So many events postponed and cancelled before Christmas. Then Janie and I spent the Christmas period doing Crisis and stuff. Then, just around the time I was supposed to start doing nice stuff again, towards the end of January, I went down with the mildest of mild doses of Covid, requiring me to isolate again and cancel out my social engagements.
I was really looking forward to seeing John for the evening. He had chosen a new restaurant that has had rave reviews: Zahter. It read and sounded wonderful. Here’s a link to the website.
But so used to cancelation had I become, that, around 16:30, rather than simply looking forward to spending the evening with John, I became convinced that John would call any second to cancel the evening.
But no cancelation call was forthcoming so I off I set to Foubert’s Place; a location I hadn’t visited in years…OK, I’ve barely visited any Central London locations in years…but in the matter of this location, many, many years.
The service was excellent – explaining the menu – from which we chose a selection of cold and hot mezes to share, rather than choosing any main dishes.
We tried:
Atom – a chilli yoghurt dip – a bit spicy for my taste these days;
Fava – a broadbean based dip very much to my taste;
Karides Guvec – tiger prawns in garlic butter;
Manti – meatballs which they kindly did for us without the walnuts.
A quick look at the Liberty clock on the way home, although it sadly was not an appropriate time to see the movement of the moving bits, unless we were willing to wait around for quarter of an hour or so…which we were not.
Our first visit to the theatre for quite a while. The Covid pandemic stopped us in our theatre-going tracks back in March 2020.
Indeed we nearly missed out on this one. I had booked for us to see a preview on 22 January, but the week before the Royal Court wrote to me saying they had to cancel the first few previews due to…you guessed it…Covid.
I called to see if we could get decent seats to see the play relatively early in the run. I spoke with a helpful-sounding Royal Courtier on the phone.
Now let’s see. You were booked in seats E9 & E10 for the preview…
…I can offer you E8 and E9 exactly two weeks later, the evening of 5 February.
Problem solved, I thought. But mischievously instead I said:
…but E8 & E9 is not the same thing as E9 & E10.
I heard a gulp at the other end of the phone, so I thought best to put the poor fellow out of his misery quickly.
…joking! Problem solved.
Ironically, as it turned out, no-one sat in E10 on the evening itself and someone rather tall was sitting in front of E8, so we did, in the end, occupy E9 & E10.
But that’s not so weird a story, whereas the play is a seriously weird story. Here’s the teaser:
I thought the play was wonderful and awe-inspiring. A sort-of pastiche of scary folk tales and fables, a sort of exploration into perennial abuse of women through the ages and the meaning of autonomy.
Alistair McDowall’s plays are a bit like that. Janie and I both absolutely loved Pomona…
…whereas The Glow split our jury, as had X – the other McDowall we had seen at the Royal Court some five years ago. Janie found elements of The Glow disturbing and was disconcerted by the extreme time-hopping involved.
Janie was not quite as disconcerted as the young woman who was sitting in front of us, who nearly jumped out of her skin at the coup de theatre that signalled the end of the first half of the play. The young lady told us after the play that she had recovered herself and enjoyed the play as a whole.
My own praise for the fascinating play also extends to the superb cast. Ria Zmitrowicz was truly excellent in the lead, ably supported by Rakie Ayola, Fisayo Akinade and Tadhg Murphy. Vicky Featherstone sure knows how to direct and produce this sort of play – who knew?
Not the easiest watch for those easing their way out of the pandemic, but if you want to see a full tilt piece of spellbinding theatre, The Glow might well do the job for you. It certainly did so for me.
Sanity Clause, Anyone? – Christmas Eve & Boxing Day
Janie and I are not exactly model celebrants of Christmas. In recent years we have made it our habit to volunteer, primarily for Crisis at Christmas, which is a wonderful charity.
Yet Janie does have a fondness for unusual Christmas decorations, and has long-regretted not photographing the “Christmas Gnomes Tea Party” we drove past on Popes Lane two or three years ago.
But we did stop and snap the above acrobatic (or possibly desperate) Santa on Boston Manor Road, setting aside our santaphobia and praising the owner of the house for his stunning fandangle.
As if that wasn’t excitement enough before Christmas, we also did our first Crisis shift of the year on Christmas Eve:
We are Ged & Daisy for our Crisis shifts. Daisy here was sporting Christmas (and for that matter Z/Yen corporate) colours.
Daisy, for reasons known only to her, tends to pronounce the word “crisis” as “crises”, as if one massive homelessness crisis at Christmas isn’t enough.
Daisy was tempting fate this season with her plurality, in my view. Indeed, we swiftly found ourselves embroiled in a second crisis. The Duchess of Castlebar (Daisy’s mum) had yet another nasty fall on Boxing Day, not even two hours after we left her. So that’s hospital again (the third time since the start of November) and all the palaver that entails.
Keeping calm in a Crisis…or crises
All Isn’t Quiet On New Year’s Day
On New Year’s Day, we were back to Crisis. A smaller team that day with plenty to do; we ended up running the coffee stall / canteen, the clothes store and delivering food to rooms on that shift.
