Author: Ian Louis Harris

Fragments Of Cricket And Tennis, Radlett, Lord’s & Oval, 1 to 10 May 2019

I saw several bits of cricket matches in the first 10 days of May, squeezed between lots of work, real tennis and other activities.

Wednesday 1 May 2019: Radlett & Lord’s

Originally, I had planned to block out that day for cricket, but I needed to fit a client meeting in mid to late morning, so had all-but abandoned the idea of seeing cricket that day.

Then I got a message from Fran to say that she and Simon were packing their sun cream, tee-shirts, thick winter coats, galoshes and brollies with every intention of going to the match come what may.

It also turned out to be a week for me being press-ganged into extra real tennis at Lord’s, so after I had stayed on court for an extra hour the day before to get some doubles experience, one of the pros asked if I could be a late stand-in at 20:00 on 1 May for a tough singles.

So the combination of the Fran message, the timing of that tennis press-ganging, together with some favourable weather and an interesting match position…

…persuaded me to jump into Dumbo to join Fran and Simon for a few hours at Radlett, where Middlesex were hosting Somerset, before driving home via Lord’s.

This was Dumbo’s first visit to Radlett since the 2016 visit, reported (surprisingly recently) on King Cricket:..

A Middlesex Second XI v Lancashire Second XI match report (from 2016)

…although I did spend a splendid day with Fran, Simon and Charley The Gent at Radlett last season:

An Unusual Day In Radlett And At The Oval, During Which Middlesex Came Second Twice, 17 May 2018

So, I got home from my client meeting, had a quick bite to eat while watching the closing overs of the Middlesex innings on the Chromecast/TV and then jumped into Dumbo who “rode like the wind” to Radlett. We arrived just after 15:00.

Dumbo wasn’t very impressed with the large public field in which he had to park – his previous visit, to a second team match, enabled him a parking space with a bit of a view.

I, on the other hand, was pretty impressed by the scale of the enterprise and how well organised the outground team seemed to be on a match day. Very friendly and helpful.

Having learnt from our rather chilly experience in the shade last time, Fran and Simon had grabbed some excellent seats on the sunny side. It was one of those “layers of clothes” days, on which I ended up in rolled up shirtsleeves when the sun came out and then donning my thick jacket, scarf and hat by the end of the match after the sun had gone in.

It was really pleasant to sit watching cricket with Fran and Simon again – they are very knowledgeable cricket followers; there was plenty to discuss in the matter of county and international cricket since we’d last met. Oh, plus catching up on our other news of course.

Middlesex took its time to take the last wicket and I had almost decided to give up on waiting to be sure to get out of the car park and back down to Lord’s in good time, but the trusty satnav kept insisting that the journey wouldn’t take long against the main flow of rush hour traffic.

So I did stick it out to the final ball and we did find it surprisingly easy and relatively quick to get out of the car field – the stewards operating very efficiently to keep the funnelling out of the ground decorous.

So Dumbo and I got to Lord’s nice and early. Moreover, as a special treat for Dumbo, it transpired that there were no functions on that evening so he was allowed to park in the Allen Stand gap and look out onto the field of play.

Don’t tell Dumbo that there was no cricket on; I’m not sure he noticed.

Dumbo and I returned to Lord’s for tennis on the Friday morning (3rd) when, very unusually, Dumbo was again allowed to park in the Allen Stand gap, as a result of works vehicles blocking the way to his regular Car Park No 6 spot. Actually the above photo was taken on the Friday morning.

The next day, 4th, I played a representative tennis match for the MCC at Middlesex University, reported here and below.

Who Ate All The Pies? A Convivial Match Between Middlesex University Real Tennis Club (MURTC) & The MCC, 4 May 2019

Wednesday 8th May 2019: Lord’s & Oval

I had long-since pre-arranged a tennis lesson on this morning, so rumours that I was having the equivalent of a “naughty boy net” after our somewhat bruising visit to Middlesex University at the weekend are simply not true. Fake news. Perhaps I shouldn’t have spread those rumours myself in the first place.

Anyway, I found myself at two major cricket grounds on the same day for the first time ever, I think, as a result of being asked to attend a somewhat last-minute ad hoc London Cricket Trust meeting with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), for which the only convenient venue was the Oval, where England were supposed to be playing a one-day-international against Pakistan.

It was a horribly rainy day and I thought it unlikely that there would be any cricket at all, but heck, I wasn’t really there for cricket, I was there for a meeting. Still, the way to get us in to the ground on a big match day was to provide us with comps, so I did have an OCS stand ticket for a rather good balcony seat.

Strangely, as there were no rooms available for the meeting, we ended up on the top level of the OCS stand having the meeting on outdoor (albeit covered area) tables and chairs. Even more strangely, the rain stopped and some play was possible for just over an hour, which coincided almost exactly with the hour we spent meeting.

Some people in the meeting must have been making very profound points, because as soon as they had finished their sentence the crowd oohed and aahed – especially if the speaker was talking during one of Jofra Archer’s overs. I didn’t manage to time any of my pearls of wisdom to coincide with an ejaculation of crowd noise, sadly. Perhaps my pearls of wisdom are not so spectacular after all.

After the meeting, AccuWeather told me that there might be 15 minutes or so before the next short but heavy rain storm, so I thought I might as well make full use of my comp for three or four overs before heading home.

A rare glimpse of sunshine on a very wet day
As seen from the OCS Stand 2nd tier balcony

I did well, thanks to AccuWeather, as I managed to get home between showers too.


Friday 10th May 2019: Lord’s…Just Lord’s

Just one cricket ground that day? What was the matter with me?

