We rose late by our standards and pootled around first thing. We played tennis around 11:00 – the courts were deserted on a formerly-drizzly, albeit Saturday, morning.
We took some brunch at Mimi’s Bakehouse on Shore, then went off to get some provisions. Found Great Grog for wine & coffee. Then a sports shop for some training troos, then Leith Farmers’ Market for some brunch provisions for tomorrow, as the weather is set very poor.
Then we went in to Edinburgh proper for our shows, both recommended by the nice family in Let Me Eat Too. First up, Harpy – a one woman play with Su Pollard. Very good performance but the play was a bit slow and all over the place. It has been pretty well received though – reviews can be found here.
In need of refreshment and reasonable comfort, we eventually found an Andalusian tapas/wine bar place happy to let us sit outside and drink some wine. There was a curious incident with a pair of drunks and their Yorkshire terrier dog and I got shat on from a great height, literally. Good job I was wearing my vinyl (imitation leather) jacket.
Then on to Wu Song – The Tiger Warrior. The recommendation lady had described it as musicians from North Korea but actually it was an extraordinary mime/dance show from Taiwan.
We probably wouldn’t have booked it had it been described to us more accurately but we really enjoyed it, so that lady’s confusion proved to be our friend. It was pretty well received in formal reviews too.
Home for a wash/change and then on to Ship On The Shore for dinner. Excellent fish meal.
We shared a crab salad starter. Daisy tried lemon sole while I went for seafood linguini.
Massive portions but superb food. We got home before the rain started…just.
We rose quite early, to be greeted by the sight and sound of miscellaneous gulls outside our window and even a bevy of eight swans, which graced our view daily throughout our stay. They even came to say goodbye just as we were leaving, a week later.
We found our way to Leith Links on foot (less than 10 minutes walk away) and played tennis there. Three courts in good condition; quite similar to our regular arrangements at Boston Manor.
Then we returned to the flat to wash, change and sort out bus/tram passes. Once we were “appy” with that, we set off into Edinburgh. First stop, to collect our tickets for today at the High Street Fringe ticket shop.
Then we headed towards Underbelly, to get our bearings & find some lunch. An Underbelly usher recommended Let Me Eat Too, where we had giant “Balmoral” panini wraps of chicken, haggis & cheese. There we met a nice English family – the son was in a show & the parents had some good ideas/suggestions for us.
We subsequently decided that places like Let Me Eat Too and their portion sizes were a bit “over belly” for us at lunchtime ahead of shows at Underbelly and the like, so we lightened up our subsequent post-tennis/lunchtime arrangements.
We saw the only play I had pre-booked for the trip: Angry Alan by Penelope Skinner. It was a superb piece, very well acted by Donald Sage Mackay, whom we had seen quite recently in White Guy On The Bus at the Finborough. Angry Alan has been very well received, on the whole, in formal reviews. By chance, we got to meet Donald Sage Mackay & Penelope Skinner afterwards in the Underbelly cafe.
Then we hunted down tickets for the shows that nice family recommended, &/but took sanctuary in the Checkpoint cafe on Bristo Place. I went on a bit of a fool’s errand from there to try & get tickets in person – app/collect works much better and cheaper it seems.
Then we strolled on to George Square to see NewsRevue; the other show I had pre-booked before we set off for Edinburgh.
I have been hanging around NewsRevue since the early 1990s and had material in the show, including the Edinburgh “best of” shows, for most of that decade. Of course I had often seen previews of the Edinburgh show at the Canal Cafe, but this was the first time I had ever seen the show in Edinburgh. The show has a different vibe in a 500-seater auditorium with the performers miked up and the audience in “early evening Fringe” mode rather than “late night cabaret” mode.
But it is still a very good show, as it has always been; and oh boy was it packed the day we saw it; probably the case every day. NewsRevue really has become an Edinburgh Fringe institution now.
Then we strolled back to High Street to collect those appy show tickets for tomorrow. Then back to Cowgate for quick drink at Underbelly & then on to Three Sisters (Free Sisters) to see Michael Keane (a friend of mine from the real tennis community) & his pals in a comedy improv. show named BattleActs.
