Friends and Family Events – Page 40

Dreaming Of A White Thanksgiving, New York, 23 November 1989

I have described the background to my USA trip and my first few days in New York in an earlier piece – click here or below:

My First Visit To The USA Part One: New York, c19 to 22 November 1989

When I woke up on Thanksgiving morning, there was a thick coat of snow over New York. At the time, I had no idea how rare an event this was – I only found out 30 years later, while writing up this event, that 1989 was the first “proper” white Thanksgiving (i.e. more than just a flurry of snow) for over 50 years and that it hasn’t happened since.

A white Thanksgiving it was – reported excitedly in the New York Times – click here or below.

Even The Los Angeles Times reported the freak East Coast weather.

So I didn’t think, “freak weather”, I merely thought, “photo opportunity before I head off to Westchester County”. So I went for a long walk around Central Park and beyond. Lots of pictures, just a few are shown below to illustrate:

I had been warned that the East Coast can be chilly at that time of year, so I would have taken warm clothes, but I’m sure I didn’t anticipate snow so my walk for sure would have been shod in quite basic sneakers. But I suppose 5 inches of virgin snow on a quiet morning is not so dangerous.

On the matter of danger, I do recall that the Barst family were concerned about me taking the train from Grand Central Station up to Westchester County to join them for a traditional Thanksgiving family gathering. At that time, they considered Grand Central to be a dangerous place, populated by hoodlums, hustlers, halfway housers and the like. They warned me to walk with purpose and only ask directions of a uniformed offical.

Bravely, I stopped to take this picture near Grand Central Station

In truth, it felt little different from Notting Hill to me, but I suppose, back then, Notting Hill was also considered a bit edgy. The mean streets of Notting Hill…the mean streets of Manhatten…

Anyway, the journey was incident and travel problem free, despite the unseasonal weather…

…hard to imagine an absence of travel disruption in similar “overnight snow before a public holiday” circumstances in the UK.

When I got to Frank and Maurie’s place, I was welcomed into the warmth of a traditional family Thanksgiving.

Patriarch Norman (left) – with daughter “hostess with the mostess” Maurie (right)

Hal (left), Bob (centre) and Jen (right). The knees (front left) are unidentified.

Hal and Joanie, who lived near me in London for a while during my early time in Clanricarde

Family and cake taking centre stage at this point in the proceedings

I especially remember Norman’s fascination with my accent – he took me around to speak with everyone (which was a good way to meet the whole clan) and kept asking me to speak just so that people could hear my…

…incredible English accent. Did you hear that? Listen to that accent! Say that again, Ian…please say that again…

I also remember Norman’s fascination with Frank and Maurie’s house, because it was a 19th century dwelling.

Just think, Ian, your Queen Victoria was on the throne when this house was built…

…to which Joanie said, with feeling…

Oh, Daddy, that’s not going to impress Ian – he lives in a Victorian house too – everybody in London does…

…well, not quite everyone, Joanie. But you did…and so do I!

It was a wonderful experience for me to join a proper family Thanksgiving during my short stay in the USA that time. A happy accident of timing combined with a generious invitation.

It was a very warm and cosy family gathering, just as I had imagined family gatherings at Thanksgiving to be.

I remember telling Grandma Jenny (Norman’s cousin) all about it when I got home; she wanted me to spare her no small detail about that aspect of my trip. By that time she was pretty much blind, so I couldn’t really show her the photos, although I did talk her through them all, in meticulous detail.

Ever since, of course, I have been dreaming of a white Thanksgving, just like the one and only Thanksgiving I used to know…

…little knowing, until just now, that such weather in that part of the world at that time of year is so very, very rare indeed.

A truly memorable day.

There are more photos – about 40 in total including those extracted above – from Thanksgiving day 1989 – click here or the Flickr picture link below.

An Unexpected Evening At The Barbican During Which I Heard Sibelius, Met Rita Frank & Experienced Driving In Dense London Fog, 12 November 1989

My log records the following:

Amazing evening – although the programme seems to be lost. Jilly had left two tickets for me at short notice. I gave away the spare ticket at the door, to Rita Frank. I drove her back to Marge’s place in Hackney via everywhere due to mega fog – I had just passed my driving test & didn’t even know where the fog lights were. Rita busied herself dancing in her seat to my hippy tape. Friendship founded.

