One of the reasons we booked the Moulin d’Hauterive was because it boasted a tennis court amongst its amenities.
Janie and I have travelled far and we have travelled wide. Our tennis rackets and balls have travelled long distances with us. Occasionally the tennis courts we find at the hotels are not quite up to the standards we are used to at home, not that we have always played on very high standards of surfaces at home either. We are leisure players.
For example, we enjoyed the tennis court at the Zenobia Cham Palace Hotel in Palmyra in 1997 despite its idiosyncrasies – I don’t suppose it is up to much any more of course – point is, we make allowances.
But the tennis court at Moulin d’Hauterive almost defies description. Had the Burgundy region recently suffered a major war or a series of natural disasters of the earthquake and hurricane variety, the cracked, moonscape-like surface and the intermittence of the perimeter netting might have been explicable.
But this didn’t look like the result of a recent disaster. It looked like decades of neglectful, distressed gentility.
On challenge, the rather haughty proprietor’s son (who had sniffly advised us, when I asked about choosing wine to go with the specific food we had ordered, simply that the more expensive bottles were always the better ones) mumbled indifferently that the court was indeed due for some repairs soon.
We played each day. It is difficult to describe the game we played as tennis in the modern sense, but it was some form of a game with rackets and balls, plus we used the tennis scoring system. But in truth it was more of a range hitting game, where we aimed for the smooth if we wanted to perpetuate a rally or aimed for the rough if we wanted a laugh.
Memorable is probably the best adjective for it.
I note that hotel Moulin d’Hauterive no longer boasts the tennis court amongst its amenities. What a pity.
I had to do some serious detective and memory work on this short trip to Burgundy, as I didn’t keep a journal.
Here is an extract from an e-mail from “Auntie Janet” at Ultimate Travel:
I think you are best to fly to Lyon, which is about 2 hours/86 miles from the hotel.
The flights are as follows:
01 Sept. BA 360 Depart Heathrow 08.40 Arrive Lyon 11.15
05 Sept. BA 363 Depart Lyon 19.25 Arrive Heathrow 20.00
…small automatic hire car, Citroen C3 or similar…will be on request if you want to go ahead and they can be quite scarce.
Darn right about scarcity – we ended up needing to reacquaint ourselves with a stick shift for that trip.
We ended up booking this hotel, Moulin d’Hauterive. It boasted a pool and a tennis court. The tennis court was an interesting wreck, I remember, variable bounce, varying between “in yer face” and non-existent, like playing real tennis except without walls, galleries and roofs. I have written a short aside on the tennis – here.
Tony and Phillie were going to be on a driving all the way to South of France holiday late August. The idea was for us to join them in a nice spot mid-France as they wended their way back to Blighty. Once we’d booked, I wrote:
We fly in to Lyon late morning on the Tuesday, so should arrive at the hotel some time mid afternoon if all goes to plan. Suspect we might get there before you unless you leave early and put your foot down.
The hotel restaurant does not open on Wednesdays and the nearest alternative is some 15 kms away from the hotel. We might want to try that alternative place or we might want to arrange a picnic for the Wednesday! We can decide all that when we are there, but thought you ought to know this vital fact.
We did indeed arrive some time before them on the Tuesday, 1 September. Janie got busy making sure that we (and Tony/Phillie) had the best available rooms, which got us off to an interesting start with the son of the proprietor, whose name escapes me and is absent from the website. Sonny took pains to tell us that he had worked in advertising in Paris for many years, before reluctantly agreeing to retreat and help run the family business when it got a bit harder for his parents. The parents were noticeably absent throughout our stay.
I recall that we did indeed eat in the hotel with Tony and Phillie on the Tuesday and the Thursday evening. The food was very good there. The wine pricey but that’s Burgundy for you. I also recall us going into Beaune on the Wednesday evening and having a very pleasant meal in the town. Tony decided to drive in the end, after we toyed with the idea of getting taxis too and fro.
We mostly just all relaxed together for two-and-a-half to three days. Tony and Phillie set off for home Friday morning; we’d booked the extra night.
…and Bourg-en-Bresse, but the most important bit was to eat lunch at the Bresse service station, where they serve poulet-de-Bresse and yes indeed it was wonderful food.
After lunch, we strolled around and found a nice music shop (I think in Bourg, not Beaune) where I bought some very good CDs, not least Jean-Guihen Queyras’s Complete Bach Cello Suites (we have subsequently seen him perform at the Wigmore Hall – click here). We also bought some well-cool Paris Jazz CDs, which Janie still plays when she is feeling in a suitably continental mood.