Not really our sort of thing; improv. shows, but this one was done very well and had packed out a fairly sizeable room at the Free Sisters.
We bussed back to Leith, stopping for dinner at Chop House Leith for some excellent aged steaks and a couple of glasses of very quaffable red wine.
We also took some lunch at the Hepworth Wakefield cafe; a much better option than a soul-destroying service station experience.
The traffic wasn’t too bad and/but we arrived in Edinburgh (or should I say Leith?) a little later than planned; just before 19:00.
We quickly went out to get our Leith bearings & some breakfast things.
In search of coffee, we accidentally found Sketchy Beats Cafe, a sort of grunge music and art bar run by a warm and friendly chap named Danny. He explained that Sketchy Beats is not really a coffee shop and suggested that we get our provisions at Tesco instead, which we did.
Danny also suggested that we return later to see the jam, which we also did. In fact, Danny seemed quite keen for me to bring my baritone ukulele with me and join in the jam, which I guessed might be a less wise idea.
We had a super tapas meal at a tapas place, surprisingly named Tapa, just three or four minutes walk from our apartment. Very rich but delicious tapas there, with a lot of iberico variants on offer
We did go back to Sketchy Beats after dinner, which was fun. The music was all very garage/grunge; highly amplified and rock style. I’m not sure that the dulcet tones of Benjy The Baritone Ukulele would have done the business there.
Daisy and I pulled out just after an explicit, dirgy number about mother-f***ing which might even have made Tarantino blush.
Thus we had a reasonably early night despite us ploughing the grimy lows of the Leith nightlife.
We’d arrived.
You can view all of our pictures from this Edinburgh trip by clicking the picture (Flickr album link) below:
I don’t really have the words to describe how excited Janie was about this exhibition, ever since the V&A pre-announced it about a year ago. Then, when we learnt that we could see a preview of the exhibition and take in a talk by the curators of the exhibition that day, we booked out the Friday afternoon and Janie got even more excited about it.
So perhaps in some ways the afternoon was destined to be an anti-climax for us.
We chose to book our timed tickets to view the exhibition after the talk. We got to the V&A early enough to have a lite bite there before the talk.
The new members’ cafe was heaving with people and a queue, so we went instead to the new public cafe at the new Exhibition Road entrance, which did not have a queue and did have outdoor seating available – a bonus on a glorious sunny June afternoon.
Then to the talk. Here is a link to the V&A resource for the talk. It was a bit folksy and disorganised, as V&A talks tend to be, but in this instance it seemed especially so. The curators, Claire Wilcox and Circe Henestrosa seemed unfamiliar with the microphones, making it hard to hear them at times. Circe in particular moved around a lot, which is fine, but surely the V&A has clip-on mics for roving speakers – I’m sure I’ve seen those used there before.
Frida Kahlo is such an interesting character; the intersection between her life, her personal tragedies and her art work is a fascinating topic. It was intriguing to learn, for example that her photographer father, Guillermo Kahlo, took so many self portraits – he might be seen as the founding father of the modern selfie craze.
In the context of Frida’s work, though, given that so many of her pictures were self-portraits, it seemed an insightful point about her father and his work.
Yet much of the complexity and confusion between the truth about Frida Kahlo and the cultural icon she has become (to some extent through her own design, to some extent through cultural appropriation) was glossed over in the talk.
The central conceit of the exhibition is that it is displaying a large selection of Frida Kahlo’s personal artefacts, which were kept locked away at La Casa Azul for fifty years after her death. The reason for this lengthy secretion was not well explained by the curators. Diego Rivera’s will stipulated that they should remain unseen for 15 years after his death, but they were not uncovered for a further 30.
We tried but didn’t get a chance to ask that question during question time, whereas a Mexican woman with verbal diarrhoea was allowed to waffle on for five or ten minutes raising about half-a-dozen obscure points without pausing for breath or answers from the curators.
