Actually the visit on 30 August started off as a real tennis match in the morning, in which “The Coley Kids” (which sounds like a 1960s Saturday morning pictures series) took apart me and my doubles partner Andrew Hinds.
Never mind. We had a most enjoyable day.
Andrew and I consoled ourselves with a light lunch at The Ivy and then watched The Hundred women’s match together, before Andrew sloped off to Vicarage Road while I stayed on and watched most of the men’s match…
…before ambling home before the end.
Finals Day – 3 September 2022
Pretty much everything that Janie and I want to say about finals day has been said in our (Daisy and Ged’s) King Cricket match report:
We witnessed the whole of the women’s match and bailed out about 30 balls before the end of the men’s match, which turned out to be a closer finish than we anticipated. Never mind. We had a most enjoyable day.
…my cousin Angela Kessler (née Harris) leapt in to the research fray and started uncovering all manner of wonderful stuff about our family’s earliest steps towards and in the UK.
Let’s start with the family legend that my grandfather Harris (aka Herz aka Hescha) set off for America but ended up in London due to a relatively minor infection/illness on arrival at Ellis Island that resulted in him being turned away from the USA.
On the above document Angela found Herz Russinov on a ship’s manifest setting off from Hamburg 6 May 1911, but clearly not for a USA destination as this is not a USA manifest. Left hand column just over half way down, record 518, listed as a 22 year old shneider (tailor).
Angela also found Hersch Russinov on a USA bound ship out of Rotterdam on 12 May 1911. He’s third from bottom on this manifest, listed as a “Hebrew” from Vilnius, aged 23. It states that his occupation is tailor, that his wife’s name is Hesha (Grandma Anne’s real name) and that the wife hails from Minsk province. This ticks our family boxes.
Uniquely on this page, no destination in USA is listed for Grandpa Hersch. Instead, in very small print, you can see a stamp that says “hospital” and “discharged” just above the hand-written word “tailor”. This does seem to prove the family legend.
One intriguing aspect of the boat records is Grandpa’s stated age; 22/23 years old. For the 1921 census and subsequent documents he had added 6 or 7 years to that age. It seems unlikely that he would have pretended to be younger than he really was for the journey, unless there was some financial/regulatory incentive so to do. It seems more likely that he added a few years subsequently, perhaps to suggest more gravitas and/or experience than was actually the case. Either way, “naughty Grandpa, cousin Angela caught you out”.
Cousin Angela also found traces of our family’s early years in London, before my father’s arrival, via birth records, in 1919. For example, Angela found the following directory entry in a 1915 trade directory:
Just in case that isn’t good enough for you to prove that this is “our” Harris Russinov, she also found her father (Alec) and our Uncle Manny in the following School Board register:
These records (around 20 rows down), which we believe to be Pulteney Street School, show seven-year-old Uncle Alec there between April 1915 and October 1915. He was previously at Lancaster Road School, near All Saints’ Road.
In early January 1916 Uncle Manny, not yet five, is removed from Pulteney Street and switched to Marylebone. Intriguingly, that Schools Board record says that Uncle Manny had attended no previous school, but the following record suggests that Uncle Manny had a very short stay at Lancaster Road School as a four-year-old.
At the time of the Pulteney Street School Board records, our family address is stated as 13 West Street, which, as Angela’s detective work ascertained, is now Newburgh Street (near Carnaby Street). Possibly Uncle Manny’s January 1916 school switch to Marylebone coincides with the family moving to Upper Marylebone Street.
It was time for me to take a stroll.
27 All Saints’ Road is, at the time of writing, Amanda Thompson Couture, despite retaining (presumably due to planning laws) the old Treggs Grocery sign. It seems to me, if retaining old signage is the rage, that the Treggs sign itself should be excavated to see if there is a Harris Russinov The Chandler sign underneath.
It is interesting that a tailor would have a go as a chandler during the Great War. I suppose there was not much business for a tailor at that time, with the men almost all away at war.
I suspect also, with the family moving around at that time, that it was struggling somewhat to settle. Still, it was a surprise to find the family in Notting Hill so early in their time in the UK. I have always thought of Notting Hill as MY stomping ground.
Above is Uncle Alec’s (and very briefly Uncle Manny’s) Lancaster Road School – now a Virgin Active Health Club.
As for 13 West Street, aka Newburgh Street, that building remains – majorly repaired perhaps but not replaced – and looks rather splendid now:
I don’t suppose the burgeoning Harris Russinov family occupied all of this premises, but who knows? There was a war on and perhaps they were engaged temporarily to “shop sit” for someone.
