Dinner And Music Biz Chat With Simon Jacobs, Ladbroke Arms, 20 March 2018

Simon Jacobs very kindly took time out from his hectic promotion schedule to meet me for dinner on Tuesday. Simon’s new single, Sore, came out three days later – today at the time of writing.

You can hear the song and watch the vid on the embedded YouTube below.

Once you decide that you want to own Sore, you can buy it at all the usual places or, to save yourself a few pence, directly from Simon’s site – click here:

The first thing I feel bound to say about our evening on Tuesday is that the song Sore is most certainly not the story of Simon’s evening with me. Neither of us drank excessively, although we did share a bottle of rather jolly Alsatian Riesling, nor did we dance on any tables in a shirtless stylee.

Of course, what Simon did after we parted company on Holland Park Avenue is a matter solely for him, but I can report that the song and video were already in the can by Tuesday, so if Simon’s lyric is reportage, it is reportage of some earlier evening. Come to think of it, it could be reportage of a great many evenings at Keele “back in the day”. but that is an entirely different matter.

Anyway, we dined at the Ladbroke Arms, which had impressed me when I met Kristof there for a drink just before Christmas. I had resolved then to try the food some day soon – so when Simon suggested that I find a gastro-pub near me for our meet up this time, it seemed an ideal choice.

Click picture for link to pub’s site – photo borrowed from that site

The staff took my request for a relatively quiet, corner table literally, so we were in the snug back area in the corner, which actually is a nice quiet spot for a chat.

Simon and I discussed all manner of things, but clearly at the forefront of Simon’s mind was his music career, past and present.

“When I was very young, I briefly joined the Jackson 5”, said Simon.

Now I have known Simon since we were both 15 or so and this was the first I had heard of this matter.

“I know it sounds strange,” said Simon, “because my name isn’t Jackson…”

“…also strange because I don’t recall one of the Jackson 5 being named Simon,” I chimed in, somewhat suspiciously.

“OK, name them all then,” said Simon, confidently.

“Michael, obviously”, I said tentatively, “Tito, Marlon…um…Jermaine…um…um…”

…”and Simon”, said Simon, who then embarked on quite a long story – 45 seconds to a minute – more than my full attention span anyhow – in which I thought he explained that, as a nipper, he imagined himself to have been asked to join his heroes in the Jackson 5 and managed to convince some naive fellow nippers in the park that Simon was now a Jackson.

“It is morally reprehensible to lie about one’s singing career”, I thought quietly to myself, “but if merely a pre-teen fantasy lived out in the park one day, I suppose it is just about forgivable after all these years”.

But when Simon sent me a kind note the following day, he included this factoid:

PS: Marlon, Tito, Jermaine, Simon, Michael… and when Jermaine stayed with Motown and the rest of us went to CBS, little brother Randy joined… it’s all on Wikipedia…

So is it true? Was Simon really a member of the Jackson 5 back then? Or was Simon guilty of generating a bit of early 1970s fake news, which for some reason (presumably to bolster his current musical career) Simon still seeks to perpetuate?

I decided that I would have to investigate this matter for myself.

My first ground for suspicion was that Simon’s surname is Jacobs, not Jackson, so how could Simon Jacobs possibly be “a Jackson”?

Well, actually, Wikipedia puts that matter into clear perspective. The original line up, known as The Jackson Brothers, included “childhood buddies Reynaud Jones and Milford Hite playing keyboards and drums, respectively”.

OK, so it was not unprecedented for a non-Jackson to join the Jacksons. But the Wikipedia entry for that group clearly mentions a brother named Jackie – the one whose name had slipped my mind (and presumably Simon’s too) – who was in the Jackson 5 throughout. So could the Jackson 5 ever have comprised six people?

That’s not quite as daft an idea as it sounds – we all know about the lesser-known fifth Beatle and the lesser-known fourth and fifth Marx Brothers. But the name “Jackson 5” does seem, at least to me, to have a cardinal-numeric requirement to it. When Jermaine left, Randy stepped in to keep the arithmetic pure to the eponymous value “5”.

Yet, even though I could find no textual evidence that the Jackson 5 sometimes exceeded five people, I did find, also through Wikipedia, the following fascinating piece of photographic evidence:

Jackson 5 1974
By The Jackson 5 (eBay front back) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Now sums is not necessarily what I do best, but I am pretty sure that there are six people in that picture which is clearly labelled “Jackson 5 1974” on Wikimedia Commons.

So perhaps Simon really was in the Jackson 5 at one time. I must say that, by the time I got to Wikipedia, all mentions of Simon were omitted from the Jackson 5 entry, but perhaps that is simply some sort of spoiling tactic by Simon’s competitors, who know he has a single coming out today.

So does Simon sound like a former member of the Jackson 5? Does Simon look like a former member of the Jackson 5? I am hopeless at judging these things and am open-minded, so I’m sitting well and truly on the fence for this one.

You, dear reader, should judge for yourself, by listening to Simon’s new single, watching the video and possibly then buying the single, e.g. directly from Simon’s site – click here:

Anyway, as usual, it had been a fun evening chewing the fat with Simon. Big tick in the box for the Ladbroke Arms food and service too.