In truth, the Wikipedia entries for Frida Kahlo and for La Casa Azul explain matters better than the talk. I guess the truth of the matter is quite mundane. The cult of Frida Kahlo didn’t really get going until after the 2002 movie “Frida” – which Janie and I loved at the time btw. So although La Casa Azul became a museum immediately after Diego Rivera’s death, it was a very low key (and probably low budget) one until this century.
Frida’s tribute in profile
Never mind – then on to the exhibition itself.
At the entrance they hadn’t yet differentiated between those who had acquired timed entry tickets and members who had just turned up, so everyone had to join the same lengthy queue. Unaware of this, we walked past the queue and walked up to the ticket dude who we imagined to be our timed ticket dude.
“We have timed tickets”, I said.
“Certainly”, he said, scanning the tickets. We then realised that he was actually the entrance for the Ocean Liners exhibition, so how our tickets scanned for that goodness only knows.
He tried to get us in to the Frida Kahlo, but we were sent to the back of the queue, there to wonder whether our tickets would now scan for Frida Kahlo having been scanned for Ocean Liners.
Somehow we got in. Perhaps those scanners merely go “bleep” without really doing anything.
It was pretty crowded in the exhibition and we found some of the preview members rather too pushy and elbowy for our taste. I’m not sure that members’ preview days at the V&A are such a good idea for us in future, unless we can find a less crazy-busy slot. In any case, the V&A should do something about the lighting of the Frida Kahlo show – some of the exhibits were hard to see and the explanatory rubric hard to read. Hopefully they put that right on the back of feedback from members like us.
Still, many of the exhibits are truly stunning and fascinating. Don’t let my rant about how disorganised the V&A can be put you off seeing the exhibition; it really is worth it. You get to see a lot of Frida Kahlo’s paintings as well as the artefacts and some superb films and photographs taken during her lifetime, providing a great deal of visual context to Frida Kahlo’s life and work.
But don’t ask about the leaflet that explains the artefacts and exhibits in each room, which we strove so hard to obtain but failed in the end to secure. Different members of staff told us that:
the leaflets had all run out (on preview day?),
they had simply run out of leaflets at the desk and they’d have some more for us shortly,
a leaflet would be brought to us once we were inside the exhibition (some hope, despite chasing),
the leaflets weren’t ready yet but would be available in a few days’ time,
there wasn’t to be a leaflet for this exhibition at all…
…I think staff are “trained” (to the extent that the word “training” applies in that place) to make up whatever comes into their heads at the time and say it kindly but with an authoritative tone to mollify the unsuspecting punter.
No doubt Rebecca, who promised to get back to us by e-mail with a definitive answer (and hopefully a copy of the leaflet) will come up trumps for us, if trumps there are to be had. While we were engaging Rebecca in this task, one of the elbowy blue-rinse members elbowed me away from the corner of the members information desk (upon which I was merely leaning to support my aching back) without a please or a thank you. I don’t approve of manspreading, but femshoving of that kind is even more overtly aggressive.
It’s a shame, really, but by the end we couldn’t wait to get out of the V&A that day. Yes, the Frida Kahlo is a fascinating exhibition, but the place seemed so disorganised and we just felt the V&A could have done better with this one.
Janie consults Frida on how to curate herself…that IS Frida’s type of question
The idea of seeing this concert was partly hatched from John Random’s desire to see some lunchtime early music with me. A couple of suitable Thursday dates were either no good for him or no good for me. But this Friday one, during the London Baroque Festival, looked bang on.
The timing was good too, as Janie had arranged to tour the new extension of the Royal Academy at 15:00 that afternoon. Janie very much liked the look of Les Kapsber’girls lunchtime programme.
As John’s availability is subject to the whims of showbiz administrators, the unreserved seating at SJSS makes it a suitable concert venue for an aproximeeting. I bought tickets for me and Janie, knowing that John would be able to get one on the day if he proved to be available.
The e-mails buzzed over the coming days. There was to be a costume fitting for John, so our gathering was off. The costume fitting had been cancelled – John was on again. The fitting was reinstated – off again.