On Christmas Eve, there was masses of donated stock but it was difficult to find individual items of the requisite type and size for each guest, so some people were taking/writing down orders in the “clothes store”, others were fulfilling them from stock in the basement and then delivering the clothes orders to the rooms. Time consuming but basically a systematic sequence of tasks. Daisy and I worked on fulfilling and delivering clothes orders on Christmas Eve.
New Year’s Day was different. Stocks were running low, with mostly super-large and super-small sizes remaining available. Almost all of the stock had been moved upstairs to the clothes store.
After our session running the canteen, Daisy and I were allocated to the clothes store. That is when we met The Sartorialist; a guest with a particular interest…you might even describe it as an obsession…with the garb on offer.
Daisy tells me that I handled the situation with great patience, but I suspect that my face was betraying whatever my words and tone were belying – I’m not a naturally patient chap. Perhaps sensing my frustration, The Sartorialist kept apologising to me for his persistence, without ever tempering his resolve to see just one more garment, in case it turned out to be a size/colour/style/brand that suited him.
At one point he said to me:
You’re well dressed – why shouldn’t I be?
I pointed out to him my tracksuit bottoms and trainers, similar to those I had worn for tennis a few hours earlier (see below).
I was talking about your top. I don’t wear tracksuit bottoms and I would never, ever wear training shoes.
I thought about my choice of jumper for my Crisis shifts (see above). It must be more than 25 years old. Daisy and I bought it when visiting a provincial town; the weather had turned unseasonably cold on us and I wanted a cheap, comfortable, washable pullover to use as layering.
I also wondered what The Sartorialist might have made of my choice of top – in particular headgear, for tennis (see below).
Geddy In Disguise…With Glasses.
At that juncture, I thought it best to hand the customer-facing side of the Crisis clothing emporium over to Daisy.
Consummate professional salesperson that she is…
…at least in the matter of selling…by which I mean giving away by dint of talking up…charitably-donated goods…
…Daisy successfully persuaded The Sartorialist to take three items of clothing and move on, enabling us to progress with other customers, who were forming an increasing long, yet surprisingly patient, queue.
4 January – A Charitable Keele Connection On Our “End Of Term” Shift
One of the good things about Facebook is the way it informs you about connections with other people who know your friends. On Holiday Monday I joined the relevant private Facebook Group for people who were doing Crisis volunteering shifts in our slot, to spot that one of the volunteers, Amber Bauer, is a friend of Sally Hyman, whom I know from “back in the day” at Keele.
Sally runs a wonderful charity, CRIBS International. It turns out that Amber knows Sally through that charity.
I wondered whether Amber would be on our 4 January shift. I didn’t spot anyone named Amber during our pre-shift briefing, but that “end of term” briefing was…very brief.
But soon after the briefing, one of my first customers when I was staffing the canteen/coffee stall again, had the name badge Amber, so we connected in person.
A little later, Daisy and I took over from Amber on outdoor duty…
…yes it was punishingly cold doing that duty once the temperature had dropped that evening…
…enabling Daisy to take pictures of a very chilly Amber handing over to a not-yet-but-soon-to-be-chilly me:
I look comparatively cold already and I haven’t started the duty yet. Mind you, Amber seemed awfully pleased to see us when we turned up to take over.
Amber and I both reckon that the above picture and story should make Sally Hyman smile – not least because it includes a soft plug for Sally’s wonderful international homelessness charity.
You Want To Know More About The Charities Mentioned In This Piece?…Of Course You Do…Clickable Links Below:
This piece of amateur research was triggered, towards the end of 2021, by a casual enquiry by Carl Snitcher, a leading light in the Dedanists & Real Champions world, while we were on our way to play a match at Hampton Court Palace.
Carl was wondering whether the asserted date of 1740 for the first real tennis champion was accurate. Some had suggested it was not. I was the only amateur tennis historian Carl had to hand at that moment.
The answer to the exam question: “Did Clergé become the first tennis champion in precisely the year 1740?”, is a reasonably straightforward one; I shall answer it briefly in the next section of this piece.
But I realised, on engaging in this small piece of research, that, far more interesting than the numerical, “when?” question, is the more human query, “who on earth was this initial tennis champion Clergé?”
Other great players of this time (1740- 1753) were Clergé, the elder Farolais, La Fosse, Barcellon (the father), and Barnéon. Clergé was the most remarkable…
Paumiers qui acquirent, il y a trente ou quarante ans, une certaine réputation de force, furent les sieurs Clergé, Farolais pere, La Fosse, Barcelon pere & Barneon ; — le sieur Clergé étoit le plus vanté…”
…except in the matter of dates, where Manevieux is saying “these past thirty or forty years” rather than stating specific dates. Manevieux no doubt spent several years writing his amateur treatise.
As an early music lover, I am at home with the use of “circa” for dates derived from estimates based on best available evidence. I find the term “circa 1740” suitably precise yet hedged for the starting date of Clergé’s pre-eminence.
Who Was This Manévieux Fella?
Before we explore the story of Monsieur Clergé, I’d like to delve a little into the author, Manévieux , upon whose 1783 writings our knowledge of the early tennis champions is based.