Now that I have disambiguated Upper Marylebone Street and New Cavendish Street numbering, I can confirm that the Harris Russinov family then took up residence at 4 Upper Marylebone Street, which is now 162 New Cavendish Street. Another building that appears to have been majorly repaired relatively recently, leaving its Fitzrovia slum days far behind.
Our guess is that the family settled there around 1916 and for sure they were settled enough by the end of the Great War to start expanding the family again. My dad was actually born in the above building on 11 August 1919.
Having only got to know them as middle-aged folk, it’s hard to imagine the Harris brothers as babies and/or mischievous school kids.
Uncles Manny, Michael and AlecDad: “I took that colour photo, so there!”
For several months prior, we had eagerly awaited our joint birthday celebration trip. We had long since abandoned the idea of having a party for the joint 60th, deciding instead to celebrate, as we have done several times before, as a group of four.
Prequel: Dinner With John At Dai Chi, Soho, 11 August 2022
Every great epic movie or three has at least one prequel these days. In any case, John and I felt that we are so out of practice with fine dining, we simply owed it to ourselves and to the girls to have a rehearsal in London earlier in the month.
That miso aubergine and gooseberry dish was to die for…or to Dai Chi for I should say.It was all so good
A very enjoyable evening indeed. Or, as we put it to the girls solemnly, “we had indeed done our boot camp training to prepare for the culinary trials to come later in the month”.
The First Afternoon & Evening At Whatley Manor, 24 August 2022
Whatley’s up, doc?
The girls had done a magnificent job of conspiring ahead of this trip. John and I knew that something…some things…were on their planning boards, but felt we owed it to them and to ourselves to just go with the flow.
As it turned out, the first “event” for me and John was a “surprise” visit to the spa, where we enjoyed a glass of wine in a hot tub prior to full body massages.
The hot tub had so many buttons and knobs it took us most of the half hour to work out how to operate the thing. Once we had sunk our glasses of wine and soaked in the tub for that much time, we were both a bit dazed and confused. John almost forgot his glasses and I almost forgot my flip-flops. Considering that neither of us had more than one or two incidentals about our person, that was a pretty high forgetfulness rate.
The massages were excellent (the place has a top notch spa) which got both of us into thoroughly relaxed mode.
But I was not so relaxed as simply to buy the idea that Whatley Manor is a 17th century building, as one of the receptionists had suggested. In fact the building is mostly 19th century and the “mock Tudor” extension is 20th century. Worse yet, the place was originally called Twatley Manor. Hats off to the marketing folk who thought that Whatley Manor would sell better as a name.
it’s a lovely manor, whatever it’s called and whenever it was built
John and I enjoyed the late afternoon sunshine after our massages while the girls were too polite to come and find us, but soon we were reunited and got ready for the “easy-peasy” Grey’s Brasserie meal we had arranged for the first night.
John went for steak & fat-frittesMandy & I both went for the pork. Mandy’s plate colour-co-ordinated with her rose wineJanie went for the duck – it was all delicious grub, oh yes it was
In honour of my mate Philip The Bold, Duke of Burgundy, we treated ourselves to a bottle of Domaine Faiveley Mercurey La Framboisière 2019 that first night and jolly gluggable it was too.
John had begged Mandy not to arrange cake and “happy birthday singing” in a public place – thank goodness – so Mandy & Janie had conspired to arrange cake and an opportunity for “happy birthday singing” in a private place – in the living room mezzanine of John & Mandy’s suite:
Did we ask for this?So symbolic – 60 illuminated by two candles
The cake was seriously yummy death by chocolate.
Day Two – During The Day, 25 August 2022
Blowing out my own candle
The chocolate cake desert had perhaps been overkill, as we had each been given a mini chocolate cake and candle which Janie and I enjoyed as a pre-breakfast treat the next morning.
Breakfast was of course excellent – we went full English that first morning – then we realised that the scheduled good weather for our trip was being interrupted by a couple of hours of drizzle and rain. I suggested that we defer our scheduled walk until that was over – about 12:30.
We walked from the hotel – across Easton Grey bridge (over the Avon) around to Foxley and then on to Malmesbury. I’ll let the photos tell the tale of this charming walk.
Easton Grey BridgeChecking the cricket score from Old Trafford, not weather or directionsThe local moofia came over to greet usThen the Foxley longhorns let us know what they thought tooFoxley ChurchJohn can see an excellent long cut back to the manor – Mandy and I talk him out of it.A brush with an emu at a farm just outside MalmesburyAlpaca and hen at the same farmOutskirts of MalmesburyThe Old Bell Hotel, Malmesbury, possibly the oldest in EnglandRefreshments in the Old BellThen a wander around Malmesbury Abbey
We wandered around the town, thought about walking home, then called for a cab when we realised that we wanted to be fit and awake for our big dinner tonight.