All I can recall of the concert is that the centrepiece was a Sibelius symphony. I think Sibelius 5 but it might be 2. I’m struggling to find more details, although more details must be available somewhere if I search hard enough…

…update!

I have subscribed to a newspaper clipping service and found this:

Concert seen 12 November 1989 12 Nov 1989, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

..so, as I said, some Sibelius plus…

Sibelius Symphony No 6;
Prokofiev Piano Concerto No 3;
Debussy La Mer.

London Symphony Orchestra with Paavo Berglund to provide authentic Finnish conducting. Barry Douglas tinkling the ivories. Thank you, Jilly!

Jilly was working at the Barbican at that time and would occasionally hand down tickets to me. Usually with a little more notice than on this occasion. I told Jilly that I’d struggle to find a date for a Sunday evening concert at such short notice but that I’d like to see that concert (whatever it was). Her view was that it was better to place one of the tickets than neither.

When I got to the Barbican and collected my tickets, there was a queue for returns; mostly couples and small groups. I announced that I had one spare ticket and was happy to give it away.

Two middle-aged women started bickering with each other, the first trying to refuse and the second telling the first that she really should take the ticket.

Seems that I’m your date…

…said the American woman, who I learnt was named Rita Frank and lived in New York. Her friend, Marge lived in Hackney and was (I think) an academic. Marge, being a generous soul, was happy that the expedition had at least ended up with her visitor/guest getting to see the concert. Marge went home.

Rita was charming company for an evening at the concert hall. She clearly was not very familiar with London, though, so I sensed she was a little daunted by the thought of travelling back to Hackney alone.

I had my car with me, having fairly recently (that summer) passed my driving test. I offered to take Rita back to Marge’s house, handing Rita my car copy of the L0ndon A-Z map book (remember those? No sensible Londoner drove without one.)

As we emerged from the Barbican Centre, I saw that a heavy fog had descended. Really heavy fog.

“Oh, London Fog”, said Rita, “I’ve heard all about these…”

Of course, I’d heard about them too, but by 1989 they were extremely rare, such that I don’t recall ever having seen quite so much fog in London before…or since.

Fom: The Illustrated London News, volume 10, Jan. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY

“Oh wow”, said Rita, grabbing one of my cassettes from a pile, “The Happy Tape…that sounds great. Can we listen to The Happy Tape?”

“Actually, it’s called The Hippy Tape”, I said.

“Even better”, said Rita.

The Hippy Tape was a superb mix tape – or in the modern parlance and in its current incarnation – is a superb playlist. It comprises these beauties:

Turn Turn Turn, The Byrds
Bluebird, Buffalo Springfield
Nashville Cats, Lovin’ Spoonful
Rock’n’Roll Woman, Buffalo Springfield
Purple Haze, Jimi Hendrix Experience
Let Us In, Speedy Keen
Ballad of Easy Rider, The Byrds
Keep On Truckin’, Donovan
White Room, Cream
For What It’s Worth, Buffalo Springfield
I Feel Free, Cream
May You Never, John Martyn
Somebody To Love, Grace Slick
Meet Me On the Corner, Lindisfarne
Moonshadow, Cat Stevens
Alabama, Neil Young
The Needle and the Damage Done, Neil Young
White Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane
Magical Connection, John B Sebastian
The First Cut is the Deepest, P P Arnold
Crazy Love, Van Morrison

I most certainly hadn’t driven in fog before. I knew that there was such a thing as fog lights, but I had no idea what they were or how to operate them on my spanking new, first ever, car. (A red Renault 19, seeing as you asked).

My inadequacies in the fog lights department were exceeded by Rita’s inadequacies in the map reading department…

…in any case Rita seemed more interested in grooving to The Hippy Tape, which is great driving music in conditions where you can see and know where you are going…

…but not so great when you are trying to navigate neighbourhoods you don’t know as a recently qualified driver in dense fog.

