We went to this with Pauline “The Duchess”, who will have sported the theatre tickets (which she got free), which she saw as fair exchange for Janie to buy the drinks and me to buy dinner afterwards.
We went to Gilbey’s for that dinner. Gilbey’s was a small chain run by honourable people, if the companies house dissolution records (which is all I can find on-line) are to be believed.
We had a few weeks off from theatre in late April & May 1998, but Janie and I did a fair bit of eating and drinking with friends instead.
30 April 1998 – “John Boy”
That is all the diary says, but my recent experience trawling medieval household accounts records for relevant factoids has led me to use a similar technique for my own stuff. I figured, if I could find a restaurant record in my archaic personal accounting system for 30 April 1998, it would have been my turn and I would, in those days, have named the place.
Postscript: John White chimed in to suggest that the place wasn’t Turkish but “a bit of upmarket suburban gastronomy.” I’m sure I recall something oriental about it – perhaps it was full of eastern promise – or just reasonably close to John’s beloved Orient.
2 May 1998 – David Party
I’m not 100% sure that 1998 was the year that DJ shlepped us all out in grand style to the Fat Duck to help Kim celebrate her birthday, but I have a feeling it was around about that year. DJ never let on where we were going in those days, sending vehicles for us at an appointed hour, so even Janie’s diary is silent on detail.
If it was The Fat Duck year, it was for sure a fantastic meal. Heston Blumenthal had not yet gone into the more excessive realms of food fancies, but was already wowing the crowds with magnificent food served imaginatively.
3 May 1998 – Mum & Dad Lunch
In the same way as Kim’s birthday inevitably (in those days) meant an event around that time, mum’s birthday falling three days after Kim’s meant more dining.
Not so high-falutin’, my household records tell me that Mum & Dad joined us at Lee Fook for lunch – they both liked a nice Chinese. This would have been the Westbourne Grove incarnation of Lee Fook, where the chef was memorably named Ringo.
9 May or 16 May 1998…The Latter, I’m Pretty Sure, Phillie & Charlie Staying At Janie’s Place
Diary confusion which i think was to do with a planned visit on 9 May being moved to 16 May, but for sure they came and I am pretty sure that Janie cooked something splendid rather than us going out on that occasion. In my diary for 16th it says “Duchess”, which might mean that Pauline joined us that evening but might also be part of the same diary confusion as Janie and I went to the theatre with said Duchess the following week. That event also might have been shunted a week.
Come to think of it, in those days Pauline would no doubt have joined us for that meal on 16th too.
I have tended to find Sebastian Barry plays long and wordy, but this one worked for me and encouraged back to try more of his stuff. I suppose after four plus hours of “Iceman” the previous week, this 150 minute jobbie seemed like a short sketch.
The Theatricalia entry for this play/production can be found here. What a fine gathering of cast and creatives. Sinéad Cusack got most of the plaudits. The critics loved it.
Janie had been dying to try this place, which John White and I waxed lyrical about after our evening there the previous autumn. Janie and I got our opportunity soon before it moved away from my patch (Notting Hill) to a larger Soho location.
Anyway, it was supposedly fiendishly difficult to get into this place on a Friday evening, but Janie found a way, perhaps booking many weeks ahead, knowing that we’d want to dine late and wanted to be in Notting Hill the next morning.
Result.
Both of us remember it being a memorably good meal.
Here’s an interview and a lauding from The Standard a few months before our visit:
We both loved the place and the vibe and the food, as did Johnboy when we dined there.
So why did Janie and I want to be in Notting Hill on a Saturday morning rather than in Ealing? Because in those days we went to see a hygienist in Kensington on a Saturday morning. That’s why.
Whose brilliant idea was it to pair The Real Inspector Hound with Black Comedy? Well, if I’m not totally mistaken The Bear Pit at Alleyn’s School did so back in the mid 1970s. It worked well then (I shall write up The Bear Pit production in the fullness of time) and it worked well nearly 25 years later, in the late 1990s, too.
Superb evening…
…was my take on it in my log. How could it not be – what a cast! Desmond Barrit, David Tennant, Nichola McAuliffe, Sara Crowe, Anna Chancellor…and Greg Doran directing.
While The Independent previewed the event the morning after our visit wondering, over three pages, whose brilliant idea it was to pair these two short plays? (The Bear Pit at Alleyn’s School. Do you arts journos know nothing?)
As we had planned to be away for most of March, but changed our plans due to Phillipa’s indisposition, we had a few weeks of relatively low key activity that spring. Yet we ended up meeting and seeing a lot of people.
Introduced To Nigel Hinks, 20/27 March 1998
I very rarely talk about work-related matters in Ogblog, but by my meeting Charles Bartlett (in Autumn 1997) and Nigel Hinks in March 1998, through The Children’s Society, a tradition that endures a quarter of a century later was established:
In the matter of being introduced to Nigel, my diary has clear notes. I had a meeting with Clive Timms on 20 March 1998, at which he gave me Nigel Hinks & Jeff Tye’s telephone numbers. I had an initial telephone call with Nigel the following week (27 March) and the rest, as they say, history.
Charles & Nigel 15 years later, Chester-Le-Street: Clive didn’t mention the singing
A Resourceful Party, Thanks To Rupert Stubbs, 28 March 1998
After speaking with Nigel on 27 March I went to play bridge at Maz’s place (almost certainly with Andrea and Tessa on that occasion), then on to Janie’s place.
That Saturday lunchtime Janie and I went to a party on Rupert Stubbs’s Thames Sailing Barge of a home, Resourceful. This might have been my first “return to the scene of the crime that was Michael Mainelli’s stag night” since that night.
