Janie had been dying to try this place, which John White and I waxed lyrical about after our evening there the previous autumn. Janie and I got our opportunity soon before it moved away from my patch (Notting Hill) to a larger Soho location.
Anyway, it was supposedly fiendishly difficult to get into this place on a Friday evening, but Janie found a way, perhaps booking many weeks ahead, knowing that we’d want to dine late and wanted to be in Notting Hill the next morning.
Result.
Both of us remember it being a memorably good meal.
Here’s an interview and a lauding from The Standard a few months before our visit:
We both loved the place and the vibe and the food, as did Johnboy when we dined there.
So why did Janie and I want to be in Notting Hill on a Saturday morning rather than in Ealing? Because in those days we went to see a hygienist in Kensington on a Saturday morning. That’s why.
Whose brilliant idea was it to pair The Real Inspector Hound with Black Comedy? Well, if I’m not totally mistaken The Bear Pit at Alleyn’s School did so back in the mid 1970s. It worked well then (I shall write up The Bear Pit production in the fullness of time) and it worked well nearly 25 years later, in the late 1990s, too.
Superb evening…
…was my take on it in my log. How could it not be – what a cast! Desmond Barrit, David Tennant, Nichola McAuliffe, Sara Crowe, Anna Chancellor…and Greg Doran directing.
While The Independent previewed the event the morning after our visit wondering, over three pages, whose brilliant idea it was to pair these two short plays? (The Bear Pit at Alleyn’s School. Do you arts journos know nothing?)
As we had planned to be away for most of March, but changed our plans due to Phillipa’s indisposition, we had a few weeks of relatively low key activity that spring. Yet we ended up meeting and seeing a lot of people.
Introduced To Nigel Hinks, 20/27 March 1998
I very rarely talk about work-related matters in Ogblog, but by my meeting Charles Bartlett (in Autumn 1997) and Nigel Hinks in March 1998, through The Children’s Society, a tradition that endures a quarter of a century later was established:
In the matter of being introduced to Nigel, my diary has clear notes. I had a meeting with Clive Timms on 20 March 1998, at which he gave me Nigel Hinks & Jeff Tye’s telephone numbers. I had an initial telephone call with Nigel the following week (27 March) and the rest, as they say, history.
Charles & Nigel 15 years later, Chester-Le-Street: Clive didn’t mention the singing
A Resourceful Party, Thanks To Rupert Stubbs, 28 March 1998
After speaking with Nigel on 27 March I went to play bridge at Maz’s place (almost certainly with Andrea and Tessa on that occasion), then on to Janie’s place.
That Saturday lunchtime Janie and I went to a party on Rupert Stubbs’s Thames Sailing Barge of a home, Resourceful. This might have been my first “return to the scene of the crime that was Michael Mainelli’s stag night” since that night.
Janie and I remember this party surprisingly well. Rupie was going out with a lovely lass by the name of Sophie at that time. The party was mostly populated by people we didn’t know – i.e. we only knew a few of Rupert’s friends before the party. Most of the party goers were either Sophie’s fun friends, whom we got to know by dint of the party, and a rather cliquey crowd of Rupert’s colleagues from Saatchi & Saatchi who were, to say the least, not quite so friendly.
Here’s Rupie a few week’s later, at an early Z/Yen cricket match, donning whites in a Saatchi & Saatchi ad man stylee. The hat is an especially telling piece of non-cricket garb.
Anyway, the hospitality was lavish and there were plenty of fun people, so we had a really good time. We weren’t surprised when we learnt that Rupert had left Saatchi’s not all that long afterwards.
I think this visit was primarily to do with Janie doing a CPD course or joining a podiatrtist’s convention of some kind, but we were also able to combine it with a visit to Michelle & Neil’s [Epstein/Infield] place in Balcombe on the way back.
We weren’t supposed to be spending a week in Mallorca. We were supposed to be spending two weeks in Burma and a week in Malaysia. But we deferred our planned trip until the autumn, due to Janie’s twin, Phillie’s indisposition. The compromise was to take this short break in early spring, between Phillie’s initial surgery and the start of her myriad of follow-up ops and treatments.
The bedroom came with a guard bear named Julio, who you can just about see guarding from above in the next picture:
The bathroom had a rubber duck.
We respectfully left the bear and duck in situ at La Residencia, but subsequently have always had at least one duck in our main home. As for a bear, we had for some years had a bear, named Geddy The Teddy, but he went to stay with Phillie to keep her company when she was in hospital later that year and stayed with Phillie henceforward. Then Kim arranged for Hippity to join us and the rest is history:
…but I digress.
I didn’t keep a log on this holiday but we did shoot a roll of film each, 32 of which are labelled and set out in the Flickr album below:
While about half of those grace this article.
We played tennis pretty much every day (I think we were rained off one day), including, unusually for us, a couple of sessions with the wonderful coach there, George. Yes, really he was called George. We learned quite a lot from him in a short period of time. Gentle instruction and lots of encouragement.
