intriguingly, the cast listened to recordings as they delivered their lines, to add a particular type of authenticity to the verbatim method.
The story of Jewish composers and musicians in the Tudor period is a fascinating one. In theory they were banned from England at that time. In practice, blind eyes were turned when the Tudor court wanted some of the best musicians in Europe to pop in.
In truth, the music was not, to our ears, the most pleasing Tudor period viol music we’d heard. Fretwork are and as always were top notch on this evening, but the modern Orlando Gough work inspired by the story and indeed some of the material, especially the songs, were not so much to our taste.
Still, it was beautiful and interesting and we were very glad we’d booked this concert.
Janie and I had booked the next day (Monday) off. My diary suggests that we simply used that day to sort out stuff and do our own thing. But whatever the plan, we do enjoy a Sunday evening concert that much more when we know we don’t have to work the next day.
Writing this Ogblog piece made me realise that I don’t have any Fretwork in my collection at all. I put that right, but not with Birds On Fire…
I believe this momentous day was my first ever match report for King Cricket. At the time, I was still editing the Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD) website, so I also co-wrote a match report for that one.
I had been campaigning quite hard for some time for MTWD match reports to be impressionistic and alternative, rather than traditional narrative reports of the game. In the early days of MTWD, providing narrative reports was a useful “free service” for fans as it wasn’t so easy to find match reports on-line. But by 2008, there was little need or demand for an amateur version of rapid narrative reportage on-line, although several of the reporters seemed wedded to “ball-by-ball match reports” (as Barmy Kev tended to describe them).
Meanwhile, I’d discovered the King Cricket site and loved his match report rules: “If it’s a professional match, on no account mention the cricket itself. If it’s an amateur match, feel free to go into excruciating detail.” However, King Cricket sought match reports as fillers to be used weeks or months after the event; yet would not (as a commercial site, could not) simply recycle material that had been published elsewhere first.
This pair of match reports is, therefore, probably the only example of me writing pretty much the same story in different words for both sites. From then on, I continued with occasional pieces (as well as editing) with MTWD for another couple of seasons while writing wholly different occasional stuff for King Cricket.
In King Cricket and MTWD match reports, Ged and Daisy are nicknames/noms de plume for me and Janie. Friends (such as Charley “The Gent” Malloy) are always referred to pseudonymously. If my diary is to be believed, Charley was a substitute as my guest for that day, as the day is marked in my diary as a stumpfmerde, which means the original idea was to visit Lord’s that day with “Timothy Tiberelli”. Something important must have come up for Timothy.
One of the regular/irregular meet ups between me and John White. John had not yet been to Lord’s to see proper (i.e. red ball, white clothing) cricket, nor had he yet done the pavilion thing.
As it was my turn to choose the eating venue, I hatched a plan for the meal to be at Hereford Road (which I was sure would be to John’s taste) and for both of us to finish work early for a change, starting our late afternoon at Lord’s. My e-mail to John a couple of days before:
We’re meeting early at Lord’s if you are still on for that – I have 4:30/4:45 in my diary. I have booked Hereford Road for dinner – excellent restaurant between Lord’s and my place – owned and cheffed by the former chef from St John.
So John joined me at Lord’s for an hour or so of cricket and the informal tour of the pavilion, then the restaurant, both of which he seems to have enjoyed – John’s subsequent e-mail words:
As always a lovely evening. It was very kind of you to let me into Lord’s. Although nobody is really that interested I have been endlessly describing the various bars, characters and atmosphere of the place. I don’t know if you won? Orient managed a 2-0 win away at Walsall on Saturday if you’re interested.
…but again only for the last couple of hours, primarily as a convivial meeting place with Steve Tasker to go through some UNISON business; probably thinking through project budgets for 2009. I’m sure we got to see a bit of cricket and enjoy a beer at the end of the day as well.
I have two abiding memories of this Sunday at Lord’s with Daisy.
They both relate to the charming South African gentleman and his Zimbabwean friend who sat next to us in the Mound Stand. We chatted with them at length in the earlier part of the day.
In particular, the Zimbabwean gentleman explained the currency chaos prevailing in Zimbabwe at that time; sacks full of bank notes to buy basic items, the authorities producing ever larger, ludicrously large denomination bank notes; worthless before they had even rolled off the printing presses.
