In honour of Charley “The Gent Malloy” Bartlett’s impending visit to Lord’s today (as I write on 21 April 2017) I was reminded of the following lyric.
It is one of the very last I wrote using Amipro and therefore part of the batch I am trying to rescue onto Ogblog before my old computer passes away…
…and the subject matter, ironically, is IT. I wrote this (and several others for The Children’s Society Windows Rollout team) ahead of a team end of project session at Wadderton.
Charles likes a bit of metal – both the IT and musical variety, so the choice of tune was, I think, a good one. I wonder what Charles will think of this well-geeky lyric nearly 20 years on?
PLANNING A ROLLOUT OF WINDOWS (Epic To the Tune of “Stairway To Heaven”) VERSE 1
There’s a fellow whose mode-, -em is not Dacom Gold, And the name of that bloke is Charles Bartlett; When he breaks wind you’ll know, As the windows are closed, If that noise was a burp or a fartlett. Mmmmmmmm, mmmmmmmmm, And he’s planning a rollout of Windows.
VERSE 2
There’s a sign on the door, Cos he wants to be sure, And the sign reads “IT room, no entry”; I suspect that the room’s, Got NS Optimum’s, Entire stock ’til the end of the century. Ooooooooooh, it makes me wonder. Ooooooooooh, it makes me wonder.
VERSE 3
There’s a feeling I get, When I call the helpdesk, That they and Z/Yen are drinking Bacardi; I get fine, rum advice, ‘Tho’ they ask in a trice, Tony Duggan or Michael Bernardi. Ooooooooooh, it makes me wonder. Ooooooooooh, and it makes me wonder.
VERSE 4
And it’s whispered that soon, Yes by the end of June, TCS will have rolled out completely; ITSOs and Marion, Will still carry on, FMI Windows training discretely.
VERSE 5
If there’s a gremlin in your Windows, Don’t be alarmed now, It’s just a browser from Bill Gates; Yes there are two paths you can go by, But in the long run, He’ll make you buy Windows 98. Ooooooooh, that’s how he’s made his fortune.
VERSE 6
Your modem’s humming but you don’t know, Because it’s so slow, If you’ve got e-mail or been forsook; Perhaps the server’s full of e-trash, Or had a head crash, Or just can’t load Microsoft Outlook. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh
(AIR GUITAR BREAK)
VERSE 7
Charles and Mike Smith have bought the road, I’m talking Tottenham Court Road; Up walks the lady we all know (“watcha Mangal”), Whose eyes light up to say “hello, What have you guys bought from the stores? We have to budget very hard, None of that corporate charge card, This recent rollout really shows, (yeh) That Windows costs a lot of dough.”
OUTRO – MIKE AND CHARLES’ REPLY
“We were buying some spares and cheap modems”.
Here is Led Zeppelin singing Stairway To Heaven with the lyrics shown on screen. I can do a passable Stairway on the baritone ukulele, btw, but I’m not expecting Chas to ask for a performance. Mike Smith, on the other hand, might insist upon it…
By gosh was I pleased when I learnt that my local, The Gate Theatre in Notting Hill, was to put on this play. Some years earlier, I had bought a book of European plays in translation and had read this play, along with some narrative about it, with a mixture of fascination and wonderment. Part of my wonderment was thinking about how on earth the play might be performed, but I suspected at the time that I would never see the piece in production.
Unlike my “how on earth might this play be performed?” musings, it worked remarkably well in this imaginative production in the Gate’s small-scale, theatre-above-a-pub environment. The Gate has reliably been extremely good at doing this sort of thing over the years.
Superb…
…was my single word verdict, which summed it up for both me and Janie.
Our friend, Michael Billington, gave a similar verdict in The Guardian, lauding performers Sean Gallagher and Jenny Quayle, plus translator Thomas Fisher in particular:
Susannah Clapp gave it a glowing and quite lengthy review in the Observer, especially praising the director, Gordon Anderson and the designer, Jane Singleton:
Let’s just say that we wouldn’t now (writing 25 years later) attempt quite such a full itinerary for a Friday through Monday long weekend jaunt. Three plays at Stratford, a motorised hike to the Welsh Borders for lunch at The Walnut Tree before going on to Hay-On-Wye for some overnight- second-hand-book-buying on my part before stopping off for a long lunch at Raymond Blanc’s place (Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons) in Oxfordshire and then home.
I think we stayed in the Shakespeare for this trip. Janie booked it but only wrote down “Twelfth Night Room £115 per night” which I suspect in those days was a suite or certainly a superior room.
The RSC does far less modern material at Stratford these days (he says 25 years later), which is one of the main reasons why we go there far less frequently now.
On the Sunday morning, we drove on to Abergavenny. One of Janie’s clients had recommended The Walnut Tree Inn, with very good reason – we had a magnificent Sunday lunch there. It seems that the place didn’t have a Michelin Star yet when we visited, but it was certainly star-standard food and service. It has had a chequered history in-between times, improving and then losing its reputation, but in more recent years it seems to be doing extremely well. We’re glad.