He is almost certainly otherwise (or more completely) known as Louis-Claude Bruyset de Manévieux, who published a couple of other works, in particular a eulogy to his great uncle,Jean André Soubry (1703-1774), Treasurer of France in Lyon.
One of my bugbears is that we have no picture of Clergé, nor of Manévieux for that matter, but there is a contemporaneous portrait of Soubry, which will have to do in the “eye candy” department for the time being:
Portrait by Nicolas de Largillière, presumed to be Jean André Soubry, c1729
In the 1783 tennis treatise, Monsieur Manévieux describes himself as an amateur. Whether he means amateur tennis player, writer or historian is unclear. Sounds like my kind of guy in any case.
Manévieux dedicates the treatise to Le Comte D’Artois, who went on to become Charles X after the Bourbon Restoration. As a youngster, Charles, Count of Artois was famous for his drinking, gambling and womanising (presumably he wasted the other 10% of his time), the fashionable rumour of the time was that Charles was having an affair with his sister-in-law, Marie-Antoinette. He famously won a bet with Marie-Antoinette that he could get his architect, François-Joseph Bélanger, to design and build a party palace within three months. The result, at enormous expense, was the 1777 Château de Bagatelle.
Charles, Count of Artois, painting attributed “after Antoine Callet”, c1775
Charles, Count of Artois was unusually keen on tennis for a French royal of his era. Thierry Bernard-Tambour (good name for a tennis historian, Tambour) in his article on 18th century royal paumiers, registers, from royal archives that that…
Janvier-Jacques [Charrier] became the King’s paumier in 1763, also [paumier to the] Count of Artois
and
[ball making by] Etienne Edmond [Quillard] in 1765 for the Dauphin and the Count of Artois
…which means that Artois did play tennis from his infancy. The Manévieux dedication suggests that Charles retained an interest in the game into adulthood. Shneerson (pp76-77) provides some fascinating insights into Charles’s extravagant behaviours and spending around the game. D’Artois apparently had a hissy-fit when spectators applauded his opponent in a public court. After that, he only wanted to play on private courts. Between 1780 and 1786 he had his architect, Belanger, build him a court on the Boulevard du Temple – as much for drinking, gambling and womanising as for watching/playing tennis if the designs are anything to go by. That was probably the last pre-revolution court built in France.
Charles spent several years in England during his exile from France, during which time he is known to have played regularly at the James Street (Haymarket) court, spectators presumably having been warned not to cheer the future King of France’s opponents.
But let us now return to Monsieur Clergé himself.
Wikipedia (Unusually Not) To The Rescue
My usual starting point for research of this kind is Wikipedia, but on this occasion, at the time of writing (December 2021), Wikipedia was having a bit of a shocker in the matter of our first named tennis champion, Monsieur Clergé.
Parenthetically, it is amusing to note that Louis de Rouvroy,The Duke of Saint-Simon founded his own fame and reputation as a memoirist on the back of his annotations of Dangeau’s memoires, despite stating that Dangeau’s writing was:
of an insipidity to make you sick.
Still, the period of the Dangeau memoires; 1684-1720, covered the last 30+ years of The Sun King, Louis XIV’s reign and the early years of the Louis XV era.
Here is an example from the autumn of 1685:
Sunday 4 November 1685, in Fontainebleau. – The King went to shoot; My lord [Louis the Grand Dauphin] did not go out all day; he made the good jeu de paume players play, and Jourdain played better than little Breton or little Saumur had ever played, as people say at that time.
I am not the first tennis historian to trawl those 19 volumes for nuggets of information about tennis, nor will I be the last. It is mostly pedestrian stuff, but I discern and summarise the following:
tennis was on the whole falling from favour in royal circles during that period;
more or less only in the autumn, when the royals were at Fontainebleau and Versailles for the hunting season, does tennis feature at all in their lives;
younger members of the royal family would “have a go” – Louis the Grand Dauphin was still having an occasional hit in the earlier period of those diaries. For example, on 3 December 1686, he played on the three-day old new court at Versailles – the Grand Dauphin continued to play regularly there throughout the winter of 1686/87, but the novelty of playing there soon wore off for him;
there was more enthusiasm for watching professional players play than for having a hit themselves – the royals tended to watch if the weather was too poor for hunting and/or if they were entertaining visiting dignitaries, such as exiled English royals;
one of the Jourdain brothers was the pre-eminent player in the mid 1680s at least;
in October 1687 the professionals at Fontainebleau petitioned The Sun King for a licence to exhibit their skills in Paris; this he granted:
Thursday 9 October 1687, in Fontainebleau. – The King saw the good players of jeu de paume play, who asked that they be allowed to take money to see them play in Paris; it would earn them money, and apparently the king will allow them.
Sunday 26 October 1687, in Fontainebleau. – The king saw the good players of jeu de paume playing, and granted them the privilege they asked for; they will play twice a week in Paris, and will be displayed like the actors. They are five: the two Jourdains, le Pape, Clergé et Servo.
I believe the above mention of Clergé The Elder to be the only one by Dangeau himself. There is a further mention in the autumn of 1690 which comes from a Saint-Simon footnote, the detail presumably extracted from Mercure:
Thursday 12 October 1690, in Fontainebleau. – The bad weather made it difficult for people to go hunting. – The king led the exiled royals [James II & Mary of Modena] of England to the tennis court, where the great players played (1).
