Friends and Family Events – Page 4

Meet My Father – Teodoro Rossiter, The Truth Uncovered, 24 April 2022

Most people who know me and knew my parents thought that Peter Harris was my father. People who knew him better might have known that he was Peter Isidore Harris and/or that his first given name was Isidore – Peter came later. A handful of family members would be aware that the family on arrival in England were named Russinov, that my grandfather was known as Harris Russinov and that dad’s name on his 1919 birth certificate was Isidore Russinov.

But it turns out that my father was actually some bloke named Teodoro Rossiter.

Here’s the thing:

Following the extraordinary and fascinating revelations just the other week about my mother’s cousin Sid Marcus, his saw playing and the Lithuanian origins of my mother’s family, uncovered with the help of cousin Adam and Ron Geesin…

Turn It Up To Max & Spit: The Baltic Origins Of My Mother’s (Marcus) Family Revealed

…I thought I should learn from Ron’s superb research into my mother’s family and do a similar dig into my father’s family. After all, research is a significant part of what I do for a living and Ron’s example had been very instructive as well as informative.

The central learning point from Ron’s research is that the recent on-line publication of the 1921 census opens up a new trove of information – probably the last such “big reveal” trove that will occur in my lifetime.

I thought it would be easy for me to find a family named Russinov in London in the 1921 census search engine…

…but absolutely nothing came up. I tried all the tricks I know to vary the spelling, allow the machine to approximate the spelling, look beyond London just in case they were away from London at the time…

…nothing.

I even tried Harris. Lots of other Harris families but definitely not mine.

Peter Harris in 2005. Were there secrets behind that smile?

I knew the family was in Fitzrovia (the south-eastern quarter of Marylebone) at that time and I even had a relic from the 1920s – a business certificate allowing the family to trade under the name Harris – which had at one time adorned the certificate wall of the Z/Yen office but was latterly in storage. I was pretty sure that 1920s certificate had an address on it.

Unfortunately, the certificate – which is for sure somewhere in Z/Yen’s secure storage dungeon – is being stored very securely indeed. It wasn’t where we thought it would be and 30 minutes of further searching in the dungeon convinced us that it must have been filed quite deeply – no doubt to be found when searching for something completely different.

I all but gave up on the idea of finding my paternal family in the 1921 census.

But I’m a tenacious sort of chap and was pondering the matter quite a bit. Then at the weekend a thought dawned on me. The granting of business certificates, at that time – indeed deep into the 20th century- often needed to be announced in a gazette. Such announcements naturally included the address.

So rather than search genealogy sites in vain, I searched my Newspapers.com subscription with my grandfather’s name instead. Instant pay dirt:

The Marylebone Mercury and West London Gazette on 3 Jan 1925

Interesting law, Section 7 of the Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act 1919, requiring migrants to seek permission (at significant expense) to use an English-sounding rather than their natural-born alien name for their business.

Interesting street, Upper Marylebone Street. It subsequently became the eastern end of New Cavendish Street and was confusingly renumbered. Before my family’s time, Thomas Paine wrote The Rights Of Man at No 7. No 7 Upper Marylebone Street was a well-known hang out for radicals, writers and radical writers.

But I digress…except that the extremely helpful article about Thomas Paine in Upper Marylebone Street…

Thomas Paine lived and wrote the Rights of Man at 148 New Cavendish Street

…locates Paine’s (now defunct) building, No 7 Upper Marylebone Street, on the site of 148 New Cavendish Street and No 4 – my Grandfather’s place – in a still-existing Georgian terraced house – now numbered 154 New Cavendish Street:

Thank you, Google Maps for this July 2021 image capture

I’d found the family house from 1925 but had I found my family there in 1921? The transcription at first glance did not look promising:

But on reflection, this was unmistakably my family. Grandpa Harris, already 39 years old. Grandma Anne (Annie) much younger, 30. Uncle Alec, 13 at census time. Uncle Manny, just 10. Uncle Michael, a new born babe. Indeed, had it not been for the industrial action that delayed the 1921 census by several months, Uncle Michael might have missed it by a few days.

And there was dad, under the name Teodoro Rossiter.

No-one had even mentioned to me the use of the name Rossiter as an early anglicisation of the family name. As for Teodoro, it is a charming name, but hardly an anglicisation or simplification of the name Isidore.

This made no sense.

I decided to invest in a scan of the original document. It set me back the princely sum of £1.75 (a half-price special offer that weekend – who could resist such a good value deal? Dad would have approved and possibly even would have bought two copies to celebrate his bargain.)

Now I’m not qualified to opine upon or judge handwriting – Ogblog readers who are crazy enough to examine my hand-written diary entries can attest – but I think the hand-writing on the original census document is mighty fine and I think my dad’s entry very clearly says Isodore (admittedly not Isidore) Russinov and all of the “Rossiter family” (as transcribed) are written extremely clearly as “Russinov”.

I award myself 9 out of 10 for detective work and I award the transcriber 1 out of 10 for the transcription of my dad’s name…awarding 1 only because I don’t do 0 out of 10.

When I talked this through with Janie, she wondered whether this might mean that I could be related to Leonard Rossiter, the wonderful (deceased) comedy actor.

Used under fair use rationale to depict Leonard Rossiter in this article. To be clear, the transcription error of the family name “Russinov” to “Rossiter” does not in any way indicate that I, or any other member of the Harris/Russinov family, is related to Leonard, or indeed any other, Rossiter. In short, I didn’t get where I am today by being related to Leonard Rossiter.

I explained to Janie that transcription errors, much like noms de plume, don’t tend to have relatives.

My dad has had an unfortunate record of transcription errors with his records. In the late 1980s, when dad was around or approaching 70, he received a letter from the NHS addressed to Isadora Harris inviting “him” to have a cervical smear test. There must have been SO much wrong with the NHS record that led to that mistake.

Indeed, dad seems so prone to nominative transcription errors, I considered titling this piece “My Trans Dad”, but decided against on balance.

More seriously, I did of course find out some interesting facts about my family history.

I had always suspected that Grandpa Harris probably hailed from Vilnius, as I was aware that he had journeyed into the Belorussian part of the Pale of Settlement where he met and initially settled with my then very young Grandma Anne. But I was also aware that Uncle Manny had been born in Vilnius and had guessed that the family had probably returned to Grandpa Harris’s home place before migrating.

Grandma Anne stated in the census that she (and Uncle Alec) were born in Igumen, which is a Belarussian town now known as Chervyen. Trigger warning – it was the scene of multiple atrocities during the 1940s – don’t click the preceding link if you’d rather not know the details. It is about 70 km south-east of Minsk – about an hour’s drive today.

The family came a long way in a short space of time, from shtetl life in Igumen and Vilnius, to London life in Marylebone…

…but then the name Teodoro Rossiter is a long way from Isodore Russinov or Peter Harris.

“Call me whatever you blooming well like”.

Turn It Up To Max & Spit: The Baltic Origins Of My Mother’s (Marcus) Family Revealed

My Grandpa: Lew (or Lou) Marcus, with his older brother Max

Meet my Great Uncle Max Marcus (1878-1952). He was the oldest of the multitude of Marcus siblings to venture from the old country to Blighty. My Grandpa Lew (1892-1959) was the youngest of the siblings.