My “sense of direction inadequacies” are a matter of legend. The sat nav could have been invented just for me, but in 1989, in the absence of knowing where you are going and in the absence of a helpful map reader and in the presence of dense fog…

…we simply drove around and around the mean streets of the East End for ages, until a mixture of borderline adequacy and luck got us to Marge’s house in one piece. A near miracle, frankly.

Marge turned out to be charming company too. Also a fairly practical sort (compared with me and Rita), who was able to fortify me with coffee and give me some sensible, simple directions to get back to somewhere I vaguely knew and from whence I could take a straight road in the direction of West London.

Meanwhile, it transpired that Rita was not just a New Yorker, but lived on the Upper West Side, very close to the apartment I was, coincidentally, being lent for a week, just over a week hence. Rita was most insistent that I get in touch when I got to New York. Her daughter, Mara, would be off college that week (Thanksgiving week) and would be delighted to act as my informal guide to New York.

At the time, I thought Rita was simply being super polite and that I would probably just “touch base” with her when I got to New York…

…besides, I imagined that 20-year-old Mara might have other ideas about the joys (or otherwise) of showing a random Londoner around New York…

…but in fact Mara and I became very good friends, not only while I was in New York for a few days…

My First Visit To The USA Part One: New York, c19 to 22 November 1989

…but subsequently when she came over to London to study for a while, the following year. I shall write up those later episodes presently.

Little did Jilly know that she was kicking off such a wonderful sequence of events when she offered me those Barbican tickets at short notice!

Thanks, Jilly.

John & Mandy & B For Dinner, 4 February 1989

I think my hieroglyphic for 4 February reads:

John & Mandy meal +B

…which I take to mean that John and Mandy and Bobbie came over to Clanricarde Gardens and I cooked them dinner.

I suspect that this was John & Mandy’s first visit there, so perhaps one or both of them remember the occasion better than i do.

John has so far signally failed to respond to my request for him to remember what he and I did a few weeks earlier:

Dinner With John White, 11 January 1989

…despite the fact that I can’t remember and cannot read my own handwriting. Infuriating.

My guess is that on 4 February I probably cooked something East Asian, although it might have been Southern Asian cuisine for that crowd.

Thoughts most welcome.

Reduced To Tears By My First Consultancy Assignment, 27 January 1989

No-one said it was going to be easy, switching from freshly qualified Chartered Accountant to hot shot management consultant as soon as I qualified.

But there was one low point towards the end of my first consultancy assignment for Binder Hamlyn, trying to resolve a seemingly irreconcilable problem for Save The Children Fund (SCF), thus named back then, when I spread all of my hand-written notes and attempted spaghetti-looking work flow and data flow diagrams all over the living room of my little then-rented flat in Clanricarde Gardens…

…and burst into tears.

Quite a lengthy burst if I remember correctly. Four minutes, possibly, which you might choose to time by listening to the following while reading on:

Why hadn’t I listened to the recruitment agent who said that I needed a lot more work experience before I’d be ready for management consultancy?

Why didn’t I walk out of the job on day one, when I learnt that I had been recruited as part of a turf war and that the person who was now to be my boss, Michael Mainelli, had been angered by other partners recruiting me while Michael was away on a short break?

And of all the tough “sink or swim” assignments Michael might have allocated me to at the very start of this seemingly-soon-to-be-foreshortened career, why did it have to be something my heart really was in – a project that might, if successful, substantially help SCF, one of the most important charities in the world?

Of course, you realise, the story has a happy enough ending. Michael and I are still working together thirty years later (as I write in January 2019) – for most of that time in the business we founded together in 1994: Z/ Yen:

Þe Chronique Of Primordyall Z/Yen: Þe First Part – Sumer Is Icomen In, Spring 1994

I also met Ian Theodoreson, then a young, up-and-coming Finance Director at SCF. Ian continued to be a client on and off throughout the decades and we have remained in touch even since he gave up on major charity roles – e.g. this get together last year.

