Friends and Family Events – Page 17

Never The Bride, The Stables (Milton Keynes), 20 August 2016

I ended up going back up the M1 soon after (and in many ways as a result of) my expedition to Northampton about 10 days earlier, reported here.

The connection is a bit tenuous, or at least idiosyncratic. Kim invited me and Janie at relatively short notice to join her groupie-fest to see Never The Bride. I explained that Middlesex were in line to be at T20 Finals Day this year and that I would only join the gig outing if Middlesex were eliminated before finals day.

As it happens, Kim and Janie were still enjoying a meal together when I started my drive back from that ill-fated evening in Northampton. I called Janie to let her know that Middlesex had lost. Both girls cheered at the thought that I would therefore join the gang for Never The Bride. Hopeless at understanding priorities and sensibilities, both of them.

Kim is a big fan of Never The Bride – not only did she engage that band to play Janie and Kim’s joint birthday party a few months ago, she also had them play a gig at her house last year and has been to see the band several times.

So Kim was up for this gig big time; which meant the full works. Gang of eight: Kim, Micky, Alan, Janie, me, Joanna, Becky and Millie. Stretch limo with magna of bubbly (see photo above) and a rather OCD timetable which required us to leave NW11 at 16:00 just to be sure of arriving at a venue outside Milton Keynes in time to eat at the venue and take our reserved seats at 20:00.

We ended up with a lot of time to kill. Not that most of the entourage would have noticed; several of them were blotto by meal time. Some had started drinking before we left London. Meal time was 18:15 at the earliest and we arrived in the grounds at 17:00. I didn’t want to drink anything before eating and felt mighty uncomfy in that stretch limo, so I got out and had a good walk around the grounds.

The place is basically Cleo Laine’s house, together with the venue she and the late John Dankworth established in the old stable. The house itself is very beautiful and Cleo Laine is clearly happy for visitors to wander up the drive to see the beautiful ivy-clad front of the house and to have a peek through a locked gate at the very beautiful, well-maintained back garden.

The meal in the Stables Cafe was very bland but also therefore inoffensive. The concert was delayed by about an hour due to some technical sound problems, which must have been beyond fixing, in fact, because the band was already there sorting out sound checks and stuff at 17:00 when we arrived and continued to signal disapproval throughout the gig.

Nikki (vocals), Been on keyboards and guest Sally Jo on the electric violin

Kim is not the only fan of this band – indeed Whispering Bob Harris is an outspoken fan and was due to present the band that night. Instead, he sent a video introduction due to slight ill health. Or perhaps he knew something about the current state of The Stables sound system that neither we nor Never The Bride knew.

I felt sorry for the band really. They had recorded a live album and video at this venue some years ago and were recording (or at least trying to do so) that night. I suspect that things had changed at the venue somewhat in between visits. Not least the nature of the audience for this gig as promoted – click here; not very rock’n’roll; more Wigmore Hall or Lord’s on a members’ night.

Nikki and Been with guests Jolly Jumper from Norway on Harmonica and John Emms from Germany on Trumpet.

The band had lined up some terrific guest performers (see photo captions above). You don’t get to see much of Been, “because she hides behind that mass of hair” according to Janie, but she is a super keyboard player and also played two other instruments just to show off.

Been and Nikki write many of their own songs, although in truth I feel their strongest skill is as performers and that their covers of suitable, well-known material, such as the Janis Joplin stuff and the blues numbers they played with their guests worked best. Both sets of covers they performed at Kim and Janie’s party were superb throughout.

I don’t think the band were that fussed about an entourage turning up from London in a limo. Nikki only mentioned it two or three times during the show; the last time she mentioned it she also suggested a post-show tequila party in the limo.

Kim insisted on hanging around for an hour or so after the gig – she didn’t want her groupie day to be over (or perhaps she fancied that tequila party), but in the end was persuaded by the others that it was time to go home.

No M1 roadworks that night, thank goodness. Not that I would have noticed. Three glasses of wine over the evening and the clock nearing midnight – I was “gonnnnnnne”.

Not sure I ever was very rock’n’roll. Am absolutely sure that I’m not rock’n’roll now. Janie went with the flow of the evening more readily than I did, although in truth she also drank little and was, like me, pleased for a nice quiet day on the Sunday.

The Heavy Rollers, Edgbaston, England v Pakistan Days One to Three, 3 to 5 August 2016

It’s a little difficult to explain why this outing worked so well this year, but it was indeed a most enjoyable success.

In the run up to the match, I had a sense of foreboding about the trip, in particular when Charles “Charley the Gent Malloy” Bartlett let me know that his knee was so bad he had brought his surgery forward and was unable to join me at Lord’s for day one of the first test (hence Simon “Awesome Simo” Jacobs joined me as a supersub). Charles said then that he was “still hoping to make it” for Edgbaston.

