I chose The Pembroke very carefully. I dug out my trusty slide rule, compass, protractor and set squares…
…concluding that this place was approximately equidistant between my place and Simon’s…
…it was also one of those places I’d heard good things about and was keen to try.
Everything went according to plan; I turned up a couple of minutes after the appointed hour and Simon turned up shortly after that.
I bet you put some effort into choosing this place on the grounds of its equidistance…
…said Simon. I nodded.
Thing is, I forgot to mention last time I saw you, but I have finally got round to commissioning that work on my house I’ve been talking about for years…so I am currently living with my mum in Pinner.
I’m not surprised Simon didn’t mention the “staying with mum” business on that occasion; it’s not a very rock’n’roll existence, is it? Even if temporary and in sensible circumstances. Even with Simon’s lovely mum.
We spent a bit of time bemoaning the whole “builders in the house” business.
The food was good, the staff were attentive without being overly-so. They had acquiesced to my request for a corner table, not that the place was too full anyway, but that back corner is away from the bar, which is a bit nosiy there.
All very satisfactory.
But the funny thing was, that once Simon had told me that he was living with his mum, he seemed somewhat reverted, somehow boyish compared with his usual self.
Still crazy after all these years
Example. Simon was describing his mother’s house, which is not the house I remember Simon & Sue growing up in; their folks moved to a different house in the 1980s.
Simon described the garden as big. Seriously big. He then went to Google Earth to try locating the garden so I could see it.
At one point, when I wondered why Simon was looking at the Google Earth globe, Simon asserted that his mum’s garden is the only structure of human construction, other than the Great Wall Of China, that can be seen from outer space. Perhaps that assertion was meant to be exaggeration for effect, rather than an attempt to hoodwink me.
In the end, Simon failed to locate his mum’s garden on Google Earth…I mean, it can’t be that big then, can it?
So we discussed other things. Such as the political omnishambles that is the general election.
We also discussed Simon’s latest cracking single, which I had been honoured to hear in preview and is due to be released on the Friday after our get together…
…which is today, now that I am writing this up, so I can share the charming video and song with you:
Cool sound, coming from a self-confessed “old bloke” who still lives with his mum…
…Ok, is temporarily living with his mum while making even more cool studio space for himself and Timothy in his house.
Anyway, we had a very enjoyable evening, as always. I was surprised at how late it was by the time we toddled towards Earls Court, from whence I went the two stops back to my place and Simon…schlepped all the way to Pinner.
Janie and I had another big night out the next day; a double-birthday celebration with John and Mandy at Kitty Fisher’s.
Janie likes restaurants where you can see the kitchensNibbly starters
John and Mandy had enjoyed a day out in London ahead of our dinner, so were able to tell us about that and about the kids.
We don’t have to tell them any of our news, obviously, because it is all there to be seen on Ogblog. Yet still we did tell them our news too.
Meaty main courses and crispy potatoes that aren’t chips, apparently
The food was excellent, the service lively and unpretentious. We really liked this place.
On learning that it was a double birthday, the restaurant managed a mercifully low key way of helping us to celebrate:
John and Mandy very kindly bought me a small gift while enjoying their day out earlier in the day – we don’t normally do presents – requesting photographs of the celebratory footwear.
We’d all really enjoyed our evening, as evidenced (if evidence were needed) by the exchange of messages the next day.
Meanwhile, Janie and I took great pleasure in taking and posing (respectively) for those photos early the next morning:
“Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me…”“Sock Long Marianne…”
I wanted to go up to North London Cricket Club to take a look at one of Middlesex CCC’s participation programmes. I wanted a bit more context around my work with London Cricket Trust, in part to inform my decision making and in part to inform any further media stuff I might be doing about it, possibly some as early as next week.
Picture borrowed from the North London Cricket Club website – click the picture to see the site.
Katie Berry thought the Wilf Slack Cup at North London Cricket Club would be a good example and I thought that 15 August, a date that I had put aside for the August Z/Yen Board meeting, an event that tends not to happen due to holidays and indeed was not going to happen, was a very good date for me to make such a visit.