Two Sweltering Days At Lord’s, The First With Ian Theodoreson, The Second With Rohan Candappa – Part One: With Ian T, 23 July 2018

Yes, somehow the project did turn out to be a success. After the tears, I realised that I needed to focus the report on the evidence-based conclusions I had reached and the single bright idea I had come up with in the several weeks I had spent with SCF.

Little did I know back then that:

having even one bright idea during a 20 day assignment is a significant success if that idea is helpful/valuable enough and finds enough favour to be implemented;
the seemingly irreconcilable problem I encountered at SCF was an example of a perennial problem in all organisations that have potentially complex relationships with their customers, members or donors. If you can even partially solve or make progress despite that “natural fault line”, you’ve done well;
this single assignment would prove to be career-defining for me in so many ways. In part because it cemented my place at Binder Hamlyn working with Michael as well as other partners. In part because I still spend much of my working time with charities and membership organisations (albeit looking at wider issues). In part because many of the things I learnt on that challenging assignment stood me in good stead for later challenges in the subsequent decades.

Ogblog is primarily a “life” retroblog, not a “work” one, so this piece is a rarity – perhaps even a one-off – being more work than life. But this period was such a major change for me, not least in shifting my work-life balance substantially towards work for several decades, that I feel bound to write it up. I also spotted some intriguing notes on the diary pages for those first few weeks of January 1989.

Compared with late 1988, this is almost all work, not much life.

That meeting with Ian Theodoreson on 10 January will have been my first formal meeting with Ian and possibly even the first time I met him at all, although we might have had a “canteen chat” in Mary Datchelor House (the SCF offices back then) before we met formally. I was making a point of being visible in the canteen for informal chats throughout the project; a technique I had leaned from my Student Union sabbatical experience just a few years earlier. I also note that I had spelt Ian’s surname incorrectly back in 1989, a mistake I was to repeat (differently) on the acknowledgements page of the hard cover edition of Price of Fish. Sorry, again, Ian.

Again, lots of work, not all that much life there. A second meeting with Ian, now mis-spelling his name in the same way as The Price of Fish error – at least some sort of consistency set in. Hannah and Peter on the Thursday evening are my neighbours from downstairs. Peter is still downstairs – Hannah (Peter’s mum) returned to Germany some years ago and is spending her dotage there. I cannot remember the evening of 22 January 1989 with Caroline – I’ll guess that I cooked Caroline dinner at Clanricarde given the time and lack of other information in the diary. Caroline has reciprocated – most recently at the time of writing a week or so ago!

The amusing entry on this page is the morning of 25 January. Someone suggested that I visit Barnardo’s by way of comparison with SCF. I’m not sure who provided the above assistance for my journey, but it reads:

Barkingside St. [Station] Church – beside it c60s US “Prison”

Anyone who has visited the Barnardo’s campus would recognise that “1960s US Prison” description and it should make them smile. It would be ironic if it had been Ian Theodoreson who provided that helpful description for my journey, as he subsequently spent many years as Director of Corporate Services there and I did several assignments at that Barnardo’s campus, in the late 1990s and early years of this century.

Please also note “G Jenny” in small writing for 26th evening and then again on the Saturday afternoon. I know that I deferred my visit to Grandma Jenny 26th because I had a report deadline looming…

…in fact the “evening of tears” might have been 26th not 27th…

…but I also know that the report deadline was really for the Monday morning, when I needed to go into the office with the report ready for review. So I also remember postponing Grandma Jenny again on the Saturday, while dinner with Jilly I think went ahead after I finished my draft report on the Saturday.

I put Grandma Jenny back into the book for the following Tuesday and I’m sure I will have gone that evening. She forgave me for the multiple rescheduling I’m sure, especially when she learnt that I was doing work for a charity in which she believed strongly. I also remember her imparting the following worldly advice to me several times during that era:

all work and no joy makes Jack a dull boy.

Well of course there was joy as well as work during those “hard yards” weeks and months at the start of my consultancy career. But I don’t suppose there was much joy inside my tears on that evening, when I thought it was all going horribly wrong.

