Mrs Klein by Nicholas Wright, Cottesloe Theatre, Followed By Dinner at RSJ, 19 November 1988

The diary is quite clear about this one:

I rated the play/production very good indeed at the time. I am pretty sure that Bobbie rated this highly too.

Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry for this production. Some cast: Gillian Barge, Francesca Annis and Zoe Wanamaker. Peter Gill directed.

There is a page about this production on Zoe Wanamaker’s website – here.

Below is Michael Billington’s Guardian review:

Billington on Mrs KleinBillington on Mrs Klein Fri, Aug 12, 1988 – 26 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Below is Michael ratcliffe’s Observer review:

Ratcliffe on Mrs KleinRatcliffe on Mrs Klein Sun, Aug 14, 1988 – 37 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

More than 20 years later, Janie and I went to see the revival of this play at the Almeida – which I also rated highly:

Bobbie and I went to RSJ’s after seeing the 1988 production. RSJ was one of our favourite places back then. I recall Janie liking that place too. It is still there in 2018 but apparently with a different formula.

That was a top notch evening back in November 1988.

My Last Day At Newman Harris – Eating & Drinking To The Fore, 18 November 1988

Left NH & Co. SB took me for lunch…

NH & Co is Newman Harris & Co, SB is Stanley Bloom. I don’t recall where we went for lunch.

Had leaving do in eve. Drinks at Phoenix. Meal at Melati.

I’ll write more about Newman Harris elsewhere no doubt. The Phoenix on Cavendish Square was often the pub of choice by virtue of being the nearest, not the dearest. Thirty years on, a Google search finds the description…

…Shabby chic pub with worn-in tables…

…which surely applied back then too.

Melati was one of my favourite South-East Asian eateries back then – gone now it seems:

https://www.allinlondon.co.uk/restaurants/restaurant-1104.php

The location would have pleased the several South-East Asian colleagues I had at NH&Co and also would have pleased me as an echo of my “leaving do” ten years earlier when, as a 15 year old finishing my first holiday job, at NH, we went to a Malaysian restaurant named Rasa Sayang – I believe long gone and unrelated to any current restaurant of that name.

I cannot remember who joined me for the 1988 leaving do, but I shall list a few names of those I am pretty sure would have been there. Ashley Michaels, Mike and Sandra King, Dilip Vora, Terry, Duncan, Lelash Shah, Varsha Yadav…

…perhaps someone who was there and who has a phenomenal memory will stumble across this piece and help fill in the details.

A Gathering In Islington & Dinner At Fredericks, 17 November 1988

The exact details of this gathering will doubtless be lost in the mists of time, but…

went to Sharani & Mark’s

…must mean that the gathering started at their place, which, from memory, was in Gibson Square.

Fredericks remains, as I write some 30 years later, a sprauncy Islington eatery…

with B+ crowd

…must mean Bobbie (who was my link with this crowd; Bobbie &
Sharani were fellow law reporters). The crowd probably included Ying Hui Tan, Peter (Ying Hui’s then beau), Maria (who ended up living in Clanricarde Gardens years later) Paul McGrath (Maria’s then beau) and possibly some others.

I’m going to guess that the purpose of the gathering was to celebrate Bobbie’s birthday with her. I’m also going to guess that it was a very jolly evening with good food and wine.

Two Dinners, Le Caprice Restaurant & Kate’s Place, 10 November & 12 November 1988

I think the meal at Le Caprice was my parents’ idea – to celebrate my qualification as a Chartered Accountant along with Uncle Michael, Auntie Pam, Stanley Bloom and his good lady (Sharit?).

Le Caprice was a trendy place even then – I’m not quite sure what would have made mum and dad choose it. Perhaps to show off a bit. Perhaps because they had heard that it was a restaurant that was able to cope with fussy eaters…we had at least one in our party that day in Auntie Pam.

Roll the clock forward 30 years and I note that Kim likes that place, perhaps for similar “trendy but able to cope with a fussy eater” reasons.

I don’t believe any photos were taken that evening to mark the occasion – such meals were not seen to be the thing of photos necessarily back then. But it is just possible that I’ll stumble across some pictures when I delve into dad’s “late works” box of negatives and prints, which still awaits my trawl.