Weather wise it turned out to be an excellent choice, sandwiched between two very wet Lord’s test match days. Work-wise it wasn’t quite so ideal, as a few things came up that needed my attention and I needed to deal with those ahead of going to Lord’s for a soaking the next day.
Still, I got to North London around 12:40 and was able to stay for a little under two hours, looked after by Pete Jones who is a key fellow in Middlesex’s participation team. He was able to give me a lot of useful context to the work we are doing and planning to do through the London Cricket Trust. We were also, usefully, joined by Mohammed from the ECB’s participation and growth team who also had some useful and interesting context to give me about such participation programmes in other parts of the country, as well as London.
Considering that the tournament was for 14-17 year olds of mixed ability and experience – ranging from some of the better colt players from strong clubs to young enthusiasts who were perhaps getting their first experience of playing hard ball cricket on a full sized cricket pitch, I thought the standard was pretty high.
I was a bit regretful that I couldn’t stick around and watch the tournament pan out for the afternoon – it was a glorious day for hanging around cricket – but I did need to get home and get some work done. Indeed, I got so deep into one or two tasks, I ended up rushing in the end to get out the door in time for the Streatham BBYO reunion gathering at Imperial China.
There was a coincidental connection between these two noteworthy, North London and then South London, activities of the day. The 14-17 year old age band of the Wilf Slack Cup coincides almost exactly with my age during the Streatham BBYO years and both of those activities were linked to the two “Mission Implausible” challenges that I had assumed at the last reunion gathering in May.
The first of those challenges was to provide cricket facilities for Mark Phillips’s school, Deptford Green. I must admit at this juncture that I rather set this challenge up when I found out that Mark was the Head Teacher at that school, as I was pretty sure that we were imminently due to put a London Cricket Trust Non-Turf Pitch into Deptford Park. What I hadn’t known, in May, was that we would also be able to get one of the greatest cricketers of all time, AB DeVillers, to open the facility for us in July.
The second challenge was to track down Barry Freedman after all these years. This I failed to achieve through the BBYO Facebook network but succeeded in doing through the Kim and Micky connection. It’s not what you know…as they say.
Woddi, Terri and Barry (sounds like a group of England cricketers and their nicknames), from way back then (1979).
I thought we might be a little short of people for the 8-person table I had booked, but I needn’t have worried. Sandra and Mark had both said yes but were demonstrably both abroad right up until the last minute. Still they both – almost AB DeVilliers-like, hot-footed it from their vacation to our event.
I did a shout-out on the BBYO Facebook group. Terri got in touch and hoped to come along and try to replicate the above picture, but sadly in the end couldn’t make it. Simon Ordever wanted to pick up an age-old rivalry between supporters of Crystal Palace (Eagles) and supporters of Bright FC (Seagulls), but sadly he now lives on the West Coast of the USA. That is a bit of a schlep for one meal.
Fortunately, Paul Dewinter was able to pick up the mantle for the Seagulls community, attending (as he has done before) as a “Friend of Streatham”. Paul possibly didn’t realise that he would be up against the combined forces of Barry, Linda and Liza in the Eagles department. I think Paul held out for a 0-0 draw despite being two men down.
Clockwise from me: Paul, Andrea, Sandra, Linda, Barry, Liza, Mark. Many thanks to the waiter whose photographic skills were surprisingly good considering his polite reluctance to accept the task.
It had been great to speak with Barry again when I called him some weeks ago and likewise it was great to see him again along with the group. Hopefully Barry will be able to join us again at the (now traditional) May gatherings. I find it very enjoyable spending time with everyone in the group. The years just seem to fall away when our group gets together, as I have said in reports of several previous gatherings, which have been happening since 2014.
It was a lovely ending to a busy but largely enjoyable day.
An enjoyable evening, as always, meeting up with Simon Jacobs for a natter and some decent grub.
I chose The Cow this time. I have only eaten there once before, some years ago, with Janie, Charlie and Chris. It turns out that Simon was in the same boat; he’d also been once before and also remembered the place fondly.
