Totally genuine picture taken on the night in question
I needed to get one more Ogblog piece in before the end of the 2023/24 tax year, obviously, so have chosen briefly to write up the Ivan Shakespeare Dinner which took place on 4 April 2024.
These gatherings of former NewsRevue writers (most of us relics from the 1990s) are a source of great joy. As Graham said at the end of the dinner,
I laugh far more at one of these evenings than I would if I paid to see almost any comedy show in town.
We’ve been enjoying these events for decades now – a couple of examples below:
John Random is our ringleader for these get togethers. In real life John might not be the most organised person I know, but oh boy is he better than all the rest of us put together in the matter of organising these gatherings.
As the years have gone on, it’s not just been Ivan we have been memorialising but several other “fallen” from our ranks. On this occasion, Barry brought a little memorial photograph tribute, which was lacking a picture of at least one of the fallen and which lacks room for any additional pictures. Either hope way in excess of expectation, or Barry plans to cram in some smaller pictures when the time comes.
John deferred on the quizzing this time, allowing Colin and Graham to confound us with some good quizzy offerings. Graham’s revolved around hit song lyrics, which he (and Sue) expected me to smash [did you see what I did there?] but I came up well short on that game, failing similarly on Colin’s quiz. I don’t think I am much of a solo quizzer to be honest. I work better as part of a team…
Anyway, Ivan Shakespeare dinners are not primarily about the quizzing, they are about mirth and convivial dining. I think I’m reasonably good at that.
Colin commented that we don’t often take pictures at these events, which I realised is true. The six of us who gathered this evening: Barry, Colin, Graham, John, Mark, and me – might never again comprise the exact group of an actual Ivan Shakespeare dinner. So obviously the event needed to be commemorated with a picture – see headline and below.
Proof…not that proof should be needed…that we are all absolutely fine.
There is no reason for anyone to question the veracity of this picture. My plea, should the gutter press start to delve deeply where they are not wanted, is to scream, “leave us alone FFS”.
…Janie needed surprisingly little persuading to do it again. We are not getting away much at all at the moment, not least because of “The Duchess’s” frailty, which makes this type of long weekend away…but not too far away…an attractive propsition.
This time I managed to secure us, via Airbnb, a cottage in Petworth itself, which proved a far easier and more attractive proposition than the “village nearby”, Fittleworth, last time, which required us to use the car and taxis a fair bit.
Before West Sussex, we first we went to Brighton and Hove for a bit of clothes shopping at Pendulum and then a visit to Cousin Sidney & Joan.
The weather was less than special on the Friday, but Dumbo was in fine form (i.e. the car worked properly this year) and we got to do the things we intended to do within the timescales we had intended them.
After checking in to our Airbnb cottage and resting up briefly, we returned to Basmati, where we had dined last year, for an Indian meal on that first night. It was a treat to only have to walk five minutes to get there. Indeed everywhere we went in Petworth we only had to walk five minutes to get there. It’s that kind of town.
Janie-style picture. I look like Clement Freud’s dog while Janie cunningly removes the worst excesses of my bald patch by cutting off the top of my head.
We probably slightly overdid the choosing of blander options at Basmati – I had forgotten that this is a place where they understand “not too hot” and can adapt accordingly. Still, a tasty meal.
On Saturday, we mostly relaxed in our lovely cottage.
In the morning the weather was bright but very cold. We used that as our opportunity to stroll the town, do a little shopping (Janie only bought one item in Tallulah Fox this time, which is a bit of a record), including some grub for smaller meals at The Hungry Guest and a wander around Petworth’s Saturday Farmers Market.
Choosing the morning for our wandering made sense as the heavens opened for most of the afternoon – really heavy, wet, cold rain. We enjoyed the snug warmth of our cottage.
Then the rains topped, allowing us a pleasant stroll to E.Street Restaurant for an excellent dinner.
Janie took an infeasibly large number of pictures of me eating there, which remind me of the pictures “The Duchess’s” carers take every day to prove that “her grace” is eating.
No-one really wants to see that.
Here, instead, is one the maître d’ took of us both.
It was an excellent meal.
On the Sunday, to Petworth House Real Tennis Court, where I met with triumph and disaster…and tried to treat those two impostors just the same.
Handshakes all round after the triumph of my first goPeter Brunner and I, showing stoic resolve to no avail in my second go
Lunch and chat after my second go, after which we watched and cheered Peter’s second go, which was the final rubber and a nail-biter, through which he and his partner prevailed, to level the fixture and enable all to go home satisfied.
In truth, the purpose of fixtures such as these Dedanist matches is more the social and fun of it than the result. Robert Muir and his wife, Carol, expertly organise such days to be maximally convivial; competitive only to the extent that we all have fun playing the game we love.