“Kates” means Kate (Susan) Fricker’s place. I’m pretty sure Kate was, at that time, living in a pied-à-terre flat in Hampstead, part of the house that had been the family home before her family moved to York.

Evenings with Kate were always pleasant. We both enjoyed cooking and eating good food. We both liked decent wine and we would always have interesting conversations. I’m sure that Saturday evening would have been such an evening.

I’m guessing that we would have both been in celebratory mode, work-wise, at that time – Kate was called to the bar around the time I qualified.

Cinema (e.g. Carrie), Casualty At Kings College and Cooper Clarke At Keele, First Half Of February 1982

John Cooper Clarke 1979 by TimDuncan, CC BY 3.0

Most of my diary notes from that period suggest that I had my head down working at that time. My impressionistic memory tells me that I was quite urgently seeking to switch from halls in Lindsay to a flat in Barnes at that time, although the diary is silent on that matter until a bit later in the month, when I pulled off that switch.

Still, the diary highlights some interesting events at Keele and an eventful trip to London at that time. Forty years on, it’s time for me to share the highlights.

Friday 5 February 1982 – …stayed in most of evening apart from dreadful film, “The Main Event“.

Yup, that’s not my kind of movie. Never mind.

Saturday 6 February 1982 – Went to Newcastle quite late. Did very little work really. Went to Michelle [Epstein]’s party in evening. Sharon & Louise came back after.

Richard van Baaren &/or Benedict Coldstream might well also have been at that party, as I recall Sharon & Louise being part of that crowd. No mention of Anju on this occasion – perhaps she had something else on. We missed Mari Wilson & The Imaginations for that party, so for sure there were other things to do on campus that night. At that stage, I think Michelle was going out with a character named Joel. I don’t think Michelle got together with Neil [Infield] whom she married – I kept in touch with both of them for many years – until much later in our time at Keele.

Sunday 7 February 1982 – Did some work during day. Went to see Carrie & Scanners in afternoon/evening + did some more work

I have one very clear memory from that psycho-thriller movie double bill at Film Soc. I went to see those movies with a young woman whose name completely escapes me. She was a close friend of Katie’s (aka Cathy) – she of my dad’s embarrassing moment a few month’s earlier. Those two were very close pals of each other and I remained a casual pal with both of them for much of my time at Keele

Update: Katie (Cathy) has put me back in touch with Linda (Jones), who was that young woman at Film Soc 40+ years ago.

In fact, we might not even have gone to those movies “as a date” but possibly both ambled along there solo and simply chosen to sit next to each other, as Film Soc folk often did.

*** Spoiler alert for the movie Carrie ***

At the end of Carrie, the following “jump scare” scene occurs:

…at which point, my young woman friend screamed, jumped and pretty much landed in my lap. Fortunately for me she was quite a skinny, light girl, so she did me no immediate damage. Nor did she injure herself with her jump, other than a little injured pride perhaps as she couldn’t stop apologising for her scare-movie-timidity for the rest of the event.

Ever since then, I haven’t been able to think of the movie Carrie, nor even jump scares in movies generally, without thinking about that young woman and her reaction to that wonderful scene. I was reminded of it the other day (as I write in February 2022), almost exactly 40 years on, when a young woman in front of me and Janie at The Royal Court jumped almost out of her skin at the pre-interval coup de theatre in The Glow:

But I digress.

In February 1982, I didn’t think Scanners was in the same league as Carrie.

Monday 8 February 1982 – …went to [Barnes] G3 for dinner…

It was the G3 crowd (which I think included Rana Sen and Kath), who helped me to find my Barnes flat. I have a feeling that the cunning plan that led to my flat room-for-halls room swap a few week’s later might well have been seeded at that very dinner. More on that swap next time.

Tuesday 9 February 1982 – …went to see Gloria in evening – OK-ish.

Again, not my kind of movie I feel.

Wednesday 10 February 1982 – very busy day – tutorials moved etc. J-Soc committee & Internal Affairs – very busy day all in all. Presidential forum – Simon [Jacobs] & Jon [Gorvett] came back for coffee.

