In the grander scheme of things, our sporting woes are small beer. But last week, on Tuesday, I played real tennis at Lord’s for the last time in a while. Earlier today we played lawners in an almost-empty Boston Manor Park, again probably on hold for some time, now that non-essential road travel is off the agenda.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. When socially distancing and only going out when necessary, we’ll need to exercise and play at home for a while. I have ordered some low cost, high value gizmondry for the purpose, which should be wending its way to us as I write…
…but in the meantime we dug out the little Butterfly miniature table tennis table:
Other brands and other outlets are no doubt available, but click the pic for an outlet
We bought ours for a mere score, perhaps a score or more years ago. We’ve only used it occasionally and always enjoyed ourselves when we have done so. It is very small and very frustrating to play…in a good way.
Daisy normally wins at table tennis and I think had always previously won at the miniature variety. The speed of reflexes and balance aspects of the game play to her strengths.
Yet, strangely, since I started playing real tennis, my table tennis results against Daisy have been getting better. Would that also apply to the miniature variety?
Only one way to find out. We agreed to play a proper match, i.e. a best of 5 games, in which each game is won by the first player to win 11 points, and be at least 2 points ahead of their opponent.
Let the games begin
The first game was an absolute humdinger, which Ged eventually won 21-19, after being 10-8 up and having far more game points than Daisy.
The second game Daisy won 11-9, keeping her nose in front pretty much all the way through that game.
Ged won the third game 11-7, in fairly dominant fashion after the first few points.
Then Ged took the lead in the fourth; at 8-5 up Ged thought he had Daisy staring down the barrel, but as so often at table tennis, the winning line seemed to evade Ged as Daisy slowly but surely turned the game around to win it 12-10.
So it was 2-2 going in to the final game. When Daisy went 4-3 up in the fifth, Ged even exclaimed…
…why do I always find a way to lose this stupid game?
…which, with the benefit of hindsight, is probably not the right way to project one’s confidence in winning at your opponent.
Still, despite that schoolboy error, Ged then managed a little run of points and then just about managed to keep his cool and his nose in front to win the final game and therefore the match 11-9.
What fun. Not quite the real thing, but better than nothing.
Until this week, Ogblog has been entirely free of Covid-19. Of course, the pandemic, which began in Wuhan in late 2019, has been well underway across the world for weeks now.
Increasing social distancing restrictions, some recommended, some enforced, have been rolled out in the UK in the past few days. I needed to do one or two things at the office yesterday; I doubt if I shall visit the City again for a while.
So, 19 March, I woke up to the new normal. Virtually normal.
The Lockdown Theatre Company
Want to know more? Click the redundancy bunny
My old mate Rohan Candappa has come up with a cracking idea to help his friends in the performing arts. The above picture link takes you to the Facebook site for the Lockdown Theatre – this link takes you to Rohan’s initiating statement.
Basically Rohan is going to produce a short performance piece each week, for several weeks, for which he is paying performers a modest but much-needed fee. initially at least this will be free to view.
Rohan does good stuff, so I commend this to Ogblog readers for artistic reasons but I also commend the communitarian and “new normal” thinking behind the idea.
So, I spent some time promoting the idea through my personal channels and writing to Rohan.
Where it will lead I don’t know. Rohan doesn’t know. None of us know where the Covid-19 pandemic will lead society either. We have to get used to “don’t know where this is going”. Don’t know but let’s give this a try is part of the new normal.
Good luck and good speed, Rohan. If I can help with this initiative, I shall.
Then I spent several hours doing actual work from home, much as I have done, remotely, most of the time in the past 25+ years. Just more video conferences and Skypes than previously. New normal.
King Cricket’s Sim Series: Sri Lanka v England Day One
King Cricket is using a rather more recent version of the International Cricket captain simulation game – click the above pic. to see the Day One report
At lunchtime, I took a break from work and checked in eagerly to King Cricket.
King Cricket’s response to the new normal, which in part means that there is no actual live cricket when there should have been, has been to try something a bit silly. He has picked an “all time greats” Sri Lanka side to play an “all time greats” England side in a simulation of the cancelled test matches in Sri Lanka.