In the evening, tired but happy, Janie and I supped on some of the cheeses we had bought the previous day, before taking an early night.
Naturally, we celebrated the end of our long weekend on our return to London on the Monday with a game of lawn tennis at Boston Manor, as oft we do.
“Please, we’re desperate…” I get so many telephone calls that start this way these days.
OK, so I have made that first bit up, but I did get a somewhat surprising phone call from Tim Connell a few weeks earlier, wondering whether I might like to be the “guest” speaker for the Gresham Society annual bash this year.
“Keep it to 10 minutes”, said Tim, a man who claims to bring the AGM business bit of the evening home in five to seven minutes, but pretty much never does.
This year the AGM bit ran to over 18 minutes. I know, because I set off my stopwatch at the start of the meeting.
Anyway, it is always good to see the Gresham Society gang and this year we were in the hallowed surroundings of the Guildhall, albeit the modern members wing. The last time I dined in that part of the Guildhall, after the meal, I started a brawl…
…all of which made this Gresham Society event feel like a doddle by way of comparison. After all, I wasn’t required to sing or play a musical instrument – indeed Tim stipulated that I was required NOT to set my talk to music.
Joking apart, it was a great pleasure to meet Melissa – indeed the company was all relaxed, interesting and convivial, as always at Gresham Society.
There were one or two false starts ahead of my talk, to ensure that all had their after dinner beverages and that temporarily absent friends were all accounted for.
Fortunately for all concerned, when I speak for “no more than 10 minutes” the resulting talk comes in at eight or nine minutes…
…although I started with my old “I thought I’d been asked to talk for 89 minutes” gag.
AI is now capable of reading the charred remains of scrolls found near Pompeii. but apparently my handwriting is beyond the capability of any artificial intelligence yet developed or even imagined.
Anyway, above is an image of part of the talk, which was primarily about The Right Honourable, The Lord Mayor, Alderman Professor Mainelli, who might or might not be the first ever Gresham Professor to become Lord Mayor but he sure as hell is the first ever member of Gresham Society so to do and I can safely say the only business partner of mine who will ever do the Lord Mayor gig. Michael and I have worked together since we met in 1988
The audience laughed a good few times during my talk…one or two of those occasions being at times that I hoped would engender laughter. At the end of the talk, once the stony silence…I mean applause…had died down, Tim Connell presented me with a book as a gift.
One of the book’s authors, Graham Greenglass, I have known since I was a kid, through youth club stuff. I must have met Graham 10 years before I met Michael.
Good book, that Guildhall book of Graham’s. I have been enjoying rummaging in it.
Just as we were leaving the event, Bobbie Scully (another person I have known significantly longer than I have known Michael Mainelli) berated me for wearing a Jackson Pollock tie with a striped shirt. I wonder what she would have made of the Jackson Pollock shirt I wore a few days later:
At Horizon 22 a few days later
It was, as always, a most pleasant evening in the company of friends at Gresham Society.
…Rohan decided to try the National Theatre foyer bars as a venue this time around – cunningly timed with two quite long plays at the Olivier and Lyttelton both starting at 19:30. That gave us ample time to perform in the relative quiet between the start of the plays and the intervals.
The relative quiet was rather noisily broken by the bar staff hoovering up around us, very early in the reading of Geraldine’s piece, but we’ll put that temporary disturbance aside. The venue worked.
And we can all honestly claim now that we have performed at The National Theatre.
Rohan threaded our pieces together, as is his way. In this instance, with the topic “The Phone Call”, Rohan’s thread covered Alexander Graham Bell‘s innovation, the practical telephone. Also the contribution of the lesser known but colourful Florentine, Antonio Meucci, who largely invented that communication method before Bell, but was too polite to patent the critically novel elements of the technology he had discovered.
Geraldine’s piece came first. A charming throwback to 1973, Geraldine recounted her mother’s almost infeasibly regular long-distance calls to Geraldine (who had escaped to New York). Geraldine’s mum persistently tried, in vain, to persuade her daughter to return to “Hicksville” and resume the “normal” life into which Geraldine had, to her mother’s perception, been born.
Rohan then reminded us all that Alexander Graham Bell’s first phone call was to an employee who awaited his call…
Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you
…starting the mighty tradition of bosses using such devices to issue instructions to underlings.
Rohan was rather sniffy about my ability to follow a simple instruction – i.e. to write a story about a phone call. I cannot imagine what Rohan’s beef might have been.
The Phone Call by Ian Harris
We don’t go out so much anymore. Not since the pandemic. It’s not a fear of infection or anything like that. It’s just that we have got out of the habit. It now takes something especially interesting or unusual to lure us back to the theatre or concert hall.
