This was about a year after Janie and I visited Ethiopia, so I wanted John to experience Ethiopian-style eating and my description of it had sparked John’s curiosity to try it.
Me and our guide, Dawit, dining in Ethiopia, 2006, taken by Daisy
John and I had a good evening at Merkato – certainly I remember it fondly. We were in part looking forward to and plotting a gathering of the four of us (including Janie and Mandy) for a few week’s hence at John and Mandy’s place.
I remember us both finding this piece about low-level BBC shenanigans interesting and enjoyable – despite a suicide forming the denouement (that is not a spoiler). I suspect, given subsequent events at the BBC, it would seem tame and much beside the point today.
I think I picked up the terms “cruel spectacles” and “waning powers”, both of which I use a fair bit, from this particular show.
Great cast, with Ben Chaplin, Paul Ritter, Bruce Alexander, Angela Thorne and Leo Bill really standing out.
Well directed by Richard Eyre and produced of course to RNT standards.
I kept loads of notes and shall write up the events from those notes in the fullness of time. For now, here are links to the notes for those who can deal with exotic cyphers:
Janie was very keen to try the famous paladar, La Guarida, in Havana and had been much frustrated by our inability to get in, even for lunch, while we were in Havana in mid February.
So, before leaving Havana to tour other parts of Cuba, we booked ahead; a lunch at La Guarida for our action packed last day in Cuba before flying off to Jamaica that evening. Not the way we would have chosen to do it, perhaps, but as it turned out a very memorable and successful day.
Does Daisy look eager to go in or what?Is that a happy face chowing down or what?
But when I say memorable, what I mean is that we both remember the event so well. The name, La Guarida, for some reason keeps evading us both whenever we try to remember the name. I can remember that it was in the film Fresa Y Chocolat – you’d have thought it was easier to remember the name of the restaurant…
…anyway, this is what I wrote about the first half of that day – the Havana/La Guarida half:
Despite the late night we both rise early so we take a pretty ordinary breakfast and then (after a short aborted attempt to get money and water) we head towards Old Town, buying water and changing money on the way.
We have a quick look at the Cathedral and then the Museum of Colonial Art. We try to see the Wilfred Lam Museum but it is closed for refurbishment, so we visit the Taller Experimental instead & see etching turned into print and buy the pressing from it (from Pedro Redonet).
Back to hotel for tepid, feeble shower (water problems) & then “checkout” & get cab to La Guarida paladar for the last and best meal of our holiday in Cuba.
Ged started with marinated fish in a subtle herb dressing with avocado & tomato. Daisy started with tuna in sweet pepper with a creamy, tomatoey sauce.
Mains of grouper (Daisy) and swordfish with seafood sauce (Ged). Dessert of Fresa Y Chocolat ice cream (naturally as that film was filmed here).
Lingered over coffee and looked around the tenement-like building before strolling back to hotel.
Tiny place, tiny kitchen back then:
Talk about a galley kitchenStarters…yum.Would you like the tenement roof view or the tenement roof view, sir?Busman’s holiday for Daisy, this tenement, if she sticks around
Quite a few crossings-out in that early part of 2007. For example, we were due to see Kim and Micky in early January, but I think that got cancelled/postponed and became instead the gathering on 10 February.
20 January 2007
A Saturday evening out with Jamil and Souad. We started the evening at their place for drinks. Janie and I are straining to remember where we ate.
We know they like to eat at Noura in Belgravia (and have eaten there with them more than once) but Janie and I both have a feeling we ate in Mayfair that night. Perhaps they just fancied the change or perhaps Belgravia was unavailable when they chose to book.
In any case, we had a very pleasant evening as always with those two.
10 February 2007
We had Kim, Micky, DJ and his then girlfriend Julie over for dinner at Sandall Close that night.
We can’t honestly remember the menu, but with two vegetarians in the group (Kim and Julie) almost certainly one of Janie’s takes on Lebanese food (perhaps inspired by the Noura experience a few week’s before) so that four of us got a good meaty main course while the others had loads of dips, tabbouleh and the like to make up a substantial meal.
If it was anything more complex, there’d usually be some tell-tale notes in Janie’s diary, but there are none…
At the end of a stressy week, what could be better than an evening of jazz at Thw Wigmore Hall?
And what a stressy week it had been – with the deal to sell most of the business to Aon/McLagan Partners due to complete that week but actually not completed until the following week.
In truth, I don’t remember all that much about this concert other than the joy of sitting and letting a very accomplished jazz trio weave their magic for me.
I couldn’t find a vid of exactly the three who played our night, but two out of three ain’t bad:
While below is a subsequent extract from Portrait Of A Woman including vocals:
Janie and I are very keen on Frank McGuiness’s plays and this one is a good example of why that is so.
It sounds like the scenario for so many Irish plays – a family gathers to celebrate a birthday in a remote cottage in the West of Ireland…just take my word for it that this one is/was special.
Our first theatre visit of that year, to the tiny New End Theatre in Hampstead. Wicked difficult to park around there and I seem to recall a very cold, perhaps even slightly icy evening.
The evening was a bit of a “West Fest”, with roles not only for Benedick as writer but also second-cousin-by-marriage Prunella Scales and young Jerusha West performing.
I remember observing to Janie that Prunella Scales had seen me perform in front of far larger audiences than that of the New End. When I was in Alleyn’s School plays, the West Family (Tim, Prunella and Sam, the latter being two or three years below me at the school) would relentlessly turn up to watch. Those evenings must have been an enlightening experience for that theatrical family I am sure. But I digress.
Benedick’s play was actually a sequence of monologues. As such, I recall it lacked dramatic intensity and coherence as a single work, but the miniature stories were well written and were quite interesting performance pieces, especially Prunella’s one.
No photos from that event, but this picture was taken on Janie’s first digital camera around that time in 2006.
Z/Yen had pretty much doubled its space in St Helen’s Place that year and we wanted to show it off to the partners and make full use of that space as part of that year’s seasonal event.
Lanes Restaurant was an excellent place. We didn’t quite have a private room – I seem to recall a curtained-off section rather than an actual separate room. Still, this afforded us enough privacy to eat, drink and make merry.
That venue soon afterwards became the London Steakhouse Company, which it remains at the time of writing (2024).
Michael wrote an ode to our office location – a rare example of Michael writing the seasonal song: “Oh Little Court of St Helen’s”, which I aped in subsequent years as “Oh Little Street Of Basinghall”.
OH LITTLE COURT OF ST HELEN’S
(Sung to the tune of “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem”)
Oh little court of St Helen’s
How swish we see thee lie!
Beneath thy deep and wealthy sleep
Z/Yen’s offices abide
And in these dark deep shadows
The everlasting blight
Consultancy adds to your years
When packed as tight as mice
How crowded-ly, how crowded-ly
Z/Yen dishes out advice
Beside the frozen servers
And other bust device
Paper’s overflowing
But Linda’s looking nice
And if we get our Seventh Heav’n
We’ll soon trash Number Five.
The joke about “seven” and “five” related to the address, 5-7 St Helen’s Place. Whereas our original (smaller) offices had been accessed through the door of No 7, this new expanded space was at the No 5 end of the building. Simples.