Charles has previous in the “still hoping to make it” department – as this King Cricket report from 2011 attests.

I started to suspect that all would in fact be well when Chas wrote, 10 days or so before the event:

“I need to see how my first car drive goes on Saturday, I also need to talk to ‘Razor’ and ‘Knuckles’ both Essex members as they offered to take my tickets off me…if I didn’t recover in time – let me see how the drive goes over the weekend and how they respond to the disappointment.”

I replied:

Razor and Knuckles sound like absolutely delightful company; indeed possibly preferable to the original candidates for the roles…

A week later, it became clear that Razor and Knuckles were set to remain in their Essex lairs; Chas again:

To confirm I’ll be bringing some 1st day food up with me on Wednesday. Dot’s happy to provide some sandwiches – corn beef and mustard on soft white and egg mayonnaise on soft white. I have some other stuff (old favourites) and some (new stuff) that looks ok, too!

In fact, Dot’s first day sandwich feast also included heaps of ham on brown and cheese on brown too. We struggled…in a good way, saving most of the other less perishable delicacies (Harish and I had also brought quite a few of those) for the later days.

So, the night before the match it was just me and Nigel dining and at the hotel, as reported here. Chas and Nick “The Boy Malloy” turned up very early on the morning of the match (Nigel and I were still at breakfast). Nigel and I had planned to walk to the ground; Nick and Chas were cabbing it. Harish was a little delayed in traffic, but, still keen to walk, ambled to the ground on his own that morning.

We were all at the ground in time for the toss. Nigel was smarting a bit, in part because the walk was perhaps a bit much for his knees, in part through the indignity of having his minimally-concealed Shiraz-in-a-flask seized at the gate.

I had determined in any case to enjoy the Edgbaston cricket dry during the day again this year, making space for a glass or two in the evening.

The three days of cricket were wonderful. At the end of day one we were all unsure whether England had scored enough runs. At the end of day two we were sure they hadn’t and that Pakistan were close to total control. At the end of day three we knew that England had all-but wrested control back from Pakistan.

Here is the match scorecard.

We played our traditional sweepstake game all three days; this year, unusually, Harish swept the board, especially on one of the days. I wanted him tested for performance enhancing substances but Harish mysteriously failed to turn up for the tests.

Harish and I were keen to walk to and from the hotel each morning and evening. After that first morning, Nigel bowed out of the walk until the Friday evening. On one of our walks, I think it was Friday morning, Harish and I had a very interesting chat about music. We schemed a tabla/ukulele jam for next time but struggled to work out whether some of Harish’s favourite tabla rhythms could possibly work with western tunes, which are usually relentlessly 4/4 or occasionally 3/4 time signatures.

Harish pointed me to the work of Zakir Hussain – click here for a fine short example – on tabla. He also pointed me towards rupak taal (songs in seven beat rhythm – here is an example of one of those with Zakir Hussain again. I’m not sure about adapting western songs to these rhythms – beyond my skills anyway, but we could probably manage some haunting, simple variations on well-known tunes if I work up some broken chords with seven plucks per chord.

On the Wednesday evening, Chas and Nick didn’t feel like coming out at all. Following an extensive investigation on our way back from the ground, Harish and I settled on Mr Idly, which Harish was pretty sure was a refurbed version of the good Southern Indian place he and Nigel had enjoyed the year before. Nigel was certainly up for that, so off we all went. Excellent dosa in my opinion. The idly, which we shared as a starter, was OK but I recalled that idly is not so much to my taste as dosa.

On the Thursday evening, Nick had arranged to meet a friend in the evening but the rest of us were keen to try/return to Colbeh, which Nigel and I had enjoyed so much on the Tuesday evening. We were not disappointed.

Heavy Rollers in Colbeh 2016 — With thanks to the waitress for taking the picture

I tried the slow-cooked lamb shank this time, while Nigel and Chas shared the full works of grills. Harish tried one of the vegetarian stews. Again, all the trimmings were wonderful, not least the amazing aubergine and mango sauce (not really a chutney, or at least not a sour chutney), which was new to me because, as we were proudly informed by the (other) son who looked after us this time, that sauce is his mother’s own recipe. To paraphrase Nigel’s eloquent recollection in the comments section from our previous visit, that makes it our sort of place.

On the Friday, all of us but Nigel headed home after the day’s play; in Harish’s and my case via the hotel, which had kindly offered safe custody to our vehicles, baggage and (in my case) Benjy the Baritone Ukulele. Nigel swore on the way home that he wouldn’t eat a thing that evening after three days of feasting and it seems he kept his word – Nigel’s subsequent e-mail report:

My plans for a quiet evening on Friday were ruined by Sharon and Kev’s engagement celebration in the hotel function suite, that really did feel like it was taking place in the next room. After the three day grazing, I took the unsolicited advice barely audible from a Ukulele shaped bag suggesting it wouldn’t harm that big bloke to miss a meal or two. That thing does have attitude.