The Big Dinner At Whatley Manor, 25 August 2022
Drinks before dinner
We won’t talk about John’s “poking himself between the eyes” incident before he came down to dinner, because that would be unkind, especially as he didn’t even need to confess to it given that his specs covered the tiny gash. I tried the concussion test on John, which he failed, but we concluded that he’d fail it under any circumstances, so that was OK.
After drinks in the lounge, head chef Ricki Weston (above) invited us into the kitchen for our first few nibbles and a chat.
Is that all?John & I listening intently to the descriptions of the first two nibblesJanie wandered deeper into the kitchen with her camera-phone
Then we sat down at table for the rest of the nibbles and the main dishes. At this juncture, it was out with the camera phones big time. We weren’t going to eat the hell out of this feast – oh no – we were going to photograph the hell out of it.
We all staggered back to our rooms after a wonderful evening.
The Morning After And Home, 26 August 2022
We’d had a wonderful time. We were all suffering a little the next morning, having become unaccustomed to long evenings of eating and drinking.
We mostly went a bit lighter on breakfast, although John still went for bacon and black pudding, claiming it to be lighter than my cereal and yoghurt!
After breakfast and check out, we met up in the grounds and strolled around those before heading home.
OK, so birthdays are meaningless milestones of decay…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTNVmJhsLU8
…but there’s nothing meaningless about enduring friendships. We’d had such a great time – it was so special to spend that much prime time celebrating the birthdays with close friends.
If you want to see all the pictures – trigger warning – there are more than 250 of them – the Flickr link here and below takes you to all of them:
…asked Rohan, while we were messaging each other to make the arrangements for a lunchtime meet up.
Is the sky blue, is the Pope a Catholic, do bears shit in the woods and is a pig’s arse pork?
…I felt like replying, but instead I sent Rohan a link to the Ogblog piece about my first ever dim sum experience, so long ago it was before I had even met Rohan…whom I met when we started Alleyn’s School in September 1973:
In that case, let’s meet at 12:30 in the middle of Gerrard Street.
Great, I thought, this will be my first visit to Chinatown for years and I miss the place.
My childhood memory of trying dim sum for the first time must be my favourite anecdote about dim sum in Chinatown, but I do have another treasured memory on that topic.
In the mid to late 1990s, while working with the late, great Professor Mike Smith, we found ourselves nearby and decided to continue our discussions over a dim sum lunch. Studying an extensive card, I wondered whether Mike had ever tried duck tongues – a dish I had tried before (I think in Hong Kong) and rather liked. Mike said he was up for anything and thus we ordered, amongst several other things, a portion of tongues.
Mike Smith, normally calm
On tasting the anatine delicacy, Mike freaked out.
Oh my God – they’ve got bones in their tongues! Ducks have bones in their tongues! Uggh.
Even after we agreed that the bone-like core of the duck’s tongue was probably hard cartilage rather than bone, Mike was too discombobulated by the discovery to eat any more of that dish…
…which, to anyone who knew Mike well, proves that he was seriously discombobulated. Indeed, Mike told the “dim sum discovery that ducks have bones in their tongues” story to anyone who’d listen for ages after the event.
Returning to 2022, I wondered whether Rohan had chickened out (or should I say ducked out) of picking a venue, but it turned out he had a specific venue in mind all along: New Loon Fung. As we entered, I was pretty sure this was the same venue as the Mike Smith tongue incident all those years ago. Seeing duck tongues on the menu pretty much confirmed my theory – you don’t see those on the menu in many dim sum places in London.
I told Rohan the story. Of course he agreed we needed to order some, along with the several other things we both wanted to try.
Perhaps the waiters had a sense of foreboding about non-Chinese people ordering a delicacy so quintessentially Chinese as duck tongues. The restaurant was heaving by the time we placed our order, almost exclusively with people who were visibly Chinese or at least of Chinese origin.
We asked a couple of times for the tongues, once it was clear that all our other dishes had long since been delivered. Eventually our portion came:
Duck got your tongue, Rohan? He sure doesn’t look 100% sure
We “toasted” Mike, each of us with a tongue on our chopsticks, Rohan tried that one tongue, then he deferred the rest of the plate to me, leaving me in a similar position, plate of tongues-wise, as I had been in 25 or so years ago with Mike Smith.
I’m old enough and ugly enough now that I don’t do anything I don’t want to do…
…said Rohan, when I pressed the point, just to be sure he wasn’t simply deferring my chosen delicacy out of politeness.
I guess I might be on my own in the matter of liking the duck tongues dish – I recall Janie not much liking it either.
Rohan and I chatted about many things, including how most of the eateries we knew from the old days had gone from Chinatown – New Loon Fung being a rare perennial. I think it was known as Dragon Phoenix “back in the day”, but it looks and feels like the same place of old.
