The Government is encouraging people to try and get back to “normal”, whatever that might be, while the pandemic is in its summer recess. This doesn’t seem to have reduced the load on charities, such as FoodCycle, nor yet on the needs emerging for NHS Volunteer Responders.
What it is achieving, though, is a reduced volunteer force…
…Janie was back to work this week, but she’s not letting that stop her from continuing with the volunteering, at least for now…
…yet I get bemused looks from plenty of people when I tell them that our voluntary workload is increasing.
Two examples this week.
FoodCycle Marylebone 15 July 2020
Probably a temporary glitch, for this project, which we have been supporting by doing deliveries for nearly three months now. The delivery load has increased to three teams these past few weeks, but this week, try as they might, they could only find two so we needed to take on an extra half load.
That meant 16 deliveries; 32 bags full (sir).
Our previous record; 24 bags. “32 bags full sir” required some strategic stacking
Mostly on the Lisson Green Estate, plus one or two blocks on the Church Street side and a few up in Maida Vale; mostly people we’d delivered to before, which helps.
When there’s something strange……in your neighbourhood……who ya gonna call?……I said, who ya gonna call???…FoodCycle!!
As usual, we got a lot of satisfaction from this gig; huge amounts of gratitude from the guests who clearly need the food and really appreciate our help.
But it really was a bit of a marathon this week. Back to three teams for Marylebone next week; Janie and I are grateful.
The Day My NHS Volunteer Responder App Went Berserk, 17 July 2020
Since May, we’ve both had a steady stream of calls. Not all that many, frankly, but around a dozen gigs each (more if you count the “no shows”), which, from what I can gather, is significantly above average.
I think the run rate has been increasing slightly, but when the first eight weeks is metaphorical dot balls and the next few weeks is ones, twos and the occasional four, it is hard to be overly analytical about the rate.
Then came Friday 17th July.
I relocated to the flat, for the first time in months, as Janie was taking patients at the house and I thought it was about time I collected the post, flushed the loo, ensured the computer was working/updated properly and got on with preparation for the Z/Yen Board meeting. Frankly, now we do everything in the cloud, I could now do Board preparation work from pretty much anywhere without shlepping loads of files or papers.
I’m not entirely sure what triggered the storm that followed, but basically the NHS Volunteer Responder App decided that, as soon as I closed one call, it wanted to alert me to another one.
I didn’t really notice it earlier in the day. My first call took a while to close. An utterly charming South-East Asian woman – Vietnamese I think from the name – who didn’t answer the first time I called and then wanted to come off the calling scheme as she is no longer isolating and is returning to work. The first such call I have taken, I called the support line to establish the protocol for doing that – basically the woman herself needs to call the support line to be removed from the scheme.
Perhaps my first ever human (telephone) interaction with the scheme itself triggered a new status on my account…
Super-responder. Bit of a mug – probably will help pick up all the slack everywhere. Bombard with calls until this responder expires.
…or perhaps the algorithm detected “a new kid in town” around Notting Hill and there happened to be a lot of business around there on Friday.
Most of the calls were delightful folk who really appreciated the scheme, had used it when they needed stuff but didn’t, as it happens, need any help that day. One other person wanted to come off the scheme and I advised her on how to do that, now I am an expert on that protocol.
As the afternoon went on and my little “ivory tower” office heated up, I decided to return to Noddyland, taking one last call. I think my 12th of the day. A charming gentleman in Earls Court who did, on this occasion, as it happened, need a prescription collected and one or two other things from the pharmacy.
In truth, I was glad to at least have one of my calls today result in an errand, even though it was a little out of my way on a hot day.
I ran the errand and returned to my car, opened the windows and checked my messages.
I picked up one message from a client that absolutely needed dealing with before I could draw stumps on my working week, but my mobile phone battery was already running low (NHS Volunteer Responder does that) so I arranged a call with the client for 30-45 minutes hence, when I’d be home.
Then I cleared the good deed I had just done by clicking the “completed task” button.
The responder went off again instantly.
I realised that I should switch myself off duty, so I hit the “reject call” button and switched myself to “off duty”.
The responder went off again instantly.
The “off duty” signal must have crossed in the post with that one, I thought. So I rejected that call and started the engine of my car.
The responder went off again instantly.
I’m starting to sweat a little now. I rejected that call. I had now been off duty for a good two or three minutes.
The responder went off again instantly.
I rejected the call and closed down the app. That would shut it up, surely?
The responder went off again instantly.
People in the street are starting to look. It’s not a quiet thing, the NHS Volunteer Responder App. It has been borrowed from the Royal Voluntary Service GoodSam scheme for emergency defibrillation, so it sounds like an emergency alarm.
In fact, if you haven’t heard it before, brace your lug holes and listen to this:
There was only one thing for it, I deleted the NHS Volunteer Responder App from my phone.
That did shut it up.
I reloaded the app later on, once I had spoken to my client, cooled down and seen real umpires draw stumps on the test match day. In short, once I had fully recovered my composure.
Fully recovered
I dread to think what might happen if the UK Government’s world beating “track and trace” app can go into that sort of overdrive. Perhaps best not to think about it.
Joking apart, that bizarre day was unusually rewarding. Swathes of gratitude from people, many of whom don’t need a lot of help (or rather, they have their own sources of help) but feel much reassured by the periodic calls to know that they have a back up service that will seek them out if they find themselves needing the help. It must be a very vulnerable feeling, to be shielding for several months and needing people to help you. Even if we are mostly just providing some psychological comfort to shielding people, as much as the occasional “errand running” gigs that form part of the deal, I think it is a very worthwhile service.
Plenty of calls for me again the next day, too. So I think this is partly about a build up of demand and a reduction in supply. Anyone out there who hasn’t volunteered yet, simply because you’ve heard there is no demand…that’s not so…
…I trawled a great many authoritative (and some nonauthoritative) sources in search of the source of the tennis scoring system. In so doing, I also learnt a great deal about the odds, or handicapping systems that tend to accompany tennis scoring.
I also learnt that the origins of tennis, its scoring and handicapping are inextricably linked to the fact that tennis was widely played and observed as a wagering game, certainly as far back as medieval times. Enjoy the following example:
During the reign of Charles V . palm play , which may properly enough be denominated hand – tennis , was exceedingly fashionable in France, being played by the nobility for large sums of money ; and when they had lost all that they had about them , they would sometimes pledge a part of their wearing apparel rather than give up the pursuit of the game . The duke of Burgundy , according to an old historian , having lost sixty franks at palm play with the duke of Bourbon , Messire William de Lyon , and Messire Guy de la Trimouille , and not having money enough to pay them , gave his girdle as a pledge for the remainder ; and shortly afterwards he left the same girdle with the comte D ‘ Eu for eighty franks , which he also lost at tennis .
I love that 14th century story about my new friend, Philip The Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Of course, the detail might be more legend than history, but it forms part of a significant body of evidence that tennis was already a structured sport way back then, with wagering being “part of the scene”.
As an aside, Philip the Bold was not only well-known to be an enthusiast of jeu de paume (tennis), he was also a great enthusiast for the Pinot Noir grape; prohibiting the cultivation of the Gamay grape in Burgundy (1395), thus initiating that region’s fine wine tradition. Philip the Bold also initiated a musical chapel which founded the great Burgundian school of music. Tennis, wine & music – Philip was my kinda guy.
Medieval Kings & Their Love/Hate Relationship With Tennis
There is documentary evidence that Philip IV, Louis’s dad, bought the Tour de Nesle in 1308 and had a covered tennis court built within. While Philip was clearly keen on the game, there is no evidence that he played. It is said that the fashion for covered courts emanated from young Louis’s love of the game. That love also, perhaps, proved to be Louis’s undoing. Just a couple of years after succeeding to the French throne, Louis X died, age 26, apparently after playing an especially rigorous game of tennis at Vincennes, in 1316. Louis X thus became the earliest named tennis player in history.
Quarrelsome? Moi?
Louis X’s kid sister, Isabella, married Edward II of England. Isabella quite possibly murdered the latter; for sure she had him deposed and had her 14 year old son, Edward III, inserted on the throne of England. That allowed Isabella and her mate, Roger Mortimer, to dabble in ruling England as regents for a bit, until Edward III asserted himself, aged 18.
Anyway, my point is, Philip IV of France (Louis X’s dad), Edward III of England and Charles V of France (Edward III’s third cousin, Philip The Bold of Burgundy’s brother) all had one thing in common in the matter of tennis; they banned it by decree.