Still, one ground, two purposes; real tennis and cricket. I had arranged to play real tennis on the Friday afternoon long since, with no expectation that Middlesex might have a home draw at Lord’s in a knockout tournament. After all, it is several decades since Middlesex has had one of those, so it hardly falls into the “expectation” category.

I watched the start of the Middlesex v Lancashire match on the TV at home, while having lunch. My plan, which worked well, was to head off for Lord’s in Dumbo at around 14:30, enabling me to put Dumbo onto a four-hour meter near the ground and then not have to worry about him for the rest of the afternoon/evening. Plan worked.

So I watched about 30-40 minutes of cricket before getting changed for tennis. Janie (Daisy) informed me that she’d probably arrive while I was playing tennis, which she did.

Daisy tried very hard to distract my opponent, Stuart, with sledging and left-field questions, but seemed better able to distract my concentration than Stuart’s. All the more so when she was joined in the dedans gallery by Dominic and Pamela…followed soon enough by John Thirlwell. The more they tried to help me with their crowd noise, the more they seemed to help Stuart.

Actually it was a very good, close game of tennis, which I lost very narrowly and felt I’d done well to stay that close, given how well Stuart was playing.

Meanwhile, by the time I got changed, Middlesex were in all sorts of trouble and it looked as though our evening watching cricket might be severely foreshortened.

Still, Janie hunkered down with some wine and nibbles up on the top deck…

…then soon after John Thirlwell joined us.

“And how are you today?”
“Better than half-a-yard”

James Harris (no relation) got Middlesex infeasibly close to the 300+ target having been 24-5 at one point, but (as I had suspected throughout the innings) it wasn’t quite enough to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Still, it was a very pleasant couple of hours of cricket watching and chat. Janie and I rounded off the evening by picking up some of our favourite Chinese grub from Four Seasons, Queensway on the way home.

Partridge In A Lemon Tree: Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons by Sam Steiner, Barons Court Theatre, 9 May 2019

This short play has done well at Edinburgh since 2015 and is now finally being brought to London at the Barons Court Theatre.

It is a dystopian play which envisages a British government imposing a 140 word per day limit on every citizen. The play, centred around a couple, moves backwards and forwards in time, covering their relationship before and after the enactment of the draconian “hush law”.

I was kindly invited to the press night in my capacity as a blogger; not the very first time I have been asked but the very first time I have accepted such an invitation.

I thought both of the performances were excellent and the play well directed.

I can understand why aspiring performers and directors might want to work with this play. It provides an opportunity to show off their talents, not only with the use of words but also movement and non-verbal communication.

There are some very clever touches in the writing too. Sam Steiner clearly has a decent grasp of language and tempo for drama and comedy.

My problem, which I found insurmountable, was with the central conceit of the play. Not even our lousy political leaders nor the lousier nutters who aspire to lead, could conceivably enact and/or enforce a blanket law restricting speech in this way. The scenario, when set in a dystopia that looked and felt very much like now, was simply unbelievable.

I could have bought into a future surveillance society that tags, monitors and restricts the use of language amongst a subset of citizens who are deemed to have transgressed the law in some way. Some nations are not far from that today. But the blanket restriction on communication just seemed utterly implausible and impractical.

So, try as I might to sit back, go with the flow, suspend my disbelief and enjoy watching two very talented young performers…

Charlie Suff and Jemima Murphy – both very talented

…I found myself, Alan Partridge-like, constantly wondering, for example:

How does a government, that today cannot even persuade a reasonable proportion of its citizens to put smart energy meters in their homes, suddenly wire up every home and public space to police the number of words each citizen uses?

What happens if someone exceeds the word limit?

Are citizens fitted with chips to prevent them from speaking or are the cells full of verbal transgressors?

How do the very young and the demented fit in with this law?

Are you allowed to write anything down?

If rudimentary eye-contact communication is permitted, why not use actual sign language?

…and so forth.

Mark Ravenhill was sitting opposite me (Barons Court Theatre is a rather sweet and cosy three- sided affair in the basement of The Curtains Up pub). I couldn’t help wondering whether he too was going through such unwanted Partridgean thought processes. Ravenhill’s recent play The Cane, which I thought excellent, takes a scenario about corporal punishment well beyond likelihood, but not so implausibly as to be distracting from the drama.

The other excellent play that came to my mind was Constellations by Nick Payne, which did a very similar style of jumping backwards and forwards in time through short scenes. But the Nick Payne progressed the audiences understanding and the unfolding of a plot, cleverly, despite the constant time shifts. Lemons, unfortunately, felt to me like a series of repetitions that provided no additional enlightenment after about 30-40 minutes and no resolution to the story of the protagonists.

Nevertheless the scenario and the performances got me thinking quite a lot about the issues raised; in particular, at a micro level in the relationship. How the word limit became a bugbear in itself when the lovers returned from work with a large or tiny quota of words remaining for the day. Yet, in scenes from before the draconian law, the couple quite often didn’t want to talk about important matters anyway. And in one comedic scene, presumably a weekend day, they chose simply to waste their quota singing along with a recording of Baggy Trousers by Madness.

This did make me think about the genuine issue of scarcity in our lives and relationships which is, I would argue, time, not words. This parable about restricting the use of words is really a metaphor for the way we use and abuse our scarce time together in relationships.

Which is all good – all the more reason for me to baulk at the implausible scenario when the political and interpersonal points might have been made through a more plausible variant. My inner Partridge just cannot stop chirping about this.

Would I recommend this play/production. For sure, if you like to see fresh talent performing, this is well worth seeing. And if you can suspend belief better than I am able, then you might truly be bowled over by it.