Maybe I even cried for the six-and-a-half minutes it takes to listen to this Dowland-ish Stevie Wonder song.

Smelling A Rat by Mike Leigh, Hampstead Theatre, Then Jilly’s Party, 14 January 1989

This was at the old Hampstead Theatre – the portacabin-like place quite near the new Hampstead (i.e. also Swiss Cottage). The place had a proud tradition by 1989, not least in the matter of Mike Leigh plays.

What a fine cast – as always with Mike Leigh who seems to be a magnet for talent – including Timothy Spall, Saskia Reeves and Brid Brennan.

I do remember really liking this play/production. It was, in some ways, the sort of cheesy farce I tend not to like. But being Mike Leigh, it was sort-of an antidote to such farces, much as Noises Off by Michael Frayn is sort-of farce, sort-of antidote.

Here is the Theatricalia link for this play/production.

Dramaonlinelibrary.com has a synopsis of the play – click here.

Below is Kate Kellaway’s Observer review:

Kellaway on Smelling Sun, Dec 11, 1988 – 41 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Below is Michael Billington’s Guardian Review:

Billington on Smelling Tue, Dec 13, 1988 – 35 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

I went to see this one with Bobbie – I wonder whether or not she remembers much about it…

…or whether Bobbie remembers much about Jilly’s party at the latter’s Nether Street residence?

I think it was at this particular Jilly party that I had a long conversation with one of Jilly’s scientist friends about nuclear fusion technologies, which we reprised some 20-25 years later at a subsequent Jilly gathering.

A full and enjoyable evening.

The Last Week Of December 1988

A person with a watch knows the time. A person with two watches can never sure what the time is.

But the “two diaries” bit seems to work out OK in this instance, with the old diary showing my Christmas activities and the new one showing that I started my “work during Twixtmas” tradition long ago.

25 December 1988: Ma Pa and G Jenny for tea, Benjamins for dinner. Stayed Ma and Pas.
Thinking about the logistics of all this – I think mum and dad must have picked up Grandma Jenny in Surbiton, brought her to my flat for tea (possibly the first time they saw Clanricarde Gardens and in Grandma Jenny’s case quite possibly the only time). At Doreen and Stanley Benjamin’s in Putney we were possibly joined by Jane and Lisa and one or both of their respective beau’s/future husbands if they were around at that time. Also Doreen’s mum, Jessie Jackson, would have been there if she was still with us in 1988.

26 December 1988: Lunch at Ma and Pas returned home early evening

No record in either diary of what I did on the bank holiday Tuesday nor the Wednesday. Perhaps I was so knackered by the activities of the preceding few weeks that i simply took the opportunity to work soft and play soft.

The diary marking SCF for 29 and 30 December shows that I went to Save The Children Fund in Camberwell those two days.

Ten Days Spent, Primarily, Eating And Drinking, 15 to 24 December 1988

If you simply go by my diary notes, I spent the ten days in the run up to Christmas eating and drinking that year. What’s changed/who knew?

I’m going to be a bit light on details with several of these:

Thursday 15 December: Went over to Bobbies for dinner
I’ll guess that there were other people involved, but the diaries are silent on the matter, beyond the above information

Friday 16 December: Went to Ma and Pa for dinner
One thing I do remember about this visit was me gently but firmly letting mum know that, now that I’d moved to Notting Hill, I wasn’t suddenly going to be making Friday evening visits for family dinner a regular thing.

Saturday 17 December: Driving lesson. Annalisa came over for meal in evening
That was my second driving lesson in Notting Hill (I’d had one the previous Saturday). I think that meal I cooked for Annalisa that evening might well have been the first time I cooked for someone other than myself at Clanricarde Gardens. No idea what I cooked for her. There are some Thai recipes on my jotter but I can see, from the context of the other notes, that those were jotted after Christmas, probably after I discovered Tawana.

Monday 19 December: Driving lesson in evening.
My instructor in Notting Hill Gate was a gentle fellow. I remember his girlfriend (or wife) was an orchestra musician from East Germany and he spent much of our chatting time railing against the Honecker regime, little knowing how close we were to its demise.