In truth, medieval kings made a bit of a habit of banning tennis (along with most sports and games other than warlike sports, such as archery) for the middling sort, while at the same time building tennis courts and letting their families and noble entourages play tennis at will.
That sort of hypocritical prohibition by decree continued well into the 15th and 16th centuries, which almost certainly helped the game become rather popular as an underground activity.
(As an aside, I have often attributed my own love of cricket to the fact that my primary school headmistress banned cricket in the school playground when I was 10, which inevitably led to clandestine games of cricket on the common whenever the opportunity arose – thank you Miss Plumridge. I don’t suppose the teachers who ruled Rosemead School were hypocritically playing cricket, while prohibiting their charges from doing so. But who knows? Anyway, I digress.)
Renaissance Tennis, Honour & Wagering
While we have strong direct evidence that noble folk wagered on their play and sometimes wagered big – Henry VIII has a great many well-documented, substantial losses from playing tennis – we also have plenty of indirect evidence that tennis was a popular game around which the players indulged in wagering and observers often indulged in gambling.
Heiner Gillmeister in his Cultural History of Tennis is unequivocal on this point:
…in the Middle Ages tennis was always played for money…
This seminal treatise on tennis was a youthful act of patronage by Alfonso II d’Este, who went on to become Duke of Ferrara and to patronise a great many works of art and science, not least the works of Torquato Tasso. An arty family, those d’Este folk. Alfonso II’s grandmother was Lucretia Borgia and his auntie was Leonora d’Este, who most probably composed the wonderful sacred music sampled below:
So Scaino’s commission to write his treatise on tennis came from a noble, art-loving patron; it is perhaps unsurprising that the treatise focuses on matters noble and honourable about the game, while ignoring the seedier, money-oriented side of the game.
Note how Scaino explains the reasoning behind the “win by two clear points” aspect of the scoring system:
It is to be noted that the game of tennis is of a beautiful and well-reasoned ordinance. The winning of points is called by the numbers 15, 30 and 45 and if the two teams have each won three points the score is “a dua”, meaning that the game is reduced to two points (became “à deux” or “deux à” in French, “deuce” in English) and not one! The method of fighting such a distinguished battle should be removed from any suspicion of chance or fortune. He who wins must be sure that he has won by his own valour, not by any outside favour. Who does not see now that the game could not be devised with good reason to end with only one point? The good and staunch Cavalier is judged not by one thrust of his lance; the elegant Dancer not by just one leap, however bold and skilful, but by prolongued dancing, and the sure and cautious Bombardier not by one discharge of his Artillery, but by many.
While the above reasoning does not preclude the use of odds, or handicapping, it certainly does not in any way allude to it either. But we do have plenty of evidence to support the assertion that medieval tennis was played for money and we also have documentary evidence of the use of handicapping, some 50 years before Scaino.
At Odds With Renaissance Handicapping: Meet the Bisque
The earliest reference to odds, or handicapping, that I can find, is from early 1506, reported in Julian Marshall’s 1878 book, The Annals of Tennis. It is an eye-witness account, by one of Henry VII of England’s attendants, of a “visit” to Windsor Castle by Philip The Handsome (another Duke of Burgundy, plus also King of Castille) and his Queen: Joanna The Mad of Castille.
Philip The Handsome, Duke of Burgundy, King of Castille, husband to Joanna The Mad, not long for this world
The Sattordaye the 7 of ffebruary…
Bothe Kyngs wente to the Tennys plays and in the upper gallery theare was Layd ij Cushenes of Clothe of gold for the ij Kyngs…
…wheare played my Lord marques [of Dorset] the Lord Howard and two other knights togethers, and after the Kyngs of Casteele had scene them play a whylle , he made partys wth the Lord marques and then played the Kyngs of Casteele with the Lord Marques of Dorset the Kyngs Lookynge one them, but the Kyngs of Castelle played wth the Rackets and gave the Lord Marques xv. and after that he had pled his pleasure and arrayed himself agene it was almost nights, and so bothe Kyngs Retorned agayne to their Lodgingss.”
There’s a lot of interesting stuff in that eye-witness account. That early 16th century period was a period of transition between hand-play and racket-play at tennis. Most scholars agree that the racket came into use around 1500. So the handicap described in the account has the King of Castille playing with a racket and the Marquess of Dorset playing with his hand, while receiving fifteen (i.e. starting each game 15-0 up). Personally, I’d prefer the racket, but perhaps the Marquess was a very handy player.
Sadly, the account doesn’t tell us who won the tennis match, but the story doesn’t end brilliantly well for the visiting monarch; who in reality was more a hostage than a guest of Henry VII. Philip signed some helpful treaties and trade deals to help bring his “visit” to an amicable conclusion. Still, within a few months, Philip The Handsome died in Spain; probably poisoned/assassinated there. This made Joanna The Mad even more distraught than usual, apparently.
Joanna The Mad, but possibly Joanna The Gaslit or Joanna The Misconstrued
Thomas Grey, the Marquess of Dorset, who as a youngster had been a ward of Henry VII, was, by 1508, sent to the tower as a suspected conspirator against Henry VII. Only the accession of Henry VIII the following year saved Grey, who had a decent run as a high-ranking courtier after that narrow escape. His grand-daughter, Lady Jane Grey, was not so lucky; famously the “nine day queen”.
Not that type of bisque
In days of yore, the most common currency in tennis handicaps or odds was the bisque. A player who receives a bisque per set can claim one stroke (point) ahead of that point being played, at any stage during a set. Any number of bisques can be given, but the use of other point handicaps, such as giving fifteen every game or half-fifteen (i.e. fifteen every other game) means that the number of bisques per set would normally have been limited to one or two, perhaps occasionally three or four. Bisques would also be used sometimes to mitigate handicaps; for example Player A might receive fifteen but give a bisque or two to Player B to make the overall handicap less than fifteen.
The object of the exercise with odds (or handicapping) is to even up the game between players of differing quality. In days of yore, it almost certainly evolved as a mechanism to make wagering simpler and/or more exciting; hence the terms odds and handicapping (both gambling terms) to describe the practice.
In real tennis, handicapping is still very much part of the scene in all but the very highest level of play, as I shall explain in the third piece in this series.
As for the origins of the term “bisque”, that is lost in the mists of time. Some say the term “bisca” is Italian for tennis court and gambling house, much as the term “tripot” in French has those two meanings. But Scaino doesn’t use the term bisca or bisque at all in his treatise. The term bisque (spelt bisquaye) first appears in writing in the 1582 paper Signification de l’ancien jeu des chartes pythagorique et la déclaration de deux doubtes qui se trouvent en comptant le jeu de la paume by Jean Gosselin, but the context implies that this form of handicapping had been in regular use for some time, as Gosselin assumes that the term will be understood by the reader.
Many subsequent papers and books on tennis go into a great deal of detail about the tactical use of bisques by the player who has been given the opportunity to apply one or more of them.
Indeed, by the start of the 19th century, a fascinating array of odds/handicaps had emerged, mostly no doubt to enhance the enjoyment of wagering & gambling on the sport, but also as part of the honour system, by which the contestants were seeking to even up the match, better to enjoy the sport of the occasion. It is the latter rationale that prevails in real tennis to this day, to great effect.
But those 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st century developments will be the subject of my subsequent scribblings. As will the intriguing notion that handicaps were an intrinsic part of lawn tennis in the early days of that game.
Tennis Handicap Tournament, 1918, Upper Arlington Tennis Club
Other Pieces On Tennis History
This piece is part two of four pieces. The other three pieces are:
Pondering tennis scoring, abacus in hand, Moreton Morrell, 2019
Why Score Points/Strokes in 15s?
Lovers of tennis have long pondered the origins of the scoring system. In particular, the notion that the first point scores 15, the second point 30 and so on, until one player has scored four points, or, if the score reaches three-all, once one player has subsequently taken two consecutive points.
There are a great many theories about the origins of this convention.
At the time of writing this piece (the summer of 2020) there are two prevailing “origins” theories on the internet, both of which fail the credibility test as soon as some historical facts are thrown into the mix.
The most common of the fallacious origin theories is that tennis scorers habitually used clock faces to score the games, taking the minute hand numbers as scores, i.e. 15 to signify a quarter of the job done, 30 to signify half, 40 (as an abbreviation for 45), 60 to conclude the game.
Unfortunately for this elegant, oft-touted and much-believed theory, there are early written accounts of the 15/30/45 scoring system dating back to the Renaissance; long before anyone had considered the idea of minute markings on clock faces. While it is possible that such devices might have been used at times in the last 300 years, this simply is not a credible “origins” theory.