But where exactly did the Marcus family venture from?

The family legend has been vague to say the least. Before the term “self-identify” had been invented, the Marcus family self-identified as “Litvak musicians”.

The word Litvak is a Yiddish term for Jews of Lithuanian (or more generically places we would now call The Baltics) origin. For families like ours, who came to Britain in the late 19th century, that meant that they would have been Russian subjects in The Pale Of Settlement before coming to Britain.

*Great Uncle Max as a young man – c1900*

The other matter of clarity from the family legend was that Great Uncle Max came to England with his wife, Leah, as an advance party, establishing themselves, at least to some extent, before the rest of the family followed towards the very end of the 19th century.

I did a little bit of on-line genealogy around 2011, liaising with my cousins Ted & Sue, which yielded very little about the family origins. It did encourage me at that time to interview my mother, plus cousins Jacquie Briegal and Sidney Pizan (the latter being Max’s grandson) – I have quite a few notes and yarns for future pieces, but almost nothing on the Baltic origins.

*1901 census shows 9 year old Grandpa Lew with parents and some siblings in Whitechapel*

I couldn’t find Max and his nascent family in the 1901 census when I looked in 2011. But I did find them in the 1911 census. In April 1911, Max and family were in Great Yarmouth. Once established as a musician in England, for much of his working life, Max split his time between London and Yarmouth. The picture below is probably Yarmouth.

Max playing double-bass with a small band, which I refer to (in PDQ Bach terms) as a schleptet.

When in London, Max played with De Groot at The Piccadilly & Regents Palace Hotels

In the 1911 census, Max claims that he and Leah come from Austria. This claim is a stretch, almost worthy of the UK Government 110 years later, in its extremely loose association with the truth.

In reality, Viennese waltz music was all the rage in those days; it was probably “professionally convenient” for Max to hold himself out as an Austrian exponent of waltz music. It is almost unthinkable that Max (or anyone else from the Marcus family) had ever so much as set foot in Austria (or any part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) before 1911.

*Max, Leah & emerging brood circa 1907. Far right is my Great-Grandma Annie*.

Max and Leah’s offspring and descendants turned out to be a pretty musical lot. On the far left of the above picture is my mother’s cousin Sid, who ended up as a first violin in and sometime leader of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. Harry, the younger boy in the above picture was, by all accounts, an even more talented violinist but suffered from stage fright, so made his career teaching.

To the right of Harry (Harry’s left) in the above picture is Becky, who became Becky Pizan:

mother of Sidney Pizan (who, along with my mother, provided the family pictures you are enjoying);
reportedly a very gifted pianist in her own right (as was, according to my mother, my own Grandpa Lew);
grandmother of the artist Adam Green, whose extraordinary, almost accidental research a few weeks ago has led to a swathe of discoveries.

I thoroughly recommend that you click through to Adam’s piece about my mother’s musical cousin (Adam’s Great Uncle) Sidney Marcus and the discoveries that flowed from that- click here or the link below.

BBC RADIO 3, RON GEESIN, UNCLE SID, AND CHOPPED LIVER IN KOVNO…

For those who just want to skim the topic, Adam has helped to identify Sid Marcus as The Saw Player on several 1930s recordings, such as the following:

My mum always referred to Sid as “a multi-instrumentalist” without going into too much detail. I hadn’t previously twigged that Sid’s “fifteen minutes of fame” second instrument was the hand saw.

Adam, via Radio 3 and Ron Geesin (composer, writer and self-confirmed absurdist), established that Max and his family, in the 1921 census, stated that they came from Kovno – now known as Kaunas, the second-largest city in Lithuania.

Adam says in his piece that he was a bit surprised, as he thought that branch of his family hailed from Riga.

My take on the matter, having been bitten by Max’s 1911 claims, was that Max on census day was not a 100% reliable witness to his own origins, but that Kaunas was unlikely to be a complete lie (unlike Austria) as it was unlikely that anyone in England would give a fig about which Baltic town Max and family might hail from.

I decided to redouble my efforts and try a bit harder to find Max and his branch in the 1901 census. I had drawn a blank when I looked back in 2011 but I hadn’t looked that hard.

As it turns out, I should indeed have looked harder back in 2011, although the search engines might not have been so good back then.

The 1901 census page for Max, Leah & Simon [sic] Markus [sic]

The trick was to look for Leah and to ask the search engine to be non-exact in the matter of surname (as well as first name) spelling. Thus we find Marks (latterly known as “Max” – we have since learnt that he was previously known as “Mendel”), Leah and baby Simon (latterly known as “Sidney” or “Sid”) in Back Church Lane Whitechapel, very close to the rest of the family and very close to Tobacco Dock, from whence it seems the family was scraping a living in the tobacco business in those early days.

Let’s drill.

Let’s drill some more and zoom:

Max comes from Nidy and Leah comes from Yugger?

OK, so in 1901, before they had mastered the English language and how to spin with it, Max and Leah admitted to having been born in different places. I am pretty confident that “Yugger” is the way the census dude wrote down Leah’s attempt to tell him that she was born in Riga.

What about Nidy? I’m pretty sure Max was telling the census dude about Nida, Lithuania.

created by dji camera – LinasD, CC BY-SA 4.0

Now I’m going to be honest here and admit that, until I did this research, I had never heard of Nida, nor had I even heard of the Curonian Spit, the 60+ mile long sand dune depicted below.

In the late 19th century, Nida was an art colony. Confusingly, the northern part of the Curonian Spit now shown as Lithuania was, at that time, part of Greater Russia, whereas the southern part that today is part of Russia, including Kaliningrad was, at that time, Königsberg, part of Prussia. As my mum would have said, “don’t start”.

For a family of musicians, I suspect that Nida, with its relatively wealthy Prussian visitors, was a suitable place to spend the summer season and earn a decent crust, even if you retreated to Kaunas for the winter and urban gigs…

…and then it dawned on me. Great Yarmouth is also a summer season town, built on a spit, albeit a smaller spit than that massive Curonian one.

Great Yarmouth on a Spit between the River Yare and the North Sea
OpenStreetMap, CC BY-SA 3.0

When Great Uncle Max chose to divide his musical time between London and Great Yarmouth, I’ll guess he was simply continuing the family tradition from the old country, having found a coastal place that reminded him just a little of his youthful summers on the Baltic Coast.

Of course there is a fair amount of supposition in this, but it is hard to imagine why Max would invent an answer to “where were you born” by falsely giving the name of a holiday town on the Baltic Coast.

Perhaps we can find some corroborating evidence on this. I note that Max, Leah and Sid had two boarders sharing their Back Church Lane home in 1901, Michael Freedland and Marks Freedland, both of whom also claimed to have been born in Nidy (Nida). So here is a shout out to possible descendants of the Freedland Brothers – has your family history handed down stories about where your family came from and how they came to England? Because it seems likely that those young men’s fortunes were, at least to some extent, conjoined with that of the Marcus family, from the old country and for a while in Blighty.