…so I asked Simon top provide trigger warnings before he mentioned any former, current or prospective leaders of the Conservatives. This Simon agreed and more or less stuck to throughout the meal.
A very tasty meal it was too. We both went for the smoked mackerel pate starter; then Simon went for the beef and Guinness pie, while I went for the posh seafood pasta dish.
…but Simon claimed to be behind with his Ogblog reading and deflected my more incisive questions. We agreed that we both recalled that Krokus were not to our taste…to say the least.
Then, just as I finished my main course, Simon said “Mark Francois” without so much as a trigger warning.
Look – I know that, strictly speaking, that gentleman is none of the things I listed (viz Tory leadership) but I do think that the flagrant, unexpected mention of his name was a breach of the spirit if not the letter of my trigger warning request.
It’s Simon’s good fortune that I was able to gather myself without causing a good deal of embarrassment, mess or embarrassing mess in The Cow.
We discussed many interesting things other than politics. We also discussed employment practices, cricket and music. We did not discuss tennis this time, much to Janie’s chagrin afterwards when I described the evening.
I always enjoy these evenings, but I must construct a more exhaustive list of characters who require trigger warnings ahead of being mentioned. We can’t afford any more Iain Duncan Smith or Mark Francois type incidents in public.
The original idea had been to meet up at Lord’s late afternoon and venture on for food from there. But I had mixed up the dates and thought that this was Day Three of a match but it was in fact Day Four, so that idea was never likely to have worked.
In any case, John’s commitments ran a bit later than originally planned so we ended up gathering at my place early evening, which enabled me to torture John with my latest musical mash-ups and masterpieces, while John caught up with his e-mails.
We also got our “intense disappointment with politics/Brexit” conversation out of the way at my place before dinner, so as not to put ourselves and each other off our food.
Downstairs at Yauatcha this time – for the first time. I think on balance we decided that upstairs works better for us at Yauatcha. Quieter and more airy.
But the food remains absolutely superb – well remembered, John.
Unusually for us, we plugged for a set menu, not least because those seemed to have such an interesting and varied selection of dim sum, it would have been hard to better those choices by calling from the card.
The presentation is beautiful, especially the dim sum course, but for some reason we both neglected to take “food porn” pictures at that juncture.
So I have borrowed a couple of pictures from the Yauatcha site, guessing that, as long as the pictures are credited and linked to their site, the Yauatcha folk won’t mind:
Yauatcha Shui MaiYauatcha So (Puffs)
For some reason, when I did decide to take a couple of photos, John decided that he wanted to look wacky and insisted on maintaining a crazed expression. I can report that John was stone cold sober on this particular evening, as he is trying to get fit for some sort of marathon cycle thingie.
You’d be mistaken in thinking that John doesn’t get out much
Those main dishes were:
黑菌花腩骨 Truffle pork belly rib
老乾媽雙鮮 Stir-fry pepper chilli seafood with asparagus
白菜苗 Baby pak choi
豆角蛋炒飯 Egg fried rice with long bean
So there.
John and I discussed, amongst many other things, our days writing for the Keele student newspaper, Concourse, not least because Dave Lee (seasoned Concourse journalist and one-time editor) had recently got in touch with me about that. Dave is pulling together a charity book about the Keele gigs of that era etc. John’s diaries might help Dave to fill gaps that mine can’t fill.
Watch this space.
Amusingly, John related that he had found several old copies of Concourse when clearing his parents’ house, all of which had his masterpieces carefully cut from them…but the file in which he must have meticulously preserved his own ouvre is lost for all time.
Anyway, as always it was a very enjoyable evening with John, which flew by all too quickly. Roll on the next one.
In many ways the smaller number is a shame, but it was nice, on this occasion, to have a single conversation between a group of five of us. I felt I had a proper catch up with everyone who was there this year, whereas sometimes I feel I didn’t really get to speak with some of the attendees.
Booking Bill’s is an interesting, different experience each time now. This time they seemed happy to take my booking for a largish group of people (I’d estimated eight) many weeks in advance, but I did get a shock when I was sent a reminder in late April for our 30 April booking. I checked my original e-mail from Bill’s and was relieved to see that it correctly said 30 May. I quickly got on the blower to Bill’s. Something about computer systems going awry, but not to worry, we were booked in for 30 May.