The second style of origin theory, often to be found on the internet, is connected with the chase markings on a real tennis court. Variations of this theory include the notion that there were traditionally 14 chase lines on the floor, so the concluded point was called, to avoid confusion, 15. The other main variation of the “floor plan” theory is that the court was traditionally 90 feet long (45 feet on each side) and that the server had to advance 15 feet on winning the first point, a further 15 on winning the second etc.
Lovers of the early forms of the game, known variously as real tennis, royal tennis, court tennis and jeu du paume, will recognise that there is no such standardisation of courts, whether on length or on court markings (or even on how to name the game). Just naming it “tennis” pleases me best.
There was a tradition in France at one time to have 14 floor marks on the service side, but that French tradition of floor marking was initiated long after the scoring system was established. It is possible that the French floor marking style was a nod to the fact that the scoring system was based on 15/30/45/60, but it cannot have been the cause of that scoring system.
While Internet Babble Might Hinder, So Might Historic, Original Sources, Now Available Freely Through The Internet, Help
So internet babble couldn’t solve this one for me. I needed to retreat into ancient texts on tennis. There I found such a rich collection of writings I could happily generate several essays on the origins of many aspects of the game; indeed I intend to do just that.
The Willis Faber Book Of Tennis & Rackets by Lord Aberdare (I had to purchase this one; it is not in the public domain) is an authoritative book on the subject. Aberdare shows documentary evidence that 15/30/45 were used as far back as the Middle Ages. Heiner Gillmeister quotes an early 15th Century Middle English poem about the Battle of Agincourt, which uses a game of tennis as a metaphor for the battle and quotes the scores XV, XXX and XLV. A poem by Charles d’Orleans, dated in the 1430s, also mentions 45 in the context of tennis. Erasmus’s Colloquies c 1518, mention the scoring of a love game as Quindecim, Trigenta, Quadraginta quinque.
Lord Aberdare also tells us that writers as far back as the 1430s wondered “why 15s?”, but could find no satisfactory answer.
Aberdare also quotes and lists his sources extensively. A great many of those original sources are now freely available on-line through the internet archive and other such public domain sources. I have provided links in this article where such sources exist.
In The Renaissance Period, The Italians & The French Were Doing Most Of The Running In Tennis
The very first treatise on tennis, attempting to set down its rules comprehensively, was written by Antonio Scaino in 1555, Trattato del Giuoco della Palla (Treatise of the Ball Game). Like so many of these ancient texts, it is freely available on-line through the Internet Archive – click the preceding link or image below to read the document.
I need to rely on Julian Marshall’s translation and interpretation of that text in his wonderful, seminal English work on the history of tennis; The Annals Of Tennis, 1878, which is also freely available through the internet archive. Julian Marshall’s work will feature large in some of my later pieces on tennis history. Lord Aberdare relies on Marshall heavily for the history of the game.
According to Marshall, Antonio Scaino advances a rather convoluted theory for the use of 15, based on (as he sees it) three types of game and the five points required to turn a 0-40 position into a game in one’s own favour.
While Scaino’s theory seems rather weak to my modern, forensic mind, yet it is still fascinating to note that Scaino speaks of this kind of scoring, including the use of deuces, as a standard thing for almost all ball games. Marshall writes:
This was, evidently, even then a matter of universal custom which needed no comment; and, with the “setting” of the game at deuce (a dua), it was common, Scaino says, to all ball-games, with the exception of foot-ball…
…why we should count, as from time immemorial we have counted, 15, 30, 45 and then game, which latter should be equivalent to 60, rather than by any other numbers greater or lesser than these.
Gosselin comes up with two “solutions” to his doubts. One based on astronomy or a sextant, being a sixth part of a circle itself consisting of 60 degrees and sixty minutes. Unfortunately, at that time, a set tended to comprise four games, not six as has more recently become common, so his 60 times four does not complete the circle.
His second theory is based on geometry and a rather convoluted theory around Roman measures, as four fingers =1 palm, 4 palms = 1 foot and 1 Clima = a square of 60 feet by 60 feet, 1 Actus = 2 Climates in length and breadth, 1 Jugerum = 2 Actus in length and 1 Actus in breadth.
After dancing around his two theories for a while, Gosselin concludes that he has solved the matter decisively, Q.E.F. (as the French say).
Readers might form their own views on Gosselin’s “extremely complicated” (as Lord Aberdare puts it) geometrical theories and the somewhat arrogant tone of Gosselin’s certainty that he has solved the doubts about the origins of the scoring system.
But I shall shortly return to the notions, which are undoubtedly so, that the origins are buried in antiquity and that, again as Lord Aberdare summarise it:
…the number 60 often represented a complete whole in mediaeval times…
While Italian written sources go back to the mid 16th century and relevant French ones to the late 16th century, there are no English authorities on tennis until the 19th century; just the occasional fragment or mention of tennis in other works.
On the question of using the term “forty” rather than “forty-five”, which several correspondents have raised, I have written a short Appendix:
19th & 20th Century English Contributions To Tennis History
The first English book on tennis was published in 1822: A Treatise on Tennis By a Member of the Tennis Club, now attributed to Robert Lukin. “The Club” referred to in the title was the James Street Court in Haymarket; at the time the club acted as “guardian of the laws” of tennis, until “the Tennis Club” closed and handed that guardianship role to the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in the 1860s.
Again, these days, you can simply click the link and read the whole book on the internet archive. A fun and short read. That book is strong on odds/handicaps and also has a fascinating appendix with historical notes about notable royal lovers/players of the game, but the scoring system is merely stated as fact with the aside that strokes:
…are reckoned in a manner, which makes it at first very difficult to understand.
The first Stroke or point is called 15
The second…30
The third…40 or 45
…
So it really isn’t until Julian Marshall’s 1878 book, The Annals of Tennis (previously mentioned and linked, but, heck, here’s the link again) that the origins of the scoring system is given thoughtful coverage in English. Marshall’s influence spans lawn tennis as well as real tennis, as I shall explain in a subsequent piece about the intriguing ways the two games have developed, like conjoined twins, somewhat independent and yet in several ways metaphorically joined at the hip. Marshall was also a prominent MCC member who played a major role in the codification of the laws of tennis in the last few decades of the 19th century.
But Marshall doesn’t progress the thinking about the origins of the scoring system, he simply catalogues the Italian and French writings on the topic authoritatively and helpfully.
More recently, in the 1990s, the subject has had in depth and well-researched coverage in Heiner Gillmeister’s book, Tennis: A Cultural History:
Gillmeister is a leading expert on the history and origins of ball games generally and in particular tennis. Gillmeister’s extensive research leaves him in little or no doubt that the game we recognise today as tennis, including the scoring system, has its origins in medieval Europe and that scoring games using base 60, divided by four, is probably related to money matters at the time.
Whisper it, people, but medieval tennis, once it became popular among the secular classes, was not played for honour and valour; it was primarily played for money. It was a mechanism for the players and also sometimes spectators, to wager.
Many jurisdictions had wager limits embedded in the law. Nuremberg commoners are:
…enjoined not to play for more than sixty “haller”and for no object or possession valued at over sixty “pfennige”
A similar edict from Munich in 1365 limits stakes to 60 “denare” (deniers). But there is no direct evidence that such limits were applied in France, nor is there direct evidence that these regulations, which were applied to dice games, would also have been deemed to apply to wagers on tennis.
Gillmeister also says, regarding such gambling regulations:
…they do without doubt prove one thing: by at least the end of the thirteenth century and during the fourteenth century, the time when sous worth fifteen deniers were in circulation, games played for stakes of over 60 deniers were forbidden
Now Mr Gillmeister might know a heck of a lot about linguistics and the history of ball games, but I’m not as convinced that he has quite such a strong grasp on the history of money. While there were many variations of coinage at that stage of the medieval period, the relative standard of 12 deniers to the sous and 20 sous to the livre was fairly well established across Europe. In England this was expressed as 12 pennies to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound. There were many local variations, including a coin known as the patard which was, at times, in circulation and worth 15d. At the higher end of the scale, Gillmeister mentions the double royal d’or and the gros denier tournois, but frankly neither of those coins became a standard based on sixty sous or fifteen deniers.
Still, I find compelling the arguments that medieval tennis was regularly played for stakes and that a maximum stake of 60 pfennigs (or 60 deniers, or 60 pennies) per game might have been a de facto standard regulation at a vital stage of the development of tennis. I find the “coinage arguments” for division into 15s less convincing, but it is quite possible that the principle of “the first to four wins the game, unless…” was well-established, making 15 the natural point counter, if you seek to get to 60 points for a game.