At that juncture I tried to guilt-trip John…with my tongue rather firmly in my cheek, I might add:
John, John, John…
…I can’t handle all four of those Kapsber’girls on my own. And I’m not so keen on your two. No, no, no, two ladies is plenty:
…so I identified the instruments to John while we were waiting for the concert to start…
…but I got more instruments wrong than right. The big thing I thought was a theorbo turned out to be an archlute; the smaller thing I thought was the archlute was actually a tiorbino (a miniature theorbo), the existence of which only became known to me on the day; the small viol I took to be a treble viol was the even smaller pardessus de viole – a soprano viol which, again, was a new instrument to me on the day. Top mansplaining on my part – waxing lyrical while getting most of the facts wrong – I must have sounded like Alan Partridge to an expert observer.
The concert was absolutely charming – as were all four of the Kapsber’girls. They are very young and relatively new to performance at this level; not all of them displayed professionally-grooved stage presence throughout the hour, especially when sitting out the odd piece. But they all four play or sing beautifully and are surely all on the road to success.
The music was early 18th century French popular songs, known as “airs de cour” or “brunettes”. Two voices and two instruments. These songs were published in the early years of the 18th century by Christophe Ballard and were phenomenally popular in France during that latter part of Louis XIV’s reign.
Here is a little vid of “our girls” performing one or two of the songs we heard:
…and if all that leaves you in the mood to hear some actual Kapsberger (and believe me it’s worth it) here are Les ‘Girls playing and singing some actual Kapsberger:
Of course we didn’t hear any actual Kapsberger in our concert; the focus was entirely on the French airs de cour.
Janie snapped this during the final, lengthy applause
John, true to his word, made an approach to one of the girls after the concert – probably to try to understand the difference between the theorbo, the archlute, the chitarrone…that might have been a long, complicated conversation. Anyway, Albane Imps kindly chatted with and then posed with John:
Is that a tiorbino in your pocket, John, or are you just pleased to see me?
We took a snack lunch in the crypt after the concert (Janie’s favourite place at SJSS) where we met a couple of Kapsber’girls again – Axelle Verner chatted with us charmingly for a while – before the girls headed off, returning to France that very day.
The girls were very self-conscious about the quality of their spoken English, although John’s assessment (and he does teach English as a foreign language) is that their spoken English is actually very good. John remarked that the French accent is a very forgiving accent for spoken English – especially when the words are delivered by charming young people! So snap out of it girls – your English is just fine.
John seemed a little star-struck, so we conducted a filmic thought-experiment in which John might make a brief-encounter-like dash to St Pancras for a touching farewell scene with Les ‘Girls, but sadly John decided against.
Not all that many people composed baroque music for eight voices and two instruments, but let’s try naming my thought experiment combination of The Gesualdo Six and The Kapsber’girls “The Zieleński Ten“.
John was clearly inspired by the “baroque girl power” he had seen, so he parted company with us in search of Millicent Fawcett’s statue, at Parliament Square, while Janie and I went on to our appointment with the new extension of the Royal Academy.
In fact it isn’t really a new extension – it is the old Burlington Gardens building behind the main building, which has been conjoined with the main building to bring the whole of the Royal Academy together. This project has been donkey’s yonks in the making and Janie was very excited, as a member, to be allowed a sneak-preview before the doors opened to the public that weekend. Here is a link to a page and vid that explains it all.
Before wandering around and poking our noses into all the new bits of the Academy, we took a quick look at the first exhibition in the new space – Tacita Dean, Landscape – click here for the RA resource on that exhibition. Not especially to our taste, in truth – we were there for the opening more than for this exhibition – but I did like several of the works that fused photographs with spray-on chalk and gouache. One or two of the larger ones were truly stunning and also, strangely, the technique worked well in miniature on postcards.
Then we wandered around the Burlington Gardens extension.