One such interesting concert caught our eyes recently – a concert of African chamber music at the Wigmore Hall, led by Tunde Jegede, who is both a virtuoso kora player and a classically-trained cellist. The kora is a large West-African 21-stringed plucking instrument, sometimes described as a cross between a lute and a harp.
Janie and I like the Wigmore Hall. It is one of the few remaining public spaces where we still normally bring down the average age of the audience quite significantly. But we soon saw, on arrival at the Wigmore Hall for the kora concert, that this audience was different. Only sparsely populated with “the usual suspects”, the average age of the audience was, horror of horrors, below ours.
The front row still had a comfortingly senior look. Next to Janie was a beaming, white-haired woman you might have got from central casting had you requested “a left-over hippy”. The woman was very friendly and chatty – clearly not part of the regular front row mafia. Familiar with the kora – she had spent time in West Africa when younger – she was a fan of Tunde Jegede’s playing but had not previously managed to see him play live. She was, as the young folk say, super-excited.
The first half of the concert was truly magical. Tunde had brought with him a posse of chamber musicians from Lagos, together with a wonderful percussionist. We were transported by the music, not least the entrancing sound of Tunde’s kora-playing.
During the interval, our friendly neighbour said that she was delighted with the live music experience and thrilled that we had enjoyed it. She recommended and wrote down the names of a couple of Tunde’s albums for us to follow up, which we did.
I wondered what those silky-sounding kora strings are made of. Our otherwise-expert neighbour didn’t know. More or less at that moment, Tunde came on to the stage to rearrange the setting for the second half of the concert. As he was standing, with his kora, about three yards away from me, it seemed only polite to ask him about the strings.
I was expecting the answer to be something along the lines of, “skin from an antelope’s anus or a sitatunga’s scrotum“. But instead, Tunde simply said, “Nylon”. “Just Nylon”, I asked, hoping for more enlightenment. “Just Nylon”, said Tunde, gently.
The second half of the concert was also good but less to our taste. Tunde didn’t play his kora – instead he demonstrated his skills as a cellist. The fusion theme was retained, as the pieces were arrangements of traditional African music, but to us the real magic had been the kora.
I tried to work out the common theme in Tunde’s unusual choice of devices for his multi-instrumentalism. I concluded that Tunde likes making music while holding his instrument between his legs.
525 WORDS
I smiled to myself as I hit the save button and e-mailed my piece to Rohan Candappa for review.
Ninety minutes later, my iPhone buzzed.
It was Rohan.
“Ian, old chap”, said Rohan. “A charming vignette, but it has nothing to do with the subject and title – The Phone Call”.
“I beg to differ”, I said. “The piece is absolutely about The Phone Call”. The introductory story about the kora concert is a MacGuffin. The main story is about the phone call.
“Well”, said Rohan, “I did consider e-mailing you, but then…”
“…never explain”, I interrupted. “You and I have collaborated on and off for over 50 years now, Rohan. Many things don’t need to be said.”
It seemed that everyone else was able to understand and obey a simple instruction from Rohan…even Jan.
Strangely, Jan, like Geraldine, had set her story in 1973. Without conferring. The central conceit of Jan’s story, which revolved around an uprooted little girl whose family had recently moved to a different town, was a troubling phone call aimed at one or both parents, inadvertently picked up by the little girl.
Similarly strange was the structural similarity between Jan’s and Julie’s story, which was also about a troubling phone call picked up by someone other than the intended recipient of the call. Julie’s was not set in a particular bygone year, but the details within the story suggested 1970s as well.
David’s story was about a character who bought a vintage GPO rotary telephone through the internet and, as a result, got a phone call more than he had bargained for.
All of The Phone Call stories were charming, thought-provoking and enjoyable to hear. It was also very pleasing to spend time with the ThreadMash gang again, even though we were a somewhat depleted group on this occasion.
Sadly, Kay, who was going to join us, was unable to attend due to the recent death of her mother. Yet Kay made a charming contribution to the collection of stories by e-mail a couple of days later:
“Here is my belated contribution to “The Call”. In the endless process of clearing out my mum’s house, we found the tin in which I used to save my phone money when I was a kid. Like many others, I was expected to pay for my calls!”
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and my goodness that picture of Kay’s is worth at least that many. But Rohan had instructed us to limit our stories to a maximum of 800 words. Honestly, some people can’t comply with the simplest of instructions from the ThreadMaster.
…and so taken with it were we, that we all agreed it would be a suitable venue for this slightly larger gathering. Which it was.
