Author: Ian Louis Harris

A Zoom With Julia Tisdall, Gerry Goddin’s Distant Cousin, 23 December 2020

It’s The Ogblog wot done it.

When I reported on the sad death of Gerry Goddin back in August and then subsequently Gerry’s funeral in October…

Gerry Goddin’s Funeral, Hoop Lane Crematorium, 15 October 2020

…it didn’t occur to me that there might be someone out there looking for the name Goddin for genealogical purposes. Not least because the search for any next of kin for Gerry had been in vain.

But a couple of weeks ago, out of the blue, I received a note from Julia Tisdall, writing to me from Australia, whose great-grandfather was the brother of Gerry’s grandmother.

That makes Julia and Gerry second cousins once removed. (Some of my favourite people are my second cousins once removed).

Forgive the pun, Julia, but a second cousin once removed in the antipodes is a distant cousin in more ways than one.

Anyway, point is, Julia was thrilled and saddened to have found this connection but in such an unfortunate context. Here is an extract from her lovely note:

My great grandfather (Gertrude’s Brother) sailed to New Zealand back in 1913 and settled in Dunedin. 5 years later his sister Gertrude died of the Spanish Flu at only 32 years of age.

I suspect this was when my forebears lost touch with Gertrude’s husband and young son (Gerry’s father) Robert Percy Wilfred Goddin.

I am so grateful to see Gerry in Rainy Day Fellas. What a gem that is.

 It took my breath away, 1 , because it is so beautiful and 2 because the close up of Gerry’s hand strumming looked identical to my grandfather’s hand strumming.

For anyone reading this who hasn’t seen the video of Rainy Day Fellas, one of Gerry’s songs which was recorded a few years ago with Donna Macfadyen singing beautifully and Gerry himself accompanying on guitar:

“Rainy Day Fellas” (Live) from D-Sav on Vimeo.

Julia said that she would like to speak, so, one thing led to another and I managed to persuade Julia, who was until yesterday a “Zoom virgin”, to join a few of us on a Zoom call.

I was really glad that John Random,  Caroline Am Bergris and Graham Robertson were able to join the call. I didn’t feel I knew Gerry all that well; I don’t suppose any of us really knew Gerry well, but between us we knew Gerry from various aspects of his life these past 30 years or so.

Not just the NewsRevue part (although all of us are NewsRevue alums) but also Caroline’s long association with Gerry in the matter of poems and songs. I think/hope we were able to give Julia a fairly rounded picture.

And talking of pictures, John has rescued a few lovely pictures from Gerry’s flat, which I was able to share on the screen. Here are a couple of examples plus a third picture which is a link to a Flickr album with all 11 of the pictures:

GERRY GODDIN HEAD AND SHOULDERS AS A LITTLE BOY

So we were able to share a fair bit of information. Julia informed us that the family were to be found at 1 Ravenhill Road, Upton Park in the 1911 census. Not only did Gerry’s dad lose his mother to Spanish flu as a small boy, but Gerry’s own mum, Mona, died when Gerry was only six. By then they lived in Fairbank Street, Shoreditch, which I think has now been absorbed by the Provost Estate in now trendy Hoxton/Shoreditch.

The highlight of the 80 minute session, for me, was the moment when Julia picked up a guitar and played us a few bars of Rainy Day Fellas, with aplomb.

But actually the whole session was a highlight. I think everyone enjoyed the time together and we hope to have another session in the not too distant future. I know that Caroline, Helen and David are looking at some of Gerry’s other songs and trying to work out what to do with them. Once there is a bit of progress with that, it would be super to regroup with Julia and possibly some other members of her antipodean family.

In these difficult times, a bit of good news like this is something to hold on to. And while our lives comprise far too much Zoom and Teams, with far too little human contact (apart from funerals and queuing outside shops)…

…happenings of this kind make me realise that communications technologies – the Ogblogging, the ability to connect with people through social media, Zoom etc. – does enable many things that wouldn’t have happened otherwise at all.

Which makes me just a little optimistic that the post-pandemic new normal might just be the best of the too-virtual world we inhabit just now and the real world social contacts we crave.