To close, my favourite picture of Max is the one below, from 1936, with young Sidney Pizan, dressed up and out for a stroll in Westcliff-on-Sea. It seems he really loved his coastal resorts, did Great Uncle Max.

Afterword: Extracts From E-Mail Conversations With Ron Geesin Casting Doubt On My Nida Theory But Not Necessarily On My Litvak Waterside Theory

Ron to Ian 4 April 2022:
“…On your latest research, hold on a minute! On the next page of the 1901 Census, there’s a ‘Caroline Davis’ ‘Needle Worker’. This gives the enumerator’s written forming of N and W, quite different to each other. So the Marcus entry has to be ‘Widy’…”
“…and there’s a village just outside Kaunas called Vijûkai. Could this half mumbled and ‘interpreted’ by an ill-informed enumerator come out as ‘Widy’? It’s not uncommon in Censuses for people to sometimes state their real original village and then later state the nearest town.”

Ian to Ron 5 April 2022
“…I don’t find the “Vijûkai” for “Wida” idea convincing, although it is just as convincing as my own wild theories! There would have been many long-since destroyed shtetls near Kaunas of which one named Wida or similar is quite possible…”

Ian to Ron 13 April 2022
“…Apropos your thoughts on Vijûkai, which feels to me a long way from anything that might be pronounced or written as “Widy”, there is a neighbourhood near that place which feels more “Widy” to me, named Vaišvydava
Both of those neighbourhoods are on the outskirts of Kaunas and the general area had a significant Jewish population back then, so it is plausible that we have found our Widy. Not on the lagoon coast but it is on the riverside coast! The general area is named Panemune…
There is a charming book about shtetl life in that neighbourhood, My First Eighty Years by Bernard Horwich. It’s been digitised and is available on the Wayback Machine – the first 50 pages or so is an utterly charming skim or read…”

See contemporary pictures of my latest Widy proposal – Vaisydava – here.

The Postmodern Deadline: ThreadMash, Performance Piece, The Tokenhouse, 15 March 2022

Unable to muster the time or energy to write an 800-900 word piece on the topic “The Deadline” in the genre “Fiction” for our first live ThreadMash in two years, I instead submitted the following 920 word letter of apology.

Dear Kay

I regret to inform you that I shall be unable to submit a ThreadMash piece on the theme “The Deadline” in the genre “fiction” by the due date.

Normally I’m good with deadlines. I’m nothing like the writer Douglas Adams, who was so lousy at deadlines, publishers knew not to bother setting them for him. Adams famously said:

“I love deadlines; I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by”.

Although I am relatively good at meeting deadlines, naturally I tend to leave written pieces until the last minute; who doesn’t?

At the turn of the century, having foolishly agreed to write a charity textbook, I managed to meet the deadline only by dint of arranging to have some wisdom teeth removed and thus being forced to stay home for two weeks of convalescence for which I set myself a 2,000 words per day target to get the last 20,000 words of the book done on time.

It was on that occasion I learnt, for the first but not the last time, that book publishers don’t expect the authors to meet deadlines, so I was met with five weeks of silence until the editor picked the thing up at their appointed time. The same thing happened when my co-author Michael and I submitted the first draft of “The Price of Fish” on deadline; five weeks of silence because the so-called deadline isn’t a true deadline.

You don’t want truth, do you, Kay?

You want fiction.

Our first book, "Clean Business Cuisine" was fiction. We wrote it without a publisher and therefore without a publisher’s deadline. Once we had a publisher and a production schedule, I arranged the first book signing with what seemed to be plenty of leeway for the production deadline. But of course we ended up with a race against time to get copies of the book to the book signing location, Halifax, ahead of the event. That “skin of teeth” deadline was met, just. I even turned up at the venue on time myself; but in my rush to change into my dinner suit that evening, I forgot to take a pen with me to the venue. That’s right, I turned up at my first ever book signing without a pen. As the venue was a youth theatre where the narrowest writing implement to hand was a permanent marker pen, this was an existential crisis for the book signing, until a customer showed up with a pen to lend me for the evening.

I could have fleshed out that deadline story, but it is a true story about fiction…not in itself fiction.

Actually I have a bit of a problem with deadline stories in fiction. They tend to follow a predictable pattern, whereby suspense is generated through the device of a deadline, often, especially in thrillers, through convoluted circumstances.

The Perils Of Pauline is a classic example of ludicrous deadline, or cliff-hanger thrillers. For bizarre reasons, villains in this type of story seem compelled to condemn their potential victims to a death that will scare them for several minutes before killing them, allowing time for the victim to extricate themselves from danger, or for a hero to arrive and rescue the victim. Bond villains are another example of fiends with this monstrous flaw. I find these fictions implausible and not to my taste.

I did consider writing a topical pastiche of the thriller deadline story, in which the villain tries to construct the cliff-hanger scenario, having tied the potential victim to a railway track, but the locomotive-driven demise is confounded by excuses from the track and train operators apologising for delays caused by Brexit, Covid and latterly Putin. Meanwhile the hero’s efforts to rescue the potential victim are similarly impaired by Brexit, Covid and Putin excuses from would-be suppliers of motor vehicles, horses and rope cutting equipment. The risk of the victim dying of neglect becomes an interesting additional angle to this otherwise simplistic, predictable storyline.

I should add, parenthetically, that The Perils Of Pauline never did have the heroine tied to a railway line; that specific scenario was used several times in the copycat series The Hazards Of Helen.

Joking apart, my dear Kay, this whole business of people being unable to set a sensible deadline and then meet it is no longer funny. It is inundating me with needless tasks and starting to get me down. The worst example of this Brexit, Covid, Putin (or BROVIN syndrome, as I call it) is the “temporary” pipe which has been dangling around our Notting Hill Gate home for more than two years, while the flat above mine awaits a not especially complex plumbing solution. An elephant gestates in fewer than two years. The entirety of our street, Clanricarde Gardens, including the shops adjoining each side of the main road, was built in the 1870s in fewer than four years. I feel like going onto the Bayswater Road and protesting about it, but a large bunch of other protesters have beaten me to it and taken root there.

No, the real truth, Kay, is that BROVIN syndrome has finally got to me. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am unable to generate 800-900 words between now and the deadline.

Sorry about that.

With love and very best wishes

Ian

PS You may complain in writing to the ombudsman, ICAT (The International Court for the Arbitration of ThreadMash – Justice R Candappa presiding). But don’t expect a response from ICAT before the deadline.

“Temporary” trailing pipe since December 2019

Clanricarde Gardens – whole street constructed 1869-1873

Local protests about other matters, more pressing than trailing pipes

The Evening Itself

We had a good time at The Tokenhouse – a venue that Rohan booked in quieter times; we suspect that they will seek larger groups henceforward.

It was wonderful to see many members of the gang in person again after so long. Unfortunately several were unable to attend – Kay’s last minute Covid indisposition reminded us why we hadn’t been together in 3D for so long.

Kay did join us via Zoom, however. Her story had a dystopian past quality to it that was only tangentially about deadlines…

…contrast with Jill’s dystopian future story about existential deadlines.