But first the Punch Room, which had a really good early evening ambiance – good music but not too loud – other trendy people, but not too many and not too loud. Interesting cocktails list. Nice waiting staff.
“Cheers!“, says JanieA cheery smile from Jilly, who said that she hadn’t seen John & Mandy for some decades
Mandy also looks cheery, while John is seriously choosing cocktailsDid somebody say British Gas?
The waiter took a lot of pictures of us (see headline example). We realised that the gathering included two whites, a black and (in maiden name terms) a browning. I thought we should go for a sepia version of the group photo in recognition of this colour palette.
We all go back so many years…
Then a five or six minute stroll through Fitzrovia to the restaurant, Pahli Hill . When you book, they say that you cannot dictate where you would like to sit, but I requested downstairs, where we had previously enjoyed the ambiance before and they e-mailed back to say that they would be able to comply with that request as ours was an early evening booking. John has been back there himself upstairs since our previous visit and concurs that upstairs has less atmosphere to his taste, so I’m especially glad I did that.
No pictures of Janie in the restaurant, sadly, as she took the following photos, while the rest of us focussed on eating and drinking.
As with our previous visit to Pahli Hill, by the time we’d finished with small plates and grills, we had no space for big plates, although we did find space for desserts.
It was a really lovely evening. Great food and drink, but most importantly very enjoyable company.
And there was me, into my 7th decade, thinking, until now, that something else comes after The Lord Mayor’s Show.
But then, in early October, I was “perfectly astounded”, to quote Charles Pooter, to receive the following invitation:
Unaccustomed as I am to attending white tie events, this meant a trip to the costume hire shop, Buckleigh Of London in my case, together with Daisy who acted as my sartorial advisor.
“Yup, that’ll do for the do“
A month later, off I trotted to the Z/Yen office, with my whistle and flute in a specially designed suiter, where I changed out of mufti. No I am not a natural in the matter of costume changes.
The Lord Mayor’s Banquet is far more formal than that – no singing, no dancing, just food, drink and speeches.
The reception ahead of dinner was a great opportunity for me to catch up with several old friends and also to speak with Michael’s family, not least his mum, Katherine, whom I missed at The Lord Mayor’s Show. I also spoke with a few new people (new to me, that is).
Then the dinner. I was sitting with an interesting collection of people – opposite me and to my right Tim and Sandi, who had been at school with Michael. Tim I had met before, at Michael and Elisabeth’s wedding. Also on that “to my right” side was Father Bill (Michael’s former maths teacher), Robert Pay and Susan Steele. To my left, people I hadn’t met before but all charming: Judith Pleasance, Philip Palumbo, Philip Woodhouse and Clare Felton. We found many and varied interesting topics to discuss over dinner, only some of which are on the unwritten “safe to discuss at formal dinners” list. Edgy.
This is what we ate and drank.
The cast list of speech makers comprised The Lord Mayor & The Prime Minister (between Course Two and Course Three), then The Archbishop Of Canterbury and The Lord Chancellor after dinner.
You can watch a vid of the speechifying if you wish:
Michael mostly laid out his agenda for his mayoral year, which you can read/skim about here. He included a joke, which, while I paraphrase, goes a bit like this:
Into a bar walks an American economist, an Irish writer, an English accountant and an Italian scientist. The barman says, “good evening Michael, what are you having?”
Rishi Sunak, as is the custom for The Lord Mayor’s Banquet, spoke about foreign affairs, the crises in Gaza and Ukraine being his main focus. Rishi understandably didn’t crack any jokes. I’m not sure jokes would be Rishi’s strongest suit even in more jovial times.
After the two “afters” courses, The Archbishop of Canterbury was entertaining, with an interesting mixture of a serious, pious, skittish and downright malcontented points.
…which is far more than I can say about the other speakers…apart from Michael, of course, with whom I have worked for nearly 35 years.
Last but not least was The Lord Chancellor, Alex Chalk, who was also in somewhat skittish mood. He picked up on Michael’s joke, and pondered about a bloke who had so many different things on his CV. Again I paraphrase:
Economist, scientist, accountant, writer…I thought, “this fellow doesn’t seem able to hold down a job”.
My first thought was to heckle:
…but that’s the whole point of Z/Yen – it’s a place where you can work while you decide what you want to be when you grow up…
…but I thought better of it. A brawl one visit, a heckle the next…I might gain an unwanted, though perhaps warranted, reputation at The Guildhall as a bit of a subversive.
Then it occurred to me that The Lord Chancellor, with all due respect to him, was hardly one to talk about holding on to a job. He has already “Chalked up” his fifth job since the start of the pandemic – indeed he seemed relieved that he wasn’t moved to a sixth job in three years in the cabinet reshuffle that had taken up much of Rishi’s day earlier.