We had hired a car for this trip, although we didn’t use it all that much, only going out for the day a couple of times plus one or two short trips in the vicinity of our village, Deià.
Stunning vistas near our hotel in the North-West of MallorcaVistas on the Sóller to Deià road
We chose to go out on the less-good weather days. Sensible in a way, but we nearly lost our lives on a long-and-winding hillside road between Deià and Palma, when, despite my low speed, I completely lost control of the car for a while on the slippery road surface. After our return, I raised this matter with a Mallorcan employee/colleague, Teresa Bestard, who was working with Z/Yen at that time.
Oh, yes, I know that treacherous patch of road. We locals call it “Dead Man’s Curve”.
Palma on a wet day but at least we were still in one piece
We also visited Cala Major, where we visited Joan Miró‘s place:
We also did a little bit of tourism around our locality, Deià. Not much to see, but Robert Graves settled and lived there for most of his life.
Existential nominative determinism: Robert Graves’s graveLa Residencia from the hills above
But mostly we hung out at La Residencia, playing tennis, eating a good breakfast, nibbling light at lunchtime (perhaps beer and nuts), enjoying the pool and eating in one of the fine restaurants at La Residencia – a place that people would visit from far and wide for one of the restaurants.
Poolside – blissDining in Béns d’Avall – blissFine dining in El Olivo – bliss
It was just a week-long break, taken in strained circumstances, but we both have very happy memories of this short holiday.
In the summer of 1996 (or was it spring 1997?), we had spent a Sunday on the Thames, on Michael & Elisabeth’s Thames sailing barge, The Lady Daphne, along with, amongst others, Trevor Nunn & Imogen Stubbs. Trevor was busy reading an early Tennessee Williams script, Not About Nightingales, which had never been performed in the UK. Despite not being among Williams best work, Trevor suggested to us the play had a lot going for it. He was thinking of putting it on at the Royal National Theatre once he became Artistic Director there. I think his appointment had been announced but Trevor had not yet taken up the role when we met him.
Anyway, we were very keen to see the finished product once the production was announced and booked to see it at the start of its run.
The only critic who really matters here on Ogblog…me…wrote:
Powerful stuff – not a great play but very well executed.
I especially remember Finbar Lynch and Corin Redgrave putting in standout performances.
Charles Spencer in The Telegraph seemed to like it:
Don’t ask me how or why we had the stomach for this violent play but not for Shopping & F***ing the week before. Perhaps the violence seemed less gratuitous. Perhaps the way it was produced/directed.
Perhaps because we were demob happy – although we had cancelled our main spring holiday plans because of Phillie’s indisposition, we had decided to take a week off an go to Majorca for some much needed rest. We flew off early the next morning.
This play/production had enjoyed rave reviews and lengthy transfers. Unusually for us, more than a year after it first came out, we decided to book it and see what it was like.
We’re not usually shrinking violets as far as “no holds barred” serious theatre is concerned, but we found this play intolerable. Perhaps our emotions were heightened by the recent shock news about Janie’s twin, Phillie, whose radical cancer surgery had taken place a couple of week’s earlier.
My logged verdict:
Ghastly – we walked out at half time.
Charles Spencer was pretty plain about the piece in The Telegraph:
At that time, along with Fung Shing, one of our favourite up market eateries in Chinatown, this is yet another fine place that didn’t make it into the 2020s.
“8:00 Valentine Night The Square Restaurant” 6 Bruton Street W1 Karine”
…reads Janie’s more helpful entry.
Janie’s diary also informs me that we went to Sound On Wheels in North Harrow that morning, where the indomitable Maurice & Ray will have sorted out the latest arrival in our household, my souped-down Honda CRX, Nobby, with a sound system.
25 years on, Sound On Wheels has gone. As has The Square, which presciently closed down just before the Covid 19 pandemic.
When we went it was all the rage, having relatively recently moved to Mayfair. It was in the process of collecting its second Michelin Star had it not done so already.
Janie remembers this as one of the finest meals we have had, with superb service too. It was a very special evening.
Naked by Luigi Pirandello, Almeida Theatre, 21 February 1998
There had been a lot of hype about Juliette Binoche coming to tread the Almeida boards, so we were really looking forward to this one.
Our review:
Not as good as we expected – the critics were more convinced by Ms Binoche than we were
My recollection is that we found it hard to hear what she was saying despite the fact that we were sitting in the front row.
The critics fell in love with her, though. My friend, Michael Billington, going a little overboard. I agree with him about Juliette Binoche’s “eccentric inflections” and that Oliver Ford Davies put in a blinder of a performance.
David Benedict in The Independent leapt to Juliette’s defence, like a knight in shining armour, denying even the accusation that the inflections were eccentric:
Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard hated the play but loved Juliette Binoche. I would agree that part of the problem was the play – not one of Pirandello’s best:
I stand by our own review – we couldn’t hear clearly what Juliet Binoche was saying in a play that, in any case, would have been a fairly difficult watch.