Several of the stories (Jan’s, Flo’s & Adrian’s in particular) managed to weave romance into the deadline scenario; in two cases ideas around internet dating and social media flirting were front & centre.

Rohan and David can explain for themselves what their stories were about, while Adrian probably couldn’t provide a logical reason why he ended up in a pantomime lion costume at the end of his performance piece.

Jan, Julie, Flo & Jill, keen to pose rather than look natural

David posing as his natural self, half capuchin monk, half capuchin monkey

Adrian, no longer donning his lion outfit (don’t ask)

Santaphobia, Sartorialism, Keele Connections And Several Crises At Christmas, 4 January 2022

Sanity Clause, Anyone? – Christmas Eve & Boxing Day

Janie and I are not exactly model celebrants of Christmas. In recent years we have made it our habit to volunteer, primarily for Crisis at Christmas, which is a wonderful charity.

Yet Janie does have a fondness for unusual Christmas decorations, and has long-regretted not photographing the “Christmas Gnomes Tea Party” we drove past on Popes Lane two or three years ago.

But we did stop and snap the above acrobatic (or possibly desperate) Santa on Boston Manor Road, setting aside our santaphobia and praising the owner of the house for his stunning fandangle.

As if that wasn’t excitement enough before Christmas, we also did our first Crisis shift of the year on Christmas Eve:

We are Ged & Daisy for our Crisis shifts. Daisy here was sporting Christmas (and for that matter Z/Yen corporate) colours.

Daisy, for reasons known only to her, tends to pronounce the word “crisis” as “crises”, as if one massive homelessness crisis at Christmas isn’t enough.

Daisy was tempting fate this season with her plurality, in my view. Indeed, we swiftly found ourselves embroiled in a second crisis. The Duchess of Castlebar (Daisy’s mum) had yet another nasty fall on Boxing Day, not even two hours after we left her. So that’s hospital again (the third time since the start of November) and all the palaver that entails.

All Isn’t Quiet On New Year’s Day

On New Year’s Day, we were back to Crisis. A smaller team that day with plenty to do; we ended up running the coffee stall / canteen, the clothes store and delivering food to rooms on that shift.

For those who might be blunt or snide enough to throw the “ah, but could he run a coffee/food stall?” question in my direction, the answer is, I believe, “yes” – as evidenced not only by our Crisis volunteering but also by the FoodCycle volunteering Daisy and I have been doing since the start of the pandemic.

A Multi-Shift FoodCycle Day In Marylebone, 21 April 2021

Running the clothes store was a different matter.

On Christmas Eve, there was masses of donated stock but it was difficult to find individual items of the requisite type and size for each guest, so some people were taking/writing down orders in the “clothes store”, others were fulfilling them from stock in the basement and then delivering the clothes orders to the rooms. Time consuming but basically a systematic sequence of tasks. Daisy and I worked on fulfilling and delivering clothes orders on Christmas Eve.

New Year’s Day was different. Stocks were running low, with mostly super-large and super-small sizes remaining available. Almost all of the stock had been moved upstairs to the clothes store.

After our session running the canteen, Daisy and I were allocated to the clothes store. That is when we met The Sartorialist; a guest with a particular interest…you might even describe it as an obsession…with the garb on offer.

Daisy tells me that I handled the situation with great patience, but I suspect that my face was betraying whatever my words and tone were belying – I’m not a naturally patient chap. Perhaps sensing my frustration, The Sartorialist kept apologising to me for his persistence, without ever tempering his resolve to see just one more garment, in case it turned out to be a size/colour/style/brand that suited him.

At one point he said to me:

You’re well dressed – why shouldn’t I be?

I pointed out to him my tracksuit bottoms and trainers, similar to those I had worn for tennis a few hours earlier (see below).

I was talking about your top. I don’t wear tracksuit bottoms and I would never, ever wear training shoes.

I thought about my choice of jumper for my Crisis shifts (see above). It must be more than 25 years old. Daisy and I bought it when visiting a provincial town; the weather had turned unseasonably cold on us and I wanted a cheap, comfortable, washable pullover to use as layering.

I also wondered what The Sartorialist might have made of my choice of top – in particular headgear, for tennis (see below).

At that juncture, I thought it best to hand the customer-facing side of the Crisis clothing emporium over to Daisy.

Consummate professional salesperson that she is…

…at least in the matter of selling…by which I mean giving away by dint of talking up…charitably-donated goods…

…Daisy successfully persuaded The Sartorialist to take three items of clothing and move on, enabling us to progress with other customers, who were forming an increasing long, yet surprisingly patient, queue.

4 January – A Charitable Keele Connection On Our “End Of Term” Shift

One of the good things about Facebook is the way it informs you about connections with other people who know your friends. On Holiday Monday I joined the relevant private Facebook Group for people who were doing Crisis volunteering shifts in our slot, to spot that one of the volunteers, Amber Bauer, is a friend of Sally Hyman, whom I know from “back in the day” at Keele.

Sally runs a wonderful charity, CRIBS International. It turns out that Amber knows Sally through that charity.

I wondered whether Amber would be on our 4 January shift. I didn’t spot anyone named Amber during our pre-shift briefing, but that “end of term” briefing was…very brief.

But soon after the briefing, one of my first customers when I was staffing the canteen/coffee stall again, had the name badge Amber, so we connected in person.

A little later, Daisy and I took over from Amber on outdoor duty…

…yes it was punishingly cold doing that duty once the temperature had dropped that evening…

…enabling Daisy to take pictures of a very chilly Amber handing over to a not-yet-but-soon-to-be-chilly me:

I look comparatively cold already and I haven’t started the duty yet. Mind you, Amber seemed awfully pleased to see us when we turned up to take over.

Amber and I both reckon that the above picture and story should make Sally Hyman smile – not least because it includes a soft plug for Sally’s wonderful international homelessness charity.

You Want To Know More About The Charities Mentioned In This Piece?…Of Course You Do…Clickable Links Below:

Crisis – Together we will end homelessness

FoodCycle – To make food poverty, loneliness and food waste a thing of the past for every community

CRIBS International – Care for Refugee Interim Baby Shelter

Drinks Reception In Marylebone Winter Garden Portman Square, Baker Street Quarter Partnership, In Aid Of FoodCycle, 2 December 2021

The Marylebone Winter Garden looked a picture, making it easy to photograph well.

We were thrilled when we learned that the Baker Street Quarter Partnership had selected FoodCycle Marylebone as its beneficiary charity for this season’s swathe of events.

Even more thrilled were we on receiving an invitation to join our benefactors for a drinks reception in Portman Square. Unfortunately, Janie couldn’t make the drinks, as she had arranged to do a Samaritans shift that very evening, but I joined several of our fellow FoodCycle-Marylebone-istas at the event; Kathy, Bill, Debs and her husband Adam.

An evening in Portman Square was a return to the scene of past “crimes” for me. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s I spent a great deal of time in Hesketh House (now known as 43-45 Portman Square):

Formerly known as Hesketh House – someone’s left the light on in what was temporarily my fourth floor room – I hope it wasn’t me, as if it was, it’s been on for 30+ years.