He is going to run his simulation of each day of the two cancelled tests on the requisite day and write some humorous end of day reports for each day. The King Cricket community chime in with comments.
I showed Janie the Day Three report (a few hours before writing this Ogblog piece). I had to explain cricket simulation games to her…
…did Janie not know that I had the 1999 version? She and I were long since together back then, although I suppose the game never travelled from my place to hers during my brief infatuation with it…
…and I also had to explain King Cricket’s match reporting idea and the fact that many readers seemed to be enjoying the idea.
You have all gone completely mad, she said.
Then I did some more work (including those extra Skypes and video conferences) until I was done with work.
Then I had some dinner before hunkering down to a virtual show.
NewsRevue Last Performance Before Covid-19 Closure, Web-Streamed
Just in case anyone doesn’t know about my past involvement with and long-standing love for the 40-year-old comedy show NewsRevue…
…I suggest you click one or both of the above links.
Anyway, social distancing means no live shows and stuff for the foreseeable future, as well as no live sport, so the NewsRevue team decided to perform the last show before closure behind closed doors and upload the video for people to watch, from scheduled show time onwards.
I watched the show around about showtime – actually about 22:00 – sat in bed after eating a supersized plate of yummy pasta left over from earlier in the week – thank you Janie.
If you want to see the show, it is embedded below.
Highlights for me were the toilet roll song, “I Love Toilet Roll” at 8:15 and also a wonderful Nicola Sturgeon song at 11:45; a very impressive singing impersonation I thought.
Perhaps not the strongest run ever, but it is quintessentially NewsRevue.
Note to self – do not make a habit of sitting in bed watching a streamed video on the TV while you are digesting your food – the food does not digest well in that posture – especially if you nod off in said posture before straightening yourself out. No need to explain in detail to the readers what can go wrong in these circumstances.
Yes, the end of such a novel day, the virtual new normal, is a time for reflection…and in my case, refluxion.
Read all about it on the Finborough site by clicking this image.
Janie and I really enjoyed this evening at the Finborough. We do like that place; it consistently puts on good stuff in a small space. Not Quite Jerusalem is no exception; indeed one of the best things we’ve seen at the Finborough and one of the best things we’ve seen this year.
I was looking out for this Finborough slot late in 2019, when I met the director, Peter Kavanagh at Gaslight.
This production is well cast, with each of the characters playing their role well. Joe McArdle, as the chavvy Yorkshire lad, shows his versatility as an actor; he was the “big reveal detective” in Gaslight – a very different role. Russell Bentley and Alisa Joy both did well as the sabra Israelis; prickly and softening believably and with credible accents too. Ryan Whittle, Miranda Braun and Ronnie York were all suitably irritating as the bright drifter, the damaged female and the uber-chavvy lad from Harlow, respectively.
I had been looking forward to discussing the Harlow chav with John White – he of Harlow- the next day, but our meet up with John and Mandy was cancelled for Covid-19 reasons.
But I digress.
Not Quite Jerusalem is not a great play, but there are lots of interesting elements in it and it hangs together very well as a story. Peter Kavanagh’s production is a thoroughly entertaining evening in the theatre.
With thanks to John Random for the 1992 pictures, such as the one above.
It was with great sadness, although not surprise, that I learnt, on 11 March, that Chris Stanton has died. He had been battling and eventually reconciling himself with terminal cancer for a couple of years. It was a fitting coincidence that I learnt of his demise, through the NewsRevue alum community (specifically, via Chris Rowe), as I came off the real tennis court at Lord’s.
I first met Chris at the Canal Cafe Theatre in the spring of 1992, when I started writing for NewsRevue and while Chris was performing in John Random’s Spring 1992 run of the show.
Chris Stanton was the very first professional performer to deliver my lyrics to a paying audience. A rather morbid number, entitled California Here I Go:
Not one of my best, but one of my first…and my goodness, a performer of Chris’s quality could make the most of whatever material he was given.