On that positive note, season’s greetings to all readers.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson, Netflix Movie, 19 December 2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ma_Rainey%27s_Black_Bottom_film_poster.jpg

I had unfinished business with the play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson. I had intended to see Howard Davies’s RNT production in late 1989…in fact I think I might even have got tickets and then had to give them up when I chose, instead, to visit the USA that autumn:

My First Visit To The USA Part One: New York, c19 to 22 November 1989

So I was very keen to see this movie when I read about it’s impending launch on Netflix in mid December 2020.

Kim had very kindly bought Janie a 6-month trial Netflix package earlier in the lockdown, which Janie switched on in order to see the mini-series around which Kim had designed her gift. After that, our usual reluctance to watch TV had switched in, so we had watched precisely nothing more on Netflix for just shy of six months.

So I knew we only had a few days left to watch this movie on our prepaid package before…horror of horrors…we might have had to actually pay to watch the thing, having not used our trial package for five-and-a-half months.

Anyway…

…watch it we did and extremely impressed with the performances I was.

Here is a link to the IMDb resources on this movie.

All of the performances were very good indeed, but in particular Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis were truly excellent.

Here is the official trailer for the movie:

In truth, it is a somewhat melodramatic play but it holds the attention because it shows an extraordinary moment in the history of music, plus the history of race and gender struggles in the USA, through the lens of a genuine early recording star in decline (Ma Rainey) and a fictional trumpeter whose direct experience of prejudice, racial violence and abuse set him on a tragic path.

Central to the play is the recording of Ma Rainey’s signature song, which you can hear here:

In short, I thought it was a superb movie and well worth seeing. Janie found the accents hard to follow and found the plot a bit basic, but did agree with me that we were watching outstanding performances, beautifully filmed.

Recommended.

Z/Yen’s Virtual Christmas Song Lyric, December 2020

This was written 6/7 December 2020 and performed virtually on 17 December 2020 at Z/Yen’s virtual seasonal event.

Note to self – communal singing doesn’t work by TEAMS or Zoom. It’s a latency thing.

DO THEY KNOW IT’S Z/YEN’S VIRTAL CHRISTMAS?

MICHAEL It’s Christmas time, Z/Yen has gathered virtually;
At Christmas time, enlightenment is on the screen.


MIKE And in our world of webclaves, we can spread a smile of joy;
Webinars around the world, at Christmas time.


LINDA But you recall, when we were in one place;
At Christmas time…


ALEX …we’d all gather face-to face.
There’s a world outside your window, that’s in a Covid wave again;


PETER Where the only liquid flowing, is the Dettol and D10.


JULIET And the Christmas bells that ring out, are the viral chimes of doom,


MORGAN Well tonight thank God it’s Teams, instead of Zoom.


SIMON And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time,
At least they can’t blame climate change down there.


IAN Oooh.


ELISABETH To Lothbury no-one goes, Z/Yen’s door is always closed,
Do they know Z/Yen still exists at all?


IAN INSTRUMENTAL RIFF 1


BIKASH Here’s to you;


BEN Raise a glass for everyone.


MATTHEW Here’s to them;


HUGH In that massive atrium.


JANIE Do they know Z/Yen still exists at all?


IAN: INSTRUMENTAL RIFF 2


IAN: INSTRUMENTAL RIFF 3


CHAOS…CHORUS – ALL: Teams Z/Yen’s chorus
Sing Z/Yen’s Christmas song remotely
Zoom Z/Yen’s chorus
Z/Yen’s not choral, not remotely.


[REPEAT CHAOS…CHORUS AD NAUSEUM]

Here is a link to the riffs.

ThreadCrushes, My Turn To Curate ThreadZoomMash, I Chose The Topic “Crushes”, 16 December 2020

This ThreadZoomMash is dedicated to the late Professor Mike Smith

Part One Introduction: Medieval Crushes

I chose the topic “crushes” by happenstance. Just before lockdown 2.0, while I was pondering my choice of topic, a couple of old friends and acquaintances, out of the blue, unprompted, confided in me about crushes they’d harboured when we were all a lot younger.

The topic of crushes resonated with me as a rich source of story telling.