I only vaguely remember being on Internal Affairs committee. Spike Humphrey (who was VP Internal that year) had been a leading light on Concourse the previous year, so I suspect that I was “open to Spiky persuasion” when asked. Forty years on, a simple googling of the fellow, still with his Keele nickname, finds him still doing committees. In the fulness of time that link won’t work, but here is a scrape of it in February 2022.

The controversy-ridden presidential election for 82/83 will have been the following day, but I make no mention of the election in my diary, perhaps because I wasn’t really involved with such things at that time. Yes, Truda Smith, who had, until recently, been going our with Jon Gorvett, was one of the candidates. But I didn’t actually support Truda for that election; I was supporting the official Labour candidate, a lovely lass named Jan Phillips, whose candidacy was ill-fated, perhaps because of Truda’s or perhaps because the power-brokers-that-were (e.g. Toby Bourgein) felt that Jan was unelectable. Meanwhile the Tory contingent, mostly under the Machiavellian guidance of a chap named Chris Boden, were looking to disrupt the election process that year. I’ll explain the resulting hoo-ha next time. Seems that I simply voted on the Thursday (not a noteworthy event) and got ready for my rare London trip.

Thursday 11 February 1982 – Lazyish day – did some work. Went to buffet supper in evening – did some work after.

Friday 12 February 1982 – Left for London early afternoon – Grandma Jenny had come for dinner – injured herself – spent evening in Kings casualty

If I recall correctly, the family crisis had already started to unfurl when I arrived at my parents’ house and we all went straight off to Camberwell. Now THAT’s my idea of a Friday night out in London!

King’s College Hospital by KiloCharlieLima, CC BY-SA 4.0

Saturday 13 February 1982 – Got up quite early. Did some taping – spoke to people. Mum & dad went out – had relaxing evening in.

Sunday 14 February 1982 – Got up late. Went to Polyanna’s for lunch. Made tapes and spoke to people for rest of the day – quite enjoyable.

I should return at some point to the tapes I was making back then, some of which catalogue the soundtrack of our lives in the early 1980s.

Not sure who dined at Polyanna’s – probably just me and my parents, as I don’t mention anyone else. Polyanna’s was a rare example back then of a proper European-style bistro restaurant on Battersea Rise. It seemed well-decent back then compared with most suburban fare. Now The Humble Grape.

Picture borrowed from Christine Eccles in Battersea Memories on FB.

Monday 15 February 1982 – Met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch – > came back to Keele. Went to lousy UGM in evening -> Simon’s for coffee.

The lousiness of the UGM was no doubt linked to the presidential election hoo-ha, about which more next time.

Tuesday 16 February 1982 – Busy day as usual. Worked in evening – got quite a lot done. Didn’t go out at all.

Wednesday 17 February 1982 – Useful day. Spent afternoon in the library. Went to see Andrea [Collins, now Woodhouse] in early evening -> John Cooper Clarke -> Simon & Jon came back – up till quite late.

I am relieved to see several mentions of Simon Jacobs in the diary around this time, as Janie and I are seeing him for lunch tomorrow – Simon doesn’t much like these forty years on pieces unless he gets a few mentions!

I remember the John Cooper Clarke concert very fondly and am really glad I attended it.

Dave Lee’s book The Keele Gigs! has more on the topic of this concert. Dave kindly not only reminded me but sent me a copy of support act, Mightier than Kong, singing their only minor hit, a rather good cover version of Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me.

As for John Cooper Clarke himself, Evidently Chickentown went down extremely well, as did most of his set. Here is an audio of a live performance from around that time (late 1981). Trigger warning: contains…indeed more or less comprises…bad language.

I also recall a Ringroad sketch entitled John Cooper Clarke which was a parody of a JCC poem, each verse of which ended with the line “John Cooper Clarke”, each preceded by an increasingly bizarre simile which rhymed with Clarke. Was it one of yours, Frank Dillon? I might have a copy of it in my “Ringroad cornflake box copies file” at the flat – if so I’ll scan it and upload it in the next week or so.

Elvis Costello And The Attractions, Hammersmith Odeon, 27 March 1981

I did a holiday job at Newman Harris that first Easter holidays of my Keele life.

My motivation for working was purely financial. I was enjoying/wanted to enjoy my time at Keele. The student grant only went so far. There was no bank of mum and dad (BOMAD) for me. Getting into debt was anathema.