I asked the gentleman if I might buy some from him for our Z/Yen edutainment boat trip games. He said he had none with him but sack loads at home. He said his wife would bring some for me when she was next in London (in a few weeks’ time) and refused to take money for them. He did not even accept the offer of hospitality on the boat in exchange.
To his credit, he followed through with his promise. A few weeks’ later a mysterious woman apparently arrived at our St Helen’s Place offices with a large envelope stuffed with billions upon billions of Zimbabwean dollars:
Try for the fifty billion?
This multitude of notes came in very handy in Z/Yen edutainment games for many years and I really am very grateful to the kind man who took so much trouble to respond to a casual request that came up in chat at cricket.
I also remember feeling slightly sleazy about the matter as, given his refusal to take anything in reciprocation, the transaction felt, in essence, as though I had successfully begged for money – albeit worthless money. Janie and I debated that aspect for a while, as I was at that time in the process of preparing my Gresham Lecture on Commercial Ethics.
But I digress.
The other abiding memory was the disappearance of that South African and Zimbabwean double-act as soon as a heavy storm blew across. It was very heavy rain, but it was scheduled to pass quickly and the new drainage at Lord’s is terrific. I even said to them that I thought the game would restart within an hour of the rain stopping, despite the heaviness of the rain.
The gentlemen both said that they had spent too long over the years waiting for Lord’s to fail to dry, so headed off as soon as the rain relented.
Play did resume within an hour of the rain stopping. It proved to be an exciting match in the end.
Lots of Worm activity (i.e. Janie’s “Wormleighton” family and friends) during August 2008 if my diary is to be believed, but no photographic evidence. For more detail on some of these activities, we might need to ransack the attic and retrieve Janie’s diaries.
Saturday 2 August – Phillie.
My diary also has “Anth” crossed out, so I think the original idea was for Anthea and Mitchell to visit when Phillie was with us, but I think they came the following week and Phillie alone stayed with us at the maisonette and had dinner. Tony was away on business if I recall correctly/
Monday 4 August – Middlesex v Somerset floodlit.
I took Paul (Belmonte) that evening and gave him the pavilion experience for some of the game and also I recall watching a fair bit from the Upper Edrich Stand. I think this was only the second floodlit game at Lord’s; at least only my second experience of it. Here is a link to the scorecard.
Saturday 9 August – Anth
Not sure what we did but quite possibly Anthea and Mitchell came over for dinner. I think my diary would have more detail if it had been a bigger adventure than that.
Sunday 24 August – Worms
The Monday was a bank holiday of course. This will almost certainly be Hil and Chris; I think we might have all have gathered at their place in Bristol – i.e. including Phillie, Tony and Charlie. I think this was the year that Janie and I went down just for the day – a late lunch barbecue – then drove home. Quite a success I seem to recall.
Correction/update: It is clear from Janie’s diary that she and I stayed at the Hotel Du Vin in Bristol that time – possibly our first stay in that place. We stayed in Berringer and at that time they parked us at the hotel. Still a success though, as described.
I tended to get strange e-mails from Barmy Kev in those days, while I was editing Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD):
“Can’t get me poll up”…
…being one that caught my eye as I tried to do forensics on my strange diary scribbles and the even stranger MTWD match reporting for some of this match.
Then I found the Barmy e-mail I was actually looking for:
We seem to be just about OK with reporting for 5 days…
…I will attend 1st session Thurs morning. A strange irony, luckily I realised over weekend my passport has just expired. I have arranged emergency passport re-issued at Victoria Thurs morning which takes 4 hours. While waiting I’ll be at Lords. May ask some Leics players if I can help them out while I’m there.
It is very unlikely I’ll be attending another game this season.
The joke about Leicestershire players was born of the feeling at that time that a couple of counties were relying very heavily on the Kolpak ruling to import a great many players rather than grow their own. Frankly, at that time, Middlesex were not doing much better in the home grown v imports department, but at least had been sowing the seeds of a much improved youth system.
My diary suggests that I wasn’t at the ground on the Thursday but was there on the Friday… …I think I managed to rejig things a little and get to the ground for some of the day both of those days.
My main task at the tail end of that week was going through the Payroll Giving Awards; an event for which I was chairing the panel of judges at that time. Lord’s was an ideal venue for going through the thick file of applications and that match perfectly timed for the task. I just didn’t want match reporting duties as well.
Astute Ogblog followers might read between the lines and conclude that I perhaps did some work that day and/but was able to spend some of the day at home with the internet radio on…