(1) “The weather was so bad in the afternoon that we could not go chasing the deer. So we only went to the game of jeu de paume, where a game between the Jourdain brothers and le Page, Clerget [sic] and Cerveaux against them, gave a lot of pleasure.” (Mercure of October, p. 297)
The great journalistic tradition of mis-spelling names goes back at least to the 17th century
Eagle-eyed lovers of tennis might have noticed that the account suggests that the exhibition match might have been three-a-side, or possibly three-against-two. Accounts from the 17th and 18th century, such as they are, suggest that such matches were quite common at that time – possibly even the norm for exhibition matches.
What Do We Know About The Initial Tennis Champion, Clergé The Younger?
The first thing to say is that there must have been an elder and younger Clergé, despite some histories suggesting that the Clergé referred to by Dangeau in 1687 and the Clergé referred to by Manévieux as being pre-eminent for some years from c1740 might have been one and the same person.
Even those of us who marvelled at the skills displayed at Lord’s, until recently, by nonagenarians Robin Simpson and the late Major Jan Barnes, would admit that the giddy heights of skill described by Manévieux are probably only at their peak for a decade or two or (at a push) three.
possibly a son, or grandson, of a player of the same name, mentioned above [by Dangeau]
…while in Real Tennis Today and Yesterday, John Shneerson is more resolute:
probably the grandson of the Clergé who played in front of Louis XIV.
I agree. The tennis business tended to be a family business, in those days to an even greater extent than it is today. Assuming our c1740 champion Clergé was the grandson of the Louis XIV petitioning and performing Clergé, it is probable that the father was also “in the business”.
In truth, we know almost nothing about the early life of the younger Clergé.
The Master Paumiers who acquired, over the past thirty or forty years, a certain strong reputation, were Messrs Clergé, Farolais (the father), La Fosse, Barcelon (the father) & Barneon. Mr Clergé was the most extolled by the strength of his first stroke, which he executed perfectly. He was the man who played the doubles game best, taking only the shots he had to, according to the rules, bolstering & warning his second, strong or weak, to take the ball. Very different from other players, who tend to make their second useless, by hogging the whole game.
When Clergé had taken the serve [hazard end], he advanced to the last [winning] gallery, appearing to defend the galleries with volleys from boasts, cross-court forces and shots off the tambour, warning his second to play the others. On the service side, he would take his place in the line of four tiles [around chase one-and-two] near the [dedans] post, where he volleyed forehand or backhand the forces or boasts off the main wall. He preferred to allow the ball to land a chase than to move from this position & let his second play all the other shots.
Nobody, in a word, was nor will be held in higher regard, not only for the strength of his game, but also for the strength of his character – Mr Clergé was a totally honest paumier. There was no deceit to his game nor did he succumb to the commercial interests that sooner or later tend to prejudice the professional player; he never played for money.
It really does sound as though he was a great bloke, Clergé, as well as a great player.
We think we know just a little more about his later life.
Between those two notable/notarised events, we find our hero assisting Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé in putting the finishing touches on his jeu de paume court at Chantilly, in 1756/1757.
It was Clergé who put the finishing touches on that Chantilly jeu de paume and who also acted as paumier to Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé for some while after that:
It is to Henri-René Clergé du Gillon, master paumier, that we entrust the regulatory finish of the room, to namely “the black painting of the Jeu de Paume three separate times”. Finally, we equip the room with nets and we buy different “utensils” needed for the game for nearly 1,500 pounds.
By that time, Guillaume Barcellon had been appointed paumier to King Louis XV, in 1753. Modern historians suggest that Clergé’s supremacy as a player had probably waned by then and that Barcellon was the champion player for a dozen or so years.
We also know, based on an undated mention in Manévieux, that Antoine-Henri Masson at one time (probably after 1765, once his supremacy had been established) challenged and defeated Clergé and Charrier, having given them half-fifteen in handicap.
La Taille et La Taille the younger, Bunelle, Clergé, Farolet, Masson, Charrier and Barcellon
But, when Manévieux lists paumiers and their courts at the end of his 1783 treatise, the name Clergé is absent. Possibly he had retired, possibly he had died between 1775 and 1783.
There might now be enough evidence gathered in one place (I’m pretty sure this article is more comprehensive than anything previously published about Clergé) to enable a keen historian to dig deeper and uncover more.
Picture This: Henri-René Clergé du Gillon, aka “Clergé The Younger”
I mentioned earlier that it seems such a shame that we have no portrait of the first champion of tennis, the first sport to establish a continuous world championship.
We have images of Barcellon and Masson, who followed soon after Clergé The Younger, but none of our hero. Perhaps he eschewed pictorial publicity as well as pay for play.
So I decided to commission a fine artist – the only amateur fine artist I had to hand at that moment – to create an artist’s impression of what Clergé The Younger might have looked like.
“Nobody was nor will be held in higher regard, not only for the strength of his game, but also for the strength of his character ”
There you have it – Clergé The Younger – he looks and sounds like such a fine chap.