In truth, I think the best joke of the evening was my own, albeit an inadvertent one. Immediately after the formalities ended, I chatted again with the Mainelli clan. Michael’s sister, Molly, asked me what I thought of the evening. I paraphrase our chat.
MOLLY: So what did you think of it all.
ME: A lovely evening, lovely.
MOLLY: What did you think about the fruitcake at the end?
ME: Do you mean the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Lord Chancellor?
MOLLY: You’re so naughty. You know I meant the cheese and fruitcake…
The thing is, I hadn’t experienced that cheese course, as it was walnut-based and I had reported ahead of time my nut allergy. For the final course, the caterers had kindly provided me with a “mushrooms on toast” savoury. So I hadn’t registered that the cheese savoury had been served with fruitcake and really imagined that Molly had found one of the closing speeches a bit left-field.
Mercifully, I don’t think anyone other than Molly heard my faux pas. Equally mercifully, I didn’t burst into song when the savoury was served…
…although that John Shuttleworth classic always pops into my head on the rare occasions I attend a dinner that reverts to savoury at the end.
After enjoying a few minutes catching up with friends and (Michael’s) family in the Old Library, I returned to the office to change back into mufti and get home before I risked causing any more trouble.
In truth, the pomp and circumstance of The Lord Mayor’s Show is not really “our thing” – neither Janie nor I had ever been before, nor had either of us even watched the show on TV.
But in these circumstances, with Michael being the incoming Lord Mayor and all, it seemed only polite to accept the invitation to see the show as a guest of The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress at the Mansion House.
But returning to November 2023, before the show, I wanted to show Janie the Z/Yen office at 1 King William Street, just around the corner from Mansion House, as Janie had not yet seen that “new” office. Nor had she seen the oft-mentioned roof terrace. It was also an excuse to make sure we would be on time, while still able to take some warm sanctuary indoors before the Mansion House opened its doors. At least half the Z/Yen team had taken a similar precaution.
Janie loves a roof terrace: 1 King William Street does not disappoint in that regard
Then Janie and I popped around the corner to the Mansion House. I suppose I’ll be popping around that corner a few times in the coming year. Following pre-show refreshments, in which we did not partake, Janie and I were stewarded to our pavement seats right at the front, underneath The Lord Mayor’s viewing position, next to Michael’s brother Kelly. I don’t think we’d seen each other since Michael’s shrieval ceremonies four years ago:
Janie, despite her stated lack of interest in pomp and circumstance, was irritated with herself for forgetting her phone and therefore being without a camera. I allowed her to use mine, on the proviso that she didn’t use up all my film. Janie, cognisant that phone cameras don’t use up film (she knows a thing or two, that lass), proceeded to take about 300 pictures, only 20% of which were fully deserving of the bin.
The weather absolutely smiled on the City of London that day. We have had a rather relentlessly wet autumn in 2023, so all assembled thought we had struck very lucky…except for the (surprisingly sizeable) minority who were convinced that Michael Mainelli is able to control the weather and therefore the crisp but sunny day was by design.
Regardless of how or why the weather ended up so good, it did make for an especially photogenic show. As did the fact that there was an even broader international flavour to the parade than usual.
If you would prefer a brief highlights skim through eye candy and a few choice words, then read and look on.
Evidence that I was there. Just one picture of me amongst the hundreds.Xenia Mainelli (Michael & Elisabeth’s daughter) at the rear of this mounted troupeMichael arrives
After the Armistice Day two-minute silence, the parade began. Here is a small sample of our (Janie’s) pictures.
Janie formed a surprising fondness for the giant effigies Gog & MagogI was able to explain the true and fictional stories of Richard/Dick Whittington to Kelly and Joan seated next to me. I guess Michael and Elisabeth knew I’d have my uses sitting there.Pageantry west meets pageantry eastListen up! The late Mayor’s key charity, The Samaritans – Janie is one of their listeners.Punjabi dancing well-timed for DiwaliVic Reeves aka Jim Moir with his arty crowdA Lord Mayor’s Show delegation from Lagos for the first time“Oh goody. Chigley…” said Janie at this stage of the showA Mongolian themed troupe, for theatrical reasons I believeJanie loved the Hong Kong dragons perhaps as much as Gog & MagogMichael’s partial to a puffin. The Institute of Couriers pandered to that preferenceAlderfolk – the boys and girls on the bus90 minutes later, the pageant was over, once Michael set off for The Royal Courts of Justice.O farewell, Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, th’ ear-piercing fife; The royal banner, and all quality.
Then milling to get back inside the Mansion House, a light lunch and some socialising/chatting before setting off for home.