(Where Do I Begin?) Love Story – A Performance Piece For TheadMash 3, 7 May 2019

The question “where do I begin?” in the matter of a love story is, I suggest, a rather uninteresting question. Almost all love stories start when the lovers meet. OK, the story might have a short preamble to set the scene, such as the almighty punch-up at the start of Romeo and Juliet, but basically love stories start when the lovers meet. Simples.

So before I begin the short love story I have prepared for you, I want to explore two variants of the “where do I begin?” question:

Firstly – where did “where do I begin?” begin, in the context of the film Love Story.

Secondly, I want to explore the question, where…or rather when…does love begin?”, which I think is a rather more intriguing question. My attempted answer also informs the rather regular style of love story with which I shall briefly conclude.

So, where did “where do I begin?” begin? 

Francis Lai had written a score for the movie Love Story, including the tune Theme From Love Story.

The Paramount Movie people felt that the Theme needed a lyric and commissioned Carl Sigman, a top lyricist at the time, to turn that theme tune into a song.

Sigman initially wrote a schmaltzy lyric summarizing the love story depicted in the film, with lines such as:

  • “So when Jenny came” and
  • “Suddenly was gone”…

…you get the picture. But Robert Evans, the larger than life producer of Love Story, hated Sigman’s original attempt at the lyric; in particular fretting that the “Jenny came” line was suggestive.

According to Sigman’s son, the great lyricist was furious at being asked to rewrite the lyric, throwing a bit of a hissy and threatening to withdraw from the project. But the next day, when Sigman had calmed down, he told his wife that he would try again. But, “where do I begin?”, Sigman asked. “That’ll do”, or words to that effect, replied Mrs Sigman. Thus, at least apocryphally, the famous line and song title was born.

But the question I really want to explore before I tell you my little love story is where…or rather when…does love begin?”

I believe that people tend to rewrite their personal romantic histories somewhat, often attributing a “love at first sight” narrative to, for example, the story of meeting one’s life partner. But that attribution is made with the benefit of hindsight.

Let me illustrate my point with a slightly less emotive example. Falling in love with a house.

I quite often tell the tale of my viewing our house in West Acton, at the behest of my then girlfriend, now wife, Janie, who had already seen it. I reckon I had been inside for no more than 30 to 40 seconds before I concluded that I could imagine Janie living out the rest of her life in that house, possibly with me in it too. In the vernacular, I fell in love with our house at first sight. We bought the house. Janie and I love that house. Noddyland, we call it.

San-Bin-Ista
The Noddyland Threshold

But supposing the Noddyland house story had not panned out as it did. My offer might have been rejected or the survey might have found an insurmountable problem with that house. Or we might have been guzumped by David Wellbrook or some such person who knows a fine house at a sensible price when he sees one.

Janie and I would have resumed our search for a house and we’d no doubt have found another; we might have liked or even loved that other house…

…but I would not have looked back on my initial visit to Noddyland as a “love at first sight” story. We might have mused about whether we’d have been happier “at that one we liked the look of but didn’t get”. We would not have used the term “love” about that house at all.

My point is that the love comes later. We tend to back-fill the story in hindsight and imagine the love to have come much sooner than it really did.

Returning to the question of romantic love, I wonder where or when that love genuinely begins. My view on this matter has changed as I have got older. Back in the days of my very early fumblings in the late 1970s, for example The Story Of Fuzz in my inaugural TheadMash piece…

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

…I don’t think I thought of those escapades as love stories of any kind.

But soon after that, once I had started having “proper, long-term relationships”…I’m talking weeks here or even occasionally months…I considered those adventures to be “my love life.” Rollercoaster emotions would ensue; elation at the onset or when a romantic setback was overcome; heartache when things went awry, especially when the upshot was that I had been dumped. I know it’s hard to believe, folks, but one or two foolish young women made that mistake and paid the ultimate price of losing their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with me.

But when I look back on those short-lived, early efforts now, I find it hard to recognize many if any of the characteristics of a love story in those tales. At the time, of course, I thought I was falling in and out of love. But with the benefit of a more seasoned perspective, those stories are merely a good source for comedic interludes or nostalgia-drenched asides…

…especially those stories for which I have unintentionally amusing diary entries with easily-interpreted hieroglyphics…

Abandoned By My Parents, The Only Thing For It Was To Party, 11 to 12 November 1978

…oh yes.

Those early entanglements are too fleeting and (I regret having to confess) sometimes too entangled with each other to make true romantic copy.

Contrast that sort of juvenile jumble with…

…David Wellbrook’s superb recitation at ThreadMash 2, about his good lady’s near death experience and David’s intimate account of his own reaction to it. Now that piece was not written as a love story, it was written as a piece on the theme of “lost and found”. Yet it was, I would argue, a profound and heartfelt personal love story. I wouldn’t attempt to emulate or better it as a love story.

But it did get me thinking about a couple of near-death experiences Janie and I went through, particularly the first of them.

The incident was many years ago, in the mid 1990s, when Janie and I had been together for fewer than three years.

Janie and I went over to my business partner Michael and his then girlfriend (now wife) Elisabeth’s place for a Saturday evening meal that May Bank Holiday. Both Janie and I experienced quite severe indigestion that night; a state we attributed to Elisabeth’s solidly-Germanic, Sauerbraten style of cooking, combined with perhaps a tad too much alcohol to wash down the heavy food. But whereas my biliousness passed as the Sunday progressed, Janie became increasingly poorly and doubled up with pain in her innards.

To cut a long and painful story short, by the night of Bank Holiday Monday, I was convinced that the locum doctor’s relatively casual attitude to a woman doubled up with increasing pain was insufficient and took Janie to A&E, where they immediately diagnosed (correctly) acute pancreatitis caused by a rogue gallstone.