Tim Marlow himself was there, available to chat with the members. We didn’t chat directly with him, but we did chat with several members of staff who were visibly excited about the whole thing. Extra exhibition space, workshop space, studio space and a soon-to-be completed lecture hall with all the modern gadgetry:
Ged is desperate to deliver the first lecture in this place……”this beautiful Burlington Gardens building dates from 1831…”
We then retired back to the City quarters for siesta before grabbing some Persian food and retreating to Noddyland for the weekend. We’d had a super cultural day.
No matter – perhaps we had been over-ambitious trying to do everything in one day, so Plan B was to meet for lunch 4 May and then go to the National Gallery.
John suggested Gaby’s on Charing Cross Road – a real blast from the past – I hadn’t been in there for donkey’s years. John had ful medames, but I didn’t want to risk jet-propelling myself around the National Gallery, so I went traditional with a salt beef sandwich and pickle. Substantial – but I had worked up an appetite playing an intense hour of real tennis that morning.
Then on to the National Gallery. John had planned five pieces with interesting/quirky stories to show me – then we would wander freestyle.
As a curious aside to the Duke Of Wellington story, John Random and I tried (and failed to remember the name of the famous QC who defended Kempton Bunton; it was of course Jeremy Hutchinson. That made me wonder whether Hutchinson had ever worked with my friend Robin Simpson, one of the senior gentlemen with whom I sometimes play doubles at real tennis. It turns out that both Jeremy and Robin were involved with the defence of the Fanny Hill obscenity prosecution, see pp192-196 of the attached thesis, as was Richard Du Cann. (Makes mental note to Ogblog the crazy day in the mid-to-late 1980s when I ended up dashing to the Old Bailey to brief Richard Du Cann ahead of a fraud trial, the facts of which had taken an unexpected, last-minute turn.)
Diego Velázquez, 1599 – 1660 The Toilet of Venus (‘The Rokeby Venus’) 1647-51 Oil on canvas, 122.5 x 177 cm Presented by The Art Fund, 1906 NG2057 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG2057
The Fifth Random Tour Item – The Non-Existent Man With Theorbo
This fifth item was due to be the highlight and indeed was probably the initiating idea for the entire visit. John and I had been talking about my interest in early music and early music instruments. Then John wrote to me, mentioning that he had seen some interesting paintings in the National Gallery, depicting people with those instruments.
Unfortunately, fragments of John’s memories of the conversation and the paintings themselves apparently got mixed up, but John promised me that he would show me a painting entitled “Man With Theorbo”. This was a very exciting prospect for me indeed; a veritable highlight was in store for me.
Or was it?
When we got to the appropriate room, John showed me the following painting
Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1588 – 1629 A Man playing a Lute 1624 Oil on canvas, 100.5 x 78.7 cm Bought, 1963 NG6347 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG6347
I explained to John that the instrument depicted was a lute, not a theorbo. I showed John a picture of a theorbo.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence – with thanks – http://collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/co5900/theorbo
Even John had to agree that these were different instruments. I politely pointed out that the painting John showed me is actually named “A Man Playing A Lute“…no mention of a theorbo.
We looked around that room, in vain, wondering whether there was also a picture of man with theorbo, but eventually John admitted that he must have been mistaken.
I decided to put my foot down at this juncture. After all, a promise is a promise. And my previous visits to the National Gallery took place when I was a small child, so I knew how to behave there.
“I’m not leaving the National Gallery until I have seen the man with theorbo,” I declared.
If John had thought about it clearly, he could have rapidly released me from this fixation by offering to buy me an ice cream outside or something. But instead, John seemed to resign himself to a long – perhaps eternal – trawl through the National Gallery in the vain hope that the non-existent grand master, Man With Theorbo, might miraculously emerge – perhaps through the power of magical thinking.
So we wandered on, through the Rembrandt Rooms and the Rubens Rooms, which felt very much like home turf to me from visits with dad in days of yore. A large party of schoolkids were having Belshazzar’s Feast explained to them by a teacher. John asked me if I could read and translate the writing on the wall. I demurred, loosely translating it as “you’ve had it, pal” – not bad for a rank amateur.
