My diary says that I played bridge with my gang at Tessa’s place on the Thursday evening. That would have been Tessa, Andrea and Maz.
Janie’s diary says that Phillie & family were arriving that day and that they were having dinner “at mum’s” that Thursday evening from 6.00 and that I would be coming over 12.30.
I think I had a key by then. Or this might have been the occasion that resulted in me having a key.
Anyway, Janie’s diary says that we all went for a meal at North China on the Friday evening. This is the gathering of Pauline, Phillie, Tony, Charlie, Janie and me, all around a Chinese restaurant table, that i recall so well from our early time together. I think we only ever did that as a group of six the once.
The diaries are very light on what we did. Possibly we didn’t do much.
To some extent Phillie, Tony & Charlie were probably using Sandall Close as a base to do other stuff.
Where the heck did everyone sleep at Sandall Close?
Anyway, we were all still talking to each other come the Tuesday, as the diary says we six (including Pauline) had a dinner party at Sandall Close on the Tuesday evening.
Janie and I both worked that day too.
I think the family stayed on with Janie until the Wednesday afternoon.
It was a quirky, rather corny film with some excellent actors in it.
I am pretty sure we ate and stayed at mine, not least because Janie treated one of her Saudi princess clients in town on Saturday moirning before we went off to Bristol. I don’t suppose they discussed Leon The Pig Farmer.
My diary is not at all forthcoming about the details of this weekend. All I wrote for the Friday evening and then Saturday were a couple of very short words:
PIG.
Hils.
Then some arrows and stuff across the Sunday, implying that we stayed in Bristol, Janie also had a symbolic line through Sunday.
With no other information about where we stayed, I’m guessing this is the one and only time that we stayed at Janie’s sister Hil and Chris Boswell’s house, in the conservatory, on their Z bed. (Sounds like a Cluedo accusation).
Memory suggests that we ate a very good meal with some good wine. Were “entertained” by the boys squabbling with each other and then tried our best to sleep on the Z bed.
I’m pretty sure this was the evening that I cooked a chinese meal at my flat for Kim, Micky & Janie, only to discover that Kim’s at that time seemingly liberal vegetarian attitudes…
…she was veggie but didn’t at that time go on about it to others…
…had limits.
One of those limits was the sight of a whole animal; in this case a fish.
One of my specialities in those days was to steam a whole fish with ginger, spring onion, using a fair slurp of saki in the steaming water and a dash of soy sauce and coriander to garnish.
Yum.
So after serving starters; probably my signature won ton soup for most of us and something well-chosen and veggie for Kim…
…I’d have probably put quite a lot of thought into the veggie options for Kim that evening…
…I then served the mains including my piece de resistance, the fish.
All hell broke loose. Kim felt sick. Kim couldn’t believe that we could eat that. Kim was upset.
Janie, who knew Kim really well was surprised at that reaction…
…but then realised that she had never served anything that looked quite so “original form animal” as a whole fish. Somehow big prawns didn’t seem to have the same effect.
Anyway, i/we never did that again when Kim was coming round.
Neither Janie nor I recall a great deal about this particular evening. I think it was the only time I went to DJ’s place in Steeles Mews for dinner and I think there were a fair few of us there.
I can see from the diaries that Janie and I had arranged to stay at my place for the weekend, not least because we had theatre at the Nationalthe next day:
It was not dustopian because of the food. Oh boy, the food was terrific. Janie’s Friday diary reads…
…collect ossobuco & Langues de chat biscuits & mascarpone [from La Pasena]
Osso Bucco – picture by Stu Spivack via Wikimedia Commons
It was the company that made the evening dystopian.
Rita is one of Janie’s colleagues – even 25+ years later Janie still refers work to Rita when appropriate.
Now don’t get me wrong, I liked Rita. Rita is absolutely fine.
The problem at that time was that Rita was with a chap named Tony and Tony liked far right politics of the most venal kind. Rita and Tony as an item didn’t stand the test of time for all that long beyond this dystopian evening…
…nor indeed did Tony make it very deep into middle age. Stonk in the brain or something of that ilk. It isn’t ONLY the good who die young.
But the Rita and Tony partnership had, by then, lasted long enough to produce young Mark who was 10-12 years old. By all accounts, Mark has subsequently settled down but at that time he was a fully paid up member of the Tony-Loony-Tunes-Yoof and not averse to doling out a bit of lip.
None of the Mark and Tony shenanigans went down very well with me and Micky. I don’t think it went down too well with Rita either when the extent of the mismatch inevitably spilled over into the evening.
I seem to recall Kim subsequently finding it all rather amusing; she rather thrives on conflict in a funny way. Not to say that she found it acceptable; just that she preferred to laugh it off afterwards while Micky and I sought solace in incredulity.
We’d got to the stage, by the end of 1992, that most of our getting togethers didn’t get specific mention as “Jane” or “Ian” in our respective diaries.
Yet this particular weekend, 5th to 7th February, is marked in Janie’s diary:
Ian over for weekend…
…and marked in mine…
Jane [with an arrow and a line through the weekend]
The significance of this, I think, is that we had not, untilt hat point or slightly beyond that point, considered spending the whole weekend together as a given. In fact, with Janie still taking a fair bit of weekend work and with me spending some weekend time writing the book with Michael etc, we rarely spent several days together.
Clearly we blocked this one out to spend the whole weekend together.