After parting company with Rohan, I took a stroll around Chinatown, confirming that most of my old haunts had vanished.
Strangely and most coincidentally, I got an e-mail from Michael Mainelli about 48 hours later asking me if I could recommend a place in Chinatown for him and the family to go to after a show – all the places he remembered had closed down since his last visit.
I was able to provide some helpful advice. Really I should put the time from my afternoon off onto my timesheet as R&D for the business. Only joking, only joking.
…which is probably worth reading before reading the following response…
…Mark responded with some fascinating reflections of his own about that music “forty years on”, along with his thoughts on what the follow-up mix tape should have been. I shall try to replicate that “thought-experiment mix tape” within this guest piece.
Ah Ian,
Every one of those tracks still gets a regular airing in my household! For me they have never aged because I’ve never gone through a prolonged period not listening to any of them. Anything by Grace Jones in that early eighties period always brings back memories of six in the morning in Freehold Street, Newcastle in the spring and summer of 1982 after a night at the 141 Club in Hanley with the likes of Anna Summerskill, Mark Bartholomew, Vince Beasley and Jan Phillips, amongst others. Invariably all of us stoned / tripping and / or speeding. The ‘Nightclubbing’ album just tailor made for the wee small hours after a long night out just as everyone was coming down. It was THE album I most associate with that crazy summer term when I went through that cathartic metamorphosis!
The Grace Jones version of ‘She’s lost control’, originally by Joy Division, on that tape I made you was one of the more eccentric covers I’ve heard. Back in 1994 I had the good fortune to meet the great lady when she was booked to play at The Fridge in Brixton. It was touch and go whether she’d make it onto stage - she was several hours late I recall before the show eventually started - but I did ask what had prompted her to cover such a track by such a band. It transpired she knew nothing about the band, knew nothing about Ian Curtis’s suicide and had merely heard the original track before deciding there and then to do her own version. It ended up as the B side to her single ‘Private Life’. She was rather horrified when she found out about Curtis’s demise and that the song was about epilepsy - a condition he suffered from.
The Roxy Music track ‘Both ends burning’ (from 1975) is etched into the memory because of their performance on Top of the Pops promoting it. Bryan Ferry dressed up as a GI with an eye patch dancing awkwardly as two heavily made up women, also dressed up in military garb, swung their hips behind him - looking vaguely glassy eyed in the eyeball department.
‘Violence Grows’ by the Fatal Microbes was always being played by John Peel. The singer was 15 year old Honey Bane, a schoolgirl who’d been signed up on the strength of her already provocative stage performances. This was a howl of rage from a time when there really didn’t seem much hope for young people as unemployment skyrocketed. Her indifferent tuneless vocal delivery for whatever reason just resonated.
‘Atmosphere’ by Joy Division arguably my favourite track released just after Curtis’s death a fitting tribute to the man’s genius. He was only 23 when he died - just imagine what might have come later on in his career had things been different. I wonder how ‘Blue Monday’ by New Order might have sounded had he gotten his teeth into it. I still recall John Peel announcing his death on air and playing ‘Atmosphere’ and being quite shocked. No one then could have imagined the cult status they would 40 plus years later enjoy.
‘Typical Girls’ by the Slits just a wonderful piece of pop-punk-reggae by the original riot girls. Ari Up the singer (alas she died of cancer some years ago) was John Lydons (nee Rotten) stepdaughter. John married Ari’s mother Nora, a German heiress, back in the eighties. It’s a track that despite its 43 years of existence still sounds like it could have been recorded in 2022.
Mark then went on to suggest a follow-on mix tape:
Had I made a second tape for you that year it would have undoubtedly included the following. All from that 1982ish period.
‘My face is on fire’ - Felt
‘Fireworks’ - Siouxsie & the Banshees
‘Temptation’ - New Order
‘How does it feel?’ - Crass
‘Torch’ - Soft Cell
‘The back of love’ - Echo & the Bunnymen
‘Second skin’ - The Chameleons
‘Persons unknown’ - Poison Girls
‘Hand in glove’ - The Smiths
‘Treason’ - Teardrop Explodes
‘Requiem’ - Killing Joke
‘Dead Pop Stars’ - Altered Images
‘Alice’ - Sisters of Mercy
‘Eat y’self fitter’ - The Fall
‘Painted bird’ - Siouxsie & the Banshees
‘Let’s go to bed’ - The Cure
‘Capers’ - The Birthday Party
‘Nightclubbing’ - Grace Jones
‘The look of love’ - ABC
‘Being boiled’ - Human League
‘Pissing in the river’- Patti Smith
‘Walking on thin ice’ - Yoko Ono
OK, let’s give that mix tape a go. I have really enjoyed listening to these tracks and hope readers enjoy them too. Many thanks, Mark, for your kind note and further selections forty years on.
