Michael is doing some scientific stuff as part of his Mayoral year, including a piece of work with the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) proving Einstein’s theory of time dilation by dint of measuring time at the top of the City of London’s tallest building (Horizon 22) and the NPL in Teddington.
Michael explained it in his inimitable style
I’ll let the propeller-headed NPL scientists explain it – click here.
The event on the evening of 15 March 2024 was an excuse for a drinks party to show off this experiment and more.
Janie came too and took loads of pictures.
Having dissed my Jackson Pollock tie at the Gresham do on the Monday, I wonder whether Bobbie would have approved of my Jackson Pollock shirt?The weighty blob experiment confounds everyone, apparently.Janie really liked the views.Several Z/Yenistas and their friends/partners
It was a jolly evening. The time flew by, which is surely what Einstein would have predicted.
The Christmas Eve shift was the busiest, as volunteer numbers were down that day for some reason. We like being busy and don’t like the sense that we are somewhat surplus even for part of our eight hour shift, so that one, for us, was the highlight.
Most of the guests seemed delighted with the meal we served them, but one guest was convinced that his food was cold, even though he refused to try it to confirm his hypothesis. His sour life was rendered yet more sour by dint of the cold plate of food, he told me. When i replaced it with another plate from the same hot tray serve din the same way, he tucked in.
Boxing Day, which the previous year had been quite busy, was a sedate affair with plenty of people around to do the requisite tasks. We again (as in 2022) had mixed reviews for the “can you run a coffee stall?” test, with some of the team leaders praising our “barristabilities”, while other attendees challenged that perception.
For reasons never explained, some of the team leaders brought in cardboard cut-outs of celebrities (I think to judge the talent show). Daisy and I failed epically to identify the celebs.
30 December was a different vibe with the Week Two team being mostly different people – at least the leadership team is different from Week One. Mostly people we had met in Week Two the year before.
We got to staff a health screening registration desk for a while, which was a bit different. We also got to hone our coffee stall skills under new management, which seemed to go very well despite our mixed reviews passim.
One encouraging sign, for us, is that very few of the 2023 guests were returnees from 2022. Word is that the work done over Christmas is getting a good proportion of the guests into a more positive loop, enabling many to get away from homelessness after their stay. That’s a large part of what our work is about and that thought makes it hugely rewarding.
So, with Crisis done for the 2023 Christmas, that’s us back to FoodCycle in early 2024:
Rumour has it that we are to be FoodCycle “poster-children” in February. Watch this space.
Oh, and if you were wondering why Daisy has two badges and I only have one…one of us forgot to bring their badge on the third day. Who knows if we’ll be invited back again in such circumstances.
…this year’s Crisis at Christmas experience was an unmasked affair.
The “needs must” experiment of using hotels rather than colleges for the residential centres had proved so successful in 2021, Crisis decided to repeat that model in 2022.
Thus Ged and Daisy returned to the “secret location near Hyde Park” where we did our volunteering last year.
Rudolf spotted near that secret location near Hyde Park
A couple of days before our first shift, Daisy was excited to see our actual “secret location” on Breakfast TV:
ICYMI Charly and Matt talked to BBC Breakfast yesterday about why #CrisisAtChristmas is important for so many people and why our support is needed more than ever this year. pic.twitter.com/B63AgWiHrh
As in the past, we met some really interesting people over this period while doing our Crisis shifts – both guests and other volunteers.
Interesting characters, neither guests nor volunteers, seen near our location
This time, probably because we were returning to the same centre, we encountered several volunteers and team leaders that we had got to know the previous year, which was pleasing. Even more satisfying was the fact that we saw hardly any of the same faces among the guests, which hopefully helps to confirm the evidence that the majority of guests last year were helped back onto their feet.
Feeling Old – Feeling Useful!
When you get to our age, stuff happens that makes you realise how old you are. For example, the realisation that England cricket’s latest wunderkind, Rehan Ahmed, is younger than my cricket trousers, as reported recently on the King Cricket website:
But when volunteering at Crisis, sometimes our age comes in handy – especially as Daisy and I are as fit and able as most of the youngster volunteers.
On our first shift, Christmas Eve, a late arrival had possibly missed his slot and was at risk of being turned away. Our shift leader asked me and Daisy to look after him and keep him occupied while “Crisis central” tried to resolve the problem and find him a room.
