When I reviewed last week’s virtual gathering, I forgot to mention Paul Driscoll’s anecdote about the optional “prefect’s blazer” available to those of us who attained such giddy heights at Alleyn’s School. The blazer was emblazoned (pun intended) with the school crest and motto.
That motto was God’s Gift. Edward Alleyn no doubt meant that motto to symbolise education. But the phrase has a sarcastic meaning in modern parlance; e.g. “he think’s he’s God’s gift.” And as Rohan Candappa so ably puts it, “We are Alleyn’s. If you cut us we bleed sarcasm.”
Unsurprisingly, very few of us took up the offer of this optional, distinguishing garment. Beyond the sarcasm, such an emblem had every chance to land us in a heap near North Dulwich railway station, where the Billy Biros (pupils from William Penn School) needed little excuse to isolate an outlier from the Alleyn’s herd, taking severe retribution for invented sleights and offenses.
The main senior school uniform was a two-piece or three-piece suit. I have only one picture of myself wearing mine:
Me And Wendy Robbins, Autumn 1979, Westminster Bridge
In the late 1980s, just a few years after a left Keele, when Guinness had a particular advertising slogan on the go, some fine folk in the University of Keele Students’ Union produced the following tee-shirt.
It dawned on me that I am a very rare example of someone eligible to wear not only the Alleyn’s God’s Gift blazer but also the Keele Pure Genius tee-shirt underneath the blazer.
In the dying moments of the Trump US presidency, this suitably modest mental image should be shared with the world and saved for posterity.
It’s just a shame I was unable to model the two garments together back then. I would have looked magnificent; indeed it would have been the best look ever, anywhere, for anyone.
This lockdown business is nobody’s idea of fun, but Rohan Candappa has been putting in some hard yards in setting up some meaningful distractions and social interactions.
It wouldn’t be Alleyn’s School without homework. For this third session, Rohan (egged on by Nick Wahla) asked some exam questions:
Nick Wahla’s suggested a question to ponder: “What advice would you give to someone about to leave Alleyn’s?”
It’s a good question, and one which I am obviously going to claim credit for. But I’d also like to twist it around a bit. My question is: “What advice would you give yourself if you could go back and talk to yourself on the day you left Alleyn’s?
Anyway, loads of people turned up again…but not Nick Wahla – he of the exam question. Typical.
I took the headline screen grab more than an hour into the event, so several people had already come and gone by then.
Again we had participation from across the globe:
Neal “Mr” Townley in Sydney,
Andrew Sullivan in Phnom Penh,
Richard Hollingshead in Washington (desperately trying to convince us and himself that Washington State is a long, long way from security-alert-ridden Washington DC),
Mark Rathbone, claiming to be in Purley, then Purely and eventually confessing to living in Kenley, a totally different place noted for famous current and former residents such as Des O’Connor, Peter Cushing, Harry Worth, Karl Popper (ironically, given this empirical falsification of the “Mark Rathbone lives in Purley” theory) and Douglas Bader – all together now – Da, da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da-da-da…or do I mean da-da, da-da-da-da-da, da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da-da…?
…I digress.
It is hard to summarise the answers to the exam questions, not least because everyone had a slightly different take on them. One theme that ran through the answers is learning quickly post school how to be yourself and follow your heart/instincts in what you want to become. Many of us suspect that we had more freedom to “find our own way” back in 1980 than pupils finishing their ‘A’ levels have now – as the route from school to career via university seems to be a more defined path now.
Some raised the matter of careers advice (it’s lack or paucity), others the more informal aspects such as teachers instilling us with confidence, arrogance or in some cases diffidence.
Naturally this led the conversation on to discussion about memorable teachers, good, bad or indifferent. Mr Jones got off pretty lightly considering he wasn’t there…
…which is more than can be said for David Wellbrook, who should have known better than to defy the wishes of Rohan Candappa by going AWOL, if Rohan’s opening remarks were anything to go by. Rohan’s willingness to turn on a loyal follower for the slightest slight is almost Trumpian in its intensity.
But then, as Rohan pointed out when the conversation turned to the vexed question of teasing, banting or bullying, we weren’t saints back then and we are hopefully a bit more grown up about it now. Well it was easy for him to say that AFTER the invective of his opening remarks.
Heck, I’m kidding. It was fun again and it seemed astonishing when Rohan pointed out that those of us who were around for the whole event had been gassing and listening for two hours.
Dumbo The Suzuki Jimny is an occasional writer, here on Ogblog and also at King Cricket. Dumbo’s writings are more widely read than those of most automobiles. Dumbo only ever refers to me as Ged and to Janie as Daisy. Why Dumbo has chosen to write a “review of the year” public message is a mystery, but 2020 was a strange year in so many ways.
2020 started badly for me. I acquired a squeak that would not go away. It was incredibly loud and hugely embarrassing – heads would turn in the street at the sound of me coming and going.
A huge team at my car hospital struggled to get to the bottom of it. Ged and Daisy started dropping hints about my possible retirement. It got as bad as that.
Eventually, just before lockdown, thank goodness Derek, Colin, & Marlon performed a pioneering operation on my viscera, which solved my problem.
Just as well I got better in mid March, because within a few weeks I was being called upon to do voluntary work.
In theory I was on call for NHS Volunteer Responders from early in the pandemic, but no gigs were coming through at first. So Ged and Daisy signed us up to do FoodCycle gigs once or twice a week, which we have continued to do throughout the pandemic.
My copious rear (as Ged describes it) comes in pretty handy, especially for the FoodCycle gigs.
It wasn’t long before the NHS Volunteer Responder gigs started to come through as well. That and FoodCycle kept us really busy through spring, summer and into the autumn.
Just occasionally, it got a bit much; like the time the NHS Volunteer Responder app went into overdrive…
Ged was busy with work the last few weeks of the year, so we did a bit less volunteering in the run up to Christmas, but during that time the pandemic got a lot worse again and the need out there started to rocket up, so we started NHS Volunteer Responding again on Christmas Day and have done lots of gigs since.
My proudest moment of the year was just a few days ago, when Ged and I went to the Co-op on Hanger Hill to get some shopping for a person who is having to isolate. (There seem to be a lot of those at the moment.)
Three young fellas from the Tesla Show Room & Shop around the corner came out of the Co-op just before Ged came out with the shopping. The young fellas stopped to admire me and one of them said, “I think these cars are pretty cool”. Ged overheard him and said, “seriously cool, not just pretty cool”.
So I don’t think Ged & Daisy will be dropping hints about my retirement again any time soon. I think we’re going to be pretty busy with NHS Volunteer Responding & FoodCycle for the next few months at least.
…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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
…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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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”…
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…
…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.
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!
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:
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.
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.
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.