A further point regarding money, which Gillmeister misses but I recognise and find compelling, is the notion that, if 60 represents a game, 240 would, at that time, have represented a set. Until relatively recently, a set was, more commonly, the first to four games, not the first to six. Sets of tennis mostly being to six emerged as a standard in the last 200-300 years. So while Gillmeister agonises over coins that might or might not have been valued at 15 deniers in various places at various time, he misses some clear evidence in plain view, that a set of tennis, if counted to four games of 60, i.e. 240, would almost universally in Europe have represented a livre, or, as we say in English old money, 240 pennies makes one pound.
Gillmeister is far more convincing and consistent on the “medieval chivalric” case for deuces, or at least the principle that games should be determined by a margin of two points, not just one point. Jan Van Berghe – he of the early 15th century Agincourt poem, discusses, in a later work, the continuation of play from deuce until one player has won two consecutive chases.
Scaino, our Italian Renaissance correspondent from 1555, is emphatic on this point in his Trattato:
The method of fighting such a distinguished battle should be removed from any suspicion of chance or fortune. He who wins must be sure that he has won by his own valour, not by any outside favour. Who does not see now that the game could not be devised with good reason to end with only one point? The good and staunch Cavalier is judged not by one thrust of his lance; the elegant Dancer not by just one leap, however bold and skilful…
Less convincing, to my mind, is Gillmeister’s alternative view on the origins of the term “love” to describe the “lack of” score for the unfortunate player who has not yet won a stroke. He is not convinced that “love” is a bastardisation of the French word “l’oeuf”, i.e. egg, representing “0” – zero. He prefers the Dutch or Flemish word “lof”, meaning honour, or “nothing more than the love of the game”. Gillmeister is a linguist as well as a ball game historian, so what do I know when I say that I find the “oeuf” explanation more convincing than the “lof” argument?
The Stuff Of Ancient Legend; As Deep In Antiquity As Can Be
Gillmeister starts his book Tennis: A Cultural History with a fascinating legend from the late 12th century.
A young, intellectually-challenged trainee monk does a deal with the devil in order to shine in his studies. One day he falls ill and has a near-death experience, during which he descends into a hellish valley where demons fashion his soul into a ball and play jeu de paume (medieval tennis) with it.
The story is recorded in the early 13th century work, Dialogus Miraculorum, by Caesarius of Heisterbach – yet another of these wonderful old texts that is freely available on-line if you wish to read or just look in awe at the ancient text.
This legend, along with the Gillmeister’s central numerical point about the scoring system; that the use of base 60 was important in medieval Europe, brought another, much earlier culture to my mind.
The very earliest civilisation known to have urbanised, the Sumerians in Southern Mesopotamia.
They started writing stuff down around 5000 to 5500 years ago, did the Sumerians. Most of the stuff they wrote down was rather dull, accounting type records, in cuneiform, on clay tablets.
The Sumerians used the sexagesimal (base 60) counting system. Sexagesimal is, in many ways, a more sensible base for counting and dividing stuff up than the decimal system we use today. As the wikipedia entry so succinctly puts it:
Given that the Sumerians basically wanted to count crops, divide them up and pay for them, sexagesimal made a great deal of sense. They also wanted to measure angles and stuff; these latter habits in sexagesimal became so deeply established in ancient times (the Greeks and Romans persevered with those aspects) that elements of sexagesimal have found their way into measures in our society still; 360 degrees to a circle, hence latterly 60 minutes to an hour, 60 seconds to a minute, etc.
Unlike the hotch-potch of currencies and translation rates known to have existed in medieval Europe, records indicate that Sumerian money was unequivocally denominated in terms linked with base 60. The basic monetary unit was the shekel. There were 60 shekels to the mina and sixty minas to the talent.
Not only did the Sumerians leave plenty of evidence of proto accountants, they also left evidence of proto lawyers. The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest known legal code, more than 4000 years old (c.2100 BC). Only some of this code survives, sadly. But those surviving passages include fines and compensation rates, which include the following:
If a man divorces his first-time wife, he shall pay (her) one mina (60 shekels) of silver.
If it is a (former) widow whom he divorces, he shall pay (her) half a mina (30 shekels) of silver.
If the man had slept with the widow without there having been any marriage contract, he need not pay any silver. (Love).
If a man commits a kidnapping, he is to be imprisoned and pay 15 shekels of silver.
We also know that the Sumerians (and their successor civilisation, the Babylonians) were very keen on games. Boards for the Royal Game Of Ur have been found dating back more than 4500 years. Some boards have been found with additional counters, believed to be evidence of gambling on the games.
The Royal Game Of Ur
The game is a proto-game closely related to chase games popular today, such as ludo and backgammon. Sumerians used several four-sided dice for this game. A rules tablet for the Royal Game Of Ur was discovered and translated in the early 1980s.
“So did the Sumerians play ball games?”, I hear you cry.
Yes, they did.
Unfortunately, we, as yet, have very little on record as to what those ball games might have been like.
But the Epic Of Gilgamesh, arguably the earliest surviving work of great literature, written more than 4000 years ago, has passages that allude to ball games at the start and end of the epic.
At the start of the epic story, Gilgamesh exhausts his male companions through the playing of ball games while exercising his droit du seigneur on the local female brides. He’s not a nice chap, that Gilgamesh.
The final part of the story (in some ways disconnected from the earlier parts) is known as Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld. In this story, Gilgamesh’s ball and ball-playing implement (sometimes translated as a mallet) has found its way into the Netherworld. Enkidu, who is Gilgamesh’s companion and/or nemesis throughout the epic, descends into the netherworld to retrieve the ball game apparatus, with predictably epic results.
This last story is hauntingly similar to the medieval story about a hellish game of tennis at the beginning of Heiner Gillmeister’s tennis history. It is also achingly similar to folklore tales throughout the world. A fascinating academic paper on this topic, The Ball Game Motif in the Gilgamesh Tradition and International Folklore by Amar Annus and Mari Sarv, can be found on Researchgate through the preceding link. Many traditional folk stories have ball games as their plot triggers, including Persian direct descendants of the Gilgamesh legends and the Estonian stories described in the “Ball Game Motif” paper.
Conclusion: An Absence Of Claims But A Wealth of Interesting Stuff
Let me be clear about this; I am not claiming that the ancient Sumerians played tennis or even anything like it. The ball games played in Sumeria were probably more akin to hockey or polo. But while we don’t know exactly how they played ball games; we do know for sure that they played such things, with implements, to the extent that such artefacts were the subject of legend.
We also know for sure that the Sumerians counted, divided and used a monetary system in base 60. We know that Sumerian regulations used denominations of 15, 30 and 60 as compensation payments and fines. We also know that this very ancient civilisation not only played ball games but also board games using four-sided dice. We strongly suspect that they gambled.
We know that lawyers and accountants tend to get involved in games as guardians of the rules and as scorers. In more modern times, the MCC is a living example of that phenomenon (in the matters of cricket and tennis anyway) and has been so for several hundred years.
Me, marking, with Hampton Court abacus in hand
The Sumerians devised the abacus too.
One of the other truly intriguing things about the Sumerian civilisation is that we still have so much to discover about them. Only a fraction of the relics that are almost certainly preserved and buried there waiting to be discovered have yet been excavated from Southern Mesopotamia. So we (or our descendants) might yet learn some further fascinating details about Sumerian games and scoring systems.
But my main point in this piece is that legends, cultural mores and gaming traditions have a strange habit of surviving and/or re-emerging across centuries and millennia.
Our game, tennis, undoubtedly emerged in medieval times and evolved from there. The extent to which the scoring system was novel in the middle ages, based on the monetary system and gambling regulations, or was based on traditional counting and gaming conventions handed down across the centuries and millennia, is unknown and cannot be known. Such mysteries are part of the fun playing and observing a game so steeped in traditions and history.
Other Pieces On Tennis History
This piece is part one of four pieces. The other three pieces are:
The Beechwood Hotel, renamed The Lakeside Hotel, prior to closure
I shouldn’t be here this evening. I should be in Edgbaston, savouring the build up to the first cricket test match of the summer. It’s an annual gathering with good friends I met through The Children’s Society; we started our Edgbaston tradition more than 20 years ago.
It’s OK. I’m glad to be here with you. I like being here, in virtual ThreadMash or ThreadZoom or ZoomMash or whatever we’re calling it now…
…with you.
It’s just that I wouldn’t be here at all, but for the virus.
I’d be travelling.
Rohan has asked us to write about travel.