Tuesday 20 December: Bobbie came over for meal in evening
This might well have been the first time I cooked for Bobbie at Clanricarde. This will have been a meatier affair than cooking for Annalisa and/but probably a simpler meal being an after work job rather than a weekend job.

Wednesday 21 December: Radius lunch in afternoon. BHMC [Binder Hamlyn Management Consultants] & drinks after work
I cannot remember exactly who Radius were, but I am guessing that they were a software supplier. That week, and the week before, I had switched away from Save The Children Fund (who wanted me to return to do most of my assignment in the new year, after their massive Christmas Appeal surge was over), so I joined colleague/mentor Lars Schiphorst at Holland & Holland. My guess is that I was brought in at that place to look at the financial/accounting systems aspects of a project long since forgotten by all involved.

Thinking about Lars, who, despite having to tolerate teaming with me on that assignment and others, went on to be a good friend for several years at Binders before he emigrated to Australia…I wondered if it would be possible to trace Lars 30 years later.

Yes. Thank you, Mr Google.

Here he is at the Australian Institute For Performance Studies in December 2018 – click here…

…or click here, where I have scraped the relevant page at the time, if you get no joy on the AIPS site above.

Lars Schiphorst – ludicrously still recognisable/barely changed all these years later.

Friday 23 December: Pub lunch with BHMC mob – little work after
The thing I remember most about that lunch was chatting with Geoffrey Rutland, RIP, who was especially friendly, welcoming and helpful with advice. He also turned out, strangely, like myself, to have been a former scholarship boy at Alleyn’s – although in his case a few years earlier.

Actually I remember everyone at Binders being friendly and welcoming that December – I felt quite at home in that firm quite rapidly, despite the fact that I knew I had been recruited as canon fodder in a turf war between a handful of partners.

Orpheus Descending by Tennessee Williams, Theatre Royal Haymarket, With Jilly, Followed By Annalisa’s Party, 10 December 1988

Obviously I was better from my 48 hours of food poisoning by the Saturday. I’m pretty sure I went in to work on the Friday and then a full weekend of activities.

Now I have had written complaints from Jilly already about my handwriting, so the above page is only for artistic effect. Here is the entry for the Saturday:

Saturday 10 December: Driving lesson & Orpheus Descending With Jilly & Annalisa Party

There – that wasn’t so challenging, now, was it?

I remember really liking this play and production. What a fabulous cast.

The Theatricalia website lists the production thus.

Note that we saw this production three days before the stated first performance, so Jilly and I must have gone to see a preview.

Below is Michael Billington’s Guardian review:

Billington on Orpheus Thu, Dec 15, 1988 – 28 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Below is Kate Kellaway’s Observer review

Kate Kellaway on Orpheus Sun, Dec 18, 1988 – 40 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

They made a film based on that Peter Hall production with some (but not all) of the cast we saw in it. Here is the trailer for that movie – far more melodramatic looking than the stage production I remember, but still it should give you some idea:

For that particular evening, I’m sure that the original idea was that Bobbie would join me to see this play/production. But when she had to pull out for some reason, it made a great deal of sense for Jilly to act as sub, especially as we were both invited to Annalisa’s party and were given leave to be fashionably late arrivals.

In truth, I cannot remember specific details of this particular party at Annalisa’s place in Hinde Street, but her parties were always popular, always lavish in hospitality and always late nighters. At that time, just a couple of years after Annalisa had finished at Keele, I suspect it was a very Keeley crowd that night.

As the diary says, on the Sunday, I:

…went to G Jenny with Ma & Pa…

…the next day, quite probably a little tiredly and sore-headedly. But Grandma Jenny no doubt wanted to know all about my new flat and my new job, so I’ll guess that I was centre of attention that Sunday afternoon.

Keep On Running: What Should Have Been My First Full Working Week At Binders, 5 to 9 December 1988

Here’s the first diary page from that week:

For those with limited ability to read clear, plain handwriting:

Monday 5 December: Started at SCF [Save The Children Fund] today.
Went to HCJA [High Court Journalists Association] dinner with B [Bobbie] in evening

I recall that HCJA dinner being rather good. I think we heard Joshua Rozenberg speak on that occasion.