Then, quite by chance, we happened upon Room 16, where John spotted A Woman Singing And A Man With A Cittern. John then remembered that he had intended to show me this room and that particular picture too, as we had, on that musical instrument discussion occasion, explored briefly the distinction between the mandolin-like cittern and the guitar-like gittern.
No! Don’t look at the main subject – look at the little fella on the stairs
“Oh look”, I said, “the little fella on the stairs is carrying an instrument that looks very much like a theorbo…”
“Thank heavens for that”, said John, “can we go now?”
“…but on the other hand, that might be an archlute, not a theorbo,” I said, “it’s hard to judge the scale of the thing at that size and distance.”
“Do you fancy a cup of coffee and a piece of cake,” said John, at this juncture realising that a few well chosen words might help him finally escape from his theorbo debacle.
“Great idea”, I said, so off we went in search of a decent caff.
In Trafalgar Square, I wanted to take a proper look at the new fourth plinth item: The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist by Michael Rakowitz:
Tim Connell is never one to miss an opportunity to organise a Gresham Society visit to a newly opened historic site; this visit to the London Mithraeum was no exception.
The London Mithraeum is one of the most substantial archaeological finds relating to Roman Britain. It was found on Walbrook soon after the Second World War and was moved away from its original site, bang slap in the middle of the City of London, to allow construction, including a permanent home for the relic more or less where it was originally located.
The building is now the Bloomberg Space, with the London Mithraeum in the basement. It opened to the public in November 2017. Anyone can visit this fascinating site and it is free of charge – but it is wise to book to ensure that you get your chosen time/date.
Enough of all that generic stuff. Here’s what happened on the Gresham Society visit.
About 25 of us gathered, which made for a pleasant gathering of the clan to add to the joys of seeing the relic. When I say “gathering of the clan”, I of course mean The Gresham Society clan and not followers of Mithras. No, no, no…
…although, when we were in the viewing gallery of the temple itself, enjoying the Bloomberg Space multi-sensory experience, I asked a couple of people whether they were starting to believe in the mysteries of Mithras?
Professor Cox answered, “not yet”…
…while Barbara Anderson replied, “not telling”.
So I detect some signs of hope for a Mithras revival.
Professor Connell mused that there must have been music involved in the initiation rites, at which point I offered to go home and get my baroq-ulele, but Tim very kindly implored me to stay, saying that he didn’t want me to miss any of the tour, which was so very thoughtful of him.
But Tim’s thought about the music for the initiation rites did get me thinking.
Anyway, after the tour, most of the party removed to a nearby hostelry for some suitable libations. I must leave it to others to report on that vital aspect of the outing, as I needed to return to Z/Yen Central to finish off some work that day.
But once I had finished work the next day, I started some in depth research into the musical side of the initiation rites of Mithraism.
It seems that the most terrifying initiation rite of them all was a requirement for the initiate to sing the Mithras Initiation Song, without hesitation, repetition, deviation or preparation.
We’re talking “one take” here.
Anyway, I did indeed manage to find some fragments of Mithraic music and text, which enabled me to translate the arcane Latin words of the Mithras Initiation Song into comprehensible English and modulate the rather dull, plain tune from the Hypolydian mode into something a little more familiar to the modern ear.
It is said that this particular initiation rite was actually more terrifying for the observers than it was for the initiate. I’ll let you, dear reader, be the judge of that.
For the Gresham academics, I would like to explain far more about my multifarious sources and the enormous trove of truly wonderful original materials about Mithraism I have uncovered.
Unfortunately, however, I realised, once I had performed the initiation song, that I have inadvertently initiated myself into the cult of Mithras at the very highest level…
…and that only initiates may be privy to the relics of the Mysteries of Mithras that I have uncovered.
Naturally, scholars who are keen enough to know about my sources may apply for initiation by singing the Mithras Initiation Song. The English language lyrics are set out below.
Mithras Initiation Song
Look at me,
I’m as cryptic as a Roman Mystery;
As I join in initiation rites,
I can’t understand,
I get Mithras,
And I’m joining that band.