Rohan has advised us, “let’s do this without any pictures or music”. He didn’t say, “this advice is not a request – it is an instruction”, but he could have done.
Anyway, for me, the instruction, “write about travel”, is not a difficult one. I have travelled a lot and have been writing up my travels on Ogblog these past few years.
I should be in Edgbaston right now and the minor matter of a global pandemic is not going to stop me from going there.
Birmingham might not exactly be an exotic location, nor is it a remote location, but going to Birmingham IS travel.
I’m going to Edgbaston and I’m going right now and I’m taking you lot with me…
…to the very worst hotel I have ever stayed in.
Late May 2006. Most of our gang, known as The Heavy Rollers, who together had savoured the 2005 Edgbaston test, a match that will forever be part of Ashes folklore, were to be reunited as a group for the first time since that match.
We knew that 2006 was to be different. 2005 had marked the end of our early era, which had enabled us to base ourselves at the Wadderton Conference Centre, the Children’s Society place in rural Worcestershire, just outside Birmingham. David Steed, who was one of our number in the Heavy Rollers, ran the place and lived on site. The Children’s Society was pleased for a bit of income from guests in the quiet summer period and it was mighty convenient and pleasant for us, with a suitable garden for pre-match cricket antics.
The time that Charley “The Gent Malloy” chased a cricket ball down the Wadderton slope, only to realise too late that the incline was too steep for a graceful deceleration, such that he went…how do I put this politely…arse over tit, into a heap at the bottom of said slope…remains as much part of Heavy Rollers folklore as the classic 2005 Ashes test match.
But I digress.
Late May 2006. Wadderton had closed permanently that winter. Now David Steed, bless him, ran Wadderton wonderfully and was subsequently a superb host at his Birmingham house. But he possibly wasn’t the best judge of a hotel unseen. Cheap and near the ground seemed sufficient criteria for him. An e-mail came:
Accommodation is confirmed as previously written about and subsequent telephone chat at Beechwood Hotel on the Bristol Road approx. 200 yards from the main entrance at Edgbaston…no deposits required…
The subsequent inquiry identified Nigel “Father Barry”, our de facto leader, as the other side of correspondence that clearly lacked the investigative skills, penetrating questions and due diligence that such matters deserve.
Thus the term “each with private bathroom”, did not preclude each of us having to toddle down a corridor to get to our nominated ablution booth.
“Private”, I suppose, did not necessarily mean “en suite” in this Beechwood world. Nor did it mean anything more than a tiny, decrepit shower cubicle. I recall some very inappropriate jokes about Zyklon B from my companions during conversations about those ghastly, disgusting showers.
The place was clearly used mostly as a sort-of social services half-way house for people who were having a multitude of difficulties. I took detailed notes about my alarming next-door neighbour, who I discovered heavily tattooed, talking frantically to himself and pissed…at six in the evening. At least he called me “young fella” when he greeted me warmly. We had a bizarre conversation or two.
But the most bizarre conversations were with Tom; I hesitate to use the title, “manager”, who tended to sidle up to us in the bar/common parts areas of the hotel and bend our ears with tales of his roller-coaster and/or imagined past. I made some fragmented notes:
I was a millionaire at 21…a multi-millionaire at 24…lost it all at 33…I’ve been out with Miss Jamaica, Miss Bromsgrove, the lot. I had an Aston Martin – would cost about £125,000 today…Do fast cars while you’re young, young man, you won’t fancy it once you are your dad’s age….I made a million when a million was real money; when a million was really a million…
All six reviews give the Beechwood Hotel one-out-of-ten: “awful”. One reviewer takes pains to point out that the system doesn’t allow their preferred score of nought-out-of-ten.
Rohan said, in his instruction, “I think the words you use will create much more vibrant pictures than anything that can appear on a screen”.
But in the mode of that great traveller, Dominic Cummings, I shall now break the spirit if not the letter of Rohan’s guidance, by using the words of others, those six unfortunate holidaywatchdog.com reviewers who followed in our footsteps, rather than my own words, to complete the painting of those vibrant pictures. One extracted quote from each victim:
“This hotel makes Fawlty Towers seem like luxury.”
“I really cannot believe that places like this are allowed to operate.”
“This hotel should be condemned on health and safety grounds!”
“I do not recommend this hotel to anyone if you have standards”.
“Hell hole!”.
And my personal favourite, the final review, from August 2009:
“Please stay away – I have stayed in 100s of hotels and B&BS all over the UK – this one has to be the worst by a long way… DO NOT STAY THERE, you’d be better off in a cardboard box.”
The Beechwood Hotel Garden and Roller. With thanks to Charles Bartlett for this picture.
Felicity Buchan MP, House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA
By e-mail only
25 May 2020
Dear Felicity
DOMINIC CUMMINGS, BORIS JOHNSON & THE HEALTH PROTECTION (CORONAVIRUS, RESTRICTIONS) (ENGLAND) REGULATIONS 2020:
AN OPEN LETTER
You probably don’t even need me to set out my argument in this letter.
Like most of your constituents, I accepted the above regulations, the most extreme impediment to my civil liberties in my circa six decade lifetime, for the good of our nation and the health of my fellow citizens.
My circumstances allow me to do volunteering for the community and enjoy a reasonable lifestyle despite the constraints. Friends and many of the people I am helping with my volunteering are not so lucky. I have friends who have not yet seen in person their new-born grandchildren and/or been unable to see their aged parents. My volunteering uncovers people who have been left destitute by the coronavirus crisis and those who are making incredible sacrifices in an attempt to do the right thing.
It is patently clear that Dominic Cummings, like so many of those people, had difficult choices to make. But unlike most people, Cummings patently made the wrong choices under pressure, by flouting the above regulations and putting himself and others at risk by making long journeys during lockdown.
It is an utter disgrace that the Prime Minister is backing Dominic Cummings in such circumstances, rather than sacking him or insisting that he resign.
As a result, the Prime Minister and the Government is losing its authority over the public in the matter of this pandemic and indeed, potentially losing its ability generally to govern with consent. This moral deficit and diminished dominion is a huge risk to our Nation.
Frankly, if you cannot persuade Boris Johnson to remove Dominic Cummings in these circumstances, you and your fellow MPs should take urgent and prompt steps to remove both Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson.
Yours sincerely,
Ian Harris
I sent the above letter to my MP, cc:ing Boris Johnson. I also posted it on Facebook, where it seems to have picked up quite a few shares and comments in just a few minutes.
Postscript: 26 May 2020
The following morning, I resent the letter with the following e-mail message:
Felicity
Just in case you imagine that the events in Downing Street yesterday afternoon/evening have superseded my letter of yesterday morning, I would like to assure you that my views have, if anything, hardened in the light of those events. My wife is so upset by the injustice, mendacity and double-standards displayed, she is talking about leaving the country if the Government continues to treat the British public with such contempt.
I therefore attach the letter again for your attention and urge you to seek to influence the Government as requested in the attached letter.
With best wishes
Ian Harris
Fewer than five hours later, I received this direct reply to the above e-mail:
Dear Mr Harris,
Thank you for your letter and emails in regards to Dominic Cummings. I have received many emails on the subject over the weekend.
I would like to first say that I am very conscious of the many sacrifices that people in Kensington have made during the lockdown; and for some this has been a particularly harrowing experience. I am sorry to hear about your wife’s thoughts of moving away – I will convey this in the strongest terms. I also believe strongly that those in Government should not be treated differently from those outside.
I want you to know that over the weekend and this morning I have fed through your views on the subject to the Government and have made clear the strength of feeling on this matter.
However, it is important that this issue does not become all consuming as there are many important decisions that need to be made in the upcoming days and weeks, as we look to reopen schools and in general look to restart the economy.
I will keep you updated on any developments from my side.
…whose real first and second names are lost to posterity. I believe it was on that fateful day with Fuzz that I bought the sampler album, Fill Your Head With Rock, which included my first Moondog track, Stamping Ground.
In truth I paid Moondog’s music only occasional heed until 10-12 years ago, when Janie and I began exploring Jazz. But Moondog’s story has long fascinated me and I have always associated him and his music with New York.
To my mind, Moondog’s music is the second most quintessential New York music.
So I was surprised, when I started researching this piece, to learn that Moondog was not a native New Yorker. Louis Thomas Hardin, known as Moondog, haled from Kansas. He moved to New York City at the age of 27 and lived there for only 30 of his 83 years. Moondog moved to Germany in the early 1970s, where he lived out his remaining decades.