Acknowledgements
With grateful thanks to the many encouraging and helpful people whose comments and ideas have shaped and are shaping my scribblings on tennis history. In particular thanks to Thierry Bernard-Tambour for additions and corrections (currently in process).
In a month during which almost everything was cancelled, apart from work, charity, exercise and political shenanigans…
…the adverb colander has literally (did you see what I did there?) helped to keep me sane. This relative sanity, despite the fact that the adverb colander is one of Rohan Candappa’s crazy ideas.
Last year, Rohan wrote and narrow-casted (within our little ThreadMash writing community) an adverb-inspired vignette each day during advent, having asked the ThreadMash community to send in three adverbs each. Rohan would draw that day’s adverb from the colander depicted above.
This year, Rohan again asked us all to chime in with adverbs, but this time the colander randomly allocated out those pesky modifiers for all of us to have a go…or two…or three.
I offered up:
Undeniably, Infrequently & Tediously.
The colander responded with the following adverbs for my inspiration:
I don’t much like soccer football. I’m certainly not one to be deeply affected by a football match. But one match is deeply embedded in my psyche. The Republic of Ireland v Albania in May 1992.
Bobbie and I went to Ireland for a week at that time. My first proper break since my back injury two years earlier and my first ever visit to Ireland. I didn’t take a camera and I didn’t take a notebook, making it the least documented trip I have ever taken abroad.
That football match between Ireland and Albania dominates my memory for two reasons.
Firstly, I remember that, in the build up to the match, the Irish media was full of news about the visiting Albanian team. Initially RTÉ news worried, on behalf of the visitors, because the weather was unseasonably cold in Ireland and the visitors reported an insufficiency of warm clothing. Two days later, RTÉ news appealed to the people of Ireland, asking them to stop sending jumpers, cardigans and the like to the Albanian team’s hotel, because the visitors were now inundated with warm clothing.
A deeply charitable nation, the Irish.
Also a nation deeply passionate about their sports teams.
The Republic of Ireland had done unexpectedly well in the 1990 Football World Cup. This May 1992 match was at the start of the qualification campaign for the next World Cup.
By the time the night of the match arrived, Bobbie and I had moved on from Dublin to Cork. Bobbie is a keen football fan whose dad was Irish. We resolved to watch the match in a suitable-looking pub near our hotel.
As usual in Irish pubs, Bobbie and I were warmly received as guests.
There was much genial chatter about the warm clothing news items. The vibe was also charged with keen expectation. The throng expected their now-successful Ireland team to win a qualification match against Albania.
At half time and beyond, with the score still at 0-0, the atmosphere in the pub became tense. Bobbie whispered to me that we should make a hasty exit if the match failed to go Ireland’s way.
Mercifully, Ireland scored a couple of goals in the last half-hour of the game, turning the mood into a memorably shebeen-like party, with plenty of drinking, singing and dancing, until late into the night.
Rigorously Draft v1.0
Not SARS-CoV – other coronaviruses are available…
Sally was super proud of her efforts over the past few months. The Advercol plc Covid Protocol Guide: DRAFT v1.0. Fifty carefully crafted pages, cross-tabulated with government guidelines, referencing journal articles on Covid protocol best practice and in-depth consultations with diverse Advercol stakeholders.
Last Friday, Sally had finally submitted the fruits of her labours for internal review to her boss, Jonathan, The Human Resources & Organisational Development Director.
Around 11:00 on Monday, Sally received a meeting request for a Zoom with Jonathan to discuss the Draft Guide. A 15-minute slot on Thursday afternoon at 16:45. Jonathan must be pleased with her work, otherwise he would have scheduled a longer session to go through the document with her in detail. Sally clicked the accept button with a satisfied grin on her face.
Over the ensuing days, Sally imagined the reaction her diligence might have engendered. A nomination for a National HR Award, perhaps. Her work would fit well in the HR Innovation category and/or possibly Health & Wellbeing. A Best In Show award, even, would not be beyond the bounds of possibility.
Yes, this Covid Guide assignment might well turn out to be career-defining for Sally. It had required attention to detail and boy had she deployed her trademark rigor. No wonder Jonathan had chosen her ahead of “Sloppy Simon” for the task. Simon had acquired his unfortunate epithet before lockdown, when Jonathan had described Simon’s attempt at a revised Diversity and Inclusion Policy as “sloppy”, in front of the whole team. Poor Simon.
Thursday afternoon couldn’t come soon enough for Sally. She clicked the link as soon as the clock on her computer clicked from 16:44 to 16:45. It seemed to take an age for Jonathan to arrive, just after 16:51.
“Afternoon, Sally”, said Jonathan. “Let’s try and keep this brief. I need to take the kids to their after-school activities at five. OK? Great. Covid Guide. You’ve clearly put a lot of effort into this.”
“Thanks, Jonathan”, interjected Sally, “I’m glad you noticed”.
“Yes. Right. Thing is, Sally…”, Jonathan continued, “this Covid rules business is a bit of a moving target, don’t you think? I mean, the government changes tack more often than most people change their undies…”
“…indeed, Jonathan”, said Sally, “that’s why I have written protocols to cover so many eventualities…”
“…so we don’t want to over-complicate matters ourselves, do we, with too many in-house rules and stuff?”, continued Jonathan. “We could do with something a little more high-level and generic, don’t you think?”