If you are keen to see the BBC broadcast of this event but don’t know where to find it – as long as you have found this piece within 11 months, you can see it by clicking here.
Frankly, only Candappa could come up with an idea like this and see it through to implementation.
When I call my friend Rohan Candappa just “Candappa”, I am of course harking back to that time, 50 years ago, when we started secondary school and discovered that we all had surnames but none of us seemed to have first names.
Candappa – bellicose back then……merely cantankerous now: Rohan Candappa
The gathering was at The Young Vic, in commemoration of the first theatrical school trip of our young careers, with Mr Sandbrook himself, to see Scapino, in January 1974:
Dress code: Grey suits (too large ideally, but don’t worry, you’ll grow into it), black briefcases, and a slightly nervous smile. Oh, and make sure you’ve got some blotting paper in the briefcase.
I knew that I would be unable to comply fully with Rohan’s rules and also that I was no longer in a position to get my (late) mother to write a note of apology to Mr Sandbrook, our form teacher. I decided to commission ChatGPT to forge a note from my mum. It took four or five goes, as ChatGPT, unwilling to imagine itself in 1973 writing a note, was keen to use the phrase “1973 was a long time ago” as part of the excuse. Only when I advised it to use a “dog ate my homework” style of excuse did it muster the following:
Interesting use of a gender-neutral pronoun there. Not very 1973.
It was always only going to be a small group of us. In the end, only four of us met, as Dave French unfortunately was a bit poorly on the day. He did send an extensive note, which I shall quote from shortly.
The four of us who met were:
Candappa, Rohan
Goodwin, Ian
Maine, Myles
Harris, Ian (me).
Left to right, Me, Myles, Rohan, t’other Ian
We called the register – strangely while I was calling the register from my old 1974 diary, Dave French was sending me a message which included said register with some thoughts about the people, especially those who have sadly departed.
Dave French helpfully provided a legible list, when he wrote in to us:
Please raise a glass or three in my absence to:
Allott
Athaide
Barrett
Burgess
Candappa – Candy
Carroll
Corrin
Dallaway
Feeley
Foord – Dunkie
Forrest
Frearson
French – Frog
Goodwin – Milk
Handy
Harley
Hayes
Hollingshead – Mutt
Manhood
Masson – Chimpy
Mayne
Moore
Ricketts
Romain – Charlie
Sym
Stendall
🍻🍻🍻
One sobering thought was the realisation that at least four of our number have departed permanently. That’s at least as many departed as gathered that October evening. An attrition rate above 15% seems very high.
Jovito Athaide – as Dave French wrote: “I think it was in the early 1990s that I received a call from Jovito Athaide’s dad, letting me know he’d died suddenly from an undetected heart condition.” I think quite a few of us got this call – my parents probably told me about it without passing on my new number to Mr Athaide. I have an address and phone number for Jo in an old address book – I should imagine he made a point of collecting/exchanging them.
Dave Masson – Dave French writes: “I and a few others stayed very close to Dave Chimpy Masson for many years after school – very fond memories in the sixth form of going back to his house at 66 Woodwarde Road, 5 minutes from school, either at lunch or during free periods, to drink his home brew – made maths more tolerable in the afternoon. Devastatingly he and his mother-in-law died in a car crash in Namibia in 1995…his birthday, December 4th, is ingrained in my memory, and I always say “Hi” and raise a glass to him. Lovely guy”.
Yet the four of us who gathered in October 2023 were able to park our melancholy, enjoy each other’s company enormously and share many reminiscences.
Rohan, being Rohan, brought a small collection of gifts for all of us who attended – a fountain pen, a piece of blotting paper and a notebook which he had craftily renamed G.W.B for general work book – gosh yes, I remember those.
Gifted, we were, all of us gifted.
Naturally, when I got home I wrote Rohan a thank you note in my GWB using my fountain pen and blotting paper.
I then scanned the note and e-mailed it to Rohan, which slightly spoiled the 1973 effect.
My favourite anecdote from 50 years ago was also one of Rohan’s. He recalled that, in one of our very first lessons with Mr Sandbrook, we were promised a princely sum of money – perhaps it was 10p – every time we spotted a spelling or grammatical mistake on the blackboard. Rohan recalls that it took him most of the year to realise that he was very unlikely indeed to hit pay dirt. Rather, Mr Sandbrook had duped him into paying attention to the spelling and grammar for best part of a year.