I hadn’t worked for Newman Harris since 1978 – that first experience being a subject I shall most certainly Ogblog in time. (I had worked full time during the summer of 1980, for BBYO – which should be another rich seam of Ogblogging once I get my head into that topic.)

The Easter 1981 vacation was the first time I worked for Stanley Bloom; he wasn’t at the firm in 1978. Yes, that’s right pop-pickers:

I got a job with Stanley, he said I’d come in handy.

Anyway, here is my diary from the first couple of weeks of that experience.

Graham in this instance must be Graham Greenglass. We were going through a process of swapping music on cassette at that time. Coincidentally, Graham furnished me with a fair smattering of Elvis Costello material, including rare groove such as Hoover Factory.

Jimmy (Bateman) was a friend from Alleyn’s. I wonder what has become of him? We met up a lot when working the University holidays those first couple of years at least.

David Robbins is Wendy Robbins kid brother. No longer a kid of course.

Caroline Freeman and I lunched and dined a lot in the holidays back then.

In fact, if my older adult self might be so bold as to observe my young adult self, according to that diary page, there seems to have been a heck of a lot of lunching, dining and going out generally. As a result, I’m not sure that the bank balance replenishment exercise could possibly have gone as well as I had intended. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t work Easter holidays again after that first year. But heck, I was having a good time.

On Friday 27th, a meal at Borshtch N Tears (posher and pricier now, I’d guess) followed by Elvis Costello and the Attractions at the Hammersmith Odeon, with Anil Biltoo (my friend from school, with whom I went to Mauritius in 1979), Caroline Freeman and Simon Jacobs, who I met through BBYO but with whom (and indeed through whom) I went to Keele.

Simon always claims not to remember anything from those days, although he might make an exception for Elvis Costello. Example: which tracks did Elvis play that night, Simon…

…and before you say, “don’t be ridiculous, I don’t remember stuff like that”, actually we don’t need your help with that question; Mr Google came up with the answer for us – click here…

…or if that link fails, I have scraped the answer to here.

Much of the material in that gig came from Trust, which was the latest Elvis Costello album at the time…

…and before Simon claims that he cannot remember exactly what he thought of Trust at that time, here is a link to Simon’s whole page review of Trust in Concourse, the Keele SU newspaper.

How Simon got allocated a whole page for an album review is anyone’s guess, but let’s just note here that the Concourse editors were sacked before the next edition went to press. That edition had to be cobbled together at the last minute by me and Dave Lee, with predictably hilarious results, which I shall write up soon enough. Simon got a regular-sized column that time.

Anyway, we must have really enjoyed the gig because we went back for more Elvis that summer; at least I know I went back with Simon for a second go and I think Caroline also joined us in the summer.

Anil, I think, was less sure about the gig. I’m not sure he had recovered from our evening watching his big sister Bi perform in The Sound the previous year.

Here is a great vid of Clubland (from Trust) to give you a taster of the gig, although the Hammersmith Odeon didn’t look like the vid as far as I can recall…

…Simon will simply claim that he can’t remember:

A Few Days In London Between Keele & Manchester, 14 to 19 December 1980

Feld’s borscht looked absolutely nothing like this

Sunday 14 December. Went to Feld’s ->…

Strangely, I had a memory flash about Feld’s restaurant the other day (December 2020), when Kay Scorah kindly sent over some soup recipes from her Essex Road Recipes collection, including one for beetroot soup (at the time of writing, not yet published on-line)…

(21 December 2020 Update! Kay has kindly uploaded her Aphrodite beetroot soup recipe and other beety things to her website – click here.)