Mask my eyes,
And a thousand stars appear to fill the skies,
Or it might be the sound of slaughtering bulls,
That music I hear,
I get Mithras,
My joining is near.
Can’t you see that you’re leading me in,
But that’s just what I want you to do;
Don’t you notice how much I need that faith,
That’s why I’m following you…(and you know that it’s true).
On my own,
I would wander through Londinium alone;
Never knowing my Persian from my proto Christianity,
Tate Modern has a new offering for members – opening a couple of hours earlier on Saturdays and Sundays for members only. Great idea.
We plugged for the Sunday, which was a sensible slot for us…
…except I should have thought to shift our Boston Manor tennis court back by an hour…
…I’ll get that right next time.
Meanwhile, London is almost a pleasure to drive through at 8:00 on a Sunday morning…and places to park when you get there.
Rather a stunning carpet on arrival at the Tate Modern
Quite a lot of members milling around the exhibition, but not crowded the way the public slots for the Picasso exhibition are likely to be. A real members’ benefit, for those of us willing to get up early on the weekend. The show is really popular, btw – you’ll need to book if you want to get in for a regular slot.
There are lots of top notch pieces on display in this show. It is mostly the story of Picasso’s miraculous year, 1932. You do get to see a few works from other periods, but not many.
Plenty of variety in Picasso’s work during 1932 and lots of interesting stuff about his life at that time too.
These days the Tate allows punters to take pictures of some but not all the works. Not quite sure how they decide what is and isn’t allowed. Janie nearly always wants to take home the book of the show if she likes a show (as she did in this case)…but still on this occasion she took some pictures as well…perhaps for your benefit, dear reader/viewer. They certainly make fine eye candy for the blog piece.
For many years I have claimed that there are only two places left on the planet where people still refer to me as “young man”; Lord’s and The Wigmore Hall. I must admit, though, it’s been a while since anyone has addressed me as such in either of those places.
As it happens, ahead of this Gresham Society event, I spent the early part of the afternoon at Lord’s, playing real tennis, as has been my wont since the spring of 2016. Real tennis is a fiendishly difficult game to play. The professionals point out that the 150-200 court hours I have put in so far leave me “barely out of nappies” in real tennis terms. Presumably I will go through a “young man” phase eventually before becoming a senior player.
We have several senior gentlemen who continue to play into their late 80s and even into their 90s.
Sadly, the video from that bout did not get saved – my opponent that day quite possibly asked for all evidence to be destroyed and frankly, given the circumstances, I don’t blame him.
After tennis, a relatively quick visit to the Z/Yen offices to sort out one or two work things before setting off, with Michael Mainelli, to the London Capital Club.
I think Michael was hoping that we’d be about five minutes late, thus missing most of the AGM, which Tim Connell had promised to keep to seven minutes.
In truth, we arrived just as the formalities were starting, so were able to appreciate all 12 minutes of the promised seven minute AGM.
Then some pleasant chat with several friends before descending to the dining area.
There was no seating plan, but I was lucky to sit with the Ayliffes to the right of me and Margaret Hodson to the left. Discussions with the Ayliffes mostly revolved around the political mess our nation (and indeed much of the western world) seems to me making of itself.
I knew about the musical side to the Hodson family, but was unaware of the horsey side, until that evening. The work that Margaret Hodson does with horse riding for disabled people is truly remarkable – click here for an independent view on it about 10 years ago.
The food was pretty good. A chicken salad round thing which was very well presented and tasty. The toast was quite hard – so much so that Margaret Hodson (and several others at our table) gave up on it. When she saw me persevering, Margaret gave a running commentary on my efforts, which could easily have been horse trials commentary, including the slightly disapproving/disappointed voice when one piece of the toast went flying towards the floor – no doubt a four-point penalty.
Then a slow-cooked lamb shank dish – a good idea for a large function and a very full-flavoured. The dessert was a crème brûlée.