Janie and I were so pleased to be invited to this Crisis event – a thank you to us 2021/22 Crisis At Christmas volunteers. I wrote up much of our volunteering experience at the time – click here or below.
Our extended volunteering for several weeks into January was unfortunately foreshortened (although only by one shift) when I tested positive for Covid after what should have been our penultimate shift. Which meant we hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye properly to several colleagues.
Reunited with Tracie & Connie
Further, we had heard such great things about the outcomes from this year’s Christmas initiative, we were keen to learn whether the new delivery model would be repeated in 2022.
Tristia and Matt express thanks and bring positive news ahead of 2021
Janie and I wondered whether we might also run into Kathy & Caroline from FoodCycle at this event, as we knew that both of them do Crisis, although we hadn’t shifted with either of them at Christmas. Almost as soon as the speeches finished, those two sought us out:
Caroline & Kathy “soughting” me outNot sure what Mike just said, but no-one, least of all Mike, seems pleased in that instant It wasn’t all bearded, long-haired, bright-shirt-wearing hunks named Ian
We had a very enjoyable time. Afterwards, Janie and I treated ourselves to a shawarma supper takeaway from Ranoush. It would have been rude to walk past the place on the way home, after all.
A Prize Dinner – Kitchen At Holmes, 29 July 2022
Free to choose whatever we want
Back in the mists of time – before we did our 2021 Crisis at Christmas volunteering, I went to a really charming Baker Street Quarter Partnership event, which was, in part, a fundraiser for Marylebone FoodCycle…
…and won a dinner for two courtesy of Kitchen At Holmes in the fundraising raffle.
Janie and I had not got around to booking that evening, as I pointed out every now and then when I stumbled across the envelope/voucher in my in-tray. We agreed that we really shouldn’t push the “valid until November 2022” deadline and that a summer Friday evening out rather than in would be a treat for us.
This meal certainly was that.
Please explain the difference between chanterelles and girolles, Genaro.“It’s like this…”
Genaro looked after us extremely well throughout the meal.
The food looked amazing and tasted just as good. We photographed the food like a couple of youngsters.
In fact, if it is culinary eye candy you are after, you can click the link below and see all the foodie pics we took:
Janie started with the lamb kofte, depicted above, while I started with a tuna tartare dish. Janie then moved on to fish – sea bass, while I enjoyed a veal steak. The chunky chips were a delight for us to share, as were the carrots & purple potties, also depicted above.
Of course a raffle is all luck but, as the organisers said at the Baker Street Quarter Partnership do all those months ago, it was really nice to have FoodCycle volunteers win one of the high-end raffle prizes
Our deserts – we sort of feel we got our just ones
Janie and I were super excited ahead of this one. During lockdown Janie had taken to fine art and had been reading up on graffiti art/street art. This Alternative London street tour, with an opportunity to try out some spray can art at a workshop afterwards, seemed like a very good idea, so I snapped up a couple of tickets for an alternative Friday afternoon off.
Gary was the geezer we rolled with
We were part of a group of 12 to 15 people, most of whom were tourists from outside the UK and very few of whom seemed to come from anywhere near Janie’s and my age range. Unlike my visits to Lord’s lately, no-one addressed me as “young man” on this afternoon.
Janie and I went mad with our camera-phones. We took nearly 140 pictures between us and if you want to flick through them all, unedited but in time sequence, this Flickr album (here and image below) has the lot:
I’ll pepper this account with some highlight pictures, which should give you a reasonable idea.
The Walking Tour
We started in Fashion Street, where there were many superb street art works, including this one, which had recently acquired its tears and farewell messages:
The above two pictures also Fashion Street, with moving stories to go with them
It also dawned on me that we were walking streets (and due to walk streets) close to the locations I have recently been researching regarding the early years of my mother’s Arkus/Markus/Marcus family in London. More on that later.
Some of the most spectacular street art in the area emerged during (or just after) lockdown, when artists needed an outlet for their outpourings and many building owners presumably thought, “why not?”:
Extraordinary and exceptional skills needed to produce works like these
We wandered a bit further east, around Princelet Street…
Janie was already getting funky with the art, snapping Princelet Street through the looking glass
We then wended our way to the open space around the old Truman Brewery, where a great deal of street art and graffiti art resides.
Lots of symbolism…Banksy himself had a hand in the car……Gary tried to explain some of it to me – it reminded me a bit of situationismThis concrete sculpture was simply stunning
Then back along Hanbury Street..