Of course this doesn’t take away from the fact that Moondog was known as The Viking Of 6th Avenue. Nor from the fact that Moondog’s music is unquestionably inspired by a glorious mixture of New York City’s ethnic sounds. But authentic New Yorker, he wasn’t.
So, if Moondog is merely the second most quintessential New York sound ever, what, to my mind, is THE most quintessential? Ah, well, that comes down to my own New York experience.
My first ever visit to New York was in November 1989 at the age of 27, the same age as Moondog when he moved to New York. Coincidence strongly links my New York timeline with Moondog’s; he made a rare visit to New York, for his last major gig there. that very month.
It seemed to be played everywhere, all the time, while I was in New York. It is said to be the first hip-house hit and has been described as a dance masterpiece. Just listen to those amazing accents; New York, African-American Vernacular. That’s authentic, no?
No. When I returned to the UK with my copy of Pump Up The Jam proudly in hand and played it to my half-Belgian friend, Daniel Scordel, suggesting that it was THE New York sound, Daniel told me that his kid sister reliably informed him that Technotronic was a Belgian act.
Googling now informs me that Felly, the “featured artiste” was in fact a Congolese model who lip-synced on the video and posed for the cover of the Belgian record as a marketing ploy. The actual singer with the “authentic” New York accent was Ya Kid K, an androgynous-looking Congolese-Belgian woman, who was also a co-author of the song. Worse yet, the hip-house genre is said to cross-fertilise Chicago & London styles. Not New York.
In truth, the late 1980’s was not exactly a golden age for authentic popular music. Consider the Eurodance chart topper just before I set off for New York, Ride On Time, Italian in this case; an even messier mix of lip-synching models in the vid…
I did have a holiday romance on that trip, but not with Moose – you need to read between the lines of that write up to find it. Instead, Moose was a superb guide; a charming & fun companion in New York. We became firm friends. I resolved to return the guiding favour when Moose was due to come to London the following year.
But that favour was not to be returned. In June 1990, I was felled by a serious back injury; multiple prolapses in my lower back. Don’t talk to me about lockdown. This was a solo lockdown; my world got smaller for many months. Everyone else was out there having a good time while I was in excruciating pain, alone in my flat, rehabilitating.
It’s at times like those when you find out who your friends are. Many of my long-standing friends turned out to be true friends. So did Moose. Moose still wanted to see me. Moose would bring in shopping for me. Moose spent happy times with me in my confined world. Moose turned out to be an authentic friend.
Now I know what some of you are thinking. You recall the story of Fuzz, whose real first and second names remain a mystery. Is Moose similarly obscure? Is this Harris bloke a specialist in befriending young women with monosyllabic nicknames, enabling them conveniently to vanish without trace?
In Moose’s case, we did lose touch with each other after she returned to the States, but I did know her real names and I knew where she lived.
So in late 2019, while writing up my New York adventures, Mr Google helped me find her. It took me about three minutes. Not bad, considering she now goes by her married name and has moved to California.
She has 24 children…Meet:
Felly Kilingi, former Congolese model…no no no…Meet:…Loleatta Holloway, the late great unsung samples singer…no, no, no… Meet:
Mara has 24 different children every year. Mara is a primary school teacher.
The next few lines are dialogue.
MARA: “I am so glad that you contacted me. I’ve thought about you over the years and wondered how you were doing…I’m amazed that you found me…It’s so nice to hear from you.”
ME: “I’m so pleased that you are glad to hear from me…Are you still known as Moose?
MOOSE: “…very few friends still call me Moose. However…I seemed to have accidentally developed a Moose themed classroom, so I usually end up with students calling me Professor Moose.”
The picture above shows Kay, who hosted the evening, top left, reading her piece at the Virtual Threadmash. In normal times Threadmash is held at The Glad, but these are unprecedented times. Chris wrote a poem about the evening during the evening and Rohan presented a short, stray piece about nicknames. Eight of us prepared and presented pieces for the evening, either on the theme Charlotte Thomas (I didn’t present my text piece on that topic) or on the theme of soft furnishings. Below is the text of my soft furnishings piece.
Before Beany and Baggy…
…what a strange sense that phase has to me; “before Beany and Baggy”…
…I can barely envisage Janie’s place without Beany and Baggy.
But of course there was a before.
There is photographic evidence from before. I even took a photograph myself of “before”:
There’s Janie. The year is 1994. And look; there is an array of floor cushions; quite nice ones. But not Beany and Baggy.
That picture was taken before.
Here’s how it was. Before Beany and Baggy, there were floor cushions. Several floor cushions. For a great many years, Janie had been content, nay, even happy, with that array of floor cushions. Here is a picture from the mid 1980s. Same Sandall Close living room, same floor cushions.
But, early in 1996, something must have changed in Janie’s brain. Those floor cushions were lacking something; they were no longer sufficient to satisfy Janie’s need for large scale soft furnishings suitable for sitting, reclining or lying around upon.
There are rough scribblings as early as January in Janie’s 1996 diary that indicate, to my razor-sharp, investigative writer’s brain, that soft furnishing schemes were on the march in Janie’s mind. Ikea. World of Leather. Just the odd name and/or telephone number. Then the diary paper trail runs cold.
But Janie remembers clearly where and roughly when she acquired Beany & Baggy.
“I saw an advert in a magazine for gigantic, armchair-like beanbags. I really liked the look of them, size and shape-wise, but the advertised ones were all garish colours. I phoned the vendor, who turned out to be a Greek-Cypriot gentleman named Costas, to ask him if he had any of those armchair-like beanbags in black.
Costas said that he didn’t have any black ones in stock, but he was expecting a new consignment any day which would include black ones. He said he’d call me when they arrived and he did call me back quite soon. Costas’s shop was in Richmond, near a shop I wanted to visit anyway to get a garment to wear at Michael and Elisabeth’s wedding…”
That’s how we know that Beany and Baggy entered our lives in the spring of 1996. Back to Janie…
“I had intended to buy just one giant bean bag, but Costas was a persuasive salesman and offered me a very good price for taking two. When you came over on the Friday, you said I’d made a mistake buying two, because the pair of them seemed to dominate the living room. I was already thinking along those lines. But you named them Beany and Baggy and we both soon got used to the idea of them”.
Beany and Baggy don’t actually speak, but they do make sneery noises, usually when Janie and I address either of them by name, implying that we have got the two characters mixed up. Our hit rate for guessing the right name is so bad, precisely 0% over 24 years at the time of writing, Janie and I are starting to think that these rebukes might just be a little game that Beany and Baggy play with us.
Anyway, after their arrival in 1996, the next 15 years were Beany and Baggy’s glory years. They had pride of place in the living room, where they were the first port of call for us to flop into and relax after a hard day or week’s work.
And it wasn’t just Janie’s and my rump that graced Beany and Baggy back then. Janie’s living room was also the waiting room for her surgery and there were high-falutin’ folk who could not resist the charms of Beany and Baggy.
Perhaps the most high profile rump that regularly graced the cool black leather of Beany and Baggy was the late, great actress Anna Massey.
Coincidentally, Janie and I saw Anna Massey play Queen Elisabeth I in Mary Stuart at the National Theatre in the spring of 1996, around the time that Janie first took custody of Beany and Baggy.
According to Janie, it was Anna Massey’s habit to arrive early for her appointment and she was keen to sit in Beany or Baggy, even towards the end of her life, by which time she needed Janie to help her out of the squashy armchair, be it Beany or Baggy, once Janie was ready for her.
It wasn’t all the celebrity lifestyle and relaxation with me and Janie though, even in the glory years. Both Beany and Baggy had their struggles with anorexia. Frankly, both of them got quite saggy after a few years.
Mercifully, Janie’s best friend Kim is a highly-regarded surgeon in the soft furnishings world (and indeed in the world of cuddly toys), so a quick visit to Kim’s Hospital; then Beany and Baggy were no longer saggy, indeed they were both really quite portly again.
Here’s the only picture I could find of me and Janie with Beany and Baggy in their pride of place position in that Sandall Close living room.
Really perceptive readers will spot three pairs of hands in that picture – Kim is hiding behind us holding up the embarrassing pom-pom things. Even more perceptive readers will notice the well-hung painting, top left. Rumours that I was my father’s model for that picture are, I regret to say, fake news.
Of course, all wonderful things come to an end. Janie moved from Sandall Close to Noddyland in the summer of 2011. Anna Massey never saw Noddyland; she died just a couple of weeks after we moved there.
Beany and Baggy nearly missed out on Noddyland too. At first there was still work going on in the house and very little room for soft furnishings – they sat stacked on top of each other in whichever room wasn’t being worked upon.