…which reminded me of Grandma Anne and the palaver we went through whenever we went to Feld’s eaterie in Mortimer Street in the hope of getting her a decent plate of borscht. I quote myself:

My Grandma Anne was an addict, but even 50 years ago it was hard to find a reliable source of beetroot soup in a hostelry.  “Mr Feld – your borscht tastes like vorter today”, she would holler at the top of her voice in that strange eponymous eatery on Mortimer Street, if the beetroot soup was not up to snuff on that occasion.  “Shake the jar!!” Dad, Mum and I would yell in unison when Grandma ordered the borscht, imploring Mr Feld to action, in the hope of staving off the voluble accusation of “vorteriness”…

Let’s be honest about this – Feld’s was not a great place. The salt beef was fine and frankly that’s why we were there. The latke was a sort of lottery, where you might get a clump of pepperiness or an unexpectedly chunky bit of potato. The matzo balls were similarly random. I recall he added almond essence to those, but sometimes you’d get a seriously almondy shot and sometimes the almond essence would be undetectable. I was partial to his tomato soup, which for some reason had a consistent quality to it (it probably came out of a Heinz catering tin), with the unusual addition of a matzo ball for good measure. Don’t ask about the lockshen pudding.

…SR Pressies -> dinner & drinks with Caroline .

SR Pressies would be a meeting of BBYO chapter presidents from across the Southern Region. I clearly went to one such meeting in the South that weekend and something similar in the North the following weekend.

Hence Keele to Manchester via London. I was never THAT geographically challenged.

Caroline would be Caroline Freeman (now Curtis).

Monday 15 December 1980 – Went to Hillel all day. YC meeting. “Return to sanity”.

I have no idea what the insanity was and what the “return to sanity” meant. My guess is that this was all connected with pulling together a National Convention in an environment where the National Exec was much depleted and somewhat in disarray.

My 1980 diary falls silent at that point but have no fear – my 1981 diary started in December 1980.

Tuesday 16 December 1980 – Anil came round for day. Busyish evening.

Anil looking quite smug

17 December 1980. Went to Hillel. Grandma Jenny came around in the evening.

Grandma Jenny

18 December 1980. Easyish day at home. Easyish evening.

19 December 1980. Stayed at home again. Did little in evening.

Given the high activity level of most of my time during that first vacation of my University life, I suspect I spent much of that two day break making up cassettes and mix tapes to take up to Keele with me. I recall feeling very short of music compared with most and compared with my usual experience at home with records and reel-to-reels to play with. I’ll revisit the music aspect when I write up the festive season.

I had written up the weekend in Manchester that followed best part of three years ago, but felt motivated to add a coda to that piece in the light of sad events since:

I Diarist, My First Diary Page, 1 to 5 January 1974

I started keeping a diary in January 1974. So exhausting must have been the process for eleven-on-twelve-year-old me, I took a sabbatical between May and late November that year.

The 1970s diaries cover my secondary school years, at Alleyn’s School. I shall write them up fifty years after the event, in the same way as I have been writing up my Keele University years of the 1980s as a “Forty Years On” series.

The juvenile writing needs some interpretation, both in terms of deciphering the strange symbols that comprised my handwriting back then and in terms of matters stated and omitted. I’ll try to explain and interpret as best I can, fifty years after the event.

I apologise for my atrocious spelling back then. Spellcheck has spared my blushes incalculably often in the IT era that followed my school years, while also drumming in some improvement to my ability at spelling.

Here’s that first page in all its glory.

Tuesday 1 January 1974 – …”Dined At Schmidt’s”…

Dad was at home. Dined at Schmidt’s. Chocolate moose was nice. In evening watched a film. P.S. Traditional walk 6th year.

Menu image borrowed from Writer’s London on Twitter (more recently known as X)

Schmidt’s was an extraordinary place on Charlotte Street. It was a German Restaurant trapped in time from the early part of the 20th century, operated by an aging gentleman named Frederick Schmidt and his moustached sister, Marie Schmidt. I knew them as Mr Schmidt and Miss Schmidt.

We ate there quite often, mostly when Grandma Anne was not with us, as she was kosher and Schmidt’s was quintessentially not so. I recall that Grandma would occasionally come there with us and eat fish there, while dad would choose his favourite dish, eisbein, a Berlin style of schweinshaxe, with dad pointedly asking for the “VEAL knuckle” as he pointed at eisbein on the menu. Naughty daddy.

I would almost certainly have gone for the liver and onions or the schnitzel as my main course. Both of those dishes came on a platter with some pease pudding and sauerkraut as well as potatoes and vegetables. More or less everything came on such a platter, now I come to think of it. The fact that I comment on the chocolate moose suggests that it might have been a new one to me, but whatever desert I chose there, I would insist on lashings of whipped cream, which, at Schmidt’s, was a highly aerated form of whipped cream which I absolutely loved, both in its look, its taste and its texture. Mum loved that stuff too, on her coffee.