In Hanbury Street, Gary pointed out the utterly compelling Libreria bookshop and then didn’t stop to give us time to have a look around – you cannot do things like that to me!
In the few moments I grabbed in the shop, the attendant spotted my Middlesex CCC shirt and engaged me in conversation about that as well as books. I’ll have to go back, I suppose.
At the end of Hanbury Street, we were on the corner of Spital Street, where my Great Uncle John (Johnny) lived and worked as a cabinet maker at the turn of the 20th century.
On Heneage Street we rather liked the Up Yours street art piece.
Multi sport facility – well streetWe SO nearly ended our tour prematurely in there
Then back to Brick Lane…
Kill The Cat
…more or less completing a circuit before ploughing south towards Whitechapel.
A wonderful, almost new, symbolic piece by an artist of Bangladeshi origin
We said goodbye to the few walking tourists who had chosen not to try some spray can art – the rest of us ploughed on towards the Hessel Street studio.
A Brief Arkus/Markus/Marcus Family Tour
We walked along White Church Lane and then past Back Church Lane – the latter (No 132) being the residence of my Great Uncle Max & Great Aunt Leah Markus at the time of the 1901 census – just a few years after Max arrived in London and while he was still labouring in the tobacco industry and dreaming of returning to his chosen profession – violinist.
Modern buildings & street works where 132 would have beenGreat Uncle Max c1900
When Max first arrived, in the late 19th century, he lived at 1 Matilda Street, where the rest of that enormous family (including my grandpa) still resided in 1901.
No longer there, Matilda Street has been absorbed by council housing buildings on the block just south-west of Gary’s Alternative London studio…
Of course I hadn’t yet got around to taking that stroll (I spend so little time in the City these days) and it hadn’t occurred to me that we might be close by, when I booked this experience.
But let us return to Whitechapel and spraying paint around.
The Studio Session
Gary made us all mask up and glove up (thank goodness) and then taught us how to spray paint on walls/boards rather than ourselves (useful skill, that, when spraying paint).
These pictures taken just before we all masked and gloved up
Keeping us away from the stencils until we had “mastered” the basics, we were charged with making a rectangular base and graffitiing our names. This, even I could do quite well.
Quite well, although my street art name should really be Ged
Even the use of the larger stencils was within my skills grasp with relative ease – the trick being to spray enough but not too much.
It was the attempt at some detailed lettering with stencils that confounded me, with more red paint on my fingers and blotching that corner of my masterpiece than actually communicating words. I wanted to spray “Media Kills”, but I think I’ll stick to the keyboard for such detailed messages.
Janie chose, instead, to “give it large” with the visual imagery, absorbing some of the existing images into her own creation, which, I am reliably informed, is very street.
So there you have it – Janie shows big idea talent at this art medium while I scratch away thinking that words are necessary in all cases.
We’d had a wonderful afternoon. Although we haven’t travelled to far-flung locations now for years, this experience transported us in far-flung cognitive ways.
And for those who think that the words are unnecessary for this experience, there’s always the Flickr album with all the pictures from the day:
These days I’m far more likely to visit Lord’s to play real tennis than I am to watch cricket; or at least to play real tennis AND watch cricket. But this rare week had me at Lord’s three times to watch cricket without playing tennis.
England v India ODI 14 July 2022
The first of the visits was for the one day international (ODI) between England and India. I don’t much go to ODIs these days (World Cup in England year excepted of course) but I had planned to take Ian Theodoreson to the test match in 2020 (until Covid scuppered such plans) and the most suitable date for a rescheduling was this particular ODI.
Ian has had a tendency to choose what turns out to be one of the hottest days of the year for his visits to Lord’s with me. He did so four years ago...
…which might be connected with the choice of dates in mid to late July.
Anyway, this 2022 visit was Ian’s first in one of the wheelchair enclosures, a factor that at least allowed the opportunity for me to meet and host Sally Theodoreson for the first time, which was an absolute pleasure, plus an opportunity for the MCC to demonstrate one of the things it seems able to do very well indeed , which is to look after wheelchair visitors.
Actually, as it turned out, this day was far from the hottest day of the year – Janie and I had that “pleasure” to come at Lord’s a few days later, but still we were grateful to the stewards finding us some shade from which to view the match.
I made the substantive picnic – being smoked trout bagels, ham and cheese sandwiches, dry salads in cups plus plentiful fruits, not least some giant strawberries that were as big on flavour as they were in size. Sally and Ian brought the other items that make a picnic sing – savoury & sweet nibbles plus a very glug-able Shiraz wine.
A very enjoyable day, albeit a very long one for Ian and Sally, motoring up from Somerset and back on the day.