Afters at Gresham Society – no waffle hereGyles Brandreth gave an excellent address to the Society. Clearly he was well briefed, so after an amusing potted history of the ups and downs of his career, he spoke highly of the Gresham Society. Gyles placed emphasis on the fact that we are the Friends of Gresham College, waxing lyrical about the benefits of societies that are genuinely friendly.
I totally agree. The Gresham Society is, above all, a very friendly bunch of people. We have a shared pleasure in and purpose through Gresham College, but it is above all a friendly group. For sure that is why I like to attend whenever I can…
…even if Basil teases me almost every time about my aversion to filling in forms and Tim Connell tries to find increasingly convoluted ways to avoid having me play my baroq-ulele…
…but I digress.
Towards the end of his talk, Gyles Brandreth mentioned younger members of the Gresham Society and I thought he might have glanced at me as he said it.
There was a little time left after the address for some more chat with friends before I realised that it really was time for me to head home.
As I was leaving, when I went up to Gyles to congratulate him on his talk and say goodbye, he told me that he was looking at me when he mentioned the younger members. I told him that I thought my days of being addressed as “young man” at Lord’s and The Wigmore Hall were behind me, but perhaps the Gresham Society, now a third outlet for what remains of my perceived youth, will revive my fortunes in that department.
John Random sits on the “Sounding Board” for the Old Royal Naval College. I’m not entirely sure what that means…
…I’m not sure John is entirely sure…
…but one thing it does mean at the moment is that John has the right occasionally to take a guest to tour the Painted Hall Ceiling.
This really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the ceiling of the extraordinary painted hall up close and personal, while scaffolding is up as the ceiling is being conserved.
How could I possibly say no when John offered me such a tour?
John dons a hi-viz vest and a hard hat
John went the whole hog, safety-dress-wise, whereas I, on learning that the hard hat was voluntary, declined the offer to wear one of those.
We were part of a small group, led my the intrepid Martina; a young, pint-sized Italian woman who seemed to know an awful lot about the ceiling.
Meet William and Mary
We are very much in the baroque period for the painted hall and ceiling. We are also steeped in the politics of the Glorious Revolution. So William and Mary take centre stage and sectarian symbolism abounds.
Symbolic characters…not the sectarian ones I am glad to say…I should have listened & memorised…River Thames & London I think…
To be honest, the detail was a bit much for me, but the awe-inspiring opportunity to see this extraordinary work up close and learn about the conservation project was extremely interesting and memorable.
I would thoroughly recommend a visit while there is still time – still several months at the time of writing this – I suggest you do it sooner rather than later.
It was a sunny winter’s day, so after the tour we strolled a bit and I especially wanted to see the chapel, where I had attended at least one concert in the past.
Scrubs up nicely, that chapel
The chapel looked especially splendid in the sunlight – I hadn’t seen it on such a day before – plus it had clearly been through a clean up and refurb of its own since my last visit, perhaps 25 years ago.
John and I pondered whether any royals had (or would) die on the day of this Painted Hall visit. We decided that, if the worst did happen, we really should abandon any future plans to meet in Greenwich.
I personally am keen on eel, although usually in the smoked form…
…indeed as soon as I have finished writing this piece I shall sup on smoked eel and salad…
…so let me press on.
John found the eel a bit difficult to navigate, because the stewed eel served alongside the pie has the bone still in. I told John that I seemed to be managing the geography of the eel pieces better than him, which he found a curious turn of phrase.
Anyway, John and I both found the eel pie shop food a little bland – not least the meat in the pie and the parsley sauce – indeed the eel was far and away the tastiest element.
We thought we might enjoy some tea/coffee elsewhere more than we’d enjoy it in the eel pie house, so we went around the corner to Red Door Cafe – a quirky place which was very much to my taste.
The proprietor, William, played a very interesting and eclectic mixture of music, ranging from Leonard Cohen to Arvo Pärt.
Red Door served a very good cup of coffee and also had an intriguing collection of teas…I sampled the white which was very nice. John tried some cake which he said was also very good. I’d certainly go to that cafe again like a shot.
John and I chatted until we realised that hours had gone by in this jovial fashion, but we both really did need to get on and do some other things before the end of the day.