Then on to Hay-On-Wye, where we stayed at my favourite stop-over place there – The Old Black Lion. I recall buying rather a lot of second-hand books at relatively high speed – some late afternoon/early evening on the Sunday, and then more first thing in the morning Monday. I think this was the trip upon which I found a pristine copy of The Boundary Book in a most unlikely place, something I had been seeking for several years. These days such things are not so hard to find while simply sitting on your backside, although my copy with the original bat-shaped cardboard book mark on a piece of ribbon is possibly still a rare find.
We had allowed more than two hours to get from the Welsh Borders to Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons, but should have allowed far longer for a cross-country narrow road hike on a Monday – lots of slow-moving rural vehicles with no chance of overtaking for miles. Janie phoned in to say that we would be at leats half-an-hour late for our 13:30 booking and was told that technically they take last roders at 14:00 but they would be flexible on that as long as we arrived soon after two…which we did.
It was a beautiful day and Raymond Blanc himself came out to greet us soon after we arrived, telling us with great charm that he had heard that we had experienced a difficult journey but that we should be sure to relax and enjoy our lunch at leisure. Fabulous food. Possibly the first time I had spent quite so much money on a single meal (£260, when that amount was real money), despite the fact that we only had a glass of wine each. An absolutely wonderful and unforgettable experience.
25 years ago, I got very excited when I scored a rare (or relatively rare) book in a second hand bookshop. Latterly, if I want such a book I sit on my backside for a few minutes, possibly only a few moments, find the book on-line, part company with my money and wait for the nice delivery person to bring the book to my door.
Back then, I made occasional trips to Hay-On-Wye and kept lists of books that I particularly wanted.
One such book was the original Boundary Book – a collection of essays about cricket from 1961. Not the oft-found “Second Innings” Boundary Book – also produced as a Lord’s Taverners fundraising machine – I acquired a copy of that easily enough and would always see multiple copies of that one in the Hay-On-Wye shops. It was the “hard to find” original I wanted.
I particularly remember the unlikely circumstance in which I found the book. Not in any of the shops that had decent sports/cricket sections (where I was repeatedly told that the original Boundary Book was hard to find), but in a small, generalist bookshop that had caught my eye for some other reason. I asked, almost as an afterthought, if they had any cricket books. “Possibly”, I was told, “there’s just a shelf or two of sports books over there”.
There, on one of those sparse shelves, was my long-sought-after book. Not only a copy, but a copy in excellent condition, with the dust jacket in well preserved order and even the original cricket bat bookmark on a piece of ribbon. £3. I thought about it for a fraction of a second and eagerly bought the book. “Ah, you found a cricket book”, said the shopkeeper. “Believe it or not, I found the very one I was looking for”, said I. He smiled, probably thinking I was just being polite…or trying to be funny.
I didn’t really know what I would find in the original Boundary Book – other than a collection of essays written just before I was born. But for some years I had longed to satisfy that archetypal book-lover’s quest, to track down a particular desired book. In any case, I had the sense that some of the best essays that Lesley Frewin gathered for his charity fundraising cricket books project over the years will have been in the first of those books…and I was right about that. There are many truly excellent essays in that original Boundary Book.
One essay in particular was to have a profound effect on me and my future following of cricket – an essay by Stephen Potter (the One-Upmanship fellow), called Lord’smanship.
It was that essay, in which Potter confesses to being a member of Middlesex CCC (MCCC) but not a member of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), that caused me to plan to join Middlesex as a life member on my fortieth birthday, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Now I am a life member of both MCCC and the MCC. But I still like Bach and I still have a beard and I suspect that the sound I would emit saying “MCCC” would still be indistinguishable from “MCC”, especially if I were to say it after two or three G&Ts.
Janie and I were partial to a bit of Richard Nelson at that time – the RSC put on several of his works in the late 1990s.
We saw this one as part of an extraordinary whistle-stop long weekend which took in three plays at Stratford (this the third of them), a motorised hike to the Welsh Borders for lunch at The Walnut Tree before going on to Hay-On-Wye for some overnight- second-hand-book-buying on my part before stopping off for a long lunch at Raymond Blanc’s place (Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons) in Oxfordshire and then home. Friday to Monday. The other bits have been written up separately from this piece – click here or below.
I think we stayed in the Shakespeare for this trip. Janie booked it but only wrote down “Twelfth Night Room £115 per night” which I suspect in those days was a suite or certainly a superior room. I did the rest of the trip, including The Old Black Lion in Hay.
I guess the RSC was on a nostalgia-trip for its older audience at that time, with Talk Of the City at The Swan about the cloud of Nazism and this one at The Other Place set just after the Second World War.
Excellent cast, as you’d expect from the RSC. Catheryn Bradshaw, Sara Markland, Robin Weaver and Simon Scadifield to name but a few. Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry.
Charles Spencer didn’t like the play, but it did pick up an Olivier award so what does he know?
…was my log note for this one. “His” referring to Stephen Poliakoff, whose best I rate very highly.