In short, the whole trip was a great success. It’s a bit difficult to explain how or why spending several days with old friends doing so little can be so satisfying and relaxing, but it is. I guess the whole idea of five day cricket is hard to explain to the uninitiated. Nigel again, writing on the Sunday morning, just before the start of Day Five:

We have once again enjoyed a fascinating Test match, which only really began to be resolved during the last session. Into the fifth day and it is still compelling. It would be impossible to explain that to the Georgian Cabbie, seen to register disbelief at Charles’ response to “who won?” at the end of day one.

More Real Tennis Than I Had Bargained For and a Surprising, Excellent Meal in Edgbaston, 1 & 2 August 2016

One aspect of real tennis at Lord’s that I omitted to mention in my piece last week – click here for that piece – is the propensity for one of the players to cancel at the last minute or even simply fail to turn up at the appointed hour. There is a strict rule that people must pay for such lapses, but some seem unconcerned about money. It almost always causes inconvenience to the staff (who then need to find a last minute opponent or in extremis play an unscheduled hour themselves) and sometimes disappointment to the other player(s), who had turned up expecting one thing and end up with another…or occasionally, if out of hours, with nothing.

However, the fairly regular scurrying around for a last-minute replacement does afford a fairly local newbie, such as myself, to benefit from quite a few free (i.e. funded by the offender) gigs.

On the evening of 1 August, for example, I had arranged to play at 19:00, after work: I had an excellent hour. One gentleman was waiting for his 20:00 match – his opponent didn’t turn up. Initially I offered to warm him up while he waited, but in the end we played a match. The handicapping system is a great help, up to a point, but he was a very sporty, experienced player – 30 handicap points ahead of me, which is out of range, really. It was great experience for me to play against such a player and I got better enough as the hour progressed for us to have some very good wrests (rallies in modern terms) in the end.

I was pretty worn out by the time I got home (I had also been to the gym that morning) and was wondering how I might get on playing again the next morning – a “pre-Edgbaston” idea. Actually, the body had calmed down by morning and I didn’t do too badly in my 10:00 hour. At the end of that hour, Chris Swallow asked if one of us could stay to help make up a doubles where one had dropped out at the last minute. My opponent couldn’t; I was in no rush, having demobilised the afternoon before, so did another two-hours-on-the-trot. Great fun, but 4 hours on court in the space of 17 hours is probably not ideal for an old git like me.

Half way to Edgbaston, when I stopped for comfort/petrol, I skimmed my e-mails and saw one from the MCC which read:

“you have caught the eyes of the selectors…would you be available to play real tennis for the MCC against the visiting Australians, The Wanderers, on 10 September?”

A very pleasing surprise. My reply:

The only criterion I can imagine might have caught the selectors’ eyes was my avoiding the need for a stretcher after two consecutive days of unexpected two hour slots.

Or perhaps it helps the handicapping to have a novice in the squad.

Still, I am flattered and absolutely delighted to accept the invitation to play that day.

I met up with Nigel at the Eaton Hotel and we went out for dinner quite early, both hungry and quite tired. We intended to go to Bengal Delight again, as we had enjoyed that place so much last year. We walked along the Hagley Road, got so far we realised we must have passed it or that it had gone. Checked on the smart phone and discovered that 207 Hagley Road is now a new Persian Kitchen and Bar, Colbeh (unrelated to the Bayswater Persian of that name).

I shall review the meal in full on TripAdvisor when I get home and add a link. Suffice it to say here that the food was really excellent; outstanding in fact. We were well looked after by a proud new proprietor and we really do wish him and the place well. In any case, it was great to catch up with Nigel over a meal again the night before the match.

So the headline is a little deceptive; it was a surprising, good meal because we set off for an Indian meal, which we expected to be good, but instead ended up enjoying Persian cuisine at that location, which was truly excellent. One of the joys of life.

Youth Club Alumni Dinner at Bill’s in Covent Garden, 28 July 2016

The last two or three years we’ve been having youth club (Streatham BBYO) reunion gatherings at Bill’s in Covent Garden. Having done nothing of the sort for well over thirty years, it suddenly and seamlessly felt like something that several of us actually really like doing.

The previous gatherings have been late May, to coincide with half term (several of our number being tied to school holiday times) but that week didn’t work for a great many people this year, so we shifted to the “schools out” week in July instead.

Slightly depleted in number, nevertheless seven of us gathered; Andrea, me, Linda, Liza, Mark, Martin, Sandra. Very pleasant it was, as indeed it has been previously.

We discussed old times, new times, in-between times and of course recent political events.

It’s amazing how much we slip back into club mode when we meet; of course we all have very different lives now, yet we are unquestionably in many ways the same old group.