That cast: Sarah Swingler, Ian Angus Wilkie, Chris Stanton, Sonia Beck
Later that run, the cast, with Chris Stanton up front and exceptional, performed another of mine, You Can’t Hurry Trusts. A much better – indeed still relevant – lyric for a topical satirical review, though I say so myself:
Chris Stanton’s professional career continued to thrive and take off as the 1990s went on…as did mine of course, but his was a performing career whereas my career was a more conventional one. I saw little of him for 20 or so years after our involvement with NewsRevue waned, by the end of the 1990s.
Chris was reluctant to join us at Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinners, although he did perhaps turn up once or twice in the early part of the 20th century.
Coincidentally, our paths crossed again some 20 years after Chris’s involvement with NewsRevue ceased, in 2016, when I took up real tennis at Lord’s and ran into Chris in the dedans gallery.
I, beginner.
Real tennis is a wonderful game, still played virtually unchanged since medieval times, ideal for those with a sense of comedy. As I said back in 2016:
Unless you are very gifted at the game (which I am not and Chris was only a little more gifted than me), you have to be prepared to look absurd at times, the game is so complex and confounding. Yet addictive.
Real tennis players are sometimes referred to as “realists” but I think there is an “absurdist” element to it for us comedy types. I especially enjoyed saying, panto-style, “it’s behind you” to Chris, if he ended up (as oft we do) confounded by the eventual landing point of that hand-made, not-quite-round ball in that crazily-shaped court. Ironically, of course, Chris was doing a fair bit of panto in recent years, before he was taken ill.
We are a geeky lot too, so “the book” for real tennis scores is a global database that records the results of every match. Here is my head-2-head of recorded games with Chris; he will have given me handicap points in each of these matches; fewer as the years went on:
Final score: Stanton 3 matches to Harris 2 matches. I could have been a contender…
I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen Chris for a while – I thought he might just have been busy with work or off games with an injury – until I ran into him at Lord’s last summer on a test match day and he explained to me (with some surprise that I didn’t know) that he had lung cancer (one of the non-smoker varieties), was undergoing treatment but was probably just staving off the inevitable. By that time, Chris seemed reconciled, I’d even say at peace, with his fate. Certainly that was the way he presented me with the facts of the matter.
My last memory of spending time with him will be an abiding one and speaks volumes about the man. Towards the end of last summer, we had a 40th anniversary party for NewsRevue at the Canal Cafe Theatre. The event included the extant show and a “smoker” – the latter being a form of party we often had in the 1990s at which performers and writers would do party pieces for one another.
Chris said to me, earlier in the evening, that he was worried that his lungs no longer had the capacity to carry him all the way through 0898 without a breather. I said that I was sure it wouldn’t matter if he did need a breather; we were a gathering of friends.
Of course, commensurate professional that he was, Chris somehow got through the song without missing a beat or pausing for breath once. It was a masterful performance, not least in the circumstances.
I don’t suppose my report of his tenacity comes as news to anyone who worked with Chris throughout his long and successful acting career, nor to anyone who did battle with him on the real tennis court.
In the language of real tennis, Chris was a “better than half a yard” sort of bloke; news of his demise has made me (and no doubt many others) feel “worse than the door”.
Or in the language of the stage, Chris Stanton was a stellar performer whose passing has temporarily made me feel wooden as I write.
But such super memories. Thank you, Chris Stanton.
Postscript: The Coincidence Magnifies
Within a day or so of posting this tribute, I learnt that Chris Rowe, the Newsrevue alum who notified us about Chris Stanton’s demise, is also a member of the MCC and also a real tennis enthusiast. Indeed, it was through Chris Rowe that Chris Stanton got involved with real tennis at Lord’s.
Here is a poster from the Newsrevue 1991 Edinburgh show, in which both of the gentlemen appeared:
For some unknown reason, we didn’t book this when it first came out. I think Janie was on a bit of a “let’s be more selective about what we see” spree at the time and at a glance I thought this play might be a bit geeky and not to her taste.
But I was wrong and I’m so glad we had the opportunity to put matters right before the end of The Haystack’s run.