M&P [Ma & Pa] return
Went to Mum & Dad for dinner (Italian)

There is a notebook page that is somewhat of a confession, or perhaps even incriminating evidence about that evening:

Well, I’m pretty sure that mother would have WANTED to be relieved of some tea towels rather than have me do without. I’m 99% sure mum voluntarily gave me the towels and that she declined to have me replace them.

The Italian meal will have been at Il Carretto in Streatham Hill – the only reference to which I can find on line is here:

…scraped to here just in case that reference dies.

Anyway, let’s not cast blame around here, but I did eat mussels that evening (perhaps a mistake) and I was tripping out on tiredness after several weeks of relentlessly pushing myself.

Wednesday 7 December: Laid up with chronic food poisoning
Thursday 8 December: Stayed off work again today

Thus, the bloke who had only previously taken time off work sick once, when he was grounded for letting flu turn to bronchitis, was now off sick in his first full week of a new job.

Ouch.

I think I soldiered in on the Friday.

My First Weekend At Clanricarde: Encountering Van Morrison, Single Spies by Alan Bennett, National Theatre, With Bobbie & Bridge At Pam & Michael’s Place, 3 & 4 December 1988

Saturday 3 December: Much sorting to do re flat – went to see Single Spies in eve – B came back to mine

My appointments diary informs me that my Zanussi washing machine was delivered to the flat that morning. I remember going for my first local shopping expedition after the machine arrived.

I am fairly sure that it was on that very first Saturday’s shopping spree that I found myself face-to-face with Van Morrison on the traffic island which divides the north from the south side of the Bayswater Road. We exchanged glances. I nodded, in as much of a “cool, nodding acquaintance” manner as I could muster.

I remember thinking that the Van encounter proved that I had really arrived in a hip, happening place – I was going to be rubbing shoulders with Van Morrison and people of that sort all the time from now on. Well, to some extent I suppose I have got to meet quite a lot of such media folk in the neighbourhood since, but that traffic island encounter with Van the Man was, sadly, a one-off. “No Van is an island”, I suppose.

Single Spies is actually two Alan Bennett plays: An Englishman Abroad and A Question Of Attribution. Both are about the Cambridge Spy Ring. The first of the two plays had been knocking around for a few years before this production – it is primarily about actress Coral Browne’s encounters with Guy Burgess. The second play was about Anthony Blunt’s role as art advisor to the Queen.

Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry.

According to the National Theatre’s historical notes, A Question of Attribution contained:

the first representation on the British stage of a living monarch, in a scene in which Sir Anthony Blunt has a discussion with ‘HMQ’.

Prunella Scales and Simon Callow played the leads in both plays. I think this was the first time I saw Prunella Scales on stage, although she had seen me ponce about in tights some 10 years earlier:

Twelfth Night, Alleyn’s School, 12, 14, 15 & 16 December 1978

I thought the production (Single Spies, I mean, not Twelfth Night) was very good and said so in my notes. I’m pretty sure Bobbie liked the production too. I think we might have eaten at the National that evening – I can’t believe that I was geared up to cook yet at Clanricarde.

Below is Michael Billington’s Guardian review:

Billington on Single Spies Sat, Dec 3, 1988 – 21 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Below is Michael Ratcliffe’s Observer review:

Ratcliffe on Spies Sun, Dec 4, 1988 – 44 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Sunday 4 December: Went to Pam & Michael’s in eve for dinner and bridge

I wonder who made the fourth for bridge that evening? It was before my irregular social group had emerged, so it wouldn’t have been Andrea on that occasion. I’ll guess it was a friend of Pam & Michael’s – perhaps one of the Setty/Gareh family or possibly it was Ralph Glasser. The diary is silent on such details – never mind.

I’ll have walked there and back, learning that Clanricarde Gardens to Pam & Michael’s place only takes around 15 minutes on foot. Cool.

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