And to reiterate, I was not sore the next morning…at least not until after I had played two hours of tennis from 8:00 a.m. straight through to 10:00. Then I was very sore.

Misty by Arinzé Kene, Bush Theatre, 17 March 2018

Janie and I both found this a very entertaining and unusual piece. A one man show written and performed by Arinzé Kene.

Friends who have seen my own little Mithras performance from earlier in the week – click here or below…

The London Mithraeum With The Gresham Society, 15 March 2018

…might expect Misty to be a sort-of jazz standards musical. You’d be so wrong.

So is Misty a play, a rap musical, an installation performance or what? It is sort-of all of those things.

Click here for a link to the Bush resource on this piece/production.

Below is a trailer showing one of the rap numbers from the start of the piece:

Below is a short “meet the writer” interview:

Kene explains that it is a piece about trying to write such a piece…

…which I suppose makes it a post-modern performance piece.

There’s some weird imagery too, with some orange balloon motifs acting as a recurring theme.

I don’t think this piece is aimed at the traditional theatre audience, but we were captivated by it.

We liked the poetry of Arinzé Kene’s language, we liked the music – both of the musicians, Adrian McLeod and Shiloh Coke (you can see them in the City Creature vid above) were excellent – I was especially impressed by Shiloh Coke, a young multi-instrumentalist – she should go far.

Arinzé Kene is a very talented rapper, along with being a talented writer and actor/performer.

At the time of writing Misty has only just opened, so you should be able to get to see it over the next few weeks – highly recommended as an unusual but entertaining theatrical, musical, image-filled evening.

The London Mithraeum With The Gresham Society, 15 March 2018

Tim Connell is never one to miss an opportunity to organise a Gresham Society visit to a newly opened historic site; this visit to the London Mithraeum was no exception.

The London Mithraeum is one of the most substantial archaeological finds relating to Roman Britain. It was found on Walbrook soon after the Second World War and was moved away from its original site, bang slap in the middle of the City of London, to allow construction, including a permanent home for the relic more or less where it was originally located.

The building is now the Bloomberg Space, with the London Mithraeum in the basement. It opened to the public in November 2017. Anyone can visit this fascinating site and it is free of charge – but it is wise to book to ensure that you get your chosen time/date.

Click here for a link to the London Mithraeum/Bloomberg Space website – including how to book.

Below is an excellent explanatory vid:

Click here for a Guardian piece by Maev Kennedy from the opening of the London Mithraeum in its new (i.e. old) home.

Enough of all that generic stuff. Here’s what happened on the Gresham Society visit.

About 25 of us gathered, which made for a pleasant gathering of the clan to add to the joys of seeing the relic. When I say “gathering of the clan”, I of course mean The Gresham Society clan and not followers of Mithras. No, no, no…

…although, when we were in the viewing gallery of the temple itself, enjoying the Bloomberg Space multi-sensory experience, I asked a couple of people whether they were starting to believe in the mysteries of Mithras?

Professor Cox answered, “not yet”…

…while Barbara Anderson replied, “not telling”.

So I detect some signs of hope for a Mithras revival.

Professor Connell mused that there must have been music involved in the initiation rites, at which point I offered to go home and get my baroq-ulele, but Tim very kindly implored me to stay, saying that he didn’t want me to miss any of the tour, which was so very thoughtful of him.

But Tim’s thought about the music for the initiation rites did get me thinking.

Anyway, after the tour, most of the party removed to a nearby hostelry for some suitable libations. I must leave it to others to report on that vital aspect of the outing, as I needed to return to Z/Yen Central to finish off some work that day.

But once I had finished work the next day, I started some in depth research into the musical side of the initiation rites of Mithraism.

It seems that the most terrifying initiation rite of them all was a requirement for the initiate to sing the Mithras Initiation Song, without hesitation, repetition, deviation or preparation.

We’re talking “one take” here.

Anyway, I did indeed manage to find some fragments of Mithraic music and text, which enabled me to translate the arcane Latin words of the Mithras Initiation Song into comprehensible English and modulate the rather dull, plain tune from the Hypolydian mode into something a little more familiar to the modern ear.

It is said that this particular initiation rite was actually more terrifying for the observers than it was for the initiate. I’ll let you, dear reader, be the judge of that.

For the Gresham academics, I would like to explain far more about my multifarious sources and the enormous trove of truly wonderful original materials about Mithraism I have uncovered.

Unfortunately, however, I realised, once I had performed the initiation song, that I have inadvertently initiated myself into the cult of Mithras at the very highest level…

…and that only initiates may be privy to the relics of the Mysteries of Mithras that I have uncovered.

Naturally, scholars who are keen enough to know about my sources may apply for initiation by singing the Mithras Initiation Song. The English language lyrics are set out below.

Mithras Initiation Song

 

Look at me,

I’m as cryptic as a Roman Mystery;

As I join in initiation rites,

I can’t understand,

I get Mithras,

And I’m joining that band.