The booking all worked fine on the night. Even our reduced numbers proved non-problematic, as Bill’s had pushed two tables together for us and were able to recycle one of those tables when our last minute reduced numbers came to light.
We reminisced, perhaps a little more than usual. I think I might have got a half-confession out of Linda about the 1978 apple pie bed incident:
Linda’s guard, most unusually, must have been down, perhaps as a result of her having had a cocktail earlier in the evening before arriving at Bill’s.
Linda, Liza, Mark and Sandra all work in education and/or care professions, so I found myself a fascinated listener to a conversation about several sign languages and their diverse educational benefits.
When I discovered that Mark is now back in London, at Deptford Green School, I initiated a conversation about non-turf cricket pitches and my Trustee role at the London Cricket Trust…
…Mark agreed that it would be most helpful to his school if there were to be cricket facilities in Deptford Park. I said I’d see what I can do.
Then we returned to our reminiscing and concluded that we’d all like to see many of our old BBYO friends again, but in particular we should try to track down Barry Freedman who was, in so many ways, the driving energy behind our group in the early years.
I’m not quite sure how I got nominated and voted onto the non-existent committee in the role of “Tracking Down Barry Freedman Officer”, as I don’t recall leaving the table or the conversation at that stage of the evening.
My friends assured me that the instructions for my mission, should I choose to accept it (not that I could refuse it, seeing as I’d been elected nem con, in absentia), had been provided on a tape recording which, together with the tape recorder, had now mysteriously evaporated:
My friends wished me luck.
I said I’d see what I can do.
As usual, it was a really enjoyable evening with a great bunch of people whose company I enjoy with renewed relish at these annual gatherings. But the next gathering might need to be sooner than usual, if I can pull off an implausible mission.
Is a selfie with loads of people in it a groupie? If so, thanks to Mark Phillips for the groupie.
Yet somehow we hadn’t got round to it. But when Janie announced that she was, unusually, seeing patients in town on the Friday afternoon/early evening ahead of the Bank Holiday weekend, that seemed a perfect opportunity to try the place. It was, not least because I was able to get a table on a Friday evening at reasonably short notice.
We chose to try the three course Robata Omakase set and believe me that was plenty of food for both of us. Brace yourselves for food porn photos, mostly courtesy of Janie:
The starter thingieThis sweet waitress explains the sashimi element of the meal to me. She seemed thrilled to learn that we had been to Japan reasonably recently.Once it had been explained, we could and did indulge.A more bulky member of the waiting staff served the grills on great big stone blocks. The grills were served with some sushi on the side – an unusual touch?
Janie and I both thought the food was really excellent and for sure the best meal of this kind we have had outside Japan. The ambience was a little soul-less, but to be fair such places in Japan tended to have a similar, “mall-restaurant” type ambience.
We were both really pleased to have tried the place at last and the meal got the bank holiday weekend off to a very tasty start.
Janie took some more photos; you can see them all by clicking the link below:
Our getting together was long overdue; it’s been a good few years. Mostly because Ashley doesn’t travel to London all that much and my visits to Manchester have been few and irritatingly poorly timed for Ashley’s availability.
…we redoubled our efforts, not least because Ashley was due in London just a few weeks later. So I kept the late afternoon/early evening free awaiting further instructions from Ashley.
He suggested an early dinner at La Fabrica in Finsbury Park. I arranged to meet Ashely at The Terrace Cafe, situated between his hotel and the restaurant, enabling me to do the cross town hike ahead of the rush hour and get some reading done while I waited for Ashley.
Picture from the Hackney Gazette – click the pic for an interesting article about this cafe.
For a while, earlier in the day, I wondered whether our plans might come to nought. Ashley was down in London for a friend’s citizenship ceremony and celebration. Ashley sent me the following pictures and note from The Landmark
– May be slightly squify
I’ve heard of Champagne Socialists, but a Champagne Anarchist?