The time passed very quickly and when the out-of-towners shot off to make sure of getting the last train, the west/north-west London contingent decamped for a drink/coffee and a few more minutes of chat before going home.

A very enjoyable evening.

A Few Days In Scarborough, Including the First two Days of Yorkshire v Middlesex, 2 to 6 July 2016

Caravan — Tony and Liz’s caravan. Not Jason Gillespie’s caravan. Why anyone might imagine it to be Jason Gillespie’s caravan, or why anyone might ask Jason for the location of his caravan, is entirely beyond me.

Our original plan was to spend a week or so in North Yorkshire, but Janie’s success with the Wimbledon ballot for 1 July and her desire to be back 6 July for the Hampton Court flower show, meant a shorter trip this time, just to Scarborough. Still, we’d have the opportunity to see Tony and Liz, plus take in a couple of days of cricket.

Despite our having raved about Cafe Fish on our previous visit to Scarborough in 2014, advice which Chris and Charlotte took and with which they concurred, Tony & Liz still hadn’t tried the place. So Janie booked it for the Saturday night as our treat for Tony’s birthday.

By booking our hotel early enough in the year this time, we’d managed to get a decent size of room at the Palm Court Hotel ; much nicer than the hotel we’d stayed previously and a joy to have the parking behind the Palm Court guaranteed as part of the deal.

Saturday 2 July

A relatively event-free journey – we set off in good time, leaving the flat very early and only stopping at the house for 90 minutes or so – the “5 minute stop” Janie had promised she needed. Still, we got to Scarborough mid afternoon, so there was time for some rest before meeting Tony and Liz. Janie went off to get a swimming costume, having forgotten that the hotel had a pool. In the end, neither of us swam. I watched the denouement of the Querrey v Djokovic match from yesterday and called Janie to tell her the result while she was still at the shops choosing her cossy.

Tony and Liz came to the hotel for a drink before we wandered three minutes down the road to Cafe Fish. There we ran into Harry and Blossom Latchman, their friend Elaine and Geoff Norris, who were getting towards the end of their meal. Janie and I remembered (and were remembered by) the Cafe Fish people, especially proprietor William, so we really must have seemed like the locals on home turf despite being in Tony and Liz’s home town. Tony and Liz were a bit discombobulated by all this.

Unsurprisingly, we had an excellent meal at Cafe Fish; I think Tony and Liz thoroughly enjoyed it. They walked back to our hotel with us, having arranged for their cab to meet them at the Palm Court rather than the restaurant.

Sunday 3 July

A fine breakfast and good weather (albeit with a cool northern breeze) for our first day at the cricket. A pleasant walk from the Palm Court to North Marine Road and (as previously) a very straightforward matter to collect our visitors’ tickets and make our way to the pavilion.

Janie took this picture just before the start of play on Day One

There we were greeted by Robin and Jennifer Smith (whom I had got to know last year at Headingley) and also Tony (a former Yorkshire committee member I’d met last year at Headingley), plus the regular Yorkshire host Geoff Cope with his delightful dog Queenie. From the Middlesex side, Andy West was there and we were assured that Harry, Blossom and Geoff were around – they had taken sanctuary from the cool breeze behind glass, one level down.

That pavilion balcony spot is a great place to view the cricket. Yorkshire had won the toss and elected to bat. Most people thought it a good toss to win at Scarborough, but the ball seemed to do a bit; Yorkshire batted well and Middlesex bowled without luck that first morning.

At lunch, Harry presented Janie with her life membership of Middlesex, which was a lovely surprise for her. Mind you, as she managed to get the lunchtime conversation onto controversial subjects such as Brexit, feminism and commercial ethics within the space of about 20 minutes, “life” started to sound more like a sentence for everyone else than an award for Janie! Actually, joking apart, that Yorkshire group are an interesting bunch for proper conversation.

As always, the day passed quickly. Yorkshire looked well placed at the end of the day just shy of 300 with only 5 wickets down. We walked back to the hotel and like doing very little indeed in the evening, which is precisely what we did.

Monday 4 July

Brighter start to the day than yesterday. Again a pleasant breakfast in the hotel and then the walk to North Marine Road. A smaller group for lunch today, but for tea we were joined by Shirley Houghton (David Houghton’s wife) plus John Hampshire & his good lady. I didn’t realise that John Hampshire had been the first coach of the Zimbabwean test team when the southern African teams rejoined the international fold in the 1990s.

On Googling John Hampshire just now, I saw this picture on Cricinfo depicting John Hampshire and Harry Latchman in action together 45 years ago yesterday. Sadly, John is not in the best of health now. It was good to speak with him again at Scarborough – we’d also chatted at Headingley last year.