The Hottest Day Ever, Middlesex v Sussex Day One, 19 July 2022
Daisy awaiting the start of play, on the sundeck, having bagsed a parasol – yey!
We had planned to meet up with Fran and Simon at Lord’s that day, after first visiting (ironically, give Fran’s now former profession) the dental hygienist first thing. In the end, Fran and Simon gracefully withdrew from the plans and we resolved to give the match a try, but we were very much aware that the forecast was for the hottest day since records began. We suspected that we’d only stay until lunch.
Actually it was pretty pleasant up on that deck during the first session, although everyone was wondering why Tim Murtagh had chosen to bowl on the hottest day ever, so some of the Middlesex regulars were getting a bit hot under the collar.
Don’t I look cool considering it was the hottest day EVER?
I wanted to show Janie the view from the top of the new Upper Compton, so we wandered around that way, bumping into one of my tennis pals, Russ, with whom we chatted for a while as the temperature rose.
We didn’t stay up top for long – the view was great and the shade welcome but the breeze was almost non-existent by 2:00 and it was getting seriously hot.
We went home to swelter in the discomfort of our own home for the rest of the day, still wondering what Middlesex had been playing at choosing to bowl.
Young Men At Lord’s, Middlesex v Sussex Day Three, 21 July 2022
But in some company the phrase seems even more sarcastic than usual. For example, my third visit to Lord’s in a week, when I met up with young Jez Horne, who came to work as a summer intern at Z/Yen in the summer of 2005 and stayed for nearly 10 years…and Jez’s six-year-old son Nathaniel.
As it happens, I originally met Jez through Middlesex cricket. In fact, now I come to think of it, I conducted his internship recruitment interview while playing catch on the outfield at Southgate in the interval between innings of a Middlesex v Gloucestershire Sunday League match, 17 years ago.
Jez did a lot of serious numbers work with Z/Yen – scoring the charity cricket matches was the least of it
Returning to 2022, Jez and I agreed to meet up on this day while Jez was introducing six-year-old Nathaniel to the joys of Lord’s. It was a very enjoyable experience for me to witness a young child’s wide-eyed wonder at all the different viewing points and places we could show him there. Nathaniel had previously visited Radlett and Hove, which are both lovely grounds, but not, until that day, had he seen Lord’s.
Our circuit started in the Warner Stand, took in a photo-opportunity or two in the Grandstand, then we watched from the very top of the Compton Stand (from whence Nathaniel was sure the land below was flat and not a hill, as I kept asserting), then the lower Compton Stand (at which point Nathaniel changed sides and agreed wholeheartedly that the cricket field is indeed a slope) and then, before tea, the Upper Allen Stand.
We met plenty of people on our trek, including Barmy Kev, Russ (who was again wending his way home after tennis) and Fletch, who shared some thoughts on the “bowl first” decision with us.
Just before leaving home, I had found a small Virgin Active gimcrack beanie ball on a shelf, which I thought might come in handy…and it did.
Just before tea, as I started to wonder whether the little fella was ever going to run out of energy, we tried playing catch with him using that beanie ball. He struggled at first but within just a few short minutes he was getting the hang of it and catching far more than he was missing.
Come tea, Nathaniel wanted to see “Grandpa’s Garden”, as I tend to call the Harris Garden. (Well, Grandpa Harris WAS a gentleman of Marylebone, albeit not THE Lord Harris of Marylebone Cricket Club fame). In the garden, Nathaniel devised a game of catching and tag that might, to the untrained eye, seem to have the rule complexity of real tennis combined with the rule-adjustability of Mornington Crescent. The use of a hat to catch the ball would have met with particular disapproval had an MCC stickler for the laws of cricket witnessed the game.
Soon after tea, that energy lull finally occurred, so I said goodbye to the actual young men and reverted to being a “relatively young man” in the pavilion watching the remainder of the day’s play.
In there, somewhere
I had been due to play tennis early evening, but after messing up my right arm the day before on the modern tennis court, I had to gracefully withdraw, so spent a few minutes after stumps watching my would be fellow combatants play, before ambling home feeling very content.
In the past decade, Janie and I have been incredibly lucky scoring good tickets for Wimbledon in the ballot. Many good days, including quarter finals days and semi finals days. But until now, we have never attended a finals day.
It seems to be my year in this “finals” respect. A few weeks ago I was able to report a first in the matter of me getting to a final playing tennis, albeit the real variety and albeit at Queen’s:
Much as the Queen’s tournament described above was a mixed doubles affair (in that case, mixed ability i.e. handicap doubles), I am talking about Wimbledon’s new idea to hold the Mixed Doubles Final on Ladies Semi-Final day.