It also resonated with my love of medieval music. Without going into too much detail as to why and wherefore, most medieval secular love songs are about unrequited love. The story formula is a simple one – as my music teacher Ian Pittaway puts it – “she is perfect…; I am hopelessly in love with her; she doesn’t want me; I am heart-broken”.

Here is a song I am working on at the moment: Puis Que Je Suy Amoureux. A late 14th century song attributed to Richard Loqueville of Cambrai. Allow me to sing you the first verse and then translate it.

Since I am in love
With you, gracious, gentle one,
I never feel pain
I am so blissfully joyful.

Thus I wish to continue dreaming
Of serving you according to my design
Since I am in love…

[Love gives to lovers
Hope, sweet and pleasant.
Now my heart is waiting
For your gracious glance,]
Since I am in love…

Translation by Asteria – below I have embedded their delightful, professional rendering of this beautiful song:

Part Two Introduction: Primary Crushes

It was not my intention to write a crush story myself. That is not normally the way with the role of ThreadMash curator. But events since I set the topic of crushes have led me to a memory flash of my very first crush.

Here’s the story of how the memory flash and that primary crush came about.

Very sadly, my friend and work colleague of more than 25 years, Professor Mike Smith, died suddenly and totally unexpectedly on 12 November. It was Mike who, six years ago, encouraged me to start playing the four-string guitar. Janie and I had formed a bond with Mike and his young family over the years.

On the last day of Lockdown 2.0, we went to Mike’s funeral. We learnt for the first time many things about Mike’s earlier life.

I knew that Mike originally came from Montgomery Alabama and I knew that Mike had very strong views against prejudice. But I didn’t know that, in the late 1960s, pint-sized Mike had tackled the racist bullies at Alabama State University, befriending black people and bravely taking on the segregationists.

I also didn’t know that, as a youngster, Mike had liked the song Red River Valley, which the celebrant at the funeral then duly played to the congregation of mourners.

At the sound of that song, I was transported back to the late 1960s myself, to when I was seven; thoughts of my fourth year primary school teacher, Miss Brown.

I loved her and she was clearly very fond of me. I did extremely well that year in school. Miss Brown introduced me to Tudor history, a subject that has fascinated me since. She encouraged my writing.

By the time you get to your fourth year of primary school, you have got used to the idea that you will move on to a different class with a different teacher the next academic year. But Miss Brown dropped a bombshell towards the end of the summer term that year; she was going to be leaving the school altogether.

I was devastated. I wasn’t merely going to be in another class. I wasn’t going to see her again. I felt abandoned.

That year, I had been given as a present a small collection of remaindered records, known as Beano Records. Most of the records are dramatised stories for children with famous English theatrical performers peppered with classical music to provide additional dramatic frisson to the stories. But one of the records, incongruously, is a collection of Cowboy Songs.

One of those cowboy songs is Red River Valley, which had caught my ear around the time I learnt that Miss Brown was to abandon me. I played that song over and over, wallowing in the sentiment of it. I became determined to learn Red River Valley and sing it to Miss Brown on the last day of school.

Eventually I told mum about my plan. Mum gently dissuaded me from that particular idea. I think she encouraged me instead to take a small gift together with a note of thanks and farewell to Miss Brown. I expect mum maintained strict editorial control over the content of the note.

With the benefit of hindsight, that might have been the one occasion in my life when mum’s intervention in my romantic ideals was unquestionably for the best.

There are many versions of Red River Valley, but one of the most charming verses (absent from the rather corny Beano recording, which you can hear through the sound file below)…

Red River Valley, performed by an uncredited “real Texas cowboy”

…is an unrequited love lyric, the third verse of the version I’m about to play. Very similar to the Puis Que Je Suy Amoureux unrequited love lyric, written some 500 years earlier.

It’s 50 years since I learnt, but didn’t sing, Red River Valley for Miss Brown.

It is now time.

It’s easy to play on the four string guitar, which Mike Smith encouraged me to play.