On the topic of Mr Sandbrook, I had exchanged e-mails with Rohan about the possibility of trying to track Ian Sandbrook down. Rohan said that he had tried to do that, but with only limited success. On the morning before our gathering, I decided to do a bit of detective work myself. I decided that an Ian Sandbrook who seemed to be highly active in the arts community of St Endellion, even since the days of teaching us, was still active there until very recently. The others agreed that the Endelienta bassoon reference clinched it, as we remembered Mr Sandbrook bringing his bassoon into the class room to show us.
I decided to write to Mr Sandbrook via Endelienta and see what happens.
On 1 November, an e-mail arrived from “Ian” addressed to “Ian”…
…it took me a while to realise that Mr Sandbrook really had just written to me. He’d like to know how we got on when we met, so I’ll send him a link to this piece. Hopefully he will send through some thoughts and memories of his own, in addition to the thoughts he wrote in his first note. He might even grant me permission to share those thoughts with the Alleyn’s 1970s alums on Facebook, several dozen of whom tend to look at these postings, however long and rambling they might be. Even Mike Jones, formally of the masters common room, hangs out in the Alleyn’s 1970s Facebook group.
Oh, and by the way, there are no cash prizes for spotting my spelling and grammatical errors. I’m not falling for that one. But all subediting comments and corrections are gratefully received.
Annalisa Redux, Lunch At Antalya In Bloomsbury, 17 October 2023
As part of my Ogblog project, I am writing up events of 25, 40 & 50 years ago from old diaries and records. A few weeks ago I wrote up Annalisa’s wedding from 25 years ago…
…and thought I should make a concerted effort to reconnect with Annalisa. I was able to track down Charlotte, Annalisa’s sister, with relative ease. Charlotte put me back in touch with Annalisa, and the result of all that was a very pleasant, long lunch at Antalya Restaurant.
We had a fair bit of catching up to do, so many years having passed, yet in many ways it felt a bit like catching up after two or three months, not two or three decades, except that the news had a longer span, as it were.
Annalisa back then. Shorter hair now.
We’ve resolved to try not to leave it 25 years again. Given the entreaties from my other two mid-October gatherings (see below) that they would love to see Annalisa again, I suspect that we’ll find a way to make it a considerably shorter interval next time.
Jilly Black & The Peculiar Matter Of “Rachmaninov Pulling Nudes”, 20 October 2023
Peculiar Serge (Rachmaninov)
I have for some while been helping Jilly to digitise her family photographs from an assortment of different types of negative, transparency, printed pictures and the like. This occasional project hit the temporal buffers over the summer (not least because Jilly’s chosen days tended to end up as train strike days), so was in need of revival.
I more or less expect to receive a note from Jilly explaining why she will be arriving later than the appointed hour (never really a problem for me, given that we are working on this project at the flat), but on this occasion the WhatsApp message gave me pause for thought:
I had to clean an extremely dirty oven and have a coffee…[something about almond milk]…and some Rachmaninov pulling nudes at the same time
I read the message twice, concluded that Jilly must have taken leave of her senses and hunkered down with whatever it was that I was doing for another hour or so before her revised expected arrival time.
Just before Jilly arrived, another message:
OH NO! It was supposed to be “Rachmaninov Preludes”, NOT “pulling nudes”
A Beautiful Rachmaninov PRELUDE
As I kindly and considerately put it in my reply:
Ha ha. That’s going straight onto the blog at the next available opportunity.
Jilly blames the technology for that verbal mishap, which I must say seems, in truth, entirely reasonable. Annalisa will no doubt have a quiet chuckle to herself about that, as I had been banging on about how much more reliable these technologies have become in recent years…which they have…but when they get it wrong, oh boy can they get it wrong!
Anyway, as always, a very pleasant lunch and afternoon with Jilly, during which we not only digitised quite a lot of her non-standard family negatives but Jilly kindly helped me to identify the locations of my family pictures from Sicily nearly 50 years ago, as Jilly did some tour-guiding there “back in the day”.
Jilly’s Dad from a 120 (60×60) negative – possibly playing a Rachmaninov Prelude
John-Boy Forking Madeleine At The End Of A Fine Meal At Jikoni, 24 October 2023
Dinner with John is always long overdue, because if we were both in town more often and had more time on our hands our get togethers would be far more frequent.
I hadn’t realised, but Bella (John & Mandy’s younger daughter) is really into cooking now, both as a hobby and latterly at work. John spotted the Jikoni cook books and decided to treat Bella to one of them.
Ravinder Bhogal (the chef/proprietor/author) took the trouble to chat with us and make a personalised dedication to Bella in the book, which I thought was a charming touch.
As always with John, the evening flew by and on this occasion we found ourselves the last people in the restaurant. We realised once we spotted that the staff were oh-so-discreetly clearing up around us!