I was known to “hang with the crowd” from there for a while…

Paul McCartney, Wembley Arena, 23 January 1990

…and even umpired a mini tennis tournament for them in Portman Square one summer – 1990 I think. The tennis court had been repurposed as a food and crafts fair for the 2021 Winter Garden season.

Anyway…

…not only did I stroll down memory lane, I got a chance to get to know some of our FoodCycle folk a little better and also to meet the lovely people from Baker Street Quarter Partnership who were helping to raise money for our cause.

I casually splashed some cash – or rather wafted my contactless card – on raffle tickets but thought little of that until one of my numbers came up. A dinner for two in the highly regarded Kitchen At Holmes.

The irony that I had won a slap-up meal for two, given that Janie and I have been volunteering à deux for the very food charity that was benefitting from the raffle, was not wasted on me, Janie, nor on those at the party. Janie and I will report back on the gift meal once we have enjoyed it – probably in the new year.

A relatively recent image of the two of us enjoying big city hospitality: Tokyo October 2018

I did consider phoning the Samaritans there and then to let Janie know our good news, but on reflection and on discussion with those around me, we concluded that it wasn’t exactly a crisis and that the good news could wait until later.

A brass ensemble for the brass monkey weather

Meanwhile we were serenaded by a superb quintet of brass virtuosi, Ensemble of the Golden Bough, who came to the event by virtue of Wigmore Hall – Janie and I are normally avid Wigmore-Hall-istas but have not been to a concert there since just before lockdown:

Belibers & Telemaniacs & All Sorts, Concentus Musicus Wien, Wigmore Hall, 6 February 2020

The Ensemble of the Golden Bough mostly played classic seasonal fare to create a suitable atmosphere. The quintet comprises Christopher Barrett, Ryan Linham, Sam Kinrade, Phillippa Slack and Rory Cartmell, each of whom is an exceptional exponent of their instrument(s). The following vid is not the seasonal type of music they played on the evening, but it is lovely and will give you an idea of the virtuosity involved:

It was almost enough to convert me to brass-only arrangements of music, which is not usually my bag. It certainly worked for that setting and the playing was truly top notch…

…as was the whole event and the company. A very enjoyable evening indeed.

Not only that, but Antonia from Baker Street Quarter Partnership informs us that we’ll smile even more when we see the four-figure sum raised for FoodCycle.

Back To Life, Back To Reality… Almost, November 2021

Thanks to Giles Stogdon for the above photo.

At the beginning of November, life seemed to be almost getting back to normal. Lots of real tennis in convivial circumstances for a start,

Thursday 4 November 2021 – MCC Real Tennis Skills Night

For my sins, I have inherited, from John (“Johnny”) Whiting, the role of “match manager” for the popular skills nights at Lord’s. A few years ago, on hearing John and the professionals discussing the amount of organising the event needs on the night, I made the schoolboy error of offering to help next time. John saw the offer of help as an opportunity to step down; frankly, Johnny had done it for so many years, who can blame him?

Fortunately for me, Johnny had left comprehensive instructions and spreadsheets rendering the event almost fool-proof, as long as there are a couple of pros who know what they are doing to make the event run smoothly on the court, which, of course, it did.

My review of the event can be found on the MCC website through this link.

Alternatively, if anything ever goes awry with the MCC site link, a scrape of the report can be found here.

Naturally, skills night is as much an exercise in conviviality as it is an exercise in tennis court skills.

However, the assembled throng did have to listen to me waffling on about prizes and the like:

Thanks again to Giles Stogdon for this photo

A Week Of Tennis & Dining Out 6 to 12 November 2021

Quite a week. Janie and I went to Simon Jacobs place for dinner on 6th, where he cooked a delicious soup followed by chicken & mushroom pie. Lots of chat about music and that sort of thing. No photos on this occasion but there are photos from our previous visit, before lockdown 2.0:

A Prescient Visit To Simon Jacobs’s Place, 10 October 2020

I played a fair bit of tennis that week, not least a ridiculous 24 hours during which I played an hour of real tennis singles on the Tuesday evening, two hours of modern tennis on the Wednesday morning (part singles, part doubles), then a match, representing MCC against Middlesex University on the Wednesday, which ended up being another two-and-a-half hours of doubles. No wonder I served a couple of double-faults at the end of my second rubber on the Wednesday evening. Again, no photos from the match this time, but here’s a report with pictures and videos from the most recent equivalent home fixture – a couple of years ago:

A Real Nailbiter Of A Finish, MCC v MURTC, Lord’s, 13 November 2019

On Thursday 11th, I went to the office for the first time (other than for a team meeting) in more than 18 months. Then I met up with Johnboy – initially in “Ye [sic] Old Mitre” (it really should read “þe Old Mitre”, you know) and then on to Chettinad Restaurant (my choice), as I thought a high-quality Indian meal would be a good way for us to “get back on the bike” of dining out. The food was very good.

It had been a really long while since John and I had met up for a simple restaurant meal – our last few gatherings had either been at homes, the four of us or the four of us at homes. This Yaua t cha meal might have been the previous one:

An Evening With John White, Including Dinner At Yauatcha, 5 June 2019

Then on the Friday I was evicted from this year’s MCC singles tournament for feeble-handicappers in the Round of 16. I don’t think I’ll try tournament singles again. I love playing singles more than doubles on a friendly basis but doubles makes more sense at my level for matches and tournaments.

Tennis At All Sorts Of Levels, Performances Of Various Kinds & A Bit Of A Boost, 15 to 29 November 2021

On 15 November I spent a very jolly afternoon at The Queen’s Club watching real tennis played by real players; The British Open 2021.

I saw Neil Mackenzie take on Matthieu Sarlangue, then Zac Eadle challenge Nick Howell, then finally (and most excitingly, a five setter) Edmund Kay against Darren Long. Here is a link to the draw/results on the T&RA website. If by any chance that link doesn’t work, I have scraped the file to here.

I spent much of the afternoon & evening with my friend/adversary Graham Findlay with whom, by chance, I was due to battle with myself that very Thursday. I was thus able to reciprocate the coffee and cake Graham kindly treated me to at Queen’s with a light bite in The Lord’s Tavern after our battle on the Thursday, before I went home to perform my latest ThreadMash piece – click here or below.

Let Them Eat Cake & The Tennis Court Oath, ThreadZoomMash Performance Piece, 18 November 2021

Janie and I had an afternoon of adventure on the Friday, having our Covid vaccinations boosted (we don’t get out much these days – all such matters need noting).

Most people reported a sore arm and aches. We both got the aches but strangely my arm did not feel at all sore at the vaccination site and I was able to play lawners lefty-righty all weekend.

A quieter week followed. I continued to play some doubles in partnership with Andrew Hinds, in preparation for our R16 match – this we did Tuesday 16th and Monday 22 November.

Janie and I were due to see Lydia White…

Hitting The High Notes With Lydia White, 5 May 2020

… star in Little Women at The Park Theatre on the Thursday, but sadly our performance needed to be cancelled due to cast illness (not Lydia) that day, so we’ll miss the run now.