As I left Janie in the care of the kind doctor, the youngster (yes, even when I was still a mere 33 years old, the night-duty house doctor in A&E looked like a youngster) took me aside. He warned me that, although they thought they had everything under control and that the odds were in Janie’s favour, he was duty bound to warn me how serious pancreatitis can be and that Janie might not survive the ordeal.

I drove home, alone, with that “might not survive” thought and the strains of Miserlou by Dick Dale & His Del-Tones on the radio…

…well it was 1995 when Pulp Fiction was all the rage. I can no longer hear that tune without thinking of that lonely drive home.

But the incident brought the romantic truth home to me; Janie wasn’t just the girl that I had been going out with for longer now than any of my previous girlfriends – nearly three whole years. It made me realize that I really did love Janie.

In fact it made me realize that I had recognized that fact a year earlier, when I discussed the idea of me setting up business with Michael. I had said to Janie that the venture was a big risk…

…the dangers of Michael and Elisabeth’s notorious cooking for a start…that’s an unfair joke that should not be repeated or put in print (apart from the Ogblog version of this piece 😉 )…

…the venture was a big risk because we’d be taking on indebtedness and if the business went wrong I’d have to give up my flat and have little or no money for quite a while. Janie had simply said that it wasn’t really a big risk because she still had a job and a flat and that we’d get by. It was then that I knew that she loved me and that I also loved her and that she and I were committed to help each other through life’s journey for the foreseeable future.

To me, THAT is truly the stuff of “where love begins”.

Extract From Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture

As for the more simple, “where do I begin?” love story; I suppose I should now tell you the story of how Janie and I met.  

We met in August 1992 at one of Kim and Micky’s parties; Kim being Janie’s best friend.

In some ways it is odd that Janie’s and my path hadn’t crossed before, through Kim & Micky. I had known Kim, through holiday jobs and stuff, since I was a youngster. In the late 1980s, when I got to know Kim & Micky socially, I would see them a few times a year at dinner or lunch parties. But I guess they saw Janie and me as part of different circles. In any case, we were both otherwise attached most of the time during those years.

Anyway, Janie and I chatted quite a lot during the party and ended up as part of a smaller group that was still around into the early evening, at which point Kim suggested that we all go across the square and play tennis.

I had just started playing tennis again, rather tentatively, following a particularly nasty back injury. Goodness only knows how useless I was after quite a few drinks at the party. But most of us had been drinking quite heavily, so I don’t suppose the quality of the tennis was very high. I do recall thinking that Janie was pretty good at tennis. It probably helped that she was the only sober person among us.

Janie had mentioned several times that she had driven to the party in her car and therefore wasn’t drinking.  After the tennis, I asked her if she could drop me at a tube station. She said that she would, but that she wasn’t prepared to go out of her way and that the only tube station she’d be passing was Hanger Lane. That was ideal for me, as Hanger Lane and Notting Hill Gate are on the same line.

Janie and I chatted some more on the fifteen minute car journey.

Janie said that she liked poetry.

When she stopped the car to drop me off, I asked Janie for her telephone number.

Janie said no.

In order to get out of the car with my dignity intact, I took from my wallet one of those sticky labels with my name, address and telephone number on it. I stuck the label on her steering wheel, saying, “in that case, you can have my address and telephone number”.

Janie thanked me and said that she would write me a poem.

I’m still waiting for the poem.

While preparing this TheadMash piece, I asked Janie if she wanted to apologise for her terse refusal that first evening and for the continued absence of my poem, some 27 years later.

“No”, said Janie, “love means never having to say you’re sorry”. Who could argue with that sentiment in the matter of love story.

In any case, Janie assures me that the poem is coming; she never set a specific date for its production. It might end up being my epitaph.

I look forward to that.

Meanwhile, if this short account has left you wondering how on earth Janie and I got it together after her initial rejection…

…well, that’s another story or two – not for ThreadMash.

But those yarns will be linked to the Ogblog version of this piece. They involve ossobuco…

Ossobuco At Janie’s Place, 16 August 1992

…and The Street of Crocodiles…

Janie and I Go On Our First Proper Date, The Street Of Crocodiles, Cottesloe Theatre, 29 August 1992

…obviously.

Postscript 1: For Those Readers Who Like Their Stories Circular/Complete

I realised after completing my first pass on this piece that Robert Evans, the producer who sent Carl Sigman back to the drawing board to write the “Where Do I Begin?” lyric, was the subject of a play Janie and I saw a couple of years ago; The Kid Stays In The Picture…

The Kid Stays In The Picture, based on the life of Robert Evans, adapted by Simon McBurney & James Yeatman, Royal Court Theatre, 11 March 2017

…which was put on by Simon McBurney/Theatre de Complicite, the same people who did The Street Of Crocodiles – Janie’s and my first proper date.

By George This Was A Good Concert, Handel & Telemann, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Wigmore Hall, 4 May 2019

We love the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. We first saw them at The Wig many years ago and have seen them a good few times since, both in London and in Berlin.

We hadn’t seen this orchestra for a while, though, so we thought we’d see if we could get hot seats for this concert. We could.

In truth I was not familiar with the Handel Op. 3 Concerti Grossi; I don’t think they get all that much of an airing, being seen as somewhat composite or compilation works.

But in the hands of fine performers, such music is sheer delight, as demonstrated by this concert.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resource on the concert.

This was our third visit to The Wig in just over a fortnight. In truth, I didn’t think we’d get our preferred seats for all of them but we did. NOT a complaint.

I was reminded of both of our other recent visits for a couple of silly reasons.

Our most recent visit had been The Orlando Consort singing 14th and 15th Century music:

Ullo John! Got A New Motet? – The Secrets Of Heaven, The Orlando Consort, Wigmore Hall, 25 April 2019

The in joke from that concert was that almost everyone involved with composing that 14th and 15th century English stuff was named John.

It occurred to me that a similar naming commonality could be applied to this baroque period, with the composers, the Hanoverian English kings and this evening’s conductor all named Georg/George.

The other recent visit was to see a Samuel Pepys themed concert performed by The Sixteen…

Music From The Chapel Royal With Excerpts From Pepys’ Diary, Wigmore Hall, 17 April 2019

…at which we were joined by Robin Simpson, experiencing The Wig and such music for the first time. At 91 going on 92, Robin demonstrated his remarkable observational skills when he remarked, the next time I saw him, that two recorder players were listed for The Sixteen at that Pepy’s concert, but there was no sign of either of them on the night.

I couldn’t explain their absence – perhaps some passing reader can. I guessed that there was a late decision to omit the recorders, perhaps due to the indisposition of one of the performers or perhaps, on Harry Christopher’s reflection, for artistic reasons.

Anyway, returning to the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin concert, once again there were two recorder players listed, but, come the interval, there had been no sign of recorders.

What on earth is going on in the world of baroque recorder players, I wondered. Is there some sort of censorship going on, whereby recorder players are being prevented from expressing themselves? Are the recorder players being kidnapped, imprisoned or worse?

The answer, at least in the matter of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin concert, came towards the end of the evening, when Anna Fusek put down her violin and picked up a recorder, which she played (beautifully, as did every player with every instrument that night) in the Soave from Telemann’s Canonic Sonata VI. Below is someone else’s recording of that sonata.

https://youtu.be/-twe0crDPPg

Below is a recording of Academy of St Martin In the Fields playing Handel’s Op 3 No 1 Concerto Grosso, by which time Michael Bosch had metaphorically bonked his oboe on the head and picked up a second recorder to join Anna. Recorder mystery fully solved.

If you haven’t seen the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin before…or even if you have…the following video should be a treat for you. They are playing Handel’s Water Music, under Georg Kallweit, who also led the orchestra at the 4 May 2019 concert.

They really are a top notch orchestra. Janie and I feel lucky and privileged to have seen them several times. This Handel/Telemann concert, while not the most exciting programme we have heard them play, was just the ticket for us at the end of a day of (similarly baroque) sporting activity.

Who Ate All The Pies? A Convivial Match Between Middlesex University Real Tennis Club (MURTC) & The MCC, 4 May 2019

Who Ate All The Pies? A Convivial Match Between Middlesex University Real Tennis Club (MURTC) & The MCC, 4 May 2019

Help!

I paraphrase the WhatsApp message I received from Carl Snitcher (Snitch) only 10 days before the match. I suspect I was one of quite a few people who got such a message from him that day.

The upshot was that Snitch was in the backveld of South Africa, doing valuable charitable works no doubt, while the far more crucial matter of arranging the MURTC v MCC real tennis match had slipped his mind.

I spotted an opportunity to get a bit of practice with my tournament doubles partner, Dominic Flint, if by chance Dominic was also available, which he was. Somehow, probably through methods and devices similarly arcane to my recruitment of Our Man Flint, Snitch managed to cobble together a team.

In any case, I have very much enjoyed playing this fixture several times previously:

Three Courts In One Day, 29 April 2017
A Week Dominated By Intense Middlesex v MCC Contests, 24, 27 & 28 April 2018

I have also represented the MCC in the home leg of this match a couple of times – a matter which went unreported on Ogblog a few months ago despite the nail-biting nature of the fixture, which (for once) the MCC won by the skin of its teeth.

No doubt the MURTC folk were hell-bent for revenge…

…except it isn’t actually that kind of fixture, as far as I can tell. The MURTC crowd are as convivial and friendly as any competitive sporting fixture can be. The eating, drinking and socialising seems to be a pretty important element.

To that end, step forward Catherine Hudson, who, together with John Harrington, put on a phenomenal spread for our fixture lunch, centred around several massive trays of The Pie Man’s phenomenal pies. A caterer well known to me – I think it was Angela Broad (coincidentally a former real tennis player from many years gone by) who put us in touch with the Pie Man himself, Murray Tollemache, when we first started catering Z/Yen events, 20 to 25 years ago.

The most difficult decision I had to make, soon after we arrived at about 12:15, was whether to eat before or after playing at 14:00. The smell and look of the food had my heart say “eat” , but my head said, “wait”. Head won.

Janie joined us, as she did last year, which helped with the congeniality of the day, not that these two teams need help. But Janie did take lots of video clips, through which I can show the progress of our rubber which was, if I might say so, a fine metaphor for the whole match, MCC-wise.

The little video below, titled “One For The Career Highlights Reel” is, um, one for the career highlights reel. Dominic with the magnificent winner.

https://youtu.be/05Kowd-jaCI

The next video might need some explanation for the uninitiated. The call of “up” tells your partner that you believe the ball will go above the dedans gallery and onto the back penthouse. The call of “yours” means that you want your partner to take the ball. Only very rarely have I had the opportunity to sat “up yours” to my partner descriptively. Of course I would never use those words expletively… not on the tennis court anyway.

https://youtu.be/YtqPHBOg23U
https://youtu.be/HHFOdw3lLSI

It was actually a very good game of tennis for most of the rubber, with the pendulum swinging one way and then the other.

https://youtu.be/F6Pgij8NmOw
https://youtu.be/GLIhpvIlqiU

But soon enough our rubber turned against us. Well played, Peter and Paul.

https://youtu.be/7_fZIJ7-5Fc

Were Dominic and I able to cope with our disappointment and rejoin the increasingly party-like atmosphere? Would we be able to digest our food after all of that excitement and the roller-coaster ride of sporting emotions?

Yes.

It really was a most enjoyable day. The teams get on really well, despite the fierceness of the competition on court, while the professionals (Chris Bray this time, Will Burns on my previous visits) make us visitors feel extremely welcome.

So I suspect that only two questions remain for the casual reader. Firstly, who won the fixture this time? Well, I think I planted enough clues in the text, but in any case, as they say in Las Vegas, “what happens in Hendon, stays in Hendon.”

The other question, normally delivered in song at sporting fixtures, is “who ate all the pies?” The answer, of course, “what happens in Hendon, stays in Hendon.”

Laughing At The Labyrinth, V&A, 3 May 2019

We have very much enjoyed our recent visits to the V&A, not least an afternoon a few weeks ago seeing the Mary Quant and Christian Dior…

A Double Dose Of Fashion: Mary Quant & Christian Dior, V&A, 5 April 2019

…and a couple of years ago enjoying on of the V&A’s “festival Fridays” while admiring the “Big Reveal” of new wing:

Two Visits To The V&A For The Exhibition Road Big Reveal, Plus Grayson Perry & The Pavilion At The Serpentine Gallery, Plus Pink Floyd and The V&A Reveal Festival, 26 and 30 June 2017

So we thought we’d enjoy this festival Friday focusing on British comedy and performance, while also taking in the new Cairo Streets display.

Ahead of time, I hadn’t thought about the irony of the V&A, perhaps the most labyrinthine of all UK museums, having a special display of photographs from the labyrinthine streets of a sprawling Middle-Eastern city such as Cairo.

But that irony was soon brought to the forefront of my mind as we tried and failed to find that Cairo Streets display. Two attempts at the information desk later (including one incident during which Janie and I also mislaid each other), the informed conclusion was that the display in question has been delayed and is not there yet. We have until April 2020 to find it, if indeed it ever shows up.

The closest to the maze of Cairo streets in the 1890s I can show you, dear reader, is some Maghrebi equivalents from the 1990s – click here or below for our photographs of Morocco:

001 8 November 1997 - Only mules and pedestrians allowed in these Fes streets M_J1_Photo (2)

The irony continued as we asked the kind woman at the information desk to direct us to the Laughing Matters Exhibition and she advised us to go to the third floor, pointing to a nearby staircase & lift.

After wandering what there is of the third and much of that end of the V&A’s second floor in vain, we asked a walkie-talkie-bearing attendant, who admitted to being clueless, but he could and did use his walkie-talkie to radio for help.

“First Floor”, came the garbled instruction from the walkie-talkie, “tell them to walk the British Renaissance 16th and 17th century and they can’t miss it”. We had walked that way before, of course, on previous visits. A bit too Mock Tudor for me, that 16th century section.

Anyway, we did reach Laughing Matters, which we couldn’t miss. Quite a small display, it is. I suppose there aren’t that many artefacts that can be deemed to be quintessentially British Comedy.

The Spitting Image of Mrs Thatcher was a highlight…that’s Mrs T in the display cabinet, not on the phone. Janie (on the phone) was listening to some of the many vox coms (voice of comedians) on such phones in the centre of the room. Some very interesting, many rather mundane. Also around the room were many quintessentially British comedy clips, such as “don’t tell him, Pike”, “don’t mention the war” and Babs Windsor’s bikini-boob-bursting scene from Carry On Camping. No mention of NewsRevue. Tish.

Can you get me a cab a bit sooner than that? I need to get out of here.

The one place in the V&A that Janie does know how to find without a map or a personal guide is the member’s cafe. That was to be our next stop.

Janie fancied some soupy, creamy courgettes, while I just nibbled some nuts with my tea – oooer, missus.

The one performance thing we fancied was a performance piece, in the new Hochhauser auditorium, named Within The Warren, a piece which heaped irony upon irony by satirising the labyrinthine nature of the V&A’s culture. I have oft suggested that organisational cultures tend to reflect some intrinsic element of the organisation – hospitals having an “accident and emergency” style culture, children’s charities having child-like elements in the meetings, etc.

So it came as no surprise to discover, through this lightweight, absurdist piece by Jessica Mullen, that an outsider finds the V&A impenetrable as an organisation.

Even the Q&A was somewhat bewildering, as the interviewer asked a couple of obscure questions and then threw the Q&A open to the floor, to find only one question…from me. Jessica Mullen batted back an answer in such an inscrutable manner, I imagine that she’ll be head-hunted for MI6…if she isn’t in there already.

The only other thing we fancied seeing was the small display on Japanese Seibu railway poster art.

“Stand clear of the doors”, Japanese poster art style…
…inspired by…

In any case, we’d not really explored the Japanese rooms before and thought we’d find the whole thing fascinating just six months after visiting Japan.

Japan Day Zero: Journey To Tokyo And Our First Evening There, 18 to 19 October 2018

Janie especially loved the Inrō (personal effects boxes)…

…and the netsuke (kimono toggles):

After that, we both felt exhausted, so we headed home to Noddyland. It was still so early that Janie was able to photograph some ducks on the Noddyland village pond – bless.

Ullo John! Got A New Motet? – The Secrets Of Heaven, The Orlando Consort, Wigmore Hall, 25 April 2019

You don’t get to hear a lot of 14th and 15th century English music, not even in the early music series at the Wigmore Hall. So this concert by The Orlando Consort looked well worth booking and indeed it was a superb concert.