Below is the short trailer vid:
If it looks like a bit of a thriller, that’s because it is a bit of a thriller. Also, the subject matter is, technically, very geeky indeed. Yet the topic; the use of technology for surveillance in our culture, is covered in a fascinating, human-interest story way. The geeky elements are covered well, but also in a way that ordinary folk can understand and relate to. Trust me, if Janie comes out of seeing a play saying that, it has done a very good job.
Ironically, those resources, including the programme, enabled us to place the writer, Al Blyth, under surveillance. Janie and I deployed our sophisticated facial recognition systems (otherwise known as our eyes) to spot Al Blyth in the audience that night…sitting next to us. Fiendish we are.
Janie nearly blew our cover by engaging him in polite conversation, but thought better of it, not least because he seemed quite engrossed with his own guests.
Proof positive though, if such proof were needed, that I know how to choose good seats at The Hampstead.
Meanwhile, the play and this production of it were cracking good. Really, really good. This is the first piece we have seen Roxana Silbert direct for some time; if it indicates the quality she is going to bring to The Hampstead in her role as Artistic Director, her appointment is seriously good news for one of our favourite places.
The play is called The Haystack because looking for lone wolf security threat types is like looking for a needle in a haystack…or is it, if you have a plethora of machine learning and surveillance tools at your disposal? Further, if you deploy those tools and techniques, are you in danger of turning the society you are trying to preserve into the very type of society you are trying to avoid?
The acting was all very good, with special mentions to Oliver Johnstone & Rona Morison as the central pair plus Sarah Woodward as a believably creepy spook.
A mikvah (or mikveh) is a Jewish ritual bath (the picture above is a modern example).
It is rather an orthodox thing and mostly a female thing, so, in truth, I’ve not had much truck with mikv’ot (mikvah, plural) personally. I do remember my father saying that he wanted to apply for the job of lifeguard when they opened a mikvah in Streatham, but he was joking and I am digressing.
The closest I’ve got to actually dipping in a mikvah-like manner personally was my visit to the Fukinomori onsen bath in Japan 18 months or so ago:
The Orange Tree team has made an excellent short video explaining the play, embedded below:
It had a short run at the Orange Tree’s Director Festival 2019, which was very well received by the reviewers, but not seen by many people, so the Orange Tree has, wisely, brought the piece back for a full run with a proper set, including a “bad boy of a pseudo-mikvah” on stage.
Janie and I were both really impressed by the writing, the production and the directing. The performances of both Alex Waldmann & Josh Zare were top rate.
At one level it is a slight piece. Just over an hour; a simple and somewhat predictable plot. It made me think of My Beautiful Laundrette, but without the heavy political and inter-racial overtones.
Yet the play works extremely well. It is a charming piece that shows two young men in semi-detached North-West London suburbia who are semi-detached from their roots and from the expectations their community places upon them.
Janie and I like short plays of this kind; entertaining, thought-provoking and well-produced. Another big tick in the box for The Orange Tree.
If you are reading this during March 2020, we recommend that you go and see this piece; it runs at the Orange Tree until 28 March.
So I am not describing this year’s Gresham Society annual bash as “long” because the formalities took longer than promised.
But in truth, deploying the sort of barefaced nerve that might even make our current Prime Minister blush at the missed timescale, Tim Connell’s perennial boast that he would keep the AGM to within five minutes (or die in a ditch attempting it?) was blown once again this year by more-than-doubling the time to 11-and-a-half minutes.
No, the reason this evening should be remembered by all Gresham Society folk as The Long AGM & Dinner is because Ray Long CB was the guest speaker.
I am certainly not suggesting that the formal elements of the dinner were too long. The grace, toasts and Ray Long’s address were all delightfully short and well-directed. Ray, who is currently Master of the Information Technologists’ Company and a Past-President of BCS, spoke in part about artificial intelligence (AI), outlining the potential risks but also the monumental benefits that such technologies might bring.
Did Ray use AI to help compose and edit his charming address? We can only guess. Perhaps Ray himself doesn’t even know for sure; that would be spooky.