We ate at Pasha afterwards. Another once-excellent eatery that is no longer there 25 years later:
I’ve never been a huge fan of Rattigan and I recall that this play/production didn’t really change my view.
On the Sunday, somewhat on a whim I seem to recall, the Mainelli’s invited us over to their place as they had several people already scheduled to visit and they wanted a butchers at my new motor.
My abiding memory of that visit was how cold it was that day, but the assembled throng (especially Rupert Stubbs) insisted that we remove the roof of the car and drive off demonstrating the open-toppedness of the thing.
Dall-e thinks we looked a bit like this
When we got home, while we were eating a camembert salad supper, Janie’s twin sister Philippa called to let us know the bad news that she had been diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. That news dampened our mood considerably and turned our world upside down for quite a while.
I am writing in January 2020, on the day the U19 Cricket World Cup in South Africa is starting.
Last time the U19 Cricket World Cup was in South Africa was early 1998. That was also the last time (and so far the only time) that England won the U19 World Cup.
Rob Key had a fine tournament, although not such a magnificent final.
It was Stephen Peters who topped the scoring/batting averages for England in that tournament and who scored the “man of the match ton” in the final.
It turns out that Peters was Essex in those days and hails from Harold Wood – Charley “The Gent” Malloy territory.
That thought made me realise that, in February 1998, I had only recently met Charles through our work at The Children’s Society and I had neither met Nigel “Father Barry” nor “Big Papa Zambesi” Jeff…yet. At that juncture, Charles was working mainly with Mike Smith. Coincidentally, Janie and I spent the evening with Mike and Marianna less than two weeks ago as I write:
It wasn’t until that summer, 1998, by which time I was also working with Nigel and Jeff, that I learnt that Chas, Nigel, Jeff…they all had a passion for cricket.
It must have been July, that topsy-turvy 1998 test series between England & South Africa was well under way. Jeff and I were going to visit a project in Mitcham – I had arranged to drive over to Clerkenwell, meet to plan the visit and then drive Jeff out to Mitcham.
When we got to the car, I tentatively asked Jeff if he would mind if I put the test match on the radio while we drove out there. Jeff’s trademark big beaming smile appeared on his face and he said,
I’d been trying to work out how to phrase that question politely to you…
…we listened all the way to the project (while also discussing cricket of course) and then again when we left the project. I arranged to drop Jeff at one of the Northern Line Tootings or Balham before I went on to see my folks.
It was a very hot late afternoon and I took the roof off Nobby – one of the very few times I did that. Big Papa Zambesi Jeff must have been grateful for the extra head room in a topless Nobby (as it were).
Janie, with Nobby, at his last resting place
I recall England taking a wicket when we were stopped at traffic lights somewhere around Tooting and we must have looked a right pair of charlies in that car leaping for joy at an announcement on the radio.
But returning to the U19 World Cup Final match on 1 February 1998, I realise that Nobby was just a twinkle in my and Janie’s eyes on that day. I think we had seen Mack the day before that final and arranged to buy Nobby. The deal was done the following Saturday…
…and I think it was the Saturday after that, in deep midwinter, that Janie and I visited the Mainellis in Nobby to see their newborn baby, Xenia, at the end of which Rupert Stubbs and the other visitors insisted on seeing us drive off with Nobby’s roof off. We drove round the corner, put the roof back on and tried to stop shivering all the way home.
I was trying to recall how I followed the tournament and that 1 February 1998 match.
To some extent, I think
No on-line all the time Cricinfo in those days. Ceefax was the only source of constantly updating cricket scores.
But I think also, in those days, Janie and I could hear sky commentary on her Videotron cable TV arrangement. She didn’t have the additional Sky sports subscription in those days – most of the cricket was terrestrial, free-to-air, but the scrambled channels, such as the sports ones, had sound all the time with the picture scrambled. I have a feeling we followed bits of that final that way.
But my main reflections are of how long ago all of that was and the journey I have shared with so many of those characters over the decades…
…and of the cricket careers that have come and gone for those (then) youngsters who fought that final. Most of the finalists went on to professional careers, many international ones. Some glorious, some less than glorious, but all interesting.
I guess neither of us quite got our heads around The Chairs. You need to be in the mood for Ionesco and perhaps we weren’t.
This version was Martin Crimp’s adaptation and Simon McBurney/Théâtre de Complicité’s production, so weirdness was probably very much the order of the evening. Richard Briers and Geraldine McEwan led the cast. Here is the Theatricalia entry for the production.
“What did the papers say about it?” I hear you cry.
Charles Spencer in The Telegraph liked it, while denying that we should read too much into the piece – darned right!
Sugar Club Standard 11 Aug 1997, Mon Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Sugar Club Telegraph Bill Knott 31 May 1997, Sat The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