So, this rendition is for Miss Brown and for Mike Smith:

Red River Valley

Oh they say from this valley you’re leaving
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile
And they say that you’re taking the sunshine
That has brightened our pathway a while

Won’t you think of the valley you’re leaving
Oh how lonesome, how sad it will be
And remember the Red River Valley
And the grief that you’re causing to me

For a long time my darling I’ve waited
For the sweet words you never would say
Now at last all my fond hopes have vanished
For they say that you’re going away

Come and sit by my side if you love me
Do not hasten to bid me adieu
Just remember the Red River Valley
And the cowboy that loved you so true

Postscript: The Evening

Ten of us gathered. Eight contributors, me in my capacity as curator/master of ceremonies, plus Rohan Candappa.

The Part One running order was:

  • Jan
  • Adrian
  • Jill
  • Geraldine

The Part Two running order was:

  • Coats Bush (Terry)
  • Auntie Viral (Kay)
  • Fabian Tights (David)
  • Arfur Pig (Ian T)

(The nicknames is a long story. Ask Rohan).

We had a good 30 to 40 minutes after the readings to discuss the contributions and all sorts of other stuff.

From my point of view it was a great evening and I thoroughly enjoyed the role of curator. Not that i would want to curate the evening every time, but my hand is certainly up to curate again.

ThreadZoomMash Celebrity Edition, Siddharta by Hermann Hesse In My Case, Plus Lots More Fascinating Contributions, 16 November 2020

Tonight, another of Rohan Candappa’s left-field ideas. Choose one page from any book of your own choosing; explain your choice and read out that page.

I railed against the Desert Island Discs idea a few months ago…

Desert Island Diatribe, A Performance Piece For ThreadZoomMash, Plus A Review Of the Evening,29 July 2020

…do I even need to explain that “choose just one page to read” meets a similarly febrile emotional push-back in my mind.

But I quite quickly settled on Hermann Hesse as my choice of author. George Elliot and Hermann Hesse are the only authors about whom I decided, on reading one novel, that I simply must try to read everything this person wrote.

Hesse’s novels are extraordinary and quite exceptional. I commend all of his novels to you. Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game are mind-blowing, but possibly not the place to start with Hesse’s work.

My first Hesse read was Demian. I picked up that novel, pretty much by chance, in a remaindered bookshop on the Charing Cross Road in the mid 1980s. Some of the fictional conversations in that book reminded me of conversations I’d enjoyed with Anil Biltoo, the school pal with whom I went to Mauritius in 1979 and through whom I met Fuzz, the subject of my first ThreadMash piece.

The Rohan Thing, My Short Performance Piece As Part Of Rohan Candappa’s Inaugural Threadmash, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2019

Hesse’s evident fascination with Eastern philosophies and my desire to read more about them took me next to Siddharta. There are two parts to the book; I am going to read you the few hundred words that conclude Part One; a point at which Siddharta reaches a spiritual awakening such that he is, in a sense, reborn in Part Two.

I don’t personally believe in reincarnation, but I did feel a shiver down my spine while researching this preamble, when I read Hermann Hesse’s Wikipedia entry. Hesse died on 9 August 1962. That was the day that Anil Biltoo was born.

Anil Biltoo. Click here or the picture for the Project Gutenberg public domain version of Siddhartha in English

The Events Of The Evening

I went first, so (apart from a short introduction by Rohan before I did my bit), this piece is sequenced in running order sequence.

Kay went next. She read The Owl-Critic by James Thomas Fields, reading from a charming anthology she has kept from primary school. Kay might chime in with the details of the anthology, but I’m guessing it is out of print and hard to find. She had peppered the poem with musical notation as a child, which was a charming additional detail.

Flo read Last Of the MetroZoids by Adam Gopnik. It is a very moving piece about the art historian, Kirk Varnedoe, coaching a boys football team while dying of cancer. It is a very moving piece, which Flo read beautifully.

Next up was Jan, who (Rohan suggested) wanted to style herself as Constance DeVereaux this evening…perhaps an in-joke between “spice”. Anyway, Jan read from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (another book available in the public domain through Project Gutenberg). She read the bit where Jo sacrifices her glorious head of hair to raise money for the family.

Ian Theodorson read a passage from East Of Eden by John Steinbeck (link is to Wikipedia entry, as the book is still in copyright). Ian preambled his reading by explaining some of the biblical references/allusions involved, not least the Cain & Abel story from the Old Testament.