An interesting character, we asked him a bit about his background. He told us he was born and raised in South-East London. Almost the same vintage as me. When I asked him where he went to school, he said, “oh, my school’s not there any more. I was a Billy Biro…”
…”oh yes, I know”, I said, “William Penn. I went to school around there too”.
We went on to discuss the relative merits of The Specials and UB40…the time flew by. He also took the opportunity to wipe the floor with me at chess. Twice. Bernard Rothbart would have been stunned – not so much at my rusty rubbish – but at how good this fella clearly was. Mr Rothbart would have approved of the matching up I did on subsequent shifts to help this guest and others who could play to get some good chess match-ups.
It’s not all serving food, chess and chewing the fat with guests
That “Billy Biro” was one of several really interesting characters we met this year. From some, we learnt how they had fallen on hard, crisis-ridden times. Some chose not to discuss such matters and left us wondering. In all cases, we just hoped that our small contribution would help them back on their feet.
Utilising Our Food Charity Skills
Daisy and I did dinner service a couple of times, utilising our FoodCycle skills, which we have been deploying on communal meals for the last 15 months, to good effect.
I particularly enjoyed getting the opportunity to do the washing up (yes really!) in a commercial hotel kitchen, never having had the opportunity to use machines and equipment on that scale before.
Dreaming of washing up
Some of the guests are overwhelmed by the experience of being in a hotel and being looked after by a team of kindly volunteers. One guest almost refused to let me take him to his table and serve him his food, because he felt that “wasn’t right”.
Some find it quite difficult to make a decision along the lines of “vegetarian or non-vegetarian pasta”, one guest seeming almost paralysed by indecision until I suggested that he might like a bit of both. “No thanks, I’ll have the meat please”.
It can be quite a leveller, though. When we were on the coffee stall, one particularly demanding guest came to me for a coffee three times during the 90 minutes or so we were on that duty and complained each time. The first time he complained about the coffee, the second time about the sugar and the third time about the angle from which I poured the milk (left-handed, from a full, large flagon, as I politely and smilingly pointed out). Another guest, when I asked him to repeat his order to be sure to make the coffee to his specification, told me off for not having listened properly the first time.
I was reminded of my father’s favourite put down, usually directed towards a politician of his loathing, that the person in question “couldn’t even run a coffee stall”. In less robust minds than mine and Daisy’s, the experience could induce a crisis of confidence.
But, joking apart, the experience is, on the whole, hugely rewarding and satisfying.
It won’t be the same secret location next year, but of course we plan to return to help Crisis next year; of course we do.
Postscript: Returning To Crisis Sooner Than We Expected
Actually we returned to do a couple of additional part-shifts during the final few days at that location. There were rail strikes on those days so we agreed to cover a few hours over the evening meal surge, utilising our FoodCycle skills.
We saw some of our volunteer colleagues from January last year whom we hadn’t seen earlier in the season, which was nice. It was also good to follow through with some of the guests towards the end of their stay.
The leveller motif was continued and even enhanced though, with one guest who seemed especially keen for me to serve him virtually clicking his fingers in my direction for “service”.
On the other side of that coin though, one guest with whom I had chatted several times over the weeks came up to me to shake my hand as he left after his last evening meal. One other regular, whom I had judged to be painfully shy, quietly said to me as he left the restaurant area on the last evening, “thank you for serving me”.
Occasionally I make guest appearances, when invited by people who assume that I have an encyclopaedic mind for the types of information that oft come up in quiz questions. Such people usually end up disappointed and don’t invite me again. Here’s a link to an example of such a day/event.
But a Z/Yen charity quiz team is different, I suppose. The quizzing equivalent of cricket matches where I am an automatic pick for the team, not based on aptitude but because the game needs my bat and my ball.
Actually, over the years, for City Giving Day, the Z/Yen quiz team has come quite close a couple of times.
This year we went more than one better, contriving to win the event, not just against the other eleven teams at our venue, but even across all the venues in London. What a team.
Z/Yen’s “FS Club 7” team: Me, Charlotte (c), Andrew, Juliet (mvp), Tyler & Libby. Six people in the team, but we sat at table seven. For older readers, the name is a pun on “S Club 7“, which was a popular music combo, I am reliably informed.