Yes, most of the evening was spent eating, drinking and enjoying conviviality, as always.
The Gresham Society crowd and their guests are such a warm and friendly bunch; this event is a great opportunity to catch up with Gresham friends. I always go home from such evenings feeling happy and uplifted.
As it turns out, fortunately, Jeremy Summerly is an early music expert with a sense of humour and a sense that there is no such thing as poor performance – in common with my early music teacher, Ian Pittaway:
Anyway, the point is, Jeremy Summerly and I had enough time chatting to realise that there should be some early music fun to be had at the next soirée, not least with a little “piece” I already have up my sleeve in readiness.
Basil also, very kindly, tipped me off to Jeremy Summerly’s superb guest lectures, the first two of which I missed but both of which are now available on YouTube (copyright issues having been overcome, it seems), so I passed a couple of very enjoyable and informative hours the next evening watching those:
I have also made a diary note to attend the next one on 2 April.
Another noteworthy element of the evening was the wine. I tried the white, a Bacchus from New Hall Vineyards in Essex, more in hope than in expectation, but I thought it really very good; as did Bobbie, who spent quite some time trying to persuade Iain to try it. The La Linda Malbec was also excellent – we should consider it for Z/Yen events, especially when our Linda (Cook) is organising them.
I’m rambling – and in danger of making this piece the only exceptionally long aspect of the event.
It was a lovely evening, as always with Gresham Society.
Saturday 8 Feburary, Janie and I went to Boston Manor for an early game of lawn tennis. It was a bit chilly but the sun was shining and the weather was set dreadful for the next couple of days.
So although I was due on court for a real tennis match that afternoon, we both needed some exercise and both fancied some of the outdoor variety.
We had a good game. I thought I played well and hoped my timing would be as good that afternoon as it had been that morning. In the end I think it was.
A quick scrub up and then off to Lord’s in Dumbo for the MCC v Dedanists match.
Parking Up Dumbo…Outside Moreton Morrell in this photo as it happens
The MCC v Dedanists match has been reported extensively on the Dedanists Society and MCC websites. Your truly has written the report. Here is a link to the Dedanists’ Society site.
Carl Snitcher in “thinker” poseSam Leigh keeping an eye on the guests, no doubt
Below are some of the spectators, rapt with attention, hanging on every shot:
Here’s me, John Thirlwell and my partner Martin Village (grabbing a coffee) as we came off court.
Here’s a link to all the stills that Janie took that day:
Janie took a few video clips, the first of which illustrates the famous Harris serve followed by the infamous Harris grunt…
…this next one shows some relatively classy play by our standards…
…and this next one includes my incisive calling, an all-time favourite string, “switch…up yours…well played”:
For the uninitiated, the phrase “up yours” is not a petulant expletive in the direction of one’s partner. Heaven forbid. “Up” indicates that the ball will land on the penthouse above the dedans gallery, thus telling one’s partner that there is no need to volley. “Yours” means that the ball, once it descends, is for one’s partner to play.
Considering that Martin and I had never even seen each other play before, let alone played together, I thought we got a lot more of that sort of stuff right than might have been expected.
I have scraped CCTV video evidence of the match highlights from all five of the rubbers, which can be seen in silence but glorious colour, through the following embedded links. We join Tony Friend & Paul Cattermull v Yuri Kugler & Julian Sheraton Davis in the second set with the score at 4-4:
We join Sam Leigh & Simon Martin v Simon Webster & Rodger Davis in the second set with the score at 3-3.
We join Giles Stogdon & Carl Snitcher v James McDermott & David Enticknap in the second set with the score at 2-3.
We join Peter Dean & Giles Pemberton v Johnny Saunders & Linda Sheraton Davis towards the end of the first set with the score at 4-4.
If you are a truly in search of passing some time (nearly an hour), you can watch both sets of the Sebastian Wood & John Thirlwell v Ian Harris & Martin Village match below.