Anyway, Ashley turned up at The Terrace at the appointed hour seemingly not the worse for wear. He had a soft drink there, though, while I had a juice rather than a second coffee.
Then on to La Fabrica, which was a great choice of place. We tried several tapas, including scallops with chorizo, cod croquettes, Iberico loin with apples, Iberico ribs, prawns in a yummy sauce…
…washed down with a rather yummy garnache/carignon wine.
…to such an extent that he claims not even to remember being there. Bobbie will not be impressed.
Still, Ashley and I did have a very good chat/catch up. Not only that; Ashley and I also had a good go at resolving some of the UK and the world’s problems.
Unfortunately, though, one evening was not enough to actually solve any of those major world problems. Maybe next time. And hopefully next time won’t be years and years away.
Did I mention that I had a recording deal lined up? Yeh, Simon Jacobs, who does producing as well as recording and all that – he signed me up to do a demo in his high tech studio. This could be the start of my stratospheric popular music career and not before time, frankly.
Now Simon is a very musical chap and has been so for longer than I have known him, which is well north of 40 years. Here, for example, is his latest hit, Ghosts, which he released many weeks ago, but it refuses to fade in the Spotify rankings, still getting infeasible thousands of streams a week on that platform – the YouTube is below so you can also see the vid:
So what, in the name of all that is good and pure, was Simon thinking when he suggested that I record the Warren & Durbin classic, I Only Have Eyes For You. Not in the original Dick Powell pitch/key of C (heck knows that is hard enough for me, even with the sheet music to look at), but nine whole stops up the register in the Art Garfunkel range.
Nine whole stops. That’s like, Notting Hill Gate to South Ruislip, if you are daft enough to go west from Notting Hll. Even Ian Pittaway, my music teacher, who has crazy ideas about my ability to reach high notes, only nudges me three or very occasionally five stops up.
Here’s the result of Simon’s wild musical concept:
Anyway, Simon said that he much preferred the Art Garfunkel version of the song:
While I complained that even the original Dick Powell was wicked hard for me to play and/or sing.
But Simon insisted that his recording gadgetry could rectify any minor failings in my singing and that he thought he could, with a little effort, turn me into a latter-day Art.
It seemed like a jolly good excuse for a get together and/but life seemed to intervene for a while, so a ridiculous number of months passed before we actually got round to implementing the plan.
On the day, I arrived at Simon’s West London studio, which also doubles as his house, late afternoon/early evening, ready for a rollicking rock’n’roll evening of music.
First up, obviously, we indulged in some appropriate herbal substances; a big mug of tea each, together with some chat about really trendy topics, such a Brexit.
Then down to business with the recording.
I felt a little strange working on that particular song, that particular week. A couple of days earlier I’d been to the funeral of our neighbour, Barry Edson, who was an aficionado of film musicals. I’d had several interesting conversations with Barry about Warren and Durbin songs and Barry had shown me interesting stuff about those song writers from his library-sized collection of books on the topic.
But back to me recording I Only Have Eyes For You in an Art-like style with the help of computerised sound engineering.
Actually it was a very interesting process for me. Simon clearly does this sort of thing a lot, but mostly with his own, not with anyone else’s, voice.
We had a rehearsal run through. Then we took a recording take which sounded crackly. That led to some rearrangement of the microphone, the music and me. I even offered to remove my socks but those lengths were deemed unnecessary.
Then a couple more takes, at which point Simon thought we might try to repair take four with some fragments, but after we’d done that, I suggested one more try at a better straight-through take.
I’m glad I did that, because the final take was, in my opinion, quite a lot better than the previous ones (I realise that notion might be hard for the listener to believe).
Then Simon really got down to doing the sound engineering thing.
Simon is geeking my song
It was a bit like having your homework marked in front of the school teacher. On many of my notes, there was a huge amount of vibrato which Simon was able to smooth a bit.
Imagine, as an analogy, someone using fancy software to turn my legendary illegible handwriting into something that looks more like a legible script.
Is there any handwriting-smoothing software that might help? – September 1989 sample
The music software would help each note find its probable home on the scale. But sometimes the thing I had sung was closer to some other note than the note that the purist might fussily describe as the “right” note.