Then a brief half-time discussion. The topic that got the most coverage was about Little Women and books of that kind, specifically whether there is an equivalent literary genre that helps young men to understand their romantic emotions. We concluded that there is seemingly no such genre.

We then had an actual half-time break, but there was no evidence of anyone eating cut up pieces of orange. Nor, mercifully, did Rohan try to motivate us with glib words and phrases such as “momentum”, “play as a unit”, “give it 120%” or “leave it all out there on the Zoom screen”.

There was then a euphemism-fest, using terms such as “recharging my gadget”, when it was clear that people wanted a toilet break.

I used that time as an opportunity to show those who remained my proud collection of decomposing Pooh.

When it comes to decomposing Pooh…if you’ve got it, flaunt it.

Rohan kicked off the second half by reciting the lyric of What A Fool Believes by Michael McDonald & Kenny Loggins. There’s a bit of involuntary threading in there, as Kenny Loggins also famously produced Return To Pooh Corner, including Loggins song House At Pooh Corner. It’s a fabulous lyric which I looked at a year or two ago with a view to giving it the troubadour treatment; I might just about be able to sing it now.

John read a nerve-jangling passage from Touching the Void by Joe Simpson. It is a heart-stopping true story about a pair of mountaineers in the Andes who survived a disaster in almost-impossible circumstances. It was made into a much-lauded documentary film some years after the book came out.

Jill read a passage from The Book Of Human Emotions by Tiffany Watt Smith. She read the piece about amae, a Japanese emotion which is hard to translate into English. “It means something like the pleasure that you get when you’re able to temporarily hand over responsibility for your life to someone else”, to quote Tiffany herself from this rather fascinating interview with her about the book.

Adrian read an hilarious piece from March Of the Lemmings: Brexit In Print & Performance 2016-2019 by Stewart Lee. The passage Adrian read was a sequence of thank you letters to brexity aunts for their brexity Christmas presents. I learnt that we should all have an Anderson shelter for Brexit; who knew?

Terry read a passage from The Big Book: Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism, explaining after his reading, in no uncertain terms, that this book saved his life.

Geraldine read us three Robert Frost poems. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but it has dawned on me the morning after, that The Road Not Taken, one of Frost’s best known and most debated poems, is a fascinating echo of the East Of Eden “free will” debate regarding the Cain & Abel story from Ian T’s reading. Geraldine read one other poem the title/detail of which has escaped me (she might chime in with the title), plus The Gift Outright, which Frost recited in person at John F Kennedy’s inauguration.

Perhaps they should book Stewart Lee to recite some fitting words for the outgoing president at Joe Biden’s inauguration, if the narcissist-in-chief bothers to show up.

After the event, a few of us stuck around for some further discussion, although it soon descended into weird debates about matters such as the relative merits of Michael Mcdonald & Malcolm MacDonald, two people who are surely very hard to distinguish from one another.

I have had this problem myself in my time. Who hasn’t?

Just one more parting thought, brought to mind by the thought of stories we loved as children and our parents’ influence. I am blessed to still have many recordings of my parents reading to me. I have several still to go through and upload to Ogblog, but one in particular, from when I was five, remains charming and is a complete story. I uploaded it a few years ago and several friends told me that they have played it many times over to their children. Hare And Guy Fawkes by Alison Uttley:

Hare And Guy Fawkes, Daddy Reading To Me, 5 November 1967

A Virtual Gathering Of People Who Left Alleyn’s School In 1980, 12 November 2020

Blame Rohan Candappa.

Rohan Candappa: “I have another idea…”

Actually this was a very good idea. The face-to-face “40 years on” reunion had to be cancelled this summer, so Rohan figured we should have a “40 years on” virtual reunion through the good offices of Zoom instead.

Of course, back in the day, nobody used the phrase “back in the day”…

…and back then a Zoom was an ice lolly, not a meeting.

I paraphrase Rohan’s remarks in the form of a quote.

37 of us gathered, from a cohort of some 120. That’s about a third of us, which, 40 years on and with some of our cohort no longer with us…is a mighty impressive haul.