As if that wasn’t enough drama for one day, Janie and I went on to the Royal Court to see All Of It after Lord’s. It was a wonderful 45 minutes of theatre, reported on here and below:
On Sunday morning the wind was howling at 40 mph plus and the weather forecast looked increasingly terrible. But the rain didn’t start first thing and Accuweather suggested that it wouldn’t rain until 11:00, so we decided to brave our regular 10:00 slot.
Just a little bit crazy – picture from some daftness a few years ago
Strangely, there was no-one else around in the park, apart from Linda Massey who was battening down the hatches of the pavilion.
Linda briefly came across to the tennis courts to tell us:
Ok, I am now officially declaring that you two are mad.
Strangely, once we got used to the wind, we had an exhilarating, fun although not exactly classic, game of lawners.
We played on Court One on Sunday, whereas we had played on Court Two (Centre Court) on Saturday. So those two, plus the Lord’s real tennis court and the Royal Court theatre add up to four courts in 25 hours.
Don’t tell Linda Massey, but we went back to Boston Manor Park again on Monday morning in similar weather – again no-one else around – and had another game of lawners. We’re not mad…we’re just a bit mad on tennis.
…we wondered whether we’d done the right thing booking this – especially as the Royal Court rubric on the piece was vague, even by Royal Court vague rubric standards. Click here for a link to the unhelpful material.
The little videos in the Royal Court information resource on this production really do not do justice to the piece or to the production’s creators.
We’d also been impressed by Kate O’Flynn when we’d seen her perform.
This production of All Of It is only running for eight performances over the next few days, so change your plans, beg the Royal Court to find you a ticket, do anything to get to see it. It is 45 minutes of theatrical delight.
Actually, it is 42-43 minutes of theatrical delight. For the first two or three minutes we were both thinking, “oh-oh”, until we realised what was going on and how the piece was going to unfold.
Then we could relax and enjoy a virtuoso performance of a rather brilliant piece of writing.
The piece is basically a short, lyrical monologue about an ordinary woman’s life. All of it.
Just take our advice and get to see it, but you’ll have to be quick. If you miss the next few days, start nagging the Royal Court to transfer it or put it on again because this production really deserves to be seen by lots of people and should give pleasure to far more people than eight-Royal-Court-houses.
I’d long wanted to see Concentus Musicus Wien. I also see so little Telemann listed these days and am a sucker for his stuff. So this concert caught my eye.
Janie really didn’t fancy this one on a Thursday evening, so I booked just the one ticket for myself.
Earlier in the evening, I went to LSE to help the LSE100 team celebrate their 10th birthday. I made a small contribution to the course in 2018, which, it seems, qualified me to join the party. I stuck to water at the LSE and indeed stayed dry at The Wigmore Hall too.
Word reached me that Dominic (my real tennis doubles partner) and his wife Pamela would be there that evening. Double-coincidence, because I learnt that i would be partnering Domnic again in a one-off game the next day.
Anyway, the music.
First up was some Biber. Are Heinrich Biber fans known as Belibers? They should be.
I can’t find a decent Concentus Biber on line, but the following performance of Battalia will give you a decent idea:
Next up was the Telemann, which I thought super special, not least the oboe and trumpet parts. Telemann fans are known as Telemaniacs in some circles, that i know for sure.
Again, you’ll need to make do with a different orchestra but this recording will give you a reasonable feel for it:
Then the interval, during which time Dominic, Pamela, a few of their other friends and I had a natter.
Then on to Vivaldi. Autumn. Nicely done.
Below is Julia Fischer playing it. Different style to Erich Höbarth, who led on the evening, but just differently lovely.
Finally, a bit more of a rarity, Purcell’s complete King Arthur Suite. Very good, it was. I only recognised odd snippets of it; for sure I hadn’t heard it in its entirety before.
To complete an evening of coincidences, I ran into my friend John from the health club as I was leaving the concert hall, so we travelled home together.
John is not so familiar with early music and original instruments – he said he found it hard at first to adjust his ear to the period instruments. It made me realise how much i have become accustomed to them – I don’t even think about the sound being “different” any more; it’s pretty much the way I expect to hear music of that period.
A shame the Wiggy wasn’t full – perhaps only 2/3rds or 3/4s full.