On Monday 29th, Andrew Hinds (depicted wooden-spoon-wielding, left, in the photo below) and I won a place in the quarter finals of the feeble-handicappers’ doubles tournament.

With thanks to Tony Friend for this photo From skills night

Due to competitor/court availability (or lack thereof) before the seasonal break, that means that we shall still be in the 2021/22 tournament into the New Year – the equivalent of getting to week two of a grand slam lawn tennis tournament – but in a very slightly less-elevated way.

The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown, Garrick Theatre, Followed By Drinks With The White Crew, 14 October 2021

It’s Showtime!

I have an idea for a musical. It is called The Last Five Decades. The musical opens at the end of the story.

Writer, Ivan Hershey, optimistically sings, “Technically Speaking, You Are Not Really A Shiksa, Goddess”, while actress, Leylah Wasp, laments, “Still Kvetching”.

The story goes back in time more than forty years, until a finale, in which we see Leylah’s dad, Jim, in his youth, mournfully singing “Stereotype” at a meeting for budding college journalists. Jim imagines that he looks like Terry Hall from The Specials, but actually, as he is sporting a Spurs scarf and Doc Martens, Jim inadvertently projects the look of a right wing yob. Unaware that five decades of friendship are about to be launched, young Ivan tries to disconcert Jim by cheerfully belting out “Children Of The Wind” from Rags, evoking the intrepid spirit of refugee diaspora people everywhere.

But what do I know of musicals? Apart from the occasional foray into writing silly lyrics for spoof musicals, which doesn’t count…

Casablanca The Musical by Magnolia Thunderpussy, Actor’s Workshop, 18 September 2001

…I have only (now) seen three live professional performances of musicals…

…and Lydia White has been in two of them. I went to Manchester to see Rags in 2019:

Rags The Musical, Hope Mill Theatre, 13 March 2019

In many ways, going to the Garrick Theatre to see The Last Five Years felt a bit like going to a familiar but occasionally-visited city like Manchester. Although London is of course my home City and under normal circumstances Janie & I see stuff regularly, this was our first trip “up west” for more than 18 months. It was the first time I’d been on the Tube for more than 18 months.

We did as we were told and got there early

Lockdown of course changed all our lives in a great many ways. One of those ways, for me, was that I started to take singing lessons from Lydia. My early music teacher, Ian Pittaway, says that her work with me has been utterly transformational and he means that in a good way. He even forgave her for blowing out my singing lesson last week, in order to fit in an additional rehearsal for The Last Five Years. Ian says I don’t need a note, Lydia.

Was Lydia good in this show? Of course she was. Superb. She has tremendous stage presence to add to her technical abilities acting and singing.

Her opposite number for the afternoon, Lenny Turner, a debutante in this production, was excellent too.

In truth, Janie and I are really not musicals people, so the show itself is not to our taste. But we can appreciate a solidly professional and excellent production when we see one, which this most certainly was.

Janie and I found ourselves sitting quite close to “Lydia’s contingent”, with John, Mandy & Bella a couple of rows behind us; Mandy’s sister Mary & her husband Alan immediately behind us. Their daughters next to us…

…I probably hadn’t seen Mary & Alan since John & Mandy’s wedding more than 30 years ago. Nevertheless, Mary apparently spotted me immediately on arrival in the auditorium and told Alan that she had spotted me. So now I know; lying low for 30 years and wearing an FFP2 mask is insufficient disguise if I want to hide from Mandy’s kin.

After the show, we all gathered outside the theatre beside the stage door. As well as the above crowd, Angela (from those good old days) was there, as were a great many other people we were meeting for the first time; one of Mandy’s friends from Saffron Walden, Lydia’s boyfriend Jack, his family, plus many of Lydia’s friends and colleagues.

Janie had a long-standing engagement with her Samaritans cohort that evening, so had pre-warned us that she wouldn’t be able to stay for drinks; she left us about half an hour after the show, at which point we were still waiting for Lydia to emerge through the stage door. I wonder whether we looked like a bunch of groupies? Who cares.

Soon enough, Lydia did emerge to enjoy a further rapturous greeting and we soon set off for Koha in St Martins Court.

The fortunes smiled on us. The weather was mild and dry. Koha seemed able to provide us with as much seating outside as we needed to imbibe and chat at length. A couple of hours simply flew by, before we all went our separate ways.

But the main purpose of the day had been to support Lydia’s performance in the Last Five Years. It really was a delight to see her performing so well and so thrilled at the end of the day with how well it had all gone.

Conviviality & Charity, Mostly In Real Life, 20 to 25 September 2021

UK society seems to be opening up, tentatively. Even the manically-busy Noddyland spider appears to be back in action at full pelt, having gone strangely dormant on us through the pandemic. Hence the evening and weekend slots seem to be filling up again.

20 September 2021

Monday evening, we had a very enjoyable, convivial dinner at Dominic and Pamela’s place. We hadn’t spent time with the pair of them since the Ireland test match a couple of years ago.

The Week That Ireland Came To Lord’s, 23 to 26 July 2019

Another couple, Sally & Barry, were there; bridge friends. Most of the conversation was about other matters; crime and punishment came into it a fair bit as both Pamela and Barry were criminal barristers in their time.

Dominic prepared a superb meal of tricolore salad, duck ragu with pappardelle…

Ivan Vighetto, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

…and a very tempting tart for afters.

It was a very enjoyable evening.

21 September 2021

Tuesday evening was the only virtual event of the week. The City Giving Day Quiz Night. Why anyone picks me for quiz teams is a bit of a mystery; I’m not good at retaining “quiz-type facts” and tend to sound uncertain about stuff I know about, while convincing about my wildest guesses. I also lose concentration easily during quizzes.

Photo-bombing my own screen shot – top row, centre

Anyway, it was for charity and the round depicted, the music round, was a perfect 10 for the Z/Yen team, which we had named FS Club 7; an ideal name for a six-person team, we felt.

In the end we were only three points off the top slot, so we felt good about ourselves without virtually-returning victorious.

It was about as much fun as on-line quizzing can be. This event is actually a convivial thing, when face-to-face, so here’s hoping that next year it will be in-person.

22 September 2021

A very exciting occasion as FoodCycle Marylebone opened its doors again, 18 months on, to welcome people for communal meals. Janie and I have been involved for most of the 18 months in-between, delivering food for most of the lockdown period and latterly helping with a cook & collect takeaway service these past few months.

FoodCycle’s Spiritual Home In Rossmore Road & Other Tales, 24 June 2020

The switch to community dining within Covid protocols must be challenging at all FoodCycle projects. At Marylebone, where uniquely we need to operate out of two sites, some of those challenges come to the fore. Yet somehow the cooking team always manage to conjure up superb meals…

…while returnees from the communal dining hosting team helped us to get through the evening without a glitch; there was much joy among the several dozen guests and the hosts alike. Let’s simply say that I was hosting “leader” only nominally that night. But I did fill in the forms, which apparently I do comparatively well, despite my allergy to form-filling.