We didn’t take many photos on that trip; indeed I think none until after Tony and Phillie had gone. In truth, Phillie was not very well by then (it turned out to be Phillie’s last holiday) and I don’t think she much fancied being photographed. The few pictures we did take are of Beaune and of me and Janie relaxing when we got back from our poulet-de-Bresse quest – on this small album going forward from the starting point.
We visited mum on that Saturday afternoon and then took her to one of her favourite Italian restaurants, Vito’s, on Northcote Road.
This will have been, in theory, mum’s birthday treat to me.
In practice, Janie will have driven to Streatham, done mum’s feet (there are copious notes about that in Janie’s diary) and then we’d have chauffeured mum to Vito’s.
There, the waiters will have fawned over mum in their classic style (Janie deliberately malapropises that description to “fornicating waiters”) while mum will no doubt have proudly told the waiters that she was treating us to an evening out for my birthday.
We’re somehow getting by without treats like this now that mum has gone.
We went to Vito’s quite a lot with mum in those days. She had her favourite places and it was a lot easier to take her to one of those. We went again 1 November, I can see in the diary.
Still, the food at Vito’s was always satisfactory and that style of service certainly pleased people like my mum. Unfortunately, that generation of customer has been dying out for some years and Vito’s itself has bitten the dust, at some point in the second half of the teeny decade, I presume.
Big Papa Zambezi Jeff Tye presenting me with my Heavy Roller shirt– thanks to Charley The Gent Malloy for the image – grabbed from his vid.
I have been encouraged to write up this particular Heavy Rollers visit now, in December 2021, as King Cricket and his partner in crime Dan Liebke have arrived at this test match in their podcast series, The Ridiculous Ashes. This test is Series Three, Episode Three – click here or below:
I haven’t listened to that podcast yet – my plan is to write up The Heavy Rollers experience and then listen.
For reasons I don’t quite understand, I have no photographs from 2009 in the “Charley The Gent” collection – just a video of Big Papa Zambezi Jeff Tye handing out the Heavy Rollers shirts on the morning of the first day:
It might just be that the photos from that year never reached me and therefore are omitted from what I thought was a canonical collection. If Charley furnishes me with photos in the fulness of time, have no fear, they will find there way to this piece.
My log records that it was a bumper year for Heavy Rollers, attendance-wise. Ashes years tended to be like that. Here is the Heavy Roll call (did you see what I did there?):
Big “Papa Zambezi” Jeff Tye;
Nigel “Father Barry”;
Charley The Gent Malloy;
The Boy Malloy;
Harsha Ghoble;
Biff;
Tufty Geoff Young;
David “Peel” Steed;
Dan “Peel” Steed;
Ged Ladd.
Others might well be able to chip in with additional memories, but my recollections of this one are slight and a bit idiosyncratic.
The Night Before – 29 July 2009
On arrival the night before (29th July), I recall that there was a bit of a scramble for the “better rooms” at Harborne Hall, although by that year (our second at the venue) I had concluded that the larger rooms at the top of the old building had some disadvantages to them such that my own preference was for a well-located slightly smaller room. I thus avoided the potentially contentious debate by deferring to my elders while still getting what I wanted.
I’m fairly sure it was this year, 2009, when I ran into my friend Maz (Marianne Tudor-Craig) at Harborne Hall, which, at that time, was still a VSO training & conference venue and Maz was still a VSO-nik at that time. It was strange seeing her in that setting while I was having a cricket break with my mates.
Day One – 30 July 2009
Obviously the single most important event of the day is captured on video for all to see – here’s the link again if you missed it above:
The rest of Day One was a bit of an anti-climax, certainly cricket-wise, as it rained for much of the day. I’m pretty sure that The Steeds would have smuggled in some wine boxes disguised as picnic-bag chillers and a fine picnic to go with it too.
I recall that nephew Paul “Belmonte” was at the ground that day and joined us for a while during one of the many rain breaks.
I also recall that, at one point, I was so “mentally unoccupied” while wandering around in a rain break that I allowed a young blond Npower saleswoman persuade me to change energy suppliers on a promise of, I blush to admit it, £200 off my energy bills for switching. Npower retained my business for several years after that.
In the absence of a 2009 photo in our maroon-coloured shirts, here is a picture of eight of us (only Biff and Tufty Geoff missing) from the previous year in the same place (Priory Stand front row) in our dark-coloured shirts:
Day Two – 31 July 2009 – Ridiculous Moment Of The Match
Forget whatever Alex “King Cricket” Bowden and Dan Liebke tell you in Series 3, Episode 3 of The Ridiculous Ashes, the most ridiculous moment of the match was around our seats at the start of Day Two.