Not much in Janie’s and my diaries for Janiary 1993 other than work and stuff, although I am pretty sure that we were spending most weekend time together by then.
I guess we were starting down the road of being people with whom we could do nothing together.
I did a couple of bridge and bookwriting sessions without Janie. Janie seemed to have given up on French lessons by the start of 1993 but was still taking Saturday work and going to the odd chiropody meeting.
On Sunday 17 January, although there is nothing in my diary, Janie has a whole load of notes about Steve Bright’s attempt to repair one of my reel-to-reel tape recorders. We must have been together for that.
The following weekend Janie notes that Ros was coming on the Sunday and I am pretty sure I first met Ros then.
“Two years ago you met a mystic woman named Ros.” “You can tell all that from the coffee grounds? Amazing!”
We went to Kim and Micky’s for dinner on that Tuesday evening (26 January).
On Saturday 30 January Janie and I schlepped out to Wallington to Paul James’s place for a party at his house. Paul was one of the Binder Hamlyn Management Consultancy partners and I remember being surprised to be invited, although I was doing a tiny bit of work with him at that time.
I seem to recall Janie quite enjoying the party but not to the extent that justified the schlep to Wallington.
I’m pretty sure we spent that first Christmas together apart, as it were, with our respective families, regathering at the bank holiday weekend after Christmas, which fell on a Friday that year.
Janie’s diary for 28 December reads:
1.00 Ian, Kim & Micky lunch – at Kim’s
I believe that.
I’ll guess that we ate some yummy food and drank far too much wine.
My diary suggests that I played bridge on 29th or 30th December. There are no clues as to where we played, nor which day, although I’m guessing the original idea was 30th and the eventual was 29th.
Janie’s 1992 diary for 31 December reads:
11.00 collect food…
…Jane’s party…
…while mine simply indicates a new year’s eve do of some kind, unspecified.
Janie is pretty sure that the term “Jane’s party” in this context means that she threw a small party at Sandall Close, as she was wont to do back then – the “collect food” bit clinching it for Janie that her use of the term “Jane” at that time would have been self-referral.
Her 1993 diary contains more clues, with an additional page stating that the food collection was from Mrs Saad’s place on St Mark’s Road. Lebanese if I remember correctly.
I’ll guess that it was a relatively small gathering – probably Kim & Micky, plus anyone else from Janie’s inner circle of friends who happened to be around. I suspect 10-12 people.
I’ll guess that we all ate some yummy Lebanese food and drank far too much wine.
…was just such a dash – to Annalisa de Mercur’s party.
I hope it was a good one. They usually were.
This one was on a Sunday, so I’m guessing it was lunch/afternoon into early evening that time.
Quite possibly it went on quite deep into the evening.
Janie’s diary suggests that we arrived back at heathrow at 11.05, so I suppose that did enable us to dump our luggage, wash and dash into Marylebone (probably via my place) to the party by early/mid afternoon.
There will have been bagels.
Annalisa usually served lots of mini bagels.
There will have been lots of people too – many of them former Keele folk.
This was probably the first time that Janie met many of the people there; Kate Fricker (probably) and Annie Bickerstaff (almost certainly). Were John and Mandy there on that occasion?
Postscript: John has chimed in by message witha confession that he and Mandy were there. But no additional information was forthcoming.
Times change. These days (he says writing in late 2019) Up The Creek Comedy Club is located in trendy Greenwich and is perceived as a happening place on the comedy scene.
Mark Ahsmann [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
So what in the name of common sense were Janie, me, Annalisa and Gerry Goddin doing going to that place on a Saturday night?
We went to see the west-country comedian Ben Murphy perform. Ben had recently engaged with some of us Newsrevue writers and had especially taken a shine to some of my lyrics, which he was proposing to try out at Up The Creek that night.
Here is a link to my first letter to Ben – only a week or so before the Up The Creek visit – a very business like and quite counter-cultural letter viz the Ben I subsequently got to know rather well. Perhaps that is why I tended to get paid by Ben, whereas some less commercially-minded writers are (I believe) still waiting for their royalty cheques.
Menawhile, back in November 1992, Janie and I actually moved an appointment to eat with Janie’s mum, plus twin-sister Phillipa and niece Charlotte, which was due to happen that evening. If my memory serves me correctly, we all went for a Chinese meal at North China on the Uxbridge Road at lunchtime the next day instead. I think that was the first time I met those three.
So, if I now point out that seeing my material, in the hands of Ben Murphy, doing battle with that seriously-arsy Deptford comedy crowd, was a far LESS daunting prospect than the thought of meeting Janie’s mum…
…but then you wouldn’t have tried mother-in-law/my girlfriend’s mother jokes at Up The Creek in 1992; that would not have ended well.
I do recall warning both Janie and Annalisa that it would be seriously risky for us to “take on the audience” if they turned against Ben. In those days, even Gerry Goddin was able to quell his instincts to chirp back in such circumstances, but I wasn’t so sure about the girls.
In the event, Ben went down pretty well at Up The Creek and we all survived the experience. Some acts that night were less fortunate than Ben…
…but then most of those acts were less naturally talented and less able to control an audience than Ben Murphy.
I have managed to find a video of Ben Murphy performing live, many years later, in less edgy circumstances – on that south-west coast circuit that he made his own for a long time:
I remember that Janie insisted on driving to Up The Creek and that we dropped Annalisa and Gerry home, as both of them, in those days, lived conveniently en route or near to Janie’s place.
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