“…umm, well, I thought…”
“…yes, indeed. So I have asked Simon to come up with a couple of pages. Quick and dirty. That should do us for now. This more detailed material might come in handy later, if or when this whole Covid thing ever settles down. OK? Oh, and Sally – let’s have a little chat about time management and proportionate effort at your next appraisal. OK?”
“I’m leaving you”, said Emily. “It’s the final straw. Everything I do, you criticise and redo nerdily.”
Stuart was taken aback. “But all I did was rewrite the shopping list in logical, aisle-by-aisle, item-by-item sequence. That’s basic logistics. It saves loads of time at the supermarket. Who wants to trudge back and forth in that crummy place, wasting valuable time?”
“I do”, Emily yelled. “I want to wander aimlessly around the aisles if I choose to do so. Sometimes, I want to spot and buy goods serendipitously. I want to live – I want to be free”.
There was a long silence. Emily looking for signs of reaction on Stuart’s face. Stuart studiously avoiding Emily’s glare.
“Get real”, said Stuart. “Anyway, there’s no such word as nerdily”.
Emily jolted, then asked, “how the hell do you work that out?”
Stuart explained. “Nerdily is not in the Microsoft spellcheck and, more importantly, it’s not in the Scrabble dictionary. No. Such. Word. As. Nerdily.”
“Be that as it may, Stuart”, said Emily, “but everything you say and do, you say and do nerdily”.
“What If this Adverb Colander Thing Goes Viral?” I Hear Many Readers Ask
We’ll need a bigger colander…
…like this FoodCycle one which Janie and I helped rescue from the Greenhouse Centre kitchen – but that’s another story:
Even more thrilled were we on receiving an invitation to join our benefactors for a drinks reception in Portman Square. Unfortunately, Janie couldn’t make the drinks, as she had arranged to do a Samaritans shift that very evening, but I joined several of our fellow FoodCycle-Marylebone-istas at the event; Kathy, Bill, Debs and her husband Adam.
An evening in Portman Square was a return to the scene of past “crimes” for me. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s I spent a great deal of time in Hesketh House (now known as 43-45 Portman Square):
Formerly known as Hesketh House – someone’s left the light on in what was temporarily my fourth floor room – I hope it wasn’t me, as if it was, it’s been on for 30+ years.
I was known to “hang with the crowd” from there for a while…
…and even umpired a mini tennis tournament for them in Portman Square one summer – 1990 I think. The tennis court had been repurposed as a food and crafts fair for the 2021 Winter Garden season.
Anyway…
…not only did I stroll down memory lane, I got a chance to get to know some of our FoodCycle folk a little better and also to meet the lovely people from Baker Street Quarter Partnership who were helping to raise money for our cause.
I casually splashed some cash – or rather wafted my contactless card – on raffle tickets but thought little of that until one of my numbers came up. A dinner for two in the highly regarded Kitchen At Holmes.
The irony that I had won a slap-up meal for two, given that Janie and I have been volunteering à deux for the very food charity that was benefitting from the raffle, was not wasted on me, Janie, nor on those at the party. Janie and I will report back on the gift meal once we have enjoyed it – probably in the new year.
A relatively recent image of the two of us enjoying big city hospitality: Tokyo October 2018
I did consider phoning the Samaritans there and then to let Janie know our good news, but on reflection and on discussion with those around me, we concluded that it wasn’t exactly a crisis and that the good news could wait until later.
A brass ensemble for the brass monkey weather
Meanwhile we were serenaded by a superb quintet of brass virtuosi, Ensemble of the Golden Bough, who came to the event by virtue of Wigmore Hall – Janie and I are normally avid Wigmore-Hall-istas but have not been to a concert there since just before lockdown:
The Ensemble of the Golden Bough mostly played classic seasonal fare to create a suitable atmosphere. The quintet comprises Christopher Barrett, Ryan Linham, Sam Kinrade, Phillippa Slack and Rory Cartmell, each of whom is an exceptional exponent of their instrument(s). The following vid is not the seasonal type of music they played on the evening, but it is lovely and will give you an idea of the virtuosity involved:
It was almost enough to convert me to brass-only arrangements of music, which is not usually my bag. It certainly worked for that setting and the playing was truly top notch…
…as was the whole event and the company. A very enjoyable evening indeed.
Not only that, but Antonia from Baker Street Quarter Partnership informs us that we’ll smile even more when we see the four-figure sum raised for FoodCycle.
At the beginning of November, life seemed to be almost getting back to normal. Lots of real tennis in convivial circumstances for a start,
Thursday 4 November 2021 – MCC Real Tennis Skills Night
For my sins, I have inherited, from John (“Johnny”) Whiting, the role of “match manager” for the popular skills nights at Lord’s. A few years ago, on hearing John and the professionals discussing the amount of organising the event needs on the night, I made the schoolboy error of offering to help next time. John saw the offer of help as an opportunity to step down; frankly, Johnny had done it for so many years, who can blame him?