People joined from places as far afield as Ontario (Paul Deacon & Rich “The Rock” Davis), New Zealand (The Right Reverend Sir Nigel Godfrey), Phnom Penh (Andrew Sullivan), Australia (Neal Townley), Barcelona (Duncan Foord), Crouch End (Rohan Candappa) and Penge (somebody, surely?).

It seemed like a recipe for chaos, yet somehow the mixture of untrammelled chat and a little bit of structured “go around the virtual room for a memory each” worked surprisingly well.

Some of the people are friends I have seen relatively recently, one way…

Ghosts, ThreadZoomMash Performance Piece, Plus Reflections On The Evening, 21 October 2020

…or another…

An Award-Winning Evening During Which I Hung Out With The Alleyn’s Old Boys Crowd, Sripur Restaurant, 6 December 2018

…but many of the people present I had only corresponded with on FaceBook or not at all in the last 40+ years.

The array of memories was varied and fascinating. A lot of stuff about teachers, good, bad and (in some violent cases) especially ugly.

Some observations especially resonated with me and stuck in my mind. Paul Romain illustrated through readings from his first and last school reports that he was a keen scout at first, but by the end at least metaphorically semi-detached from the school…if not detached and several acres from the metaphorical school. That resonated with my experience.

It also brought back to me my lingering grudge against my late mum for throwing out my old school reports (and indeed all my juvenilia from that period apart from my diaries) on the spurious grounds that “no-one would ever want to look at that sort of old rubbish again”. When I challenged this assumption, by letting mum know that I was REALLY REALLY upset that she had done this, she said, “how was I supposed to know that you cared for that stuff?”. To which my simple answer was, “if you had asked me BEFORE you threw my things away, you’d have known.” No, I’m still not over it.

“Renée is an enthusiastic, diligent lass, but she sometimes allows her natural exuberance to mar her judgement”

I think it was Jerry Moore who held up some editions of Scriblerus (the Alleyn’s School magazine), threatening to scan and circulate some elements of them. I do hope he does that. David Wellbrook mentioned his first toe-dip into performing Shakespeare and the rather damning review Chris Chivers gave of his performance.

That all brought back to my mind my own somewhat involuntary performance in Twelfth Night, I think the year after David Wellbrook’s debut. I remember Mr Chivers’ Scriblerus review of my performance as Antonio; in particular I recall pawing over it on a train with my friend Jilly Black, trying to work out whether he was praising me or damning me with faint praise. I suspect the latter, but I would love to see the review again now that I am older and…well, just older.

I have to be honest about this; I really was not in the mood for a reunion come 19:30 on 12 November. I had received some horrible news just a couple of hours before the event; the sudden and totally unexpected death of a friend, Mike Smith:

A Personal Tribute To Professor Mike Smith, 12 November 2020

Indeed I considered sending my apologies to the virtual reunion and spending the evening wallowing instead. But I thought better of doing that and Janie encouraged me to give the virtual meeting a go…I could always switch off the Zoom early if I really didn’t feel up to the gathering…

…anyway, I’m so glad I did join the group, even if I wasn’t entirely myself throughout the evening. It was great to see everyone and I learn that there is every chance that many of us will be doing it again.

I guess I need to dig out those diaries again and see what else I can find!

A Personal Tribute To Professor Mike Smith, 12 November 2020

Janie and I were shocked and deeply saddened to learn that Mike Smith had died suddenly, on the morning of 12 November 2020.

I have known Mike since early 1995, when I went to visit him (and Marianna) at Keele University, at the behest of Michael Mainelli, in the very early days of our business, The Z/Yen Group. I have written up the very first 1995 visit – click here and below:

The Day I Saw Slade & The Smiths At Keele, 10 January 1995

Michael, who had already known and worked on and off with Mike Smith for 16 years by then, was aware that Mike was possibly looking for a change and might be the answer to my skills shortages, especially when advising civil society organisations on matters information systems and/or informatics.

We dipped our metaphorical toes in the working together water in the summer of 1995. Then, in 1996, Mike moved down to London, taking an employment contract with Z/Yen for “most-of-a-post”, while retaining an element of academic interest through a part-time professorship at QMW (now Queen Mary University of London).