Actually I believe I did sing all the right notes…just not necessarily in the right order.
But it didn’t matter because Simon’s fancy software could shift pretty much whatever I sang to the exact place it belonged on the scale.
On just one occasion did Simon have to say, “I’m not even sure what you’re supposed to be singing there – may I please see the music?” – that was on the second intro couplet, which Art Garfunkle doesn’t sing.
And there is the one note that I strangled so very comprehensively that no amount of tinkering seemed able to repair it. Let’s imagine that I was gulping with emotion on that note.
Then some more listenings and some more tinkerings…
…by which time I was getting quite excited and wondered whether we should try more and more takes, on the basis that my voice seemed to be getting better and better each time.
The conversation then drifted towards artistes who had spent months or even years trying to perfect individual tracks for release.
I wondered whether we might lock ourselves away, perfecting this track, for, say, five years, in order to emerge, not only with a sure-fire hit on our hands, but with Brexit over. Simon thought that five years is probably not long enough…to ensure that Brexit is over with.
Anyway, in case you missed it above, or want to hear it again, here’s the end result:
Timothy then joined me and Simon for dinner at The Brackenbury Wine Rooms, which was a suitably convenient and high quality location for some good food & wine plus some top notch natter. It was a good opportunity to get to know Timothy a little better – the only time I’d met him before was at Simon’s Circle Line album launch, about 18 months ago, which was not an occasion for getting to know people well.
On parting, I suggested dates for me to return to record the rest of the album. But Simon just shook his head politely and solemnly. “A one-off recording deal, that was”, he said.
“Not even a B-side for the single?” I asked.
Simon shook his head politely and solemnly again, as both Simon and Timothy said, “goodbye,” not, “au revoir.”
But…
…and here’s a thing…
…when I listened to the track again the next morning, it sounded far better to me than it had the evening before. I said so to Simon, in a thank you message. Simon’s reply, perhaps similarly inspired by a re-listening:
Glad you like your recorded performance! Do let me know when you’re ready to record your whole album!!
So now I have an album deal lined up? Yeh, that well-known music producer Simon Jacobs…this must be the next stage of my stratospheric popular music career and not before time, frankly.
In many ways this evening had been long in the planning. Janie and I spotted Mere as a suitable place to dine with John & Mandy last summer, but in the end we opted for Dinner In Noddyland:
So good was it, that John and I decided that we “owed it to the girls” to all four have a meal there once the opportunity arose. Now was that opportunity.
We met ahead of our booking time to have a drink in the lovely bar. Janie and I got there first and I ordered a bottle of the excellent Sancerre that John and I had tried at Mere the first time around.
We also discussed many other things, not least John and Mandy’s other daughter, Bella, who looks set to go to Manchester to study – does Bella not know about the inclement weather in Manchester?
We all decided we wanted to try the tasting menu; so we did. Three of us (all bar Mandy) also went for the wine pairings.
John And Mandy taking it all in, as the sommelier explains the first of the wine pairingsHere’s all the stuff we tasted, in words.
Janie took the pictures, which explains why she appears in none of them. Take my word for it, Janie was also listening attentively, smiling a lot and enjoying the tastes, smells and the chat.
Leeks & TruffleAttentive listeningCornish CodWas I describing Hitler’s cohones at this juncture? Something like that.ScallopMandy sniffs the interesting Youngblood Grenache served with the scallopRose VealWe really do look like a couple of pseudo-connoisseurs in this pictureWhite Port to go with the cheeseCheese (mine mercifully without the candied walnut)Am I unconvinced by the final wine or just running out of steam?Apple Chocoholics delight
This Ogblog piece makes it look as though we did an awful lot of eating and drinking, which we did. But the portion sizes were such that we did not feel stuffed or sloshed at the end of the meal, just very happy.
We all four know how lucky we are to be able to eat in a place as good as Mere and to be able to enjoy the company of such good friends. It was a truly memorable and wonderful evening.
Or, to summarise in one word using John’s favourite adjective back in the mid 1980s:
