I hadn’t quite acquired my “Bard look” in 1999, but nevertheless we interrupted our brace of weekend visits to the Barbican to see large scale concerts with a visit to the local cinema in Ealing to see Shakespeare In Love.
It was one of those films that you had to see at that time because everyone was talking about it.
These days, he says writing 25 years later, we tend to avoid films that everyone is talking about.
Anyway, we enjoyed this one, even the silly bits. We did not imagine we were having a history lesson.
We went to the Dorcheter Hotel for lunch at the Oriental Restaurant. We had been dying to try the place and had been tipped off that the lunchtime offering was a much better deal than the evening meal.
My then-mate-to-be, Alastair Little, doing the celebrity chef bit. I don’t think we went to that bit – Janie and I didn’t tend to go to the big showpiece parts of such events – we just liked going around, picking up ideas and sampling things..
I’m not sure whether it was this occasion or another visit to one of these fairs, but I recall a very beautiful “English rose” of a young woman marketing Kentish wines, persuading me to try her wares. At that time (or at least this particular wine) was very ordinary wine at an above ordinary price. I have a strong memory of trying to find kind, encouraging and positive words about the wine without seeming interested in actually purchasing the stuff. She smiled sweetly throughout the exchange, so I am quite sure I got away with it.
Michael and I had been commissioned to do a bit of work for Bloomberg. Janie and I decided to enjoy a weekend in New York ahead of my assignment. Janie flew out with me on the Friday, returning to London on the Sunday redeye. I then joined up with Michael and we worked in New York for several days.
Janie and I stayed at the Waldorf Astoria, scoring a manageable price at that time – especially as expenses was picking up five of my seven nights.
We chose to eat at Smith & Wollensky’s (see headline picture) the first night, having read a rave review about it in one of Janie’s travel mags. What that review didn’t teach us was the extent to which a high-end steakhouse in NYC was a “jacket & tie more or less assumed” place, which I discovered only after we arrived in smart casuals.
One local asked Janie if we were Irish as he was leaving, perhaps based on Janie’s physiognomy but perhaps also our casual look. One friendly but drunk gentleman, while walking past us as he departed, stopped and asked me if I realised how expensive the restaurant was. I told him I did. Thing was, back then, an expensive New York restaurant seemed quite modest in price by London standards.
Museum Of Modern Art (MoMA)
Janie and I did some culture-vulturing on the Saturday, spending quite some time at MoMA, partly looking at the excellent general galleries but also taking in some special exhibitions, e.g. a Jasper Johns retrospective.
We went on to a Nan Goldin exhibition at The Whitney, which had been much heralded on both sides of the pond:
By mid-late afternoon, we really were both wilting, so we returned to the hotel for siesta, before venturing out again, this time for dinner at the 2nd Avenue Deli:
Actually we eschewed the popular “salt beef on rye” style of deli food depicted for a more traditional Jewish deli meal, harder to come by in London, including a truly excellent cholent, which Janie, now a self-appointed aficionado of such dishes, claims to be the best she has ever tasted. I believe it was accompanied by (or perhaps we separately ordered) a kishke or helzel, which, obviously, will have helped the fatty-gooiness of the occasion make an especially strong impression. We also tried p’tcha (calves foot jelly), which is one of those mistakes people tend to only make once.
Still, it was a very special evening and I am pretty sure we slept off our endeavours/over-indulgence at length that night.
The next day we took it easy, simply strolling and finding a suitable-looking mid-town eatery for a traditional New York Sunday brunch, before I helped Janie get a cab to the airport for her “red-eye” journey home that evening.
New York cabs were still a hit-and-miss affair, probity-wise, back then. The authorities had fixed the price of a fare from Manhattan to JFK, so I gave Janie the appropriate fare plus a generous tip, explaining to her that she could and should simply exhaust her supply of dollar money on that journey. The cabbie tried to enforce some monstrous sum showing on his meter, which was the very thing the authorities had sought to prevent with the flat fare rule. Janie simply explained what had been explained to her and the initially angry cabbie relented. Janie has not sought a rapid return to New York City since.
I have a feeling I met up with Michael at the Harvard Club that evening. I recall having some superb sashimi with him there – for some reason (perhaps brainiacs tend to like sashimi) the place had employed a top sashimi chef at that time, which didn’t go with the decor but did go down very nicely indeed.
Then for several days it was mostly work.
I recall one midweek evening being entertained for dinner at John Aubert’s elevated apartment on the New Jersey side of the Hudson Bay with a glorious view of Manhattan.
One midweek evening comprised an early evening cocktail party at the Harvard Club, organised by Michael for his wider circle of friends and acquaintances, followed by dinner with a closer-knit small group. Very New York.
On my last night, the Thursday, Bloomberg arranged a dinner for us and several of the seniors involved in our project at a seriously up-market, kosher restaurant in mid-town. Several of the attendees had such dietary needs. It was, to date (25 years on), the one and only meal I have ever had that might be described as both haute cuisine and glatt kosher.