Janie even suggested that Kim might like them for her workplace, Theme Traders once the new furniture arrived. Kim demurred, Beanie and Baggy were too special; she suggested that we should find room upstairs for them both.
Kim was right.
Now one of them lives in the bedroom, under the telly…the other one lives in the spare room.
Beany…or is it Baggy…in the bedroom
It’s a sort of semi-retirement for them both. Janie occasionally sits on Beany…or is it Baggy?…in the bedroom.
In truth no-one these days tends to sit on Baggy…or is it Beany?…in the spare room.
They are sort of living back-to-back now, in closer proximity than they were before. Less than two meters. Not sure if it counts as social distancing what with the wall‘n’all. So they live separately yet together, very close and unquestionably a couple. Janie and I can relate to that.
If only we could work out which one is Beany and which one is Baggy.
But in these unprecedented times (oh boy am I becoming sick of hearing that phrase, “unprecedented times”) the only way we can ThreadMash is remotely.
So that’s what we did.
The brief for TheadMash 6 was set at ThreadMash 5. Rohan waved a leather-bound notebook emblazoned with the name “Charlotte Thomas” at us. Rohan had bought that notebook cheap in Paperchase on the Strand. Someone had ordered it before Christmas but had not turned up to collect it. “Who was Charlotte Thomas?”, Rohan wondered. The brief was simply to write a short story that addressed that question.
Eight of us have written Charlotte Thomas pieces. Four of us addressed the mystery of Charlotte’s leather-bound notebook in our stories.
Here is my story, steeped in the experience Janie and I had volunteering for Crisis At Christmas. The character, Sharla, is based on several of the vibrant characters we met at Crisis. As far as we know, none of them were actually named Charlotte Thomas in real life, but then again, you never know!
THE NIGHT OF CHARLOTTE THOMAS
The karaoke was in full swing. Not the best karaoke we’d ever heard, frankly. But also not the worst. This was not your semi-professional karaoke of regular singers hoping to be spotted. This was impromptu karaoke. Informal, party, Christmas night, karaoke.
We heard one of the guests belt out Delilah, rather well, in a strong Middle-Eastern accent. Then we heard another guest belt out My Way…badly. Daisy and I couldn’t see the karaoke. We were in earshot, well within earshot, but we were on duty and had to remain at our post.
Then we heard Sharla sing. We didn’t know that she was called Sharla at that juncture, of course, nor did we yet know what she looked like, but we did know that the quality of the singing had gone up several notches, above and beyond the Delilah guy.
“…I should have changed that stupid lock, I should have made you leave your key, If I’d known…”
Daisy gave me one of her “I’m impressed” looks. I responded with my “too right” nod. I wished that I could go and have a look over the balcony to see this singer, but that would have meant breaking the rules and leaving my post. I wasn’t about to do that.
About five minutes after I Will Survive had finished, a pint-sized, super-confident-seeming female guest came up to our station and engaged me and Daisy in conversation. Sharla was only one or two words into her husky, deep-voiced opening gambit with us and we both knew we were being visited by that singer.
In truth, Sharla had taken a shine to Daisy, not really to me, although she seemed interested in both of us once she learnt that we were not just a duty pair, but an actual couple in real life. At this stage, Sharla pretty much asked all the questions and Daisy provided most of the answers.
Soon after Sharla moved on, Daisy and I were reallocated to a different station; ground floor. It was getting late by then, perhaps midnight, but quite a few guests were still milling about.
We chatted with several interesting people down there, before hearing the unmistakable sound of Sharla singing. The karaoke had long since finished. These were snatches of songs, mixed in with chatter.
“Pull up to my bumper baby, In your…every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little…”
Daisy complimented Sharla’s singing again and asked her if she’d ever considered singing for a living. Sharla told Daisy that she wasn’t the first person to have asked her that question.
Later, Daisy and I were advised to wrap up warm for front door duty. Now about 2.00 or 3.00 a.m., Boxing Day morning, gosh it was cold out there. A few guests still hanging out, some having a smoke, others just having a chat. Sharla appeared around the corner, a large mango in each hand. She told anyone who’d listen that a local 24 hour shop had given them to her. She vehemently denied the suggestion that she might have “liberated” them without the shopkeeper’s consent.
Sharla seemed in her element outside; indeed she told us that she was so used to rough sleeping, that she felt more in her element outside than inside at that hour.
Sharla must have spotted that I was feeling cold – at least Daisy had been given a padded hi-vis jacket to wear, I just had one of the flimsy ones…
…Sharla darted inside and badgered one of the indoor volunteers, who was wearing a fleecy hi-vis, to swap with me.
“Thank you, that was very thoughtful of you, Sharla”, I said, wondering why I hadn’t thought to take that action myself.
“I’m very grateful to you volunteers”, said Sharla, “unlike some of the fucking dickheads around here. I’ve seen some of ‘em being so fucking rude, it’s a fucking disgrace. I was in a bad mood last night, but I’m never that fucking rude to volunteers. I’m ‘avin’ the best night ever tonight”.
Outside, Sharla opened up to Daisy more than before. Sharla talked about her disorganised upbringing and the similarly chaotic upbringing to which she had subjected her own children. She talked about the drugs and the prostitution and the rough sleeping. She talked about her family in Jamaica and her desire to visit them. Not all of Sharla’s stories quite stacked up, nor were they all entirely consistent with each other. But all her stories were eye-opening.
“You have led a fascinating life”, said Daisy, “you should write your stories down and get them published.”
“You’re not the first person to tell me that”, said Sharla. “In fact, just last week, down by the Strand, I was talking to a nice gentleman and he said just that. He said he’d buy me a leather-bound writing book with my name on the front as a Christmas present. He even wrote down my full name and made me spell it out for him. Charlotte Thomas”.
“Ah, Sharla stands for Charlotte”, said Daisy, “our niece is called Charlotte.”
“Nice,” said Sharla, “anyway, that nice gentleman never showed up with my present.”
“Maybe he’ll show up with your present after Christmas,” said Daisy.
“Nah,” said Sharla. I knew he wouldn’t and I know he won’t. People make promises like that all the time, but they don’t really mean ‘em.”
We didn’t see Sharla again for the next few hours. We were on various dormitory floor duties and Charlotte Thomas was clearly not one for using the Crisis beds.
The last time we saw Sharla was at about 7:00 in the morning on our last duty; near the entrance, making sure that incoming daytime volunteers and wandering guests all went in the right directions. We replaced another pair who very quietly pointed to a sleeping Sharla, sitting in a chair, her upper body sprawled out across the table, fast asleep. “She pretty much fell asleep mid-sentence while talking to us”, a grinning volunteer told us, in a whisper.
And there slept Sharla…Charlotte Thomas, for the rest of our shift. The arms of Morpheus had finally got her, just when most of the other guests were getting up and starting to mill around again. What was Charlotte Thomas dreaming about, I wondered? Such a life she leads, so many stories she has. She really could do with that writing book. Maybe that nice gentleman really will turn up on the Strand with her gift after Christmas.
With thanks to John Random for the 1992 pictures, such as the one above.
It was with great sadness, although not surprise, that I learnt, on 11 March, that Chris Stanton has died. He had been battling and eventually reconciling himself with terminal cancer for a couple of years. It was a fitting coincidence that I learnt of his demise, through the NewsRevue alum community (specifically, via Chris Rowe), as I came off the real tennis court at Lord’s.
I first met Chris at the Canal Cafe Theatre in the spring of 1992, when I started writing for NewsRevue and while Chris was performing in John Random’s Spring 1992 run of the show.
Chris Stanton was the very first professional performer to deliver my lyrics to a paying audience. A rather morbid number, entitled California Here I Go:
Not one of my best, but one of my first…and my goodness, a performer of Chris’s quality could make the most of whatever material he was given.
That cast: Sarah Swingler, Ian Angus Wilkie, Chris Stanton, Sonia Beck
Later that run, the cast, with Chris Stanton up front and exceptional, performed another of mine, You Can’t Hurry Trusts. A much better – indeed still relevant – lyric for a topical satirical review, though I say so myself:
Chris Stanton’s professional career continued to thrive and take off as the 1990s went on…as did mine of course, but his was a performing career whereas my career was a more conventional one. I saw little of him for 20 or so years after our involvement with NewsRevue waned, by the end of the 1990s.
Chris was reluctant to join us at Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinners, although he did perhaps turn up once or twice in the early part of the 20th century.
Coincidentally, our paths crossed again some 20 years after Chris’s involvement with NewsRevue ceased, in 2016, when I took up real tennis at Lord’s and ran into Chris in the dedans gallery.