Fairly soon after tea it got gloomy and then it started to rain. There was a brief respite, but only brief before the light deteriorated again. Middlesex only two down but a long way from safety still.

We walked back to our hotel in the gloom, hoping to get in before the end of the Murray v Kyrgios match and before the heavens opened. We ran into Barmy Kev, Big Harv and another of the Middlesex regulars on St Thomas Street. We chatted for a while, in my case with one eye on the skies, declined the opportunity for a “swift drink” and got home just before the heavens opened. We took a couple of glasses of wine and some nibbles to our room and caught the end of the Murray match, plus some other interesting tennis on the box.

Tuesday 5 July

We had breakfast in the hotel, then checked out and drove over to Tony and Liz’s place for “elevenses” and a look at the progress they have made with their house since our last visit.

In the end we didn’t get away until lunchtime, which lengthened the drive home a bit, hitting the rush hour towards the end of the drive. Unusually, we split the journey into three; I did less than half the run, the Daisy took over the wheel but was feeling fatigued by Luton-ish so we stopped for petrol and had one more changeover, such that I did the final leg.

We followed the Yorkshire v Middlesex match on the way home, along with the tennis.

Wednesday 6 July

On the Wednesday, I played a good morning game of real tennis after clearing my e-mails and then worked from home in the afternoon, catching the end of the extraordinary Yorkshire v Middlesex match on the internet radio. This is how it panned out, scorecard-wise. Who’d have thought it? Back to Lord’s in the evening for another “last minute sub” game of real tennis; two very good, close matches in one day – exhausting.

Middlesex v Lancashire at Lord’s, Day Two, 27 June 2016

I had a game of real tennis at 10:00 and arranged (with Chris’s blessing) to play again at 16:00. I made a short, promised visit to the Committee Room; then to the writing room to do some reading and watch some cricket.

Expecting Chris (Escamillo Escapillo) to arrive around 14:30, I packed up my things and left the reading room to find a “just arrived” message from Chris just as I left the room – good timing.

I watched some good cricket with Chris for just shy of 90 minutes until tea – then went across to the real tennis court again. Towards the end of the hour, Chris came and watched the real tennis, then went back to the pavilion while I changed.

I changed quickly, found Chris in the Long Room and we watched the rest of the day’s play together over a drink. Some interesting chat, one amusing element of which will find its way to King Cricket in the fullness of time…update – February 2018 – click here or below…

A report from a 2016 Lord’s match between Middlesex and Lancashire

(If anything ever goes awry with the King Cricket website, that article has been scraped to here.

…then one more drink for the road before parting company.

Chris wanted to get home to see the England v Iceland football match. So not a happy ending for Chris, but a happy afternoon for both of us to be sure.

You don’t want/need a scorecard for England v Iceland, no sir-ee, but you might want to see the Middlesex v Lancashire scorecard – click here.

A Rather Strange Mix of a Day, 3 June 2016

Unusually, I spent Thursday night at the house, as the kitchen ceiling at the flat was being done over the Thursday/Friday.

I spent a couple of hours first thing, working on my latest “why Brexit would be an act of collective commercial and geopolitical seppuku” article.

Then I set off by tube for a mixed day of peripatetic work and leisure. First stop; Lord’s for a game of real tennis. I thought I played well again today; perhaps starting to get my head round some of the tactics needed to win big points and close out games.

I didn’t hang around too long at Lord’s, as I wanted to visit Lock and Co. before meeting Chris Harrison for lunch. My beaten up old Chepstow trilby really had become an embarrassment and yet was still a favourite hat; I probably wanted a direct replacement. I tried a few different ones, but basically concluded that in the Chepstow “I look like me” so went for it.

About 150 yards down the road, as I was walking past St James’s Palace, I walked past two young American women, one of whom said to me (without pausing for breath in the middle of her conversational sentence with her friend), “I really like your hat”, which I felt endorsed my buying decision.

Another 150 yards towards Chris’s offices, I am crossing The Mall at the pelican crossing there and I see a cyclist, who has stopped for me at the lights, who looked the spitting image of Boris Johnson. On closer inspection, I realised that it WAS Boris. “You’ve made a really bad call to go for Brexit, Boris”, I said, “a shocking and dangerous decision. Think about the geopolitics of it. Think about the world”.

“No I haven’t, no it isn’t” mumbled Boris as we parted company. I wonder whether I made him think at all? I wonder whether he liked my hat?

Postscript: November 2018

I realise, in retrospect, that my intervention with Boris might be considered to be a microaggression, or even a macro-aggression, frankly.