On the way out, I spotted a strange effigy which I photographed and wrote up for the King Cricket website:
Gresham Society Walking Tour Of Thomas Gresham’s City, 15 June 2022
Coffee houses came after Gresham, but Sir Thomas’s grasshopper persisted
It was a super idea, for the Gresham Society to get back into the swing of face-to-face activities by having a walking tour. When people arrange such events, they don’t normally anticipate 15 June being one of the hottest days of the year, but by gosh it was blistering.
Our guide took pity on us and tended to stand us in shady spots, even if at some distance from the location she was describing, to minimise our time in the sun.
I noted that she omitted to mention 1 King William Street (the current location of Z/Yen’s office) as a Thomas Gresham place, although it was the original location of The Gresham Club.
In truth, most of the tour might have been interpreted as a tour of Z/Yen offices, once we had progressed from the Royal Exchange. We didn’t get as far as St Helen’s Church, where Sir Thomas now resides, but Z/Yen was located in St Helen’s Place overlooking that church, for 16 years (1995 to 2011), following our initial short stop at 31 Gresham Street (1994 to 1995). We also strolled past 41 Lothbury (Z/Yen 2016 to 2022) and looked at the site of the old college on the corner of Gresham Street and Basinghall Street (Z/Yen 2011 to 2016).
There really should be a series of Z/Yen & Gresham plaques around that central part of the City.
The chat covered the period after Gresham as well as the Tudor period, so we learnt about coffee houses and the establishment of modern banks, insurance companies and exchanges.
The tour was a wonderful opportunity to stroll and look around the City – I have walked around the City plenty in my time but usually with “head down purpose” rather than head up, taking in the sights. For example, I had never previously noticed the carved Gresham grasshopper in the stone towards the back of The Royal Exchange, only having noticed the glistening gold grasshopper at the top of the tower.
Note the stone grasshopper left as well as the golden hopper atop
From Gresham Street and a look at The Guildhall, a stroll down Old Jewry to Mercers’ Hall, where Mike Dudgeon, mercer and Greshamista, hosted us for tea and gave us a fascinating guided tour of the hall.
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Peppered with some superb anecdotes from Mercers’ history and Mercers’ legend, this last part of the tour was a feast for our ears and our eyes…and our backsides, after a couple of hours on our feet walking around!
Joking apart, it was wonderful to do a Gresham Society outing and spend time with those interesting, friendly Gresham Society people again. Also, for me, it was the ideal half-holiday to initiate my short break.
A Wander Around Central Birmingham Before Dinner With Janie, 16 June 2022
Birmingham Museum & Art gallery
Earlier we stopped in Leamington allowing me to play (and Janie to shoot some videos of) a spot of real tennis – the Strange Case of Dr Robson & Mr Hyde against me and Charlie at doubles…
…followed by lunch with the Leamington fellas.
That still gave me and Janie plenty of time to get to our Harborne Road Air B’nB and then stroll off towards our restaurant through central Birmingham.
We witnessed a dance festival for a while
On our way to Chamberlain Square, we spotted a dance festival and had a quick look. Then on to that central square area where the Museum (see above), Town Hall (now a concert hall) and Chamberlain Memorial hove into view.
Town Hall & Chamberlain Memorial
We were keen to get to our restaurant on time, so took a photo of Queen Victoria in Victoria Square from a distance. Normally she looks like this – click here – but she has been “reimagined all at sea” for the Commonwealth Games, so now looks more like the following:
We can surely be forgiven for not hanging around, as we were on our way to Opheem Restaurant for a very special treat. I shall write that meal up soon enough.
There was simply no way we were going to let a global pandemic totally ruin our Z/Yen staff Christmas gathering for two years.
OK, we had to do without completely at the end of 2020. OK, the Omicron wave made it impracticable to persevere with our original date – 17 December – in a week where everything else was also postponed or cancelled.
But we were determined that this would be a postponement, not a cancellation. Those fine people at Watermen’s Hall, together with the rather wonderful The Cook & The Butler people who do the catering there, came up trumps with an early opportunity for us to regroup in mid February.
They kept very quiet about their choice of menu ahead of the day, perhaps because it was full of nice surprises and treats, some of which might well have been late decisions.
More than just sound good, that five course meal tasted really good too, with excellent choices of wines to wash the food down.
