Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
This was a really good play/production. It was only on at the Royal Court for a short while – so we felt we’d got ourselves hot tickets for this one. Unusually for a David Hare, this one had started in New York 15 months before.
The Royal Court Stub has all the details and the full text of lots of reviews.
The usual suspects all loved it. As did we; great cast, super play.
Janie is a very good-hearted sort, as evidenced by her diary entries for this afternoon – listing a whole load of stuff to take over to my mum’s house that afternoon for our “half-holiday” and evening with mum. A busman’s half-holiday in Janie’s case, with chiropody equipment and massage oils listed.
In short, Janie will have given a great deal of care and attention to mum’s feet and shanks when we visited her at Woodfield Avenue that afternoon, ahead of dinner at Newton’s in Clapham.
Newton’s had been recommended by John and Lily Hogan, who were keen on that place. To be fair, it had good reviews back then and writing more than 10 years later (January 2019), although renamed 33 Abbeville now, still seems to be well regarded by the locals.
We were also attracted to the place by the offering of slow-cooked lamb shanks; a dish we all like(d) and don’t often see on modern restaurant menus.
Unfortunately, the care and attention that Janie gave to my mother’s feet and shanks did not appear to be replicated in those served to us at Newton’s. Our guess is that the shanks we were served had not been cooked for anything like long enough, making the central purpose of our visit more than a little disappointing.
At that stage of her life, mum found it difficult to keep her disappointment to herself…
…and at that stage of long, hard-working weeks, Janie and I were not in the very best of moods for awkwardness either, so I don’t think the visit ended quite as well as it should have done.
We did not return to Newton’s to ascertain whether our poor meal there was a one-off problem – quite possibly it was but we were none of us “second chance” types for restaurants – especially mum.
We wanted to visit Charlie in Cambridge before she finished her law degree at Girton. January of her final year was leaving it almost as late as would be feasible. We had a pretty full itinerary of short trips March/April and Charlie had finals to start thinking about.
We booked the Felix for the last weekend of January, went and had a good time.
We had a wander around Cambridge on the Saturday and saw some interesting things, the most memorable of which was the Pepys Library. We went with Charlie and some of her friends to a comedy show after dinner on Saturday. Sub-Footlights, had its moments. But for some reason no photos from those bits. Oh well.
This was the first Docklands finance lecture that Michael organised for Gresham College. In theory this was the 2007 one, but it took place in early 2008.
David Blood was the guest speaker. It was a very interesting talk. The Gresham College resources, including the talk, can be found here.
I was an honoured guest at the dinner with David afterwards, which I’m pretty sure was at the Four Seasons Canary Wharf (at the time of writing, April 2020, the Canary Wharf Riverside Plaza).
Good meal and interesting discussion over dinner.
We had really enjoyed our Friday evening trip to the Bush Theatre the night before, but this play at the Hampstead left us cold.
At that time, we were having a shocking run at the Hampstead – so much so that we started to lose faith in the place – revived of course when the Edward Hall era turned the place around.
The critics were harsh on the play and the place:
We stuck it out, if I remember correctly, hoping for a more interesting second half. Marginally more interesting but in truth the play really was a lemon.
Neil LaBute is good at short, punchy plays. These two, Land of the Dead and Helter Skelter – see Bush Theatre stub here, are companion pieces.
It was a Friday evening, so it was stronger meat than we would normally choose for the end of the working week. Still, we were really taken by these plays and this production of them. The reviews we can still find tend to agree with us:
My role on the British Computer Society (BCS) Ethics Panel resulted in me leading the debate at one of the tables at this Thought Leadership event at the Royal Society.
I was lucky enough to have Onora O’Neill on my table; not only an absolutely brilliant mind for such a discussion but also delightful company.
The idea was that I simply take hand-written notes and then Penny Duquenoy, who ran the secretariat of our group, would produce a write up.
But a few days after the event Penny e-mailed me to say that she couldn’t read my hand-writing at all, so could I provide her with some typed notes. My handwriting illegible – who knew?
Several days of too-ing and fro-ing ensued in an attempt to get my hand-written notes back to me. Eventually they came and I then submitted the following notes, which paid careful heed to the Chatham House rule so I feel perfectly at liberty to reproduce them here. The topic of this debate is all too relevant as I write 11 years later and for sure will remain relevant for some time to come.
BCS THOUGHT LEADERSHIP DISCUSSION ON SHARING HUMAN DATA – TABLE ONE NOTES
• Concern that we do not have privacy legislation in the UK, we have data protection legislation which is not the same thing. We have incoherent case law on privacy and a resulting inconsistency between case law and statute law.