Imagine the scene; a be-suited gentleman in a sharp Paul Smith suit and a brand new Chepstow from Lock & Co, carrying a rather peculiar looking bag, which happens to contain nothing more than a real tennis racket, waving the bag in anger at a stationery Boris on a bike:

Here are some of the items for you to peruse

That real tennis bag, a kind “hand-me-down” gift from Angela Broad, has some antiquity to it and is a rarely seen thing these days. Indeed, when I was playing as a refugee at The Queen’s Club in September 2018…

Tennis At Queen’s Followed By Dinner With Simon Jacobs At Brasserie Blanc, 12 September 2018

…the young professionals there were convinced that my real tennis bag contained a sawn-off shotgun rather than a tennis racket…

…which is a bit odd at one of a handful of places in the world where there is more than one real tennis court.

Coincidentally, one of those young professionals, Jack Clifton, transferred to Lord’s when it reopened in October and spotted straight away that one of the real tennis exhibits in the reception is a very similar bag; that which belonged to the late, great actor, Sir Ralph Richardson:

The inscription in part reads, “Although not a very gifted player, Sir Ralph was a real tennis devotee…” Sounds like my kind of guy.

Anyway, point is, I did not intend my intervention with Boris Johnson to be quite as aggressive as it might have seemed. Further, I apologise unequivocally for my unintended aggression towards Boris. I should, to use language that lawyers and Boris understand, have aligned my mens rea with my actus reus.

Back To the Original 2016 Piece

A delightful lunch with Chris, at which I handed over his ticket for Friday at the test. A small family-run Italian place near his offices; I had a very tasty seafood pasta. Good strong coffee afterwards too. I had texted Janie to let her know that I had accosted Boris in the street, so she phoned to make sure that I wasn’t joking and/or hadn’t had a psychotic episode. Chris and I wondered why Boris was cycling away from the Commons at lunchtime and where he might have been going.

After lunch, a tube ride to Hammersmith and time to do a spot more on the Brexit paper before my one client meeting of the day, which went very well. Then a simple tube ride back to North Ealing, beating Janie back to the house by a good few minutes.

After clearing my e-mails, it was time for a little ukulele practice with Benjy the Baritone Ukulele, who thus photo-bombed the above picture of me sporting my new hat.

Janie and I then enjoyed an unusually early Persian food supper from Boof, a very good local Persian place.

A strange but pleasant day.

A Groovy Happening In Cricklewood, Kim and Janie’s 60’s Party, 28 May 2016

This party was rather a long time in the planning. The date was set at least 18 months before the event. Kim’s birthday is late April, Janie’s is late June, so the last Saturday in May, which is also a bank holiday weekend, seemed ideal.

60’s as the theme, given the “big zero” milestone year both of them were to be reaching. It did help just a bit, of course, that Kim is in the themed party planning business. It also helped that several vivid imaginations went to work on the ideas.

On arrival, everyone was given a little bottle and a pewter cup (see photo above). People only heard 1960s style sitar music – the following playlist was playing on a loop: 60’s Warm Up Ravi Shankar To Beatles Playlist Final.

People were kept in a relatively small reception area, part courtyard, part entranceway to the Theme Traders site.

Actors dressed as Hari Krishnas welcomed new arrivals and mingled with the guests.

Then the Hari Krishnas led all the guests through the warehouse, past all the nooks and crannies that would later be party breakout rooms. At that stage the 60’s Warm Up Ravi Shankar To Beatles Playlist Final was playing throughout the warehouse.

In the garden at the back of the site, the guests were crowded into an enclosed area, not realising that the walls were paper and that behind the walls was a band ready to play and a barbecue ready to grill. In that area one of the actors was dressed as a guru. Janie had briefed him on the sorts of things to say, which ended up being a mixture of Timothy Leary, Beatles lyrics, general “peace and love” messages, getting people to chant back his incantations and the like.

It’s hard to explain why this was very funny, but it was. Some people seemed to be really into it. Only a small handful of us knew what was really going on; we of course egged on the guests, although they didn’t need much egging. Everyone must have realised that it was all meant to be a bit of fun.

Then the guru started to get very excited and even more rambling in his incantations, the drums started to roll and the guru tore down a paper wall to reveal the band.

With everyone looking towards the band, I realised that someone needed to make a start on the wall to reveal the food, which I did and found rather cathartic after all those months and especially the last few days of preparation. Soon others were helping me and the whole process probably took 5-10 seconds.

The band, Never The Bride, were really excellent. They are friends of Kim’s, or is it fairer to say that Kim is one of their groupies? Both statements are true I think. We’d seen them perform before at a small party at Kim’s house, but I hadn’t realised from that scaled down performance they had the oomph and repertoire to create a “60’s rock fest” atmosphere – but they did just that.

They performed two sets during the evening. The first had the most impact, naturally, but the second was a good “watershed” period for the party…

…a different atmosphere in the dark and a good foil for presenting the cake, butlers removing their trousers and other such merriment.