Fortunately for me, Johnny had left comprehensive instructions and spreadsheets rendering the event almost fool-proof, as long as there are a couple of pros who know what they are doing to make the event run smoothly on the court, which, of course, it did.
Alternatively, if anything ever goes awry with the MCC site link, a scrape of the report can be found here.
Naturally, skills night is as much an exercise in conviviality as it is an exercise in tennis court skills.
However, the assembled throng did have to listen to me waffling on about prizes and the like:
Thanks again to Giles Stogdon for this photo
A Week Of Tennis & Dining Out 6 to 12 November 2021
Quite a week. Janie and I went to Simon Jacobs place for dinner on 6th, where he cooked a delicious soup followed by chicken & mushroom pie. Lots of chat about music and that sort of thing. No photos on this occasion but there are photos from our previous visit, before lockdown 2.0:
I played a fair bit of tennis that week, not least a ridiculous 24 hours during which I played an hour of real tennis singles on the Tuesday evening, two hours of modern tennis on the Wednesday morning (part singles, part doubles), then a match, representing MCC against Middlesex University on the Wednesday, which ended up being another two-and-a-half hours of doubles. No wonder I served a couple of double-faults at the end of my second rubber on the Wednesday evening. Again, no photos from the match this time, but here’s a report with pictures and videos from the most recent equivalent home fixture – a couple of years ago:
On Thursday 11th, I went to the office for the first time (other than for a team meeting) in more than 18 months. Then I met up with Johnboy – initially in “Ye [sic] Old Mitre” (it really should read “þe Old Mitre”, you know) and then on to Chettinad Restaurant (my choice), as I thought a high-quality Indian meal would be a good way for us to “get back on the bike” of dining out. The food was very good.
It had been a really long while since John and I had met up for a simple restaurant meal – our last few gatherings had either been at homes, the four of us or the four of us at homes. This Yauatcha meal might have been the previous one:
Then on the Friday I was evicted from this year’s MCC singles tournament for feeble-handicappers in the Round of 16. I don’t think I’ll try tournament singles again. I love playing singles more than doubles on a friendly basis but doubles makes more sense at my level for matches and tournaments.
Tennis At All Sorts Of Levels, Performances Of Various Kinds & A Bit Of A Boost, 15 to 29 November 2021
On 15 November I spent a very jolly afternoon at The Queen’s Club watching real tennis played by real players; The British Open 2021.
I saw Neil Mackenzie take on Matthieu Sarlangue, then Zac Eadle challenge Nick Howell, then finally (and most excitingly, a five setter) Edmund Kay against Darren Long. Here is a link to the draw/results on the T&RA website. If by any chance that link doesn’t work, I have scraped the file to here.
I spent much of the afternoon & evening with my friend/adversary Graham Findlay with whom, by chance, I was due to battle with myself that very Thursday. I was thus able to reciprocate the coffee and cake Graham kindly treated me to at Queen’s with a light bite in The Lord’s Tavern after our battle on the Thursday, before I went home to perform my latest ThreadMash piece – click here or below.
Janie and I had an afternoon of adventure on the Friday, having our Covid vaccinations boosted (we don’t get out much these days – all such matters need noting).
Picture actually from first vax
Most people reported a sore arm and aches. We both got the aches but strangely my arm did not feel at all sore at the vaccination site and I was able to play lawners lefty-righty all weekend.
A quieter week followed. I continued to play some doubles in partnership with Andrew Hinds, in preparation for our R16 match – this we did Tuesday 16th and Monday 22 November.
… star in Little Women at The Park Theatre on the Thursday, but sadly our performance needed to be cancelled due to cast illness (not Lydia) that day, so we’ll miss the run now.
On Monday 29th, Andrew Hinds (depicted wooden-spoon-wielding, left, in the photo below) and I won a place in the quarter finals of the feeble-handicappers’ doubles tournament.
With thanks to Tony Friend for this photo From skills night
Due to competitor/court availability (or lack thereof) before the seasonal break, that means that we shall still be in the 2021/22 tournament into the New Year – the equivalent of getting to week two of a grand slam lawn tennis tournament – but in a very slightly less-elevated way.
A few weeks ago, I played an especially close and exciting real tennis tournament match at Lord’s, emerging victorious – in straight sets but by the narrowest of margins in each set.
Exhausted but happy, I stopped at Porchester Waitrose on my way home, to pick up bread and other comestibles for my supper.
But I discovered the in-house bakery covered in tarpaulin, with signs reading, “No Entry” and “Due to a leak in our ceiling we have had to close down this area…”
Opposite the bakery were mostly bare shelves, where normally the bread would be. But one shelf was fully stocked, bulging with packs of brioche loaves and brioche rolls.
“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”, I said to myself. In the circumstances; who wouldn’t?
The English expression. “let them eat cake” is, in fact, a loose translation of the phrase, “qu’ils mangent de la brioche”.
I don’t like the loose, English translation. Brioche is, in my opinion, a rich form of bread. Classified as viennoiserie, brioche is almost pastry, but not a piece of cake.