In truth, it wasn’t until a couple of days before we went that it occurred to me that I had inadvertently scored a brace of tickets for a finals day. It was a nice surprise when we found out. It became even more of a pleasant surprise when we learnt that Neal Skupski & Desirae Krawczyk would be appearing in that final.
But let us start from the beginning of a truly magical day.
We like to get to Wimbledon reasonably early on such a day to see some smaller court stuff before the grand event. On this occasion we managed to get to the Wimbledon campus about 11:45, giving us nearly two hours to take a look around.
Mili PoljicakKilian Feldbausch
First up we wanted to see, on Court 12, the infeasibly named Kilian Feldbausch of Switzerland against the equally infeasibly named Mili Poljicak of Croatia.
Goran Ivanišević also wanted a look at the Croatian lad
We’d missed the first set, which the Swiss lad had won convincingly, but Mili turned it all around in sets two and three, looking very convincing indeed. News update: Mili went on to win the entire Boys tournament.
Mili Poljicak: crazy name, crazy guy – remember where you heard the name first.
Next, we wandered across to No. 2 Court to take a look at a young American named Liv Hovde against a German girl named Ella Seidel.
Liv HovdeElla Seidel
Liv Hovde played really well to win her first set and indeed (it turns out) went on to win not only the match but the entire Girls tournament.
It transpired that we were sitting very close to Liv’s coach, whom Liv was ignoring throughout the set, so we tried to engage him in some motivational pleasantries as we departed, but he did not seem to be an especially communicative chap. Alejandro Garcia Cenzano he’s called, which, together with my new-found Rossiter family connection, made me think of this corny commercial – click here.
Remember where you heard the name first…Liv Hovde I mean.
Next, we popped in to No. 3 Court to see a few minutes of Czech girl Linda Klimovikova against promising Brit Jasmine Conway.
Linda Klimovikova Jasmine ConwayNo. 3 Court has a tasty view of Members & Centre
We saw Jasmine win the first set, by which time we needed to get across to Centre Court for the start of the semi-finals. A steward asked us why we were leaving so soon. We explained. He said…
thank you for slumming it for a while with us here on No. 3 Court,
…which I thought was pretty funny.
On the way to Centre Court we ran into Mats Wilander, Àlex Corretja & Barbara Schett; Daisy was keen to snap them.
First up, Ons Jabeur against Tatjana Maria. Those two are incredibly close friends, by all accounts, which made their embrace and the interview with the victorious Ons after the match especially moving.
Snacking on nuts and fruit only gets you so far at this stage of the day – it was “out with the trout” time:
My classic smoked fish sandwichesElena Rybakina serves to Simona Halep……and vice versa
Elena Rybakina, surprisingly (to us) blew away Simona Halep. Meanwhile, Matthew Ebden, one of the Mixed Doubles finalists, had only just finished his Gentlemen’s Doubles five-set-epic semi-final on No. 1 Court, so while he got some well-deserved rest, the authorities laid on some Invitation Mixed Doubles to keep the crowd entertained.
Mansour Bahrami serving
Todd Woodbridge & Cara Black verses the evergreen Mansour Bahrami and Conchita Martinez. Some people love this exhibition stuff. I tire of it quite quickly and in any case needed to move my legs and butt, so I decided to go for a stroll after a short while.
On my stroll, I watched the end of an Under 14’s girls match between young Brit Isabelle Britton and young Algerian Maria Badache.
It did not go well for Maria. Isabelle looks very promising.
Then on to Court 8 to see the end of Arabella Loftus (GB) against Marianne Angel of Mexico.
Arabella LoftusArabella and Marianne
By the time I got back to Centre Court, the Old Git Doubles was also close to the handshake moment and we started to feel the buzz for the Mixed Doubles Final.
Neal Skupski, Desirae Krawczyk, Matthew Ebden & Samantha Stosur warming upEbden serves to Skupski
Those enormous strawberries all had to go.
Soon enough came the winning moment – Skupski & Krawczyk were to be the champions.
It was a long day – over all too quickly. Daisy snapped the headline picture and the one below as we left in the late evening sunshine, which sort-of sums up the Wimbledon vibe.
The above picture is somewhat deceptive, as only two members of the Trio are permanent members, the singer in the centre of the picture, wonderful though she might be, is Torunn Østrem Ossum, not Jorunn Lovise Husan.
They are supremely talented singers who fill that hall with a wonderful sound and a charming vibe. They sing with smiles on their faces. They make supremely difficult singing look almost effortless. It really was a joy to see them again.
This concert was based on their latest album, Solacium, which is centred around traditional Norwegian and Estonian-Swedish lullabies and hymns. It includes some modern works by Anders Jormin, Andrew Smith and Marianne Reidarsdatter Eriksen, all of which felt very much in keeping with the early music nature of the programme.