By this stage of our proceedings, Charley “The Gent” was curating a fair bit of the Day Two picnic. As is Chas’s way, he was busying himself sorting out the contents of several bags of goodies at the start of play.
Despite several of us saying to Chas that the day’s play was about to begin, Chas was looking down in his bags when Graham Onions took a wicket with the first ball of the day.
Chas was disappointed missing that ball, but then returned to busying himself with his bags.
Despite several of us warning Chas that Onions was running up to bowl his second delivery, Chas continued busying himself, eyes down inside the bags…
…missing the fall of Michael Hussey for a primary – the second ball of the day.
Naturally Chas then gave the game his undivided attention for the attempted hat-trick ball and several subsequent deliveries of the ordinary variety.
We got plenty of play to see on the second day, although the mood of excitement was lessened because the weather forecast for Day Three was shocking, so (even during the exciting Day Two) there was a sense that the match was inevitably destined to be a draw.
I do hope I can supplement this piece with memories from other Heavy Rollers.
Where did we eat the night before the match? And the evening after Day One? I don’t think we played at all that year, but maybe we did. Hopefully the hive mind of the Heavy Rollers will help.
Phillie loved a birthday party, but by 2009 the zest for a big do with lots of old friends had passed. But 2009 did mark Pauline’s 80th, so we arranged a small, just family evening in Janie’s garden.
What could possibly go wrong on 27 June? Well, for one thing, the weather turned locally awful on us that late afternoon and evening. While some parts of London got away with it, Ealing copped huge amounts of rain. We braved it in the garden for a while between showers until a heavy deluge came, which led to our retreat indoors.
There are some pictures from that do, but the indoor ones (most of them) have more red eye than a New York to London overnight flight. Click here to see them in Flickr.
I made up a pretty decent play list for that do, one of my earlier efforts, but it still sounds pretty good on the old iTunes – here’s a pdf of it: Worms Party 2009 pdf.
There are a few in jokes and references on that list. Firstly, a lot of jazz from 1929, which was the year of Pauline’s birth. Secondly, more Barry White than you might expect on one of my playlists; Phillie was especially partial to the Walrus of Love. Thirdly, rather a lot of Neil Young. That is because Neil Young was playing in Hyde Park that night. Tony, Chris and I had secretly plotted to sneak off to see “The Youngster” if Pauline played up at all. She didn’t play up and/or we didn’t have the courage to mutiny, beyond the knowing grins and glances when the Neil Young tracks came around.
Between a date yet to be excavated, I’m pretty sure in 1989, and this date in 2009, I played occasional “kitchen table” bridge with friends. Occasional, by which I mean a few times a year.
Maz (Marianne Tudor-Craig) was there at the very first and the very last of these sessions. The first one was at Daniel’s (Daniel Scordel’s) house near Wandsworth Common.
Many people came and went over that 20 year period. Maz, me and Andrea (Dean) were the most regular players throughout the period.
The bridge was only part of the deal; there would always be a decent meal to make the evening as much a social event as a game evening.
The 25 June 2009 evening was at Maz’s house. The other players that night were Andrea and Barmy Kev (Kevin Ziants).
I’m not sure why this long, occasional tradition petered out that night. There was no particular reason to think that it would. Barmy Kev was a recent addition and is for sure a much better player than the rest of us, so perhaps his enthusiasm waned quickly. Also, Maz was soon to change her life with Steve; perhaps by then she had decided that she wanted to take bridge more seriously than me and Andrea.
Anyway, this 25 June evening was very pleasant – we had a good meal and reasonably good bridge as I recall it.
My most abiding memory of the evening, though, was putting on my car radio on the way home and learning that Michael Jackson had died that day. So the evening was the end of an era in more ways than one.
Back then, of course, that four year series of lectures was the bedrock of what would become a joint magnum opus between me and Michael, The Price Of Fish. So that last lecture of the series was both a milestone and a landmark personal event. I suspect we all ended up at The Cheshire Cheese for a Samuel Johnson-inspired meal afterwards.
But before that, we held a reception in the Headmaster’s Study at Barnard’s Inn Hall, during which someone without question will have told me I look like the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, a copy of which hangs in that study. I’d been handling that quip in that place since 2005 and at the time of writing (2020) am still handling it there and in other places.
Friday 22 May 2009
I did some work in the morning before heading down to Balham/Streatham Hill, where I treated my mum to lunch at a delicatessen named Fat. Now long gone. I rather liked it, but mum had her favourite places (by that time I think there was a Parisian-style cafe, also in Balham, which she favoured) so I don’t think we went there a second time.
