A first time for the Ivan Shakespeare memorial dinner crowd at a new venue, which seems at the time of writing (January 2017) to be our gathering’s new home. John Random circulated us a couple of weeks before:
In response to popular request I have taken the decision to change the venue to the Cafe Rouge at 77 Kingsway.
I don’t remember a great deal about this June 2015 gathering in particular. After the event John wrote:
I believe I speak for all when I say that the new venue (Cafe Rouge, Kingsway) was well-liked, so all being well, we’ll be going there again some time in the early autumn…
…I would also like to thank Gerry, Mark and Colin for their quizzes.
Around this time the previous year, my old youth club (Streatham BBYO) gang gathered at Bill’s in Covent Garden. We had done nothing of the sort for well over thirty years, but was a great success.
Linda had taken the lead organising the 2014 gathering and then asked me to finalise the details at the end. This is how she kicked off negotiations, in March 2015:
Hi Everyone,
Thought it would be good to meet again as its been a year in May!
Last year we met on a Thursday in the school holidays so thought we could try that again, what do people think?
The date would be 28th May, if that is not good for the majority any suggestions are welcome!
Then Ian I can pass it to you if it becomes complicated
Linda xx
Strangely, it proved incredibly easy to organise. Everyone was comfy with the date and everyone agreed that the company was more important than scratching around for a different venue, so Bill’s got the nod again.
Natalie had to drop out at the last minute this time, sadly, but still we had me, Linda, Sandra, Mark, Andrea, Jacey, Liza, Wendy, Martin and even a visitation from Ivor.
The atmosphere was partly tinged with sadness that evening, as news of Jeffrey Spector’s passing was only a few days old that night. Still, Jeffrey wouldn’t have wanted us to mope and nor did we.
Ivor told us all about his Hollywood movie prospects while Martin showed us the photographs he took at our infamous “fashion show” back in 1979 (I didn’t realise colour photography had been invented back then). Details of both of those interludes shall remain under wraps for the time being.
Again it was lovely to see everybody and again it seemed impossible that so many years had passed and that most of us had felt disinclined to meet up like this for such a long time.
After two such gatherings, it seemed inevitable that there would be more get togethers…as indeed there have been.
Janie and I know what Kim & Micky’s parties can be like, so we hadn’t arranged anything for the Saturday evening and had arranged to take the Monday off.
This was a relatively small gathering by their standards, Sunday during the day, in honour of Kim’s birthday.
The usual suspects were there, plus some of the less usual suspects and of course Kim’s menagerie.
Imagine a smaller version of Never The Bride (shown above at Milton Keynes) performing in a conservatory
It was the first time I had seen Never The Bride, who Kim arranged to perform in the conservatory. In truth Kim’s conservatory is a bit small for the Never The Bride sound, even when the group turns up with just a core of performers and keeps the amplifier’s volume dial well below eleven.
Still, Never The Bride were very good and got everyone at the party singing along by hand picking the sorts of songs that most people of a certain age know well enough to sing along to.
Janie might remember more about the party than I do. We left relatively early in the evening, having been there since lunchtime, but I think a few people stuck around until very late by all accounts.
Not only did we take the next day off (pretty sure we played tennis and used the time pretty well) but we also had nothing arranged for the following weekend either.
I think that was more to do with having left dates clear for our impending Ireland trip than a need for a week or more’s clearance after Kim’s party. Perhaps a bit of both.
Whatever the reason, the next non-work thing in my diary is our visit to Lord’s on the Bank Holiday Monday, just before we set off for Ireland.
DJ very generously wanted to treat us all to dinner at Scalini. It is hard to refuse such offers.
I suspect we arranged this some months in advance; it is not so easy to get all of us together at the same time these days.
I think it was just the five of us that evening; if one or both of Max and Jo are around they sometimes join such an evening, but that night I think was just five of us.
I’m pretty sure Janie and I stayed at the flat afterwards, as it was deep midwinter and we also had a Wigmore Hall concert the next night.
I can’t remember exactly what we ate and drank; only that we did a bit too much of both and that the evening was very good in all departments.
Janie might remember more and chime in…but then again she might not.
I’m pretty sure we were still going to the now defunct Café Rouge in Maida Vale the previous autumn and I missed the 2014 Christmas bash, which had been a bit shambolic by all accounts, ending up in Pizza Express Charlotte Street.
This February evening was therefore my one and only visit to that Pizza Express.