I, beginner.
Real tennis is a wonderful game, still played virtually unchanged since medieval times, ideal for those with a sense of comedy. As I said back in 2016:
Unless you are very gifted at the game (which I am not and Chris was only a little more gifted than me), you have to be prepared to look absurd at times, the game is so complex and confounding. Yet addictive.
Real tennis players are sometimes referred to as “realists” but I think there is an “absurdist” element to it for us comedy types. I especially enjoyed saying, panto-style, “it’s behind you” to Chris, if he ended up (as oft we do) confounded by the eventual landing point of that hand-made, not-quite-round ball in that crazily-shaped court. Ironically, of course, Chris was doing a fair bit of panto in recent years, before he was taken ill.
We are a geeky lot too, so “the book” for real tennis scores is a global database that records the results of every match. Here is my head-2-head of recorded games with Chris; he will have given me handicap points in each of these matches; fewer as the years went on:
Final score: Stanton 3 matches to Harris 2 matches. I could have been a contender…
I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen Chris for a while – I thought he might just have been busy with work or off games with an injury – until I ran into him at Lord’s last summer on a test match day and he explained to me (with some surprise that I didn’t know) that he had lung cancer (one of the non-smoker varieties), was undergoing treatment but was probably just staving off the inevitable. By that time, Chris seemed reconciled, I’d even say at peace, with his fate. Certainly that was the way he presented me with the facts of the matter.
My last memory of spending time with him will be an abiding one and speaks volumes about the man. Towards the end of last summer, we had a 40th anniversary party for NewsRevue at the Canal Cafe Theatre. The event included the extant show and a “smoker” – the latter being a form of party we often had in the 1990s at which performers and writers would do party pieces for one another.
Chris said to me, earlier in the evening, that he was worried that his lungs no longer had the capacity to carry him all the way through 0898 without a breather. I said that I was sure it wouldn’t matter if he did need a breather; we were a gathering of friends.
Of course, commensurate professional that he was, Chris somehow got through the song without missing a beat or pausing for breath once. It was a masterful performance, not least in the circumstances.
I don’t suppose my report of his tenacity comes as news to anyone who worked with Chris throughout his long and successful acting career, nor to anyone who did battle with him on the real tennis court.
In the language of real tennis, Chris was a “better than half a yard” sort of bloke; news of his demise has made me (and no doubt many others) feel “worse than the door”.
Or in the language of the stage, Chris Stanton was a stellar performer whose passing has temporarily made me feel wooden as I write.
But such super memories. Thank you, Chris Stanton.
Postscript: The Coincidence Magnifies
Within a day or so of posting this tribute, I learnt that Chris Rowe, the Newsrevue alum who notified us about Chris Stanton’s demise, is also a member of the MCC and also a real tennis enthusiast. Indeed, it was through Chris Rowe that Chris Stanton got involved with real tennis at Lord’s.
Here is a poster from the Newsrevue 1991 Edinburgh show, in which both of the gentlemen appeared:
How does one describe Threadmash? It is sort-of a writing club, where people write and recite pieces, often being encouraged outside their safe places, by ringmaster Rohan Candappa.
But it is not so much about what we do as it is about how it makes those of us who participate in it feel. I probably described that for the first time at the end of the Ogblog piece in which I set out my second threadmash piece:
Rohan is not one to let a birthday or anniversary go unmarked…
…nor is he one to miss an opportunity for a party of sorts.
So Threadmash 5 was cunningly scheduled for the first anniversary of Threadmash. Well played, Rohan.
There were several new faces this time, observing the readings and whole-heartedly participating in the party atmosphere. Several of them had “Sh” names, such as Shirani, Shivangi, Shazia and Rowan.
Terry went first. He wrote a job application letter, to become a taster for Mr Kipling cakes. He used the application as a mechanism to tell us all about his “work experience” as a youngster. It was very amusing and touching in parts.
Jan then read us a letter to a plate of food that she was forced to “study” outside the headmistresses office for the whole afternoon, when five years old, because she had the audacity to abstain from eating the ghastly gunk that was her school dinner. This too was a very funny and touching piece.
…followed by Chris who wrote a letter to his own testosterone, explaining how their relationship had changed and was likely to continue changing over the decades. Not only funny and engaging, this piece was also moving and quite risky in the level and nature of its confessional humour.
Flo’s piece was the fifth one. A letter, decades later, to a youth with whom she had enjoyed extended correspondence and an unfulfilled dalliance “back in the day”, probably because she was less ready for romance at that time than the young man. As with all of the pieces, there was a mixture of drama and humour; this one especially bittersweet because the mismatch was one of those timing things that so many of us probably, if we put our minds to it, experienced one way or another when we were in the early stages of romance. I probably wasn’t the only man in the room thinking, “crickey, I never, ever put THAT much effort into wooing a girl. Poor chap.”
Next up was David Wellbrook, who wrote a very moving letter in the part of a soldier on the front line in WW1, writing home having just killed a man in hand-to-hand combat. David is a very versatile writer. To a greater extent than most of us, he is able to pick up on Rohan’s entreaties to stretch ourselves beyond our safe zones and make that stretch comprehensively.
Strangely, Kay’s letter was to her late Grandfather and talked a great deal about his active service in WW1.This seemed like a particularly coincidental echo, coming immediately after David’s WW1 story and also in relation to mine, which was also a letter to a dead relative of the grandfather generation, albeit “grandfather-in-law” in my case. Kay’s piece was very touching, not least because clearly her grandfather had been unable to communicate feelings very much when Kay knew him and also because it is clear from the letter that Kay feels she might not have communicated with him sufficiently either.
Geraldine’s letter was directed by Rohan to be a letter of resignation, but Geraldine cleverly and delightfully twisted the idea to make it a letter of resignation to her former husband, explaining why she felt she simply had to escape the drudgery of the “American dream, American housewife” role in which she found herself cast as his wife. It was a beautiful piece of writing, full of love combined with a steely determination to explain herself and not to apologise. As with all of the pieces, the letter was probably the right length for such a performance piece but (and because) it said so much while leaving me wanting to know more.
After a short interlude, Rohan took us through a 10 point agenda. Is this is all getting a bit business-like?
…not as business-like as it looks, once you read the items
The brief for Threadmash Six is to write about an unknown woman named Charlotte Thomas. All we know of her is that Rohan managed to acquire a cheap moleskin-like notebook that had been customised with her name but never collected from the shop. Our job is to write about whosoever this person might be.
It did cross my mind to recycle my Theadmash One story, which is about a youthful dalliance with a young woman who I only ever knew as Fuzz, thus not even knowing her real first name, let alone her second name. She might very well be (or have been) Charlotte Thomas…
…but that would be cheating – I won’t do that. I think I have already decided on my Charlotte Thomas idea – it will be a bit of a stretch but I guess it is meant to be.
There was an awards ceremony, during which Rohan’s Edinburgh nemesis Rowan presented Adrian (in absentia) and Julie “Croissanita” with awards which, given their origins from the same stable as the Charlotte Thomas moleskin-type thing, I suggested should henceforward be known as “Charleys”.
It was a birthday party so of course there was cake…
…and goody bags.
Even the awkward silence was superb.
Then Rohan performed a new piece of his own, a very evocative piece which the agenda claims to be a collaboration with a top musician. But Rohan actually confessed that Brian Eno is…was unaware of the collaboration. I’m hoping Rohan will tell me which ambient piece he used to back up his words, at which point I shall update this piece with the information and possibly (with Rohan’s permission) let Brian Eno know how well he did.
Update: Rohan reports that the piece used was Neroli. You may hear Neroli on-line by clicking here or the embedded thingie below:
Rohan’s new work, about 15 minutes long, is a lyrical, poetic piece named Park.
Rohan was so pumped for his recital that he even felt the need to change for his performance:
Not only was Park a very charming and thought-provoking piece, it was, in a way, the third coincidence on the topic of troubadours. Of course, we will never know whenether the troubadour tradition was one of singing the lyrical poems to tunes or the dramatic recitation of lyrical poems with musical backing…almost certainly a bit of both depending on the piece and the troubadour. In any case it occurred to me that Rohan’s piece was very much of that 800+ years old troubadour tradition.
As always, the very act of gathering and spending an evening with such super people is a huge part of the Threadmash thing. I have known several of the people for just shy of 50 years now, whereas some of us have just met in the last year and about half the people at this anniversary evening were new to the thing. All were great company.
I’ve written too much already. It was a cracking evening. Thanks as always, Rohan.