Between live sets, there was a DJ. We had supplied him with a strong playlist of sixties dance music…

60’s Dance Soul and Funk Top 100 Playlist Final

…but he played little from that and showed reluctance when several guests (including Janie) made specific requests, unfortunately. Later in the evening, I switched the sounds in the Mods breakout area (see below) to the above playlist so that some of us could have more appropriate bop.

Breakout Rooms and Music

The breakout rooms were fabulous. I curated different music for different zones, the playlists for which (but not the music) are all downloadable here:

60’s Surf, Lounge, Jazz & Tropical Playlist Final

60’s Folk, Hippy and Psychedelic Zone Playlist Final

60’s Carnaby Street, Quintessential Playlist Final

60’s Mods, Go-Go, Ska & John The Only One Dancing Playlist Final

Between the surf lounge area and the hippy psychedelic area was a small breakout room with everything upside down, “Alice In Wonderland”-like. When we went over to set up the sound the day before, Kim’s team were worried because there was so much sound bleed between those two other zones in that area. I listened for a while and realised that the very different types of music, one type coming from one side, the other type coming from the other side, created a very strange soundscape and decided that this was exactly what music in the upside down room should sound like! It became a real feature.

The actors changed from Hari Krishnas to characters from the Sixties and mingled around the party and the breakout areas. By way of example, here is a picture of “Andy Warhol” in the Hippy Zone:

Movie

One of the breakout rooms was a mini cinema, which showed an amazing short movie that Kim and Janie had made a few weeks before the party. It depicts the two of them talking about the heady days of the sixties and mingling with many big names from that era. It is really very funny. If you haven’t seen it and want to have a look at the movie, for the time being drop me an e-mail or a comment and I’ll arrange for you to see it.

Photos

There are loads of photos. For now, if you go to my Flickr albums area, you can see all the mini albums that friends have sent to me and Janie, click here. More are coming through and we plan to sit down with Kim and make up a consolidated album over the next few weeks.

More

I’ll write more about the food and the photos and the music in the fullness of time, but it is (at the time of writing this piece) nearly two weeks since the party, so the public deserves to read something about it by now. Although those of us who were there will struggle to forget this party…

…although they say that if you remember the Sixties you weren’t doing it right…so in that sense, I suppose, this memorable evening was contra-Sixties. Or perhaps uber-Sixties.

Anyway, it was fab and groovy. Peace and love.

A Couple of Days spent mostly at Lord’s, Middlesex v Somerset, 23 & 24 May 2016

Monday

I played real tennis at the convenient time of 10:00 – convenient that is for seeing a fair chunk of county cricket afterwards. I played a good game this morning by my own sporadic standards. By the time I had showered, changed and chatted best part of half the morning session had passed, but I found a nice sunny spot in the pavilion and hunkered down with my book, A Confederacy of Dunces, which I was determined to finish today, along with some more business-oriented reading.

I had taken with me the simplest lunch of nuts and fruit. A resuscitating coffee in the pavilion afterwards and then I went in search of more sun by relocating to the front of the Mound Stand. Fine spring weather it was.

Trego and Gregory were trying to ruin Middlesex’s day, but once Trego fell the wickets tumbled. Then Robson and Gubbins got to work in fine style.

Meanwhile I was making similarly light work of A Confederacy of Dunces; I shall write up that book in its capacity as cricket reading for King Cricket.

Postscript: my “review” was published on King Cricket on 13 March 2017 – click here.

If anything ever happens to King Cricket, I have scraped the piece to here.

Once that was done, I read the Economist and then, as it started to get a little colder, decided to bail out while I was still enjoying myself – after all, I’d be back tomorrow for some more and wanted to clear some work from home.

Tuesday

A couple of meetings first thing towards the Middlesex strategy, then a few minutes before lunch to watch the cricket. I joined Brian and Judy for the first time this season, hoping to witness the completion of a couple of tons and a double century stand between Robson and Gubbins, but Robson fell on 99 with the team score on 198. But Gubbins did go on to complete his maiden county championship ton.

Again some reviving coffee at lunchtime, while watching Andy Murray snatch victory from the jaws of defeat against Radek Stepanek in the first round of Roland Garros. Then I wandered over to the Upper Compton stand, in the hope of finding James Sharp of Googlies and Chinamen fame. So much for one man and a dog at county matches – there must have been a couple of hundred people up there. I asked a few people, who I recognised as Middlesex regulars, if they knew James, but they didn’t, so I e-mailed James with my location. But it transpires that James travels incognito, or at least without an e-mail device. He says he also looked out for me, but it wasn’t to be.

One of the more senior regulars up there suggested to me that Middlesex were batting so slowly that they might lose the match. I said I thought they were getting close to the position when only Middlesex could win, although the draw remained the most likely outcome.

Here’s the match scorecard, btw.