The members of the consort each introduced chunks of the concert – all clearly knowledgeable fellows but wearing their learning lightly on the night.

Mark Dobell, for example, theorised that most of the English composers of the period were either named John or “anon”, when he announced a block of pieces in the second half of the concert. Even the composer known simply as Forest was probably John Forest, we were assured.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resource for this concert.

Some of the names in the composer column might be a bit confusing. Roy Henry, for example, might be King Henry V, King Henry VI or just possibly King Henry IV. Trent Codices is not the name of a modern US composer, nor a fellow who opens the bowling for New Zealand, but a collection of musical manuscripts from the Italian city, Trent. Who knew?

If you want to hear and see some 15th century music performed by The Orlando Consort, the following video from a Library of Congress concert in 2017 might be for you. But it is mostly composers from mainland Europe, not English composers of the period, so no Johns. The music starts some 4’50” in:

Whereas, if you would like to hear some extracts from of The Orlando Consort singing the sort of English polyphony that we heard at the Wigmore Hall, then this short extract vid from a CD promo might be for you. You even get some John and anon: including some John Dunstaple:

The singing was beautiful throughout the concert and we sensed that this quartet of singers take great pleasure in singing this music and with each other.

The hall wasn’t full but it was quite busy. The “nice front row couple” that I quite often see at The Wig and SJSS were there in the front row, just fancy!, a few seats along from us. We chatted only briefly this time.

Janie and I hadn’t seen The Orlando Consort before, although we had probably seen most if not all four of the individuals in other choirs and consorts. Anyway, we most certainly will enjoy seeing them perform again if/when we get the chance.

Music From The Chapel Royal With Excerpts From Pepys’ Diary, Wigmore Hall, 17 April 2019

Russ London — (Russ London) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], from Wikimedia Commons

The combination of subject matter, music and the choice of performers for this concert made this a bit of a “must see” for me at the Wigmore Hall. Janie rarely graces that Hall on a Wednesday, as it is not so convenient for her after a surgery day, but on this occasion she felt motivated to join me.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resource for this concert.

I have long been fascinated by Samuel Pepys as a character and as a diarist. Indeed, I nearly named this website “Poopys Diary” rather than Ogblog, as a nod to two of my favourite diaries, those of Messrs Pepys and Pooter.

I had followed with great interest Christopher Page’s Gresham lecture series on 16th and 17th century guitar, not least the lecture on Samuel Pepys and the Guitar:

Samuel Pepys The Guitarist, Gresham College, 16 May 2018

This concert seemed set to supplement that interest in the form of live performance.

Also motivated to come along was Robin Simpson, one of my nonagenarian friends from Lord’s who still plays real tennis – sometimes rather too well. When Robin mentioned, a few weeks earlier, that he is a member of the Samuel Pepys Club, I mentioned that we were going to this concert and Robin said he was unaware of it. I gave Robin the details. A day or two later I took an excited telephone call from Robin to tell me that he had got himself a ticket in the third row.

So when Janie and I got to “The Wig” just after 19:00 I was unsurprised to see Robin in the bar. We joined him and arranged some interval drinks. As Robin turned out to be a “Wigmore Hall virgin”, we acted as his guide, not least taking him into the hall through the quieter back stairs route that makes so much sense if you are sitting at the front of the hall.

I was especially keen to hear some of Pelham Humfrey’s music, as I had read about him but, to my knowledge, not previously seen any of his music performed.

The web is not awash with high quality Pelham Humfrey, but here is a link to a fine recording of O Lord My God from the 1960s, the Guildford Cathedral Choir – copyright prevents embedding this link but you can click and listen here.

Here is a link to a less-than-special but rather charming performance of By The Waters Of Babylon from a festival in Brazil:

It was also wonderful to see Elizabeth Kenny playing a couple of solo pieces on the five course guitar as well as her more familiar appearance with the theorbo. Elizabeth Kenny doesn’t play solos much, but I am able to find her charming 10 minute video-essay on the theorbo…

Sadly there don’t seem to be any vids of Elizabeth Kenny playing the five course guitar, but here is a video of Ramiro Morales playing some of the Francesco Corbetta we heard:

Another highlight was to hear Beauty Retire, a piece attributed to Samuel Pepys, not least because he mentions it several times in his diary, describing it as his own. In truth, Cesare Morelli seems to have had quite a lot to do with Beauty Retire and indeed all the pieces attributed to Pepys. Here and below is a recording of the song:

In truth, the whole concert felt like a highlight. The performances were uniformly excellent, as one might expect from Harry Christophers superb ensemble, The Sixteen, together with that fine actor, Michael Pennington, reading passages from Pepys.

The Sixteen are one of my favourite early music ensembles. They were one of the main “happening things” back in the late 1980s when I started listening to early music. I first got to see them live some 30 years ago when my old firm, Binders, sponsored one of their concerts:

Music At Oxford At The Sheldonian Theatre & Bodleian Library, 7 July 1989

Coincidentally, my first stage sighting of Michael Pennington, the fine actor who did the narration for the 2019 concert, was around the same time as my first sighting of The Sixteen.

Playing With Trains by Stephen Poliakoff, The Pit, 11 November 1989

But returning to the April 2019 concert, it was a superb evening of 17th century music and words. The audience was hugely appreciative at the end. There was a delightful encore too, but I didn’t recognise it and Harry Christophers didn’t announce it. If someone reading this can chime in with the name of the piece, I’d be grateful. I’d guess from the texture of the sound it was by Pelham Humfrey. Was it O The Sad Day? Have a listen; it’s lovely:

In any case, Janie, Robin and I all had a most enjoyable evening.