My post evening note to John Random was the following:
John
Good to see you and the gang last night.
Many thanks for that wonderful-looking bottle of wine. Extremely generous of you and quite unnecessary.
Janie and I will save it for a special occasion and enjoy it then…unless the Bulgarian merlot runs out and we need an emergency bottle in a hurry.
John, knowing little about wine, grabbed a rather long-in-the-tooth bottle of Bulgarian Merlot from his home and brought it for that 5 February evening at my house. We all agreed that the bottle was undrinkable and offered the bottle’s contents to the kitchen sink drain gods.
Being John, he wrote me an own-liver-eating e-mail the next day, also agonising about the fact that he didn’t know that my mum had recently died until some way into the evening.
I responded, amongst other stuff 6 February, specifically on the Bulgarian Merlot:
It was good to see you and do stop fretting about the wine. But on that note, I do recommend the film Sideways, if you haven’t seen it, a very funny sort of road movie about an introverted wine snob on a California wine tour with his extrovert actor mate. The wine snob has an irrational thing against the Merlot grape, btw, which happens to have been the grape variety in your Bulgarian curiosity.
So, again being John, he brought me a rather splendid bottle of wine when we met at the Pizza Express for the Ivan Shakespeare 19 February.
The only other matters of note, which emerge from John’s post evening messages, are:
Gerry did the quiz;
John approved of Pizza Express, but the venue did get moved the next time. That might have been down to Tottenham Court Road Central Line closure more than the venue itself;
We all recorded birthday messages for Laurie, John and Jenny’s son, just ahead of his 15th birthday, which Laurie apparently appreciated very much.
Always good fun, Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinners.
Things were different back then, I realise at the time of writing (January 2017).
For a start, Harry Morgan was on the list of places I definitely wanted to eat, rather than (as now) a place that has gone downhill but still is my last local source of Jewish-style chicken soup and chopped liver, both of which they still do reasonably well.
Secondly, meeting up with Richard for lunch back then was simply a general catch up and chat during the cricket off-season. Richard was Deputy Chief Executive of Middlesex then and little did any of us know that he would find himself in the hot/top seat just a few months later. It’s hard to recall what we discussed; probably some aspects of the team and the clever new commercial arrangements with the MCC, which seemed to me (still seem to me) hugely beneficial for both clubs.
I had considered buying some “Jew food” for John and Rohan, but thought that twice in one day might be a bit much for me…and possibly that once in one day might be a bit much for them. Chopped liver is a wonderful, heart-warming dish for the initiated but can seem like a rather crude pate to the uninitiated.
So, even before Richard cancelled, I planned instead to serve them food from Tavola, Alistair “Big Al DeLarge” Little’s splendid deli. I guess I went on my way home from the gym, buying enough tempting Italian dishes, making the meal extremely quick and simple to prepare (once Al and his team have done almost all the hard work).
I know John Random from comedy writing at NewsRevue, i.e. since I was in my late twenties. I know Rohan Candappa from Alleyn’s – i.e. since I was eleven. They are both very good, very funny writers. Both are at stages of their lives/careers where the writing has taken a bit of a back seat, perhaps for too long, while providing for themselves and their families comes to the fore.
I simply thought that these two ought to know each other, without any particular agenda or ideas about why they should or what they might do about it. I also thought that it would be a pleasant evening for the three of us.
It was.
I especially recall one bit of the conversation when Rohan and I reminisced briefly about a big sporty lad at school known as Jumbo Jennings. Seemed able to turn his hand to any sport. Terrifyingly quick and bouncy bowling, I especially remember. Fiendish fives player too. John remarked that they didn’t have schools like Alleyn’s in Hartlepool, but he had always imagined that nicknames such as “Jumbo Jennings” were more the stuff of fiction than reality.
I should have instantly retorted that I’d always imagined that disappearing acts like that of John Darwin, the Hartlepool Canoe Man, were more the stuff of fiction than reality, until that fraud was exposed and we learned that John Random’s cousin was the subject of that proto fake news story.
I’m getting my witty retort in nearly two years late, aren’t I?
We have known Lisa Opie for many years now. We were introduced to her when she was at college studying towards her osteopathy qualification. Lisa is a top notch healer; a superb masseuse as well as (now) an osteopath. Janie and I still see her regularly. Occasionally Janie and Lisa do CPD courses together.
Anyway, Lisa was keen for us to meet (Janie and I were also keen to meet) Lisa’s (then) latest, Edwina, so we invited the two of them over for dinner.