Then as 15:00 approached, I wandered back round towards the main gate, as I was expecting cousins Ted and Sue as guests. I ran into Steve Tasker along the way and we had a good chat. Then I saw Harry and Blossom Latchman, and spoke with them briefly, until I spotted Ted and Sue at the Grace Gate. The stewards did their wonderful bit of making guests feel like honoured visitors. I showed them around the lower pavilion and we watched the last few overs before tea from there.

Then I showed them the upper pavilion and Bowlers Bar, where we had a drink and watched for a while, until Ted casually mentioned that he’d like to see the museum. I thought we’d missed the closing time, but the stewards kindly let us follow the last tour in so Ted and Sue could at least see the Ashes. Then I showed them the real tennis court, which they enjoyed for a while, then round to the Presidents Box for the last few overs before stumps.

An early dinner at The Bridge House (home of the Canal Cafe Theatre) and then a walk back to their Paddington hotel, followed by a short hike back to the flat for me.

Splendid, it all was.

Britten Sinfonia at Saffron Hall and Dinner With John & Mandy at The Tickell Arms, 15 May 2016

Janie and I arranged to see John and Mandy in their home town of Saffron Walden. They were keen to show off their new Saffron Hall. Luckily, we were able to find a suitable Sunday for all of us, with an appealing afternoon concert scheduled that day.

Saffron Hall 15 May 2016 — Saffron Hall Addendum

Janie and I played tennis in the morning at 9:00; an hour earlier than our usual Sunday slot. I was hoping to get away at 12:00/12:15, which didn’t seem too ambitious in those circumstances. Anyway, we set off just after 12:30 hoping the traffic wouldn’t be too bad. It wasn’t.

We checked in to The Cross Keys, where I had booked a luxury room. We parked Dumbo a bit awkwardly on arrival, as a large group of cyclists/diners had taken up one of the few proper parking spaces. When John & Mandy arrived, I managed to persuade one of the group to help me by moving the bikes a little so I could park properly, which she kindly did.

John whisked us off to Saffron Hall, which is in the grounds of the County High School. We hadn’t expected quite such a large and splendid hall in the circumstances; it can hold 740 people and has been designed in a modern, acoustically excellent style.

We were warned on arrival that Alice Coote, the intended soloist singer, was ill, so had kindly been replaced at short notice by Ruby Hughes. I think we have heard Alice Coote at the Wigmore Hall more than once; her CV is hugely impressive and her voice superb.

I looked at the addendum piece of paper (see above), half expecting it to say that Ruby Hughes is one of the better singers in the lower sixth, who has almost managed to get through Dido’s Lament without pausing for breath or singing too many wrong notes…

…but actually Ruby Hughes also has a most impressive CV and her voice was also superb. There was a small change to the programme, so we got the pieces shown on the scanned piece of paper above; similar to the original programme really.

It was a bit of a Wigmore Hall outreach gig, as Mahan Esfahani played the harpsichord in the Bach Keyboard Concerto (probably our highlight) and directed the Britten Phaedra (probably our lowlight). Janie and I are seeing one of Esfahani’s recitals at The Wig next month.

We also got two encores:

an orchestral version of a Bartok Romanian Dance
a version of a Chinese Fishing Song, orchestrated by someone who works in the Britten Sinfonia office, apparently.

The Britten Sinfonia had just returned from touring China. Slightly ironic, as John and Mandy were hoping to hear from Yining (their informal protectee) who is currently in Hong Kong trying to get back to Europe from China.

After the concert, we went on to The Tickell Arms for a really pleasant early dinner. Really good food and an interesting Languedoc-based wine list. A great opportunity to have a proper catch up and chat. Highlights were a pea and rocket soup and a superb roast pork dish. Mandy started with scallops and had room for some cheese as well; good for her. John was supposed to be on an alcohol holiday but the smell of the beer in The Tickell soon tempted him to break his fast.

After dinner, we showed John and Mandy our super room at the Cross Keys, then parted company reasonably early (perhaps 21:00 or so). I played Benjy the baritone ukulele briefly and then put on some 60s music, at which point Janie and I both fell asleep. I woke up at gone midnight to realise, to my horror, that the rather loud music was still playing. Just as well that luxury room of ours is quite isolated from the other rooms.

Monday morning, we had a superb breakfast at the Cross Keys and then, following John and Mandy’s advice, took a stroll around the stunning Bridge End Garden to walk off our breakfast. We even succeeded in entering and escaping the maze. What a pair of troopers. We won’t mention that the maze isn’t at all difficult, nor that we had to ask a couple of gardeners the way to find the maze in the first place. I admitted to one of those gardeners that needing directions to the maze is not an ideal qualification for a budding maze explorer. He replied, with a smile that “where is the maze?” is the most frequently asked question in the garden.

Enough excitement for one day – we headed back to London and spent the rest of the day picking up some items we need and sorting out some things that only seem to get sorted when you have a day off.

A delightful mini break.

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