We would sometimes see Esther Rantzen in the delicatessen section of the establishment, where we would usually spend some time after eating, perhaps choosing some delicacies to take home with us or just browsing. When I met Esther properly some 20 years later, I mentioned that I remembered seeing her in Schmidt’s several times and we had a joyous reminisce about that lost world.

There is a fascinating blog spot piece by Mark Bowles about the place, with many comments, which you can read here.

If anything were ever to happen to that web page, you can read a scrape of it here.

…”Watched A Film”…

The film was probably Around The World Under The Sea.

The traditional walk was something I did with my dad over the festive season every year for many years – initially I suspect it was mum’s way of getting a bit of peace for an hour or so and giving us the chance to walk off all the food we’d eaten. I think of Boxing Day as the usual day for that event, but it seems it was held back until 1 January that season – perhaps a weather-related change.

Wednesday 2 January 1974 – …”bought 5 History Books”…

Uneventful yet bought 5 history books. I cannot quite reconcile those two phrases.

I can, however, identify the books. They were from the “Everyday Life” series. I still have them:

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted that there are nine books from that series depicted above, but the diary entry reports me buying five books. The even-more-eagle-eyed amongst you might be able to spot that the five “Everyday Life” books to the right of the picture look considerably more thumbed than the four to the left, which I’m sure I purchased at a later date.

I suspect that I spent my own money on those books (I’d have been flush with Christmas money or Hanukkah gelt at that time of year). The list price of the five books I bought that day comes to the princely sum of £1.45, but I’d wager a good few bob that these books were discounted after Christmas and I might have scored the batch of five for around £1 in W H Smith. I loved those books, which is why I have not been able to part with them, even when I cleared out most of my childhood books.

I especially loved the two about life in the stone ages. These related to the period of history we were being taught that year at school.

In both of the Stone Age books, I have written:

Ian Harris 1.S.

If found please return to 1.S.

I must have been taking these books to school with me on history days – possibly leaving them at school overnight sometimes. Only those two have that inscription, but inside the one about Roman Times, I discovered…

…an ancient, small piece of blotting paper, with one quite large blot on it, marking the place between pages 64 and 65 which, judging by the spine of the book, is as far as I got with that one 50 years ago. This discovery felt like a bit of a Pompeii moment, my juvenile reading trapped within a moment of time many years ago, providing evidence of reading interrupted and never resumed. I feel a relentless desire now to finish reading the book, which I think, fifty years later, will require me to start again from the beginning. I’m guessing that I’ll be able to whizz through the 130 or so pages quite quickly. But again I have put off the task to another day. It won’t be another 50 years, that’s for sure.

…”Saw Tommy Cooper”…

The Tommy Cooper Hour will have been this one – Episode 3 – click here. It will have looked a bit like the vid below, an episode from the same series, shown a few months later:

Thursday 3 January 1974

Went to dentist. No fillings yet. Drawn darts match. 5p Kalooki. 2 Rons [The Two Ronnies] good.

The dentist will have been Harry Wachtel, a slightly eccentric Austrian-Jewish refugee dentist who practiced in Streatham for several decades.

How a darts match ends up drawn I have no idea. Neither do I know who I played in that drawn match. Can’t have been one of my parents (dad would have gone back to work and mum would never go near my dartboard…come to think of it, nor did dad). Possibly Andy Levinson came round. Ot possibly I had a game of my own devising which enabled me to play against myself and secure a draw.

Kalooki probably did involve my mum and it seems that I got lucky, skilful or both, making 5p (that’s a shilling in real money).

The Two Ronnies was this episode. Interesting that I was allowed to watch TV that late at that age – it was possibly my starting secondary school that got my bedtime shifted towards and beyond the watershed.

Friday 4 January 1974

1×2 + bull at darts. Saw Fantasia for a third time – it is great.

I’m guessing that Fantasia was not shown on TV that week, so it would have been a visit to the cinema. I don’t say who I went with, but that might have been with mum (she loved Fantasia too) as I think I would have named my companion if I had gone with a friend or even if I had gone with Grandma Jenny. Probably local, at the Streatham ABC or Odeon.