Postscript: actually it looks as though Mum, me and Janie went to Fat together the following Sunday (31 May), so I have a feeling I might have posited the idea of Fat with mum on 22 May without us actually having vivited it that day.
In any case, I think I went straight on to Sandall Close, where Janie and I had a quiet evening in.
Saturday 23 May 2009
Phillipa and Tony arrived. They were staying in the Crown Plaza, on the Hanger Lane gyratory, very near to Sandall Close.
We went to Chez Gerard in the evening; no evidence as to which branch; Janie’s and my combined brains reckon Chiswick most likely.
Sunday 24 May 2009
Both our diaries say “Barby” or “BBQ” at Kim’s. That will have been the main purpose (or at least the focus) of Phillie and Tony’s visit. In truth I don’t remember this particular Sunday lunchtime gathering especially well. We wouldn’t have known it at the time but it was to be Phillie’s last such visit to Kim’s place.
The following picture was taken just a few weeks later in Sandall Close. I prefer its look in B&W because the colours, not least the red eye, were not so good:
It seemed like a lovely idea for Janie, her sisters and the husbands/significant other to gather for a long weekend somewhere nice. We settled on The Dart Marina in Dartmouth. Very nice.
We gathered on the Friday as the afternoon went on. I think Janie and I got there first, obviously, as we had by far the furthest to travel. We all agreed/decided that the pub adjoining (part of, really) the hotel would be our best bet that first night. It was old-fashioned fish and chips type food, done very well.
On the Saturday, Phillie, Tony, Hils and Chris had planned a pootle around town while Janie and I went off to meet our friends Nigel and Viv (who then lived in Totnes) for lunch – more pub grub.
This time we took it easy a bit, though, as we knew we had a big meal planned for the evening in the hotel’s posh restaurant:
If it looks as though we spent most of the weekend eating and drinking…well you’re not entirely wrong. But that was about to change.
The Sunday plan was for Phillie and Tony to do a bit of gentle shopping while Chris, Hils, me and Janie did a proper walk. Chris and I planned the walk and off we set up the hill. Hils (no aptronym here) started protesting vigorously that we must be going the wrong way as we were walking far too much up hill. Now despite my spatial and directional challenges, I am quite good at plotting routes on maps. Moreover, Chris works for Ordnance Survey and is a specialist map guy.
In short, I think we were going in precisely the right direction, while Hils was barking up the wrong tree.
Still, once we explained the plan to her, which included descending to a lovely sounding village with a pub, she calmed down and cheered up.
By the time we got to the pub, Hils was a convert to this walking thing and has undertaken many walking holidays since. Must be to do with the pubs…I mean the exercise.
In the above photo, I’m sporting a West Indies ground staff tee-shirt from Nigel and Viv’s recent sortie to the Caribbean (was it Antigua or Barbados, I forget?) with Charlie and Dot. When I sported the tee-short again in front of Charlie later that summer, it had the desired effect (intense and voluble envy).
That evening we ate in the third of the Dart Marina’s restaurants – the bistro -style one, which we decided was possibly the nicest of the three for our purposes, not least because the weather smiled on us enough to enable us to eat outside under the patio heaters. There was some debate about meal timing and whether or not Chris and I could choose the wines we wanted to pay for rather than the house wine that Hils insists is always adequate. The photographic evidence (below) suggests that, for once, Hils didn’t get her way:
There are other photographs from that trip – click here for the Flickr set, but in truth they are for completists/connoisseurs – the ones that tell the tale are included in this posting.
Our bridge four was getting close to its end by then, but despite the gulf in motivation and bridge quality between the four of us, we persevered with occasional social evenings of bridge.
Maz sent me this message after the 15th:
Many thanks for the ‘last supper’ last night – as always extraordinarily good and I ate too much.
Thanks too for my memento of the bridge 4 that has been going for 19 years I think (as one of original founder members).
If I have time I will try and do a short quiz for you at mine.
See you then and give Janie a big hug
Do I remember what I cooked? Do I heck. Do I even remember doing some sort of a quiz? Nope.
Double diary disaster! My diary says we went to Vito’s, Janie’s says we went to Positano.
I believe Janie’s diary, because I recall going to Positano, on Battersea Park Road, just once, with mum for mother’s day.
I think mum was displeased with the 14:30 slot we were offered at Vito’s, so Janie went in search of a suitable alternative that served Italian food of the kind mum liked – i.e. calves liver.
My recollection is that Janie and I actually thought Positano a bit better than Vito’s, but that the waiters there fawned a little less than the Northcote Road Italian waiters, so we never returned to Positano, while Vito’s got our business quite frequently until mum died.
10 years on (June 2019), Positano is gone – what was Positano is now a Sushi Cafe.