• Principles such as “proportionality” and “need to know” are extremely hard to interpret and we don’t even have formal mechanisms on how to interpret these concepts.
• Discussed the example of patient identifiers at some length – the pros and the cons (as outlined in the introductory talks).
• Discussed “lazy data sharing” – i.e. many of the problems we experience are connected with human error, laziness etc., not information systems themselves.
• Discussed the principle of autonomy, how that differs from privacy etc.
• Discussed the relative merits of “opt out” and “opt in” schemes. Concerns about complexity in both cases – i.e. concerns that both practitioners and subjects struggle to understand such schemes. Opt out often simpler in many ways, but concerns about direct and/or indirect discrimination against those who opt out. US examples cited.
• DNA database discussed at length as an example with many facets. Should everybody be on the DNA database (avoids the discrimination risk). But then how much DNA information could/should reasonably be held to ensure benefits while minimising the risk of misuse. Worried about lack of safeguards, wrongful use of information, over-abstraction (e.g. to the extent that such DNA evidence would be inadmissible in court).
• Discussed Prüm Treaty and its implications for sharing DNA information. Also discussed Passenger Name Record proposal (EU).
• Should each citizen have a unique chip implant at birth? This led on to discussion of ID cards.
• Concern about too much stricture. People like multiple identities without necessarily using same for serious crime, fraud or mischief. Several “close to home” examples were discussed; these are mercifully protected by the Chatham House Rule and the fact that I did not write them down at the time.
Re that last point, it’s not exactly a breach of the Chatham House rule for me to state that I explained my use of Ged Ladd as a benign second identity for the purposes of fun stuff and for communicating with nephews and nieces who, at that time, might have found corresponding with uncles and aunts on (e.g.) Facebook a little embarrassing.
I don’t think it breaches the Chatham House rule for me to reveal that, once I self-outed such use, that more than half the other people at the table admitted that they too, for various benign reasons, use second identities on line for some purposes. Fascinating.
We had a relatively quiet start to 2008, with everything that went on towards the end of 2007, we’d booked little at the start of 2008.
5 January
A gathering at Kitt & Julia’s place in Sandall Close. A good chance to socialise a little with neighbours etc.
9 January
I went to Aidrienne Da Donka’s funeral that day. The Da Donka’s lived next door in Woodfield Avenue. If I recall correctly mum couldn’t face it, being so close to dad’s passing and at the same location, so I moved my (copious) work around and represented the family at that funeral. This was the first of what seemed (to me) an unlikely number of such funerals within 12-18 months or so of dad’s passing.
12 January
Dinner at Amaya with Kim & Micky. Top notch Indian grub. Looks as though we stayed at my flat afterwards. I’ll be honest and say that I don’t much remember this evening…
…but strangely Daisy remembers lots about it. She even remembers eating “zip-up lamb”. Crumbs – that’s some memory in January 2019 from someone who claims to have almost no memory.
We do both remember the evening being a success though as everyone enjoyed their grub as well as the company.
We’d made a bit of a tradition of going to the new years eve concert at the Wigmore Hall and see in the new year quietly at the flat if we liked the look of the concert. We certainly liked the look of this one when we booked it, many months before.
Between us booking it and the concert date, Robert King of the eponymous King’s Consort was jailed for indecent assault. Unaccustomed as we were to such occurrences in our favourite baroque ensembles, we wondered what might happen to our concert. It turned out that Matthew Halls, the harpsichordist, took over as the director temporarily and would lead our concert.
It all felt a bit odd and of course the programme was silent on the matter of Robert King’s absence, but still it was a good concert if I recall correctly. I can’t find any reviews and the Wigmore Hall archive stubs don’t go back that far. But they are a very accomplished group of musicians and they attract some top notch soloists, so the quality of the performances wasn’t really a surprise.
We were keen to see this exhibition over the holiday period, so decided to take advantage of a bright, albeit cold day.
There weren’t many people around, which suited us down to the ground, but probably did little for the fortunes of Kew.
Janie and I have always really liked the Henry Moore stuff.
I remember going to see an exhibition in Battersea Park when I was little and crawling through some of the holes in the sculptures.
Indeed I have subsequently (March 2021) discovered some photos from my hole-crawling day and written up that 1966 exhibition (more thoroughly than this 2007 one) – click here or below:
I am delighted (while mildly disappointed) to report that there was no hole-crawling activity from me (or Janie) at Kew.