Janie and I both remember this evening well, but cannot recall what Janie cooked for the main course. Something meaty, we are pretty sure. Janie does recall making a rice pudding for desert. Janie’s rice pudding is always good news.
Jilly inferred informality but some semblance of dress sense in her invitation, which was a non-electronic thing that came through the post in October but is now gone – hence my inability to state exactly where the party took place…
…update!! Jilly has subsequently sent me a copy of the invitation and some photos, so here is the invitation with the venue details, while I have subtly redacted Jilly’s personal contact details with a picture of Jilly:
I responded in October by e-mail:
Jilly
I think your invitation infers that we’d need to be out of our minds to say yes, but we are quite crazy so we are coming to your party anyway.
Many thanks for inviting us and looking forward to seeing you on the day.
Lots of love
Ian (& pp Janie)
PS I’ll need to invest in a pair of gardening jeans in order genuinely to abstain from coming to the party in same.
Here is Jilly’s response to my response. I should make clear that I am not Jilly’s uncle, but Jilly has called me uncle pretty much since I met her, when I was about 16 and she was about 14:
Dear Uncle,
I was fairly confident you were mad enough to come when inviting you, so really glad I didn’t get that completely wrong, and that you are indeed coming. Excellent news.
You could also just wear any pear of jeans but sit in a muddy field in them beforehand (there are a few close to the hall) if you wanted that kind of look, but could you just let the mud dry before you arrive?
Marvellous.
Look forward to seeing you.
Me xxx
Janie and I ended up sitting at table with several BBYO alumni, not least Sue Jacobs (Simon Jacob’s sister), who sat next to us and was excellent company. We talked cricket a lot, not least because one of Sue’s daughters is very keen. We also sat with some other people we hadn’t met before, who were also very good company. One or two of those people I think we had sort-of met before at one of Jilly’s house parties, but we got to know them better this time.
I’m sure Janie isn’t normally out of focus – she must have been violently agreeing with Sue, nodding her head at great speed……Sue, by contrast, looking very focused……while Jilly looks very happy, as well she should have done, hosting such a super party. Many thanks to Jilly for these pictures
It was also good to see Jilly’s sister Caroline (known to me as Frog) again. Also Jilly’s mum, who sadly has dementia now but is able to disguise it for a while.
It was less than a fortnight since my mum died and only a few days after the funeral, but actually it wouldn’t have occurred to me to miss this party. Indeed, from my point of view it proved to be a real tonic and Jilly seemed to be having a wonderful time with so many of her good friends around her in one go. It was a really jolly event, held in a rather quaint village hall, with a very informal atmosphere and lots of nice people.
Update: Jilly has now kindly added details, such as exactly where the party was held, otherwise that type of detail might easily have got lost in the mists of Ogbloggy-foggy-time.
Jilly is also questioning some of my above details, such as exactly how old we must have been when we first met, but that is subject matter for further discussion and future Ogblog postings!
In the orthodox Jewish tradition, the funeral takes place very rapidly after death. But mum and dad had opted out of the orthodox way and had planned to be cremated. Hence the 10 day interval between mum’s demise and her funeral.
The funeral took place at South London Crematorium/Streatham Park Cemetery at 16:00 that day. The funeral was officiated by the Streatham Liberal Synagogue’s Rabbi, Janet Darley.
As for dad, I wrote and read a eulogy which I shall upload here, with any other artefacts I think worthy of retention, such as the music playlist, when I go through the relevant papers in the fullness of time.
We, family and friends retreated to Nightingale for a reception, the centrepiece of which was the cafe cheesecake which made mum so happy during those last few years of her life.
Come to think of it; if there is one thing I do miss about that whole period it is that wonderful cheesecake.
Janie and I had visited the day before and suspected that mum was fading.
Angela Broad visited on the Monday, allowing me to try and get back into work. She called me late afternoon to let me know that mum looked very weak indeed – significant change even in the last 24 hours.
So it didn’t come as a surprise to me (although these things are always a shock) when the hospital called about 10:00 pm and broke the news to me that mum had died.
After sorting out the formalities over the next couple of days, I made the following posting on Facebook:
I also felt the hospital treated the whole matter with great care, compassion and professionalism, so I also (a few days later) published the following open letter of thanks to the hospital staff:
Those two Facebook postings pretty much sum up my thoughts at the time, really.