Bread, pastry, biscuit, cake; these distinctions might seem trivial or inconsequential. Yet, in the early 1990s case of McVities v HMRC, the very VAT status of Jaffa Cakes hinged on whether that particular delicacy should be defined as a cake (zero-rated) or a chocolate-covered biscuit (standard rated). The tribunal ruled that the product had nine characteristics, some cake, some biscuit, but on balance determined it to be a cake.
Two hundred years earlier, Marie Antoinette’s place in history was determined, formally, at the hands of the French Revolutionary Tribunal. Unfortunately for Marie Antoinette, her informal reputation is entwined with the phrase “let them eat cake” or “qu’ils mangent de la brioche”, despite the fact that there is no evidence that she ever used the phrase and a great deal of evidence that she couldn’t possibly have originated it.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau coined the phrase in his Confessions, attributing the anecdote to an unnamed “great princess”. Rousseau wrote Confessions between 1765 and 1769, when Marie Antoinette was still a nipper and before she had ever been to France.
Rousseau might even have made up the anecdote. Another possibility is that the anecdote originated with Marie Theresa of Spain, about 100 years earlier.
Marie Theresa was consort to Louis XIV, The Sun King, during an extremely lavish era – when Versailles was transformed from a hunting lodge into the opulent palace we now associate with Versailles.
Marie Theresa died in 1683, before the Versailles tennis court was completed, but her son, Louis, The Grand Dauphin, played an inaugural game on that court in 1686.
Roll the clock forward a hundred years again, to 1789. The Versailles tennis court played a crucial role in the French Revolution. In June 1789, the Third Estate or National Assembly of commoners, found themselves locked out of the chamber by order of the King.
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, suggested that they congregate instead in the nearby Royal Tennis Court of Versailles, where they swore a collective oath, similar in style to the US Declaration of Independence, “not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established”. 576 of the 577 members of the assembly took the oath.
The Tennis Court Oath was a seminal moment in the progress of the French Revolution. Ironically, though, the tennis court oath neither benefitted the reputation of tennis nor that of Joseph-Ignace Guillotin.
Jeu de paume, as the French call real tennis, virtually died out in France in the aftermath of the French revolution. In tennis’s 17th and 18th century heyday, there were hundreds of courts in Paris alone.
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was a doctor who opposed capital punishment. He advocated the use of a quick, painless blade mechanism, but only in preference to the more torturous methods of execution commonly used. It was much to the doctor’s chagrin that the deadly mechanism acquired his name. There is an urban myth that Dr Guillotin was himself thus decapitated during the reign of terror. It is true that A Dr Guillotin met that fate, but not Dr Joseph-Ignance Guillotin, who was imprisoned, but survived the reign of terror by the skin of his teeth.
I mused on all these matters that evening, a few weeks ago, while munching my brioche and reflecting on winning a tennis match by the skin of my teeth.
The oath I had heard on the tennis court that evening was the single expletive, “shit”, used by my opponent so many times, he got a warning from the marker (umpire). I wondered how many of the 576 subscribers to the original Tennis Court Oath were reduced to such lesser, expletive oaths, soon after their revolutionary gesture.
Changing the social order, like brioche, is not a piece a cake.
Rice at The Orange Tree Theatre was our first visit to the theatre to see a drama for more than 18 months. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then.
The Orange Tree assured us in its marketing that the theatre is “See It Safely” approved, which no doubt it was. The problem with that level of biosecurity in a small theatre like The Orange Tree is that the safety removes much of the warmth, atmosphere and absence of fourth wall that theatre in the round is meant to provide.
It didn’t help that the weather has turned a bit colder on us – well it is autumn – to the extent that even extra layers of clothing and cushions neither made us feel warm nor comfortable while sitting for 90 minutes plus.
The play was not designed to make us feel comfortable of course – it grapples with relationships, inter-generational conflict, cultural conflicts and international commerce – in the hands of two performers, primarily as a two-hander play but each performer also covers several additional, smaller roles.
As we would expect at The Orange Tree, one of our favourite places, the quality of the acting, directing and production was very high. We have been impressed by Matthew Xia’s work as a director before, both at the Orange Tree and elsewhere.
But this complex piece/production did not really warm the cockles of our hearts, to encourage us to rush back to fringe theatre the way we visited regularly and avidly prior to the pandemic. We’ve booked one or two things for this autumn/winter – we might book one or two more .
We’ll keep our (many) memberships going of course – we are still great supporters but we’re just not in a rush to attend very often – not yet anyway.
A real treat of a day out for real tennis – such a long time since I have been able to do one of these.
Selected to represent The Dedanists against The Hamsters (a select subset of the Royal Tennis Court membership), I again, as last time, enjoyed the company of Carl Snitcher on the journey from Central London to Hampton Court Palace.
Carl with ball in hand
Here and below is my write up of the fixture from two years ago:
Again, this time, James McDermott was my partner, but, on this occasion, we were down to play the first rubber rather than the last of the match. That left me available for much of the day to do some match marking – I actually marked two of the other rubbers in the 2021 match.
In between those playing and marking activities, there was plenty of time for convivial chat and eating a wonderful lunch.
Of course the pandemic isn’t over, but this sort of day marks a further return to something closer to normalcy. It was a splendid day and I thoroughly enjoyed the match and the company.
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