Not a pickle in sight
Michael stayed on Friday for an audience with Michael Bloomberg himself, while I took the wimps (daytime) flight back to London, arriving late evening to find that Janie had, in my absence, changed all of the carpets in Sandall Close. Let’s tread carefully around that one.
Strangely, I remember going with Janie to an open day for one of her chiropody suppliers, Footman, in Mitcham.
It was a bit weird.
I think one of the reasons I tagged along was because we wanted to see the movie Much Ado About Nothing and the sensible show time that Sunday was to go straight on from Janie’s trade show.
“But I thought Janie doesn’t like Shakespeare?” I hear you cry. Well, that wasn’t quite so set/established by then and in any case so many people were telling us that we needed to see this movie because the Beatrice and Benedick bit of the plot reminded people of our relationship.
Yawn.
Kenneth Brannagh & Emma Thompson? Do me a favour. Who were we and/or our friends trying to kid?
Not a bad movie though, in that British costume drama/turn a classic into a rom-com sort of way.
It was a quirky, rather corny film with some excellent actors in it.
I am pretty sure we ate and stayed at mine, not least because Janie treated one of her Saudi princess clients in town on Saturday moirning before we went off to Bristol. I don’t suppose they discussed Leon The Pig Farmer.
My diary is not at all forthcoming about the details of this weekend. All I wrote for the Friday evening and then Saturday were a couple of very short words:
PIG.
Hils.
Then some arrows and stuff across the Sunday, implying that we stayed in Bristol, Janie also had a symbolic line through Sunday.
With no other information about where we stayed, I’m guessing this is the one and only time that we stayed at Janie’s sister Hil and Chris Boswell’s house, in the conservatory, on their Z bed. (Sounds like a Cluedo accusation).
Memory suggests that we ate a very good meal with some good wine. Were “entertained” by the boys squabbling with each other and then tried our best to sleep on the Z bed.
Both our diaries say we went to Janie;s friend and former colleague Viv’s place for dinner, but Janie’s diary also has some temporally confounding stuff in it:
7.30 Viv dinner. 6.00 Ian for dinner.
Orlando at 7.00 (film start 7.10)
[then Viv’s Temple Fortune address, redacted for this purpose]
From memory, this scheduled evening at Viv’s was postponed, perhaps more than once, owing to Gray (Viv’s partner) being indisposed. Busy chap was Gray – I think we were supposed to have dinner with him quite a few times but only actually did so a couple of times.
Anyway, I do recall going to see Orlando with Janie very soon after it opened in the UK. Janie was very keen to see it.
Not really our sort of thing, but Kim persuaded me and Janie to join her and Micky at Circus Space on the Caledonian Road.
Now (he says, writing in December 2019) known as the National Centre for Circus Arts and based in Hackney, this training organisation for circus skills has long raised funds by putting on shows for the public.
Kim was a fan and we went along to give it a look-see.
I’m not a fan of circuses, my main beef being to do with making caged animals perform. Kim has an even more profound animal rights thing than I do, so her choice of Circus Space reflected the fact that they do not (or at least did not) do any animal related stuff.
I remember coming away from the evening feeling that the performers were very accomplished and that they deserve a decent audience…
…but it only reinforced my view that circus-type performance isn;t really for me.
Janie barely remembers the evening at all – unusually for her when it comes to performance-related memories. I think the circus was a big turn-off for her.
Where are the clowns?……There ought to be clowns.
Oh well.
We’ll have had a nice meal and will have enjoyed the evening together despite the circus, I am sure.
I don’t have great memories of seeing this opera, but I think my memories of it are more closely linked to my general mood that weekend than to any intrinsic issue with the opera/production…
…other than to say that this experience probably helped to kick off the view, which has become a prevailing one, that opera ain’t me.
Bobbie was there for this one, as was Ashley Fletcher – yes, my memory definitely serves me correctly for this one, as the diary makes clear that Ashley was down for the weekend and stayed in the tower – i.e. the annex to my flat in Clanricarde Gardens – so named, by Ashley, as he felt that the place would be suitable for the detention of a mad and/or elderly relative. That annex now serves as my office – renamed the ivory tower – a more liberal purpose and name.
…a few days before I wrote up this piece, about Don Giovanni.
Postscript after seeing Ashley in April 2019: Ashley has no recollection of that weekend. So we must rely on Bobbie’s memory that I was tripping out on tiredness and rather freaked at the thought of going out to get some additional soap, as there was none for Ashley in the shower of the tower. If I really did say words to the effect:
I did not envisage this weekend as a soap buying weekend…
…that would have to be up there amongst my most autistic utterances ever. I have a dreadful feeling that Bobbie’e memory is going to be bang on regarding that point.