Mike was a terrific mentor and an exceptionally brilliant systems architect. Advisory work was less his forte. But through the triumphs and difficulties we enjoyed and endured together during those years, the important thing is that we had tremendous respect for each other, forming a firm and enduring friendship.

Mike also remained an associate and close friend of Z/Yen after moving on to form Medix, which at that time was a research business for the health sector based around some of Mike’s ingenious software. Mike retained the rights to the core of his research systems and latterly Z/Yen started to use them and worked with Mike again on various projects.

It was while Mike and I were working together on a project at Moorfields in 2014 that he sprung upon me the idea that I should learn to play a musical instrument for relaxation. He recommended the baritone ukulele. Then, one day, when we were meeting a senior Moorfields medic, Mike turned up with an instrument and presented it to me at the start of the meeting.

Janie and I were about to go off to Oman for a short break; Mike insisted that I take the instrument with me, despite my concerns about travelling with a loan instrument.

A Short Break in Oman, Zighy Bay, 1 to 12 March 2014

That was me up and running…or do I mean “up and strumming”? I know Mike was thrilled that I took to the instrument with such gusto.

Indeed, the last time we saw Mike was at the start of this ill-fated year, 2020, when Janie and I went over to Mike & Marianna’s place to have dinner with them and the kids. Naturally it was also a musical session.

A Gentle Start To 2020, Including Music & Food With The Smiths & The Neighbours, Early January 2020

Janie and I were due to reciprocate the hospitality; we had a date in the diary for April, but of course lockdown put paid to that and we didn’t get to reschedule during this crazy on-off year, which is such a shame. But Janie and I are both grateful that our last memory of being with Mike is such a happy one.

Trying To Rectify Dire Customer Service: It’s A Gas Gas Gas, 2 November 2020


SASOL, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE BRITISH GAS CUSTOMER RELATIONS TEAM

2 NOVEMBER 2020

Thank you for your response to my complaint last month.

For the benefit of new readers, I complained about shortcomings in the establishment of a joint electricity and gas account which required me to spend 10 to 15 minutes unsuccessfully and eventually 45 minutes successfully waiting for my phone call to be answered.  I would not have needed to phone British Gas at all, but for shortcomings in the on-line service which allowed me access to the electricity account but required me to phone to initiate the gas one.

I asked you not to blame the Covid pandemic for these shortcomings, but you spent some 35% of the words in the substantive part of your response doing just that.  I did not complain about the delay in commencing the gas service, as I am aware that you were one of two suppliers involved. But you spent some 30% of the words in your substantive response implying that Opus might be to blame.  (The previous supplier was Octopus). 

To be clear, only British Gas is to blame for:

  • the fact that the on-line system worked for the electricity account on commencement but not for the gas account;
  • providing no means for me to initiate on-line activity for that gas account – there was simply a clear message on the screen telling me to call a particular phone number;
  • such dire staffing on that phone line, I waited an hour before speaking with someone.

The reason I didn’t want you to blame Covid is because I KNOW that British Gas can staff telephone lines adequately at the moment. The sales team responded to my calls very rapidly. British Gas has chosen not to staff adequately the customer services phone.  I strongly suspect that the dire service level I experienced is regular fare for your poorer and more vulnerable customers, who might lack the literacy or IT skills to use the on-line systems and webchats (if/when available, which in my case, you realise, they were not).

You end the substantive part of your response with a delicious question:

“In terms of complaint resolution, other than apologies, could I ask what are you requesting?“

I find this question hard to answer. Perhaps some of my friends and contacts have ideas, which is one of the reasons I am publishing this letter openly.  If I get any great ideas from my personal network, I shall pass them on to you.

But I suspect that your question is a veiled way of asking “how much compensation do you need to go away and not come back?”  I shall leave the answer to that question to you.  I spent an unnecessary hour just waiting for you to answer the phone and I have spent a further 90 minutes or so actually getting my problem resolved and writing to you. 

At minimum wages levels that equates to £21.80.  At my commercial charge out rate it equates to £1,000.  Somewhere between those two figures feels right to me.