Theme Traders Tour And Music Jam With DJ, 16 April 2019

I always look forward to my music jams with DJ, but I was especially looking forward to this one, as DJ had promised me a guided tour around the new Theme Traders Production Village ahead of the jam.

I sure wasn’t disappointed. It is a really fun, interesting and unique place. The following video gives a feel for it, but does not show all of the most recent innovations:

On top of all of the extraordinary props, equipment and creative spaces I saw, there were two encounters, or I should say re-encounters, that will live long in my memory.

The first was with this fella:

DJ gave Janie a reclining Buddha just like this one, many years ago, suggesting that we place it in the garden at Sandall Close. We didn’t realise that it was one of a pair.

Our Buddha had mostly returned top the earth by the time Janie moved out of Sandall Close and I can now report that there is no trace of our Gautama left – the following picture taken 22 April showing the site where ours returned to the dust.

But the discovery of that memory-jogging Buddha was the least of it.

More bizarre still was the discovery, when we got deeper into the props collection and looked inside a large old decommissioned safe, inside which they keep, for some reason, an assortment of old gadgets and gizmos.

There in the centre of the middle shelf was a spool of 9.5 mm cine film…

…with my Dad’s handwriting on it:

How an old spool from Dad’s shop has ended up in the Theme Traders props collection is a bit of a mystery. I do know that, when dad was shutting up shop, DJ bought up some of dad’s old stuff. But that was over 30 years ago when DJ was running “the Boffin Shop”; prior to Theme Traders even starting.

DJ doesn’t recall taking much if anything of that “boffin” kind across to Theme Traders back then. In any case, the chances of any item surviving that long – let alone finding pride of place on display rather than buried in storage as part of their giant collection, are minuscule.

It fair made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, seeing Dad’s unmistakable writing. Not only that, but a rare mistake of dad’s too. On the side and on the top Dad had written “The Pawnbroker”, but he also added on the top ‘Shop’, perhaps recognising that the name of the film is actually The Pawnshop”.

The irony of the discovery of that spool and the content of this film – some parts of the Pawnshop depicted look a bit like the Theme Traders props department – was not wasted on me. Well worth seeing the film (below) if you’ve never seen it.

https://youtu.be/8g3803sAfkE

I had never seen the film before, because we had no projector for that old 9.5mm gauge – that’s almost certainly why dad simply disposed of the film as I collected the 8mm items he hadn’t sold. Still have a box of them in the attic somewhere.

The music jam almost seemed like an anticlimax after all of that…

…except of course it never is an anticlimax to have fun making music.

DJ and I tried out my new rishas – plectra intended for ouds but Ian Pittaway has recommended that I use a cut version for medieval music, as they used a quill-like plectrum back then. DJ meanwhile thought the sound would be great for some of his jazz music work.

We mostly played 60s and 70s popular music this time, once I had demonstrated the medieval.

DJ and I bickered as usual as to who should be Major Tom and who should be Ground Control when we have a go at Space Oddity. As usual we ended up both trying each of the roles.

We tried some new material too. We’ll work on Valerie and Jesamine next time – songwise I mean. We also tried Daisy Bell, so that Daisy won’t be too jealous when she finds out about Valerie and Jesamine.

We also ate and drank…as always it was a really relaxing and pleasant evening.

Inspired By The Sistine Chapel, The Tallis Scholars, St John’s Smith Square, 14 April 2019

Hanging about in that part of Westminster is becoming a habit. The Abbey on the Friday…

A Gresham Society Visit To Westminster Abbey Library & Muniment Room, Plus The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries, 12 April 2019

…and that was not even my first visit of the week to Dean’s Yard…

…then this wonderful Tallis Scholars concert at the start of the St John’s Smith Square (SJSS) Holy Week Festival.

It is hard to explain why, as non-religious people, this type of religious music works so well for me and Janie. I suppose it is simply because we love the music of that Renaissance period and the finest music from the period tends to be the sacred rather than the secular music.

Janie and I enjoyed a pre concert and an interval drink in the crypt, a venue which Janie always enjoys. Great to see something close to a full house at SJSS too; we don’t so often see that, sadly. The place seems warmer when full.

Here is a link to the SJSS resources on this concert. For those who don’t wish to click, the main take away from that material is that this concert showcases music that was guarded by Popes during the high Renaissance within the confines of the Sistine Chapel.

Lots of Palestrina with the magnificent Allegri Miserere as the highlight to kick off the second half of the gig.

Here is a beautiful video of The Tallis Scholars performing the Miserere, albeit some 25 years ago:

As in that 1994 version, at our concert several of the voices spread out across the concert hall, to give an intriguing surround-sound effect.

Below, from that same 1994 concert I believe, is some Palestrina, Nunc Dimittis, not one of the pieces we heard in April 2019:

The Tallis Scholars are always top notch – so professional and such marvellous voices. We hadn’t seen them for a while…

The Tallis Scholars: Isaac and Mouton, Wigmore Hall, 9 March 2017

…the last time we saw them I picked up from the encore the delightful Heinrich Isaac song, Innsbruck Ich Muss Dich Lassen, for my Gresham Society performance that year:

Gresham Society Soirée, Barnards Inn Hall, 14 December 2017

No such simplicity in April 2019 – The Tallis Scholars encore was Lotti’s Crucifixus for eight voices. At least seven-and-three-quarter voices above my pay grade.

Here is another mob, confusingly named Tallis Vocalis, all performing that lovely Lotti at an appropriate pay grade:

The Tallis Scholars concert we enjoyed 14 April 2019 was a simply lovely concert. If you ever get a chance to see them, we really do recommend them highly.