Before the meal, Reverend Clare conducted a short, moving service of remembrance for those regulars who are no longer able to join in with the communal meals. Janie and I had got to know several of the people who have died or become incapacitated since the start of lockdown.

Reverend Donna took on the role of DJ during the meal, playing an assortment of gentle classics. But at one point I detected the unmistakable sensation of live music in the hall. One of the guests, a Russian gentleman, who had only recently started attending for takeaways, was playing the piano…

…masterfully…

…with exceptional virtuosity, in a St Petersburg style, if you know what I mean.

“Did you know he could play?” I asked the reverends. Both demurred. He simply asked if he could have a go and they thought, “why not?”

Not quite Sokolov (both the gentleman and the piano are a few sizes down from the grand depiction below) but that YouTube link might give you the gist and in any case is a charming listen:

There was tumultuous applause at the end of our guest’s set. I for one found the whole experience delightful and moving; it was the first time I had heard live music of performance quality since before lockdown. I do hope that gentleman plays for us again.

The whole evening was a great success. We’ve learnt a lot and hopefully we can do even better next week.

25 September 2021

Earlier in the week, out of the blue, I received a message from Frank Dillon saying that he would be in London this weekend and at a bit of a loose end on Saturday.

I hadn’t seen Frank since we went to Southport four years ago:

Southport Day Three: County Cricket En Famille Plus A Blast From My Keele Past, 11 June 2017

As luck would have it, Janie had arranged to have her hair done middle of the day and I too was available.

Thus Frank journeyed from Gray’s Inn to Noddyland for the afternoon, while his kin went to the Chelsea Flower Show.

The weather didn’t smile on us quite as much as I’d have liked, but we were able to take coffee and sit on the terrace for some time.

By the time I started to pull together a luncheon platter, word came from Janie that she was on her way back from the hairdresser’s, so we were all able to graze together, at which point it was only right and proper to try a glass or two of wine.

We didn’t quite finish putting the world to rights, but we had quite a good go at it. In any case, we’ll need something left to remedy for our next regathering, which hopefully will be reasonably soon.

It was a really pleasant way to end a convivial and charitable week.

Blondin On Blondin: Multiple Launches In Blondin Park, 7 September 2021

Ian: Is that Morris dancing, Vicky?

Vicky: Yes, we’ve been worrying about Morris for some time

Ever since Linda Massey (of Boston Manor Friends/Tennis Club fame) mentioned fundraising for a pavilion at Blondin Park (across the way), Janie and I became, tangentially and in a small way, involved in the project.

Firstly we both pledged a small offering towards the pavilion. Secondly, once I realised that Blondin Park was flat-ish and suitable for field sports, I looked into the possibility of putting one of our London Cricket Trust non-turf pitches in there – click here or see link below for another example.

AB & Me & The LCT, Deptford Park, 16 July 2019

In fact, we managed to get the Blondin Park NTP installed during the winter of 2019/2020, but then the pandemic put the kybosh on our plans for a launch there.

Meanwhile, Linda and the Blondin Consortium’s plans for a pavilion came to fruition towards the end of summer 2021, so it seemed to make sense to have a joint launch of the facilities.

The Mayor of Ealing, Munir Ahmed, came along to cut the pavilion ribbon.

Linda Massey briefs The Mayor on arrival

Prior to the ribbon cutting…a display of Morris dancing. Why Morris dancing, I hear you cry? Because, apparently, the Northfield Morris troupe was the first community group to book the new pavilion as its new home for its practice sessions and the like.

Had you asked me on the morning of this event whether I knew any Morris dancers. I’d have said “unequivocally no”. But unfortunately it seems that Morris dancers have infiltrated polite society in West London, so we recognised at least two members of the troupe as Boston Manor Tennis Club regulars.

The pavilion launch and even the Morris dancing is explained in this community link piece – click here. Or, if that link ever fails, click this scrape instead.

Meanwhile Carol, a Boston Manor regular but not of the Morris persuasion, helped the assembled throng to reach a state of Morris tolerance…or perhaps even wondrous oblivion, by dint of jugs brimming with Pimms.

Soft drinks were also available for youngsters and those with a good reason to avoid Pimms. In my case, I had driven to Blondin, following my own Byzantine instructions for navigating the parking restrictions and the experimental road closure at one end of the ideal access road for the park. I wrote chapter and verse – some would say an entire apocrypha – on the topic.

There was also a splendid spread of sandwiches and nibbles for the guests, which was quite a treat, although it was a very hot afternoon, so “plenty of liquids” seemed more important than “plenty of sandwiches”.

Meanwhile the youngsters from Ealing Fields High School were limbering up for some cricket.

Several youngsters enjoying the use of our non-turf pitch

The site of their school recently erected the following plaque to the most famous alum of the predecessor school on that site:

The Ealing Civic Society Green Plaque unveiled on 13 October 2020 at the entrance to Ealing Fields School, Little Ealing Lane, Ealing, London W5 4EJ to commemorate singer Dusty Springfield (1939-99). .As Mary O’Brien, she attended what formerly was St Anne’s Convent School on the site between 1951 and 1955. The future Dusty Springfield spent her teenage years growing up in Ealing before embarking upon a career which resulted in her being the only British female singer to have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Once I learnt that our youthful cricket neophytes were from that school, I considered adding some Dusty patter into my London Cricket Trust speech:

Dusty Springfield is actually my role model in the matter of batting. Whenever I take to the crease, I just don’t know what to do with myself, so I close my eyes and count to ten”…

…but then I thought better of it.

Not sure anyone was listening when I spoke anyway

So apparently I said words along the following lines:

I am thrilled to be part of the celebrations opening the Blondin Park Community Pavilion and non-turf cricket pitch. Every one of the dozens of non-turf pitches the LCT establishes in parks around London is special, enabling thousands of youngsters to experience the joys of playing cricket. But this Blondin facility, in my own community, has an extra special place in my heart. Many thanks to the Blondin Consortium, Ealing Council & The England & Wales Cricket Board for the collaboration that has made this wonderful facility happen.

The pavilion itself is indeed a rather wonderful prefabricated building, spacious and full of useful facilities.

There’s me having a chat with our friend Joan from the tennis courts

The wash room facilities, for example, reminded me a bit of Japan…

Japan Reflections: I Need To Write About Toilets In Japan, 7 November 2018

Below is a picture of Jean washing her hands – the sink works out that you are there, so squirts the requisite amount of soap, runs warm water on your hands for a while and then blow dries your hands.

The event was all over too soon. The participation cricket team from my beloved Middlesex County Cricket Club facilitated a rapid game of cricket for the youngsters.

The event was all over the media – Ealing Today.co.uk no less. (If anything ever happens to the Ealing Today.co.uk website, I have scraped the text of that piece to this link.

As always, seeing young folk having fun playing cricket using our facilities always makes me happy. But seeing the new facility being used in Blondin park, in my own community, gave me an an extra special surge of excitement and joy.

Then it was time for everyone except the London Cricket Trust folk to go home.

We held our Trustees meeting at the site, making ourselves the very first EVER meeting to be held in the new Blondin Pavilion.