My burgeoning darts career tails off soon, at least in the matter of diary mentions. I suspect that the dart board was a new toy for Christmas 1973.

Saturday 5 January 1974

Mum bought coat £22 reduced to £9.95. Went to Lytton’s. Played Striker with dive goalies.

Striker with dive goalies. That sounds amazing. I have re-established contact with Steve Lytton in the 50 years since that epic event. I wonder whether he still has his Striker set and is up for a rematch.

Borrowed from ebay, click here or image, where this item can be procured (at the time of posting).

From Yan Chow (Or Do I Mean Yang Chow?) In Streatham To Dim Sum In Soho, Chinese New Year, Probably February 1972

Photo by Jason Jacobs, CC BY 2.0

When I was a small child, growing up in Streatham, there was not exactly a vast choice of restaurant cuisine to choose from. But there was a Chinese restaurant near home. Mum, dad and I all liked the food there.

This image, from 1958, thanks to John Payne on Facebook

In my memory it was named Yang Chow – perhaps the proprietors changed the name between 1958 and my childhood visits there in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But that was the place. The “theatre” mentioned in the advert above is apparently the Streatham Hill Theatre, subsequently the Mecca Bingo Hall, although the restaurant was no more opposite the Bingo than it was opposite The Locarno, or The Cat’s Whiskers as it was known when I was munching food in the restaurant almost opposite those two landmarks.

My parents were friendly patrons in any restaurant we visited and we became friendly with the proprietor family. I cannot in truth remember the name of the matriarch patron, but for some reason the name Li pops into my head, perhaps falsely, but I’ll refer to her as Li in this article. I do remember the name of the proprietors’ little boy, Christopher, who was a similar age to me (perhaps a year or so younger), who would tend to show his face during our visits to the restaurant. Christopher and I became friends.

On one visit, Li announced that the restaurant would be closed for one weekend only as the family was going to celebrate Chinese New Year with family and friends in Soho that weekend. They wondered whether I would like to join them, to keep Christopher company.

I was keen. My parents were content. The date was arranged.

I’m not 100% sure that it was the 1972 new year, but I’m pretty sure I was around that age and something about “The Year Of The Rat” rings a bell. Again, the vague memory might be flawed.

But I am 100% sure how excited and awe-inspired I was by that event.

We went upstairs in a Soho Chinese Restaurant – sadly I have no recall which one it was. The beautiful sketch below might be the very one; who knows?

Terrence Dalley’s 1972 Sketch Of 43 Wardour Street

We sat at a large table and the upstairs room was packed with Chinese people. I think I might have been the only western face in the room.

Everyone seemed to know everyone – not only the people at our large table – which was presumably Christopher’s family and close friends – but the whole room felt a bit like one big party. It was probably an informal gathering of the suburban Chinese restaurateur community.

Writing 50 years later, it seems extraordinary that local Chinese restaurants might close for Chinese new year – a guaranteed busy time for all Chinese establishments today – but back then I don’t think the annual Chinese event had any traction in the wider community.

I remember lots of people making a fuss of me and I remember several people, especially Christopher’s parents, worrying that I might not like the food and letting me know that they could arrange for some food with which I was more familiar if I didn’t like the “party fare”…

All the Dim Sum

But by gosh they needn’t have worried. The smells, the look of the food, the textures, the flavours. I’d never seen, smelled or tasted the like of it before.

I fell in love with dim sum that day and have never lost the love for it.

Little me, around that time

It was not all that long after this seminal event in my culinary journey through life that the Yang Chow closed and that family moved on, we knew not/know not where.

67 Streatham Hill in 2022 – from Googlemaps

Before the end of the Yang Chow era, I do vaguely remember my mum insisting on reciprocating the hospitality I had received by inviting Christopher over to our place for a homely meal. Whether he liked the meal and/or ended up associating matzo balls as a variant of dim sum is a matter seemingly lost to history…

…unless, by some chance, my posting of this article somehow helps re-establish contact with Christopher and/or that kind family, who initiated my love for westernised Chinese food at the Yang Chow and utterly entranced me with dim sum at a more authentic Chinese restaurant in Soho, all those decades ago.