Janie and I remember this party surprisingly well. Rupie was going out with a lovely lass by the name of Sophie at that time. The party was mostly populated by people we didn’t know – i.e. we only knew a few of Rupert’s friends before the party. Most of the party goers were either Sophie’s fun friends, whom we got to know by dint of the party, and a rather cliquey crowd of Rupert’s colleagues from Saatchi & Saatchi who were, to say the least, not quite so friendly.
Here’s Rupie a few week’s later, at an early Z/Yen cricket match, donning whites in a Saatchi & Saatchi ad man stylee. The hat is an especially telling piece of non-cricket garb.
Anyway, the hospitality was lavish and there were plenty of fun people, so we had a really good time. We weren’t surprised when we learnt that Rupert had left Saatchi’s not all that long afterwards.
I think this visit was primarily to do with Janie doing a CPD course or joining a podiatrtist’s convention of some kind, but we were also able to combine it with a visit to Michelle & Neil’s [Epstein/Infield] place in Balcombe on the way back.
We weren’t supposed to be spending a week in Mallorca. We were supposed to be spending two weeks in Burma and a week in Malaysia. But we deferred our planned trip until the autumn, due to Janie’s twin, Phillie’s indisposition. The compromise was to take this short break in early spring, between Phillie’s initial surgery and the start of her myriad of follow-up ops and treatments.
The bedroom came with a guard bear named Julio, who you can just about see guarding from above in the next picture:
The bathroom had a rubber duck.
We respectfully left the bear and duck in situ at La Residencia, but subsequently have always had at least one duck in our main home. As for a bear, we had for some years had a bear, named Geddy The Teddy, but he went to stay with Phillie to keep her company when she was in hospital later that year and stayed with Phillie henceforward. Then Kim arranged for Hippity to join us and the rest is history:
…but I digress.
I didn’t keep a log on this holiday but we did shoot a roll of film each, 32 of which are labelled and set out in the Flickr album below:
While about half of those grace this article.
We played tennis pretty much every day (I think we were rained off one day), including, unusually for us, a couple of sessions with the wonderful coach there, George. Yes, really he was called George. We learned quite a lot from him in a short period of time. Gentle instruction and lots of encouragement.
We had hired a car for this trip, although we didn’t use it all that much, only going out for the day a couple of times plus one or two short trips in the vicinity of our village, Deià.
Stunning vistas near our hotel in the North-West of MallorcaVistas on the Sóller to Deià road
We chose to go out on the less-good weather days. Sensible in a way, but we nearly lost our lives on a long-and-winding hillside road between Deià and Palma, when, despite my low speed, I completely lost control of the car for a while on the slippery road surface. After our return, I raised this matter with a Mallorcan employee/colleague, Teresa Bestard, who was working with Z/Yen at that time.
Oh, yes, I know that treacherous patch of road. We locals call it “Dead Man’s Curve”.
Palma on a wet day but at least we were still in one piece
We also visited Cala Major, where we visited Joan Miró‘s place:
We also did a little bit of tourism around our locality, Deià. Not much to see, but Robert Graves settled and lived there for most of his life.
Existential nominative determinism: Robert Graves’s graveLa Residencia from the hills above
But mostly we hung out at La Residencia, playing tennis, eating a good breakfast, nibbling light at lunchtime (perhaps beer and nuts), enjoying the pool and eating in one of the fine restaurants at La Residencia – a place that people would visit from far and wide for one of the restaurants.
Poolside – blissDining in Béns d’Avall – blissFine dining in El Olivo – bliss
It was just a week-long break, taken in strained circumstances, but we both have very happy memories of this short holiday.
In the summer of 1996 (or was it spring 1997?), we had spent a Sunday on the Thames, on Michael & Elisabeth’s Thames sailing barge, The Lady Daphne, along with, amongst others, Trevor Nunn & Imogen Stubbs. Trevor was busy reading an early Tennessee Williams script, Not About Nightingales, which had never been performed in the UK. Despite not being among Williams best work, Trevor suggested to us the play had a lot going for it. He was thinking of putting it on at the Royal National Theatre once he became Artistic Director there. I think his appointment had been announced but Trevor had not yet taken up the role when we met him.
Anyway, we were very keen to see the finished product once the production was announced and booked to see it at the start of its run.
The only critic who really matters here on Ogblog…me…wrote:
Powerful stuff – not a great play but very well executed.
I especially remember Finbar Lynch and Corin Redgrave putting in standout performances.
Charles Spencer in The Telegraph seemed to like it:
Don’t ask me how or why we had the stomach for this violent play but not for Shopping & F***ing the week before. Perhaps the violence seemed less gratuitous. Perhaps the way it was produced/directed.
Perhaps because we were demob happy – although we had cancelled our main spring holiday plans because of Phillie’s indisposition, we had decided to take a week off an go to Majorca for some much needed rest. We flew off early the next morning.
This play/production had enjoyed rave reviews and lengthy transfers. Unusually for us, more than a year after it first came out, we decided to book it and see what it was like.
We’re not usually shrinking violets as far as “no holds barred” serious theatre is concerned, but we found this play intolerable. Perhaps our emotions were heightened by the recent shock news about Janie’s twin, Phillie, whose radical cancer surgery had taken place a couple of week’s earlier.
My logged verdict:
Ghastly – we walked out at half time.
Charles Spencer was pretty plain about the piece in The Telegraph:
At that time, along with Fung Shing, one of our favourite up market eateries in Chinatown, this is yet another fine place that didn’t make it into the 2020s.