We did almost everything we had planned for the original event, including our traditional Secret Santa. The picture above shows my table. The one below the other Z/Yen table, capturing the moment when Peter discovered that he had received the best Secret Santa ever – a massively extendable diagrammatic representation of the central part of the River Thames.
Given the setting of Watermen’s Hall, this present couldn’t be bettered and it did the rounds of the room several times.
The only problem with Peter’s Secret Santa present was that Juliet couldn’t contain her pleasure at how well the gift had gone down, exposing herself (as it were) as having been that particular Santa.
For some reason, by way of contrast, no-one has owned up to giving me a tin of Senior Moment Mints.
The picture below depicts Charlotte and Bikash chatting about their spoils while Michael addressed the assembled throng – a loyal toast I think.
One thing we chose not to do was sing the 2021 Z/Yen Christmas song. Linda did bring it along, as it had been all ready to go back in December 2021. But we chose not to proceed with singing it, as the entire meal had been changed and we can’t even “trail slothfully back to Lothbury” any more.
Still, I thought I should still publish the “unused canticle” for completists of my oeuvre to collect, debate and savour like connoisseurs, at their leisure, in the privacy of their own metaverses.
I think we drew the long straw with the February 2022 menu, personally.
After such an enjoyable meal and conversation, not wanting the afternoon to end, most of us retired to Jamies St Mary’s to continue the discussions over a few more quiet glasses – such is the City early evening on a Friday post-pandemic.
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.
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…
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.
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…
With thanks to Rachelle for the photo
…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.
Thanks to Bill for this photo
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.
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.
It’s an exciting time for us at FoodCycle Marylebone. We’re finally saying goodbye to the emergency delivery service that has been running there throughout the pandemic and starting the process of migrating back to the more regular FoodCycle model of communal cooking and eating.
Janie and I have been helping with emergency deliveries at several projects during the pandemic. White City for example...
But this week was the last week of the deliveries. It was also one of two piloting weeks for the transitional cook and collect service. The headline photograph shows me and Janie trying to come to grips with the sneeze guard screen. Hopefully we’ll have come to terms with it by next week.
Will I need a third hand to take the register while holding this screen?
The main reason that Marylebone is one of the last FoodCycle projects to migrate to the transitional service is not to do with our low-level flat pack assembly skills.
No.
It is the fact that, uniquely, Marylebone FoodCycle does not have a single site available for cooking and service to the guests, so there are significant logistical challenges with which to grapple.
Bill Miller has been leading the good battle to set up the new service while keeping the emergency service ticking over. He is a pleasure to work with, is Bill. For some obscure reason he doesn’t like to have his photo taken whenever we’re around, yet he is the poster boy for FoodCycle Marylebone on Instagram:
Anyway, while we were grappling with the cook and collect starter kit, such as getting our heads around the vital dating and allergen labelling system for the cooked meals, a small cast had long-since assembled at the nearby Greenhouse Centre to pilot the cooking:
With thanks to Rachelle Gryn Brettler for the kitchen photos
Once the cooked food is ready, a volunteer collects the cooked meals and trolleys then from Greenhouse to St Pauls. This week Janie and I piloted that bit of the volunteering, so we can “project lead” it in future:
Janie is demonstrating the de-luxe food trolley, said to be the Rolls-Royce of such trolleys
Then, once the cooked food was all labelled up, Amandine, Janie and I were snapped by Bill in the process of bagging up food for this week’s delivery service.
Then, just to make sure that Janie and I really had done a decent double or triple shift, we also delivered the cooked food and surplus to a local shelter project and then went on and did our (formerly regular) delivery round for the final time.
No photo of what Dumbo actually looked like when we set off with all that lot in tow, but the picture below from last summer looks a bit like it:
I don’t think Janie and I will miss doing multi-shifts like this. That was an exhausting one-off.
Still, at least once it was done we could relax…it wasn’t as if I was giving a talk that night or anything…
We’re more than a week past April Fools Day, so pieces that start, “we have discovered a long lost…” would normally have to wait another year.
But this one is true.
While Janie was busy deep cleaning the place yesterday, ahead of her restart on Monday, she knocked a small Peter Harris (my dad) painting off the wall, smashing the glass of the clip frame.
She was momentarily upset, wanting everything to look right from day one of the restart, until I pointed out that Amazon Prime could ship an exact replica of the frame to us next day. Of course they could; of course they did.