Janie and I saw this one as part of an extraordinary whistle-stop long weekend which took in three plays at Stratford (this the second of the three), a motorised hike to the Welsh Borders for lunch at The Walnut Tree before going on to Hay-On-Wye for some overnight- second-hand-book-buying on my part before stopping off for a long lunch at Raymond Blanc’s place (Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons) in Oxfordshire and then home. Friday to Monday. The other bits have been written up separately from this piece – click here or below.
I think we stayed in the Shakespeare for this trip. Janie booked it but only wrote down “Twelfth Night Room £115 per night” which I suspect in those days was a suite or certainly a superior room. I did the rest of the trip, including The Old Black Lion in Hay.
As for Talk Of the City, Poliakoff directed this one himself, if I recall correctly, which I think might have been (and often is) a minor mistake – i.e. playwrights, even if superb directors, can usually do with an external eye as director on their own works.
We saw this one as part of an extraordinary whistle-stop long weekend which took in three plays at Stratford (this the first of them), a motorised hike to the Welsh Borders for lunch at The Walnut Tree before going on to Hay-On-Wye for some overnight- second-hand-book-buying on my part before stopping off for a long lunch at Raymond Blanc’s place (Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons) in Oxfordshire and then home. Friday to Monday. The other bits have been written up separately from this piece – click here or below:
I think we stayed in the Shakespeare for this trip. Janie booked it but only wrote down “Twelfth Night Room £115 per night” which I suspect in those days was a suite or certainly a superior room. I looked after most of the rest of the trip, including The Old Black Lion in Hay and Le Manoir.
This was one heck of a good evening at the theatre. A triple-bill of Pinter. I think it was Janie’s and my first visit to the Donmar Warehouse, not least judging by the detailed notes Janie wrote down while booking this, including the full address etc.
Janie paid £15 a ticket for Row C centre stalls. Not bad to say the least, even if £15 was real money in 1998. In those days, the Donmar was still regarded (and priced) as fringe. Janie noted the following timings:
A Kind Of Alaska 7.00 to 7.50;
Interval 25 minutes;
The Collection 8.15 to 9.10;
Interval 25 minutes;
The Lover 9.30 to 10.25.
What a cast…or should I say, what casts – as this triple bill had a separate cast for the first play and then one cast for both the second and third.
A Kind of Alaska starred Penelope Wilton, Bill Nighy & Brid Brennan.
The Collection starred Harold himself (always good value as an actor as well as a playwright & director), Douglas Hodge, Lia Williams & Colin McFarlane. The latter three also starred in the Lover.
We thought all three plays excellent and the whole production top notch.
Nicholas de Jongh in The Standard only really liked the first play:
Our friend Michael Billington clearly liked all three, although he did share de Jongh’s view that three Pinters in one night was possibly a Pinter too many:
In truth I remember little about this day out in London.
Charlotte, who was about 12 at the time, might remember it a whole lot better. I’m not sure that Phillie & Tony were with us for the outing, although I’m pretty sure that Phillie, if not both of them, joined us at least for the meal at Good Earth in the evening. Both my diary and Janie’s diary describe the outing as “Charlie”.
The London Planetarium was clearly something that Charlie was keen to see, so see it we did. Janie’s diary is full of copious notes booking the place up and arranging to park in Chiltern Street.
After that, the trail gets murky. Janie was clearly considering Planet Hollywood or The Fashion Cafe for an in-between stop off, but I have a funny feeling we ended up in Madam Tussaud’s, which came as part of the deal with the Planetarium. Possibly we snacked there (or at the Planetarium) for lunch, especially as we had a dinner booked.
I think I might remember having been at the Fashion cafe, especially if all of them supermodels were hanging around in there, as implied by this write up. I did used to see Claudia Schiffer in Moscow Road occasionally in those days – I think she had a pied-à-terre around there. But I digress.
I’m pretty sure it was the Knightsbridge incarnation of The Good Earth that we tried that evening and jolly good food it was too.
Update: Yes Charlie does indeed remember more than us!
Charlie writes:
Wow, Ian, thank you for sending me that diary reminder from 1998. I remember it so well…even to the extent of Janie doing my hair in an ‘on the side’ ponytail and me wearing a hideous luminous yellow jumper ?
It was a wonderful weekend; we did Planetarium and M Tussauds followed by lunch at Fashion Cafe. I’m not sure mum did join us for dinner in the evening as I have a memory of going to tennis with you both on the Sunday and me having a tennis coach. I think you both also bought me some Speedo swimming costumes?!!!!!!!
So we did go to the Fashion Cafe, but I guess the supermodels weren’t there that day. Still, it’s just as well we went when we did, because the Fashion Cafe apparently opened in London in 1998 and went bust in 1999! The global story is of an even more spectacular failure.
The tennis coach would have been Jeremy or Shola, probably the latter, at Lammas Park in those days. It was Shola who introduced me and Janie to Boston Manor.
Billington Guardian Copenhagen 30 May 1998, Sat The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
de Jongh Standard Copenhagen 29 May 1998, Fri Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Kellaway Observer Copenhagen 31 May 1998, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Max Davidson Sunday telegraph with Frayn 24 May 1998, Sun Sunday Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