Whatever you decide to provide as compensation to Buffalo Woodfield Limited, I pledge personally to donate that sum to FoodCycle, the charity which my wife and I are supporting through the pandemic by doing food drops to the needy.  My friends and contacts will eagerly await the donation figure.

I genuinely want British Gas as a supplier to look after poorer and more vulnerable customers properly. You are a large organisation which can make bigger and bolder choices than small companies like mine and individuals like me.  Currently, in the matter of customer service, you are making bad customer care choices.  Do better.   

With best wishes

Ian Harris, Director, Buffalo Woodfield Limited. Complaint Reference number: 5022907658. 

Postscript

Seventy minutes after sending the above complaint (and posting it on Facebook & Ogblog) I received correspondence offering £200 as a goodwill gesture.

For aficionados only, the full chain of correspondence (including my acceptance of the offer with some further entreaties for British Gas to look after its vulnerable customers better) is attached as a pdf here.

…and for lovers of Facebook chat about such matters, here is my Facebook posting of the above repleast with comments from friends and family.

Socially Distanced Halloween, 31 October 2020

Janie normally likes to go to town for Halloween in Noddyland, as reported in several previous posts, such as this one from last year…

The Amsweetyville Horror, Halloween Night In Noddyland, 31 October 2019

But these are not normal times, so we needed to keep the little urchins away from our biosecure gates and door.

But we did put out an illuminated pumpkin for them to spot and one bowl of sweets atop the hedge for those bold enough to take anything at all from such an uninviting place.

I hope the “joke” involved in getting a “Keep Out – foot and mouth disease” sign for a podiatrist’s door isn’t wasted on you readers…it probably is wasted on many of the passers by, not least the local kids.

We’ve done our best this year. Hoping we can go back to the normal levels of pseudo-horror next year. The real horrors of 2020 are not fun.

How Often Do You Read An Obituary, Only For The Penny To Drop About Something Momentous That Happened To You?, 27 October 2020

I have been reading and indeed writing far too many obituaries recently.

I learnt a few weeks ago that the great human rights campaigner, Swami Agnivesh. had died.

At breakfast this morning I devoured an excellent obituary of him in The Economist.

Perhaps only subscribers can see the above piece but here, on fair use principles, is the sentence that made me gulp my coffee:

In that role of peacemaker, he also trekked in 2011 into the forests of Chhattisgarh to oversee the handover by Maoist rebels of five abducted policemen.

Janie and I were in Chhattisgarh in February that year. Intrigued, I Googled the incident to see if, as I suspected, it occurred when we were there and near where we were.

Here is a link to the contemporaneous article from The Hindu.

So, the hostages were taken on 25 January 2011 and a hostage crisis started to unfold in Narayanpur on 3 February when demands were made by the Maoists and interventions planned by Agnivesh and others.

Janie and I were due to visit Narayanpur for market day on 6 February, but our host, Jolly, assured us that it would not be a good idea to go there and said he had revised our itinerary to see equally or even more interesting tribal people and markets nearer to Bastar.

With the time saved, we ended up in Jagdalpur with me providing live commentary for the Interstate Cricket Match, which yielded one of my favourite memories/anecdotes for the King Cricket website...

Interstate competition, Bhawaripatnam v Konta at Jagdalpur – match report

…and also one of the most memorable travel days Janie and I (aka Daisy and Ged; that too is a long story)…have ever had. Here is the write up of the whole day:

More Bastar Visits; Nayannar (Bison Horn Maria People), Jagdalpur, Commentating On Interstate Cricket Match, Pamela Market & More, 6 February 2011

Of course, we had been warned before we travelled to Chhattisgarh that it was a politically volatile place and that our itinerary might be subject to last minute change.

But what a wonderful day we had on the back of that change.

And how extraordinary to learn, after nearly 10 years, that the reason for that change was a hostage crisis that was being resolved by one of our human rights heros in the place we were supposed to visit.

We can’t (in practical terms) travel at the moment, during the pandemic, but Janie and I were all-but transported, through time and space, back to that 2011 adventure of ours in the central plains of India. Invigorating, it was.