The new frame has just arrived.
To our surprise we discovered, between the backing sheet and the clipboard, dad had left the above sketch. Perhaps in error. Perhaps deliberately to add bulk to the backing having abandoned the sketch. It’s unsigned, so he clearly didn’t consider it to be finished. He was not one of life’s finishers, my dad.
Good artist, though. And a lovely bloke.
Moved I am, to see this sketch for the first time. Actually Janie and I were both a little moved by the discovery.
With thanks to Rachelle Gryn Brettlerfor snapping us in Rossmore Road, preparing to do our FoodCycle run on a wet winter’s day
We don’t get out much in Lockdown 3.0, other than to buy food and do our charity work.
That is giving me a chance to crack on with my retro-blogging; I’m working through 1995 & 1996 to cover the Ged & Daisy (Ian & Janie) “25 years ago” story. I’m needing to give more thought, though, to the formerly less well-documented, “40 years on” story of my early days at Keele University.
Strangely, 1981 and 2021 seem to have collided, forty years on.
…mentioning the superb tapes Graham Greenglass used to make for me, including quirky numbers such as Rossmore Road by Barry Andrews. I still hum it or sing it more often than not when Daisy and I do FoodCycle from there:
Dreamy use of sax and double bass on that track.
Last week, I wrote up the very weekend during which several visitors descended on Keele and Graham presented me with a few cassettes, including that very track. The piece below is a thumping good read, even if you weren’t there, including an excellent undergraduate recipe for spaghetti bollock-knees:
On Wednesday, before Daisy and I did our FoodCycle run, I did an NHS Responder gig to collect a prescription. Strangely the prescription was to be collected at the Tesco Hoover Factory in Greenford. Strange, because also on that little collection of quirky recordings given to me in February 1981 was the song Hoover Factory by Elvis Costello:
So, by some strange quirk of fate, forty years after being given recordings of those two rather obscure (but wonderful) recordings about lesser-known places in West London, I found myself doing charity gigs from those two very places.
I have already written up the ear worm I got from Hoover Factory a few months after first hearing the song:
But the early 1980s connection this week does not stop there.
While I have been cracking on with the NHS Responder/GoodSAM app as well as FoodCycle, Daisy has been training to become a Samaritan and this week moved on from being a course trainee to becoming a mentee (i.e. doing real sessions with real calls under the supervision of a mentor).
Towards the end of her course, Daisy had been waiting with a little trepidation to find out who her mentor might be. Mentors work closely with their mentees for a few weeks. She knew that it might be one of her course trainers or possibly someone she hadn’t encountered before.
A couple of weeks ago Janie announced that her mentoring instructions had come through and her mentor was a new name to her: Alison Shindler.
GED: Oh, yes, I know Alison Shindler.
DAISY: What do you mean?
GED: She was a leading light in BBYO towards the end of my time there.
DAISY: Might not be the same person…
GED: …Ealing BBYO – bet it is!
Of course it is.
What a pleasant surprise.
Less of a surprise though, after their first session together, is that Alison & Daisy seem to be getting along really well. I’m confident that the mentoring partnership should be a very good one.
Meanwhile Alison has furnished me with a photo from so far back in the day, the biggest surprise is that we were in colour back then:
With thanks to Alison Shindler for this photo
That’s a c17-year-old me turning around, next to me Simon Jacobs who was central to my “going to Keele” story and part of the “cooking weekend”. In the red scarf I thought was Jilly Black (who has remained friends with me, Daisy and Alison throughout those decades – in fact it is a little surprising we haven’t overlapped before now )…but it turns out to be Emma Cohen disguised as Jilly. Opposite Simon is Lauren Sterling plus, slightly upstaged by Simon’s head, Caroline Curtis (then Freeman) who visited me and Simon at Keele the February 1981 weekend following the “cooking” one.
But now, after all that excitement, Daisy and I are in temporary exile at the flat. The replacement of the Noddyland boiler has over-run by a day, making Daisy right and me wrong, as usual.
Stock boiler image: neither the actual old nor the actual new boiler
I’ve been grasping for a quirky early 1980s musical connection for a boiler replacement. So my earworm for the tail end of this tale is by that early 1980s mainstay, The Human League – Being Boiled:
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