Thanks to Linda Massey and Janelle for the above photograph.

After the meeting, I showed Ed Griffiths Boston Manor Park and gave him a lift back to a suitable station, despite the relentless teasing he had given me about my parking/driving instructions for the event. Still, I have been brought up to respond with kindness whenever possible, so Dumbo and I took Ed as close to the platform as possible for his journey home.

Meanwhile, the launch day in Blondin Park had been a great success, both for the Blondin Consortium and for the London Cricket Trust.

The Hundred Finals Day At Lord’s & “A Hundred Weeks Later” With John & Mandy In Noddyland, 21 & 22 August 2021

The Hundred Finals, Saturday 21 August 2021

Janie and I played tennis at 8:00, enabling us to get ready and set off in a leisurely style for the inaugural finals day of The Hundred tournament.

No difficulty finding suitable parking spaces ahead of the women’s final, both for Dumbo on a street nearby and for our backsides in the Warner Stand.

Ahead of taking our seats, we ran into Alfred & Sunita, tennis friends of ours from Boston Manor. They were invitees in the President’s Box, which made our Members and Friends privileges feel positively like slumming it.

Slumming it in The Warner Stand, with no Champagne Charlies behind us today

Janie in particular got snap-happy during the warm ups.

Are the cricketers below practicing for cricket or Morris dancing, I wonder, on reviewing the pictures:

Morris Dancing…Or Possibly They Can Boogie.

Throughout the tournament (this was my fourth visit to Lord’s to see The Hundred) I had relished the opportunity to help choose the walk-on music for various players, despite the fact that most of the choices were between three songs I had not heard before by three artistes I’d not heard of before. In truth, I think the “join in the fun…you choose” appy stuff might be aimed at a demographic other than mine.

But I was delighted that the first “choice of three” I was offered on finals day, as Fran Wilson’s walk-on music, included two songs and three artistes I recognised:

Yes Sir, I Can Boogie – GBX Feat. Baccara
By Your Side – Calvin Harris Feat. Tom Grennan
One Kiss – Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa

I voted for the third of those choices, but the consensus narrowly went for the first choice – a song from 1977 which I recall finding old-fashioned even at that time. I recall my mum liking the Baccara record. Mum would be in her hundredth year this year, were she still alive. Perhaps she would have embraced this aspect of The Hundred.

Once the game got underway, Janie and I competed to get pictures of the pyrotechnics that went off whenever a boundary was scored…

…or “the occasional central heating” as I called it. It was a slightly chilly Saturday afternoon, such that we quite enjoyed the bursts of warmth. On hot days such bursts can be unbearable.

The Women’s Final rather petered out, as a match, unfortunately. The women’s matches I had seen prior to the final had been close and exciting to watch.

Never mind. There was loads more entertainment lined up.

The men’s teams warmed up while the musical entertainment kept the crowd happy

Jax Jones was the live musical entertainment on finals day. Another artiste I had heard of – I saw him interviewed on one of the TV music channels a few years ago and was impressed by his diverse, global musical influences. Not to mention his dapper choices in headgear.

But until the day, I didn’t realise that Jax Jones was the artiste behind The Hundred’s theme tune, Feels, until he performed it:

The number that really got the crowd (including me and Janie) going was You Don’t Know Me, with its utterly infectious beat:

By this stage of proceedings I was feeling far too cool for school, so it came as no surprise to me that I recognised one of the choices for Chris Benjamin’s walk-on music; Incredible by M.Beat Feat. General Levy. Janie was suitably impressed. I was delighted that my choice was the chosen one.

Even more impressive was my timing to snap the pre match fireworks at the men’s match – we’d both managed to get to the cameras a little late for the women’s fireworks:

With all the music and pyrotechnics, you might be wondering whether there was any cricket involved. Yes there was. I should confirm that we did watch cricket that day.

Unfortunately, matters took a bit of a turn for the worse towards the end of the match. The absence of Champagne Charlies behind us meant that, instead, we had a Beer-swilling Bernard instead, who managed to kick over one of his beers, soaking Janie’s bag. Yes, she had taken a washable jobbie with her (based on previous experience) but “Bernard’s Beer-stream” succeeded in soaking the bag and seeping through to some of the contents in a mood-affecting manner.

Then my mood took a turn for the worse too, as the DJ, perhaps transfixed by the entertaining cricket match, or possibly on a toilet break, simply forgot to play Incredible when Chris Benjamin came out to bat. I should write to the Chief Executive of the MCC about this one. Relaxing the dress code – fair enough. But the DJ forgetting to play the chosen walk-on music is a breach of Lord’s etiquette and should be suitably sanctioned.

Here, to make up for the disappointment, is that Incredible track:

In truth, by the time Chris Benjamin was walking to the crease (without his walk-on music) it was becoming extremely unlikely that Birmingham might rise Phoenix-like from the hole they were in by that stage to pull off an incredible win. Here is a link to the scorecard.

Janie and I therefore took our leave of Lord’s a few minutes before the end of the match, to avoid the crowds.

We’d had a great afternoon and evening. The razzamatazz does feel like an update or reset to the short format; that should make it more appealing to the young and young at heart.

John & Mandy In Noddyland, Sunday 22 August 2021

In this crazy pandemic era, time flies by. Could it really be more than a hundred weeks since we last saw John & Mandy?

Dinner At Kitty Fisher’s With John And Mandy, 28 August 2019

No dinner out this time – just a blissfully long afternoon/early evening in Noddyland to celebrate the joint birthdays – a week early this time as it happens.

Janie did her humus and pita bread starter thing as garden nibbles ahead of the meal.

The weather had been teasing us (pretty much all summer in truth) but even on the day there was the occasional threat of showers, including one shower just before John & Mandy arrived. But the weather smiled on us for a couple of hours enabling us to sit in the garden, chat, drink and nibble.

The showers returned just as we were preparing to come inside anyway.

Janie’s signature baked Alaskan salmon dish was the main, followed by a boozy summer pudding.

It was really lovely to see John and Mandy again post-lockdown. We had lots to chat about and somehow Zooms and phone calls can’t quite do the same job, however much of a decent substitute for the real thing they might be.

It shouldn’t be another hundred weeks until the next time.

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Afterword: Extracts From E-Mail Conversations With Ron Geesin Casting Doubt On My Nida Theory But Not Necessarily On My Litvak Waterside Theory

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The Evening Itself

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Sanity Clause, Anyone? – Christmas Eve & Boxing Day

All Isn’t Quiet On New Year’s Day

4 January – A Charitable Keele Connection On Our “End Of Term” Shift

You Want To Know More About The Charities Mentioned In This Piece?…Of Course You Do…Clickable Links Below:

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Thursday 4 November 2021 – MCC Real Tennis Skills Night

A Week Of Tennis & Dining Out 6 to 12 November 2021

Tennis At All Sorts Of Levels, Performances Of Various Kinds & A Bit Of A Boost, 15 to 29 November 2021

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20 September 2021

21 September 2021

22 September 2021

25 September 2021

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The Hundred Finals, Saturday 21 August 2021

John & Mandy In Noddyland, Sunday 22 August 2021

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