The building “set back” with a turret in the above picture is the original Tudor-period covered tennis court at Hampton Court Palace, with several walls remaining, one of which is part of the current, Stuart-period covered court, which is on the site of the original uncovered court.
Thanks to Janie for most of the pictures and all the videos (apart from the professional highlights vid).
Whose idea was it to have a real tennis-themed event at Hampton Court? As the event proved to be a great success, Tim Connell is claiming full responsibility for the idea. Meanwhile, I am claiming at least to have inspired the idea with my lockdown webinar, Tennis Around The Time Of Thomas Gresham, in 2020.
Full credit to Tim for the timing of the event – he insisted that we try to find a sweet spot between the summer holidays and the weather turning autumnal. A hostage to fortune, perhaps, but the timing worked brilliantly, as we were blessed with a sunny but not too hot afternoon for the event.
The good people at the Royal Tennis Court, Hampton Court (RTCHC) were incredibly helpful in allowing us to hold the event and facilitating same, from the initial conversation I had about it with Lesley Ronaldson the previous autumn right through to the day itself. Thanks to all named below plus Nick Wood, the RTCHC Head Professional, without whose blessing none of this would have been possible.
The History Of The Court & Explaining The Game, David Best, Lesley Ronaldson & Jack Josephs
Yours truly introducing David Best
Lesley very kindly suggested that David Best, who wrote THE book on the history of the Royal Tennis Court, speak to our group on that topic. David even more kindly agreed to speak and also to join in our brief “exhibition” to demonstrate the game.
RTCHC’s junior professional, Jack Josephs, did most of the game explaining. Two years ago, when I first met Jack at Middlesex University’s court, he was a complete newbie!
Both Lesley and Jack talked a lot of balls…I mean, talked a lot ABOUT balls
After hearing about it, Gresham Society members and guests were invited to have a go. Surprisingly, many tried…
Unsurprisingly, few succeeded. It is a fiendishly difficult game, even for moderately talented regular enthusiasts. For neophytes it is even harder than that.
Basil’s first ever hit of a Real Tennis ball skimmed beautifully over the net. The second did not – Basil claims that it was poorly delivered.Tim & Bobbie; “close but no cigar” in the matter of hitting the ball over the netJanie’s technique looks wanting, but she landed chases with each of her goes
Then a short exhibition, during which David Best and I, ably assisted by a professional on each side – thank you Jack & thank you Scott Blaber – demonstrated through a short match how it should and shouldn’t be done. Lesley supplied the commentary, as did the players when at the service end.
Janie shot very little video of the exhibition match…”thank goodness” I hear many readers cry…but here is a short snippet to give you an idea:
If you want to see what the game looks like at the highest level, the following six minute reel of highlights shows the very top professionals at play:
Tea & Cake
Then, for the Gresham Society visitors and their guests it was time for tea and cake. In truth I hadn’t realised, when the RTCHC people said that they would lay on tea and cake, that “Lesley Ronaldson’s home made cake” is what they meant.
Had I known that, I wouldn’t have teased Lesley by e-mail a couple of days before with the words:
No pressure, but my wife, Janie, will be judging the whole event on her piece of cake.
Former US Open Champions / World Championship Finalists are not deterred such entreaties. As we know, champions adjust and pressure is a privilege.
Lesley “pulled off a blinder” in the matter of the home made cakes, to such an extent that Janie was too busy enjoying the tea break to photograph same until most of the sweet delicacies had been well and truly devoured.
The weather was simply glorious at that stage of the afternoon, allowing the visitors to enjoy the wonderful tea and cakes in the garden – hence the barren look of the dining room in the above photo.
The visitors took some marshalling back into the dedans gallery for the final part of the visit, a performance symposium, led by yours truly, on the topic of “Hampton Court, Tennis, Gresham, Music & Drama”.
The performance was ably supported by Jack Carter and Reuben Ard, tennis-playing music graduate / research students from Middlesex University Real Tennis Club and a couple of guest appearances from Tim and Pilar Connell. Also providing praiseworthy support were the visitors, most of whom sang along with the help of their scripts/song sheets. Click here for a pdf of those extracts.
I was particularly impressed that people sang along so well to “In Darkness Let Me Paint It Black” – see final embed below.
Janie got busy with the video app on her phone during the performances, so several highlights and lowlights were recorded. Below only the highlights as YouTube embeds.
I would recommend, if you were to choose only one highlight, Reuben Ard’s performance of William Byrd’s Earl of Salisbury Pavan, which was really quite magical performed in that wonderful setting on “electric virginals”:
Word is, most if not all of the visitors thoroughly enjoyed their afternoon at Royal Tennis Court, Hampton Court. Thanks again to our hosts, who made us feel so welcome and steered the event to sweet success.