 

Mask my eyes,

And a thousand stars appear to fill the skies,

Or it might be the sound of slaughtering bulls,

That music I hear,

I get Mithras,

My joining is near.

 

Can’t you see that you’re leading me in,

But that’s just what I want you to do;

Don’t you notice how much I need that faith,

That’s why I’m following you…(and you know that it’s true).

 

On my own,

I would wander through Londinium alone;

Never knowing my Persian from my proto Christianity,

I get Mithras, and Mithras has me;

Yes Mithras, is the one god for me.

Checkpoint Chana by Jeff Page, Finborough Theatre, 11 March 2018

After our excellent experience seeing Returning To Haifa on Friday…

Returning To Haifa by Ghassan Kanafani, Finborough Theatre, 9 March 2018

…we were really looking forward to the other piece running concurrently at the Finborough, Checkpoint Chana, but we found it comparatively disappointing.

Finborough Theatre, near Earl's Court, London

The topic is interesting – an academic/poet accused of making anti-Semitic references in one of her poems. But as a play it really didn’t work. The poet is also meant to be a soak – so there’s a lot of soak-laden drama involved, which tends to leave us cold.

There’s a lot of telling rather than showing in this play – which tilts it towards melodrama.

I thought it was almost a good short play, but could have done with a heavy prune/edit/revision. Janie really didn’t like it and thought the whole thing beyond redemption.

Here is a link to the Finborough resource on this play/production.

A search term that finds the reviews – mostly middling – can be found here.

Picasso 1932, Tate Modern, 11 March 2018

Oh yes, Janie and I loved this exhibition.

Tate Modern has a new offering for members – opening a couple of hours earlier on Saturdays and Sundays for members only. Great idea.

We plugged for the Sunday, which was a sensible slot for us…

…except I should have thought to shift our Boston Manor tennis court back by an hour…

…I’ll get that right next time.

Meanwhile, London is almost a pleasure to drive through at 8:00 on a Sunday morning…and places to park when you get there.

Rather a stunning carpet on arrival at the Tate Modern

Quite a lot of members milling around the exhibition, but not crowded the way the public slots for the Picasso exhibition are likely to be. A real members’ benefit, for those of us willing to get up early on the weekend. The show is really popular, btw – you’ll need to book if you want to get in for a regular slot.

There are lots of top notch pieces on display in this show. It is mostly the story of Picasso’s miraculous year, 1932. You do get to see a few works from other periods, but not many.

Plenty of variety in Picasso’s work during 1932 and lots of interesting stuff about his life at that time too.

These days the Tate allows punters to take pictures of some but not all the works.  Not quite sure how they decide what is and isn’t allowed. Janie nearly always wants to take home the book of the show if she likes a show (as she did in this case)…but still on this occasion she took some pictures as well…perhaps for your benefit, dear reader/viewer. They certainly make fine eye candy for the blog piece.

Here is a link to the Tate resource on this exhibition.

Below is the trailer vid, with some delicious flamenco music:

We loved the show – what more is there to say?

If you want to see reviews of the show, click here for a search term that finds them.

Here are a couple more of Janie’s pictures…I mean Picasso’s pictures photographed by Janie of course, to round off this blog piece.

Returning To Haifa by Ghassan Kanafani, Finborough Theatre, 9 March 2018

Janie and I rated this piece and production very highly.

I’m not usually a big fan of adapting cerebral novels into plays, but Ismail Khalidi and Naomi Wallace have done a superb job with this one.

Here is a link to the Finborough resource on this play/production.

Not without controversy – it was originally set to be performed in New York and then withdrawn under political pressure.

It is controversial material from a controversial author. The piece is the story of a  Palestinian couple returning to Haifa in 1967, some 20 years after abandoning their home and (inadvertently) their infant child in that city.

Here is a short vid about Kanafani and this play – basically it was the fundraising vid for the production:

Kanafani was clearly a serious intellect who could see the Israeli/Palestinian debate from both sides. There is nuance in this piece which is rarely seen in dramatic material on this subject.

It reminded me of a piece Janie and I saw nearly 20 years ago at the Tricycle, The Gardens Of Habustan – click here or below:

The Garden Of Habustan by Rebecca Wolman, Tricycle Theatre, 27 April 1999

It took me a while to identify the name and author of that play, despite the fact that it was written and directed by my old friend Rebecca Wolman. Weird – I remembered that play so clearly and I separately of course remembered going to see Rebecca’s play in 1999 and getting a chance to see her again briefly after so many years, but I hadn’t connected the two until I dug out my old archives. But I digress.

Rebecca’s play, similarly nuanced, used the fertility of the gardens as an allegory for the impotence of the displaced Palestinians. Kanafani’s piece uses the abandoned child as that symbol.

Both plays I believe contain sufficient insight to make strong arguments for a  peaceful resolution, but whereas Wolman’s piece is firmly oriented towards peace, Kanafani’s protagonist, Said, suggests that only fighting could resolve the conflict, even if that results in brother fighting brother. Kanafani’s own political career and life sadly went in the violent direction, although there is evidence that he renounced violence (certainly of the indiscriminate kind) shortly before he was assassinated.

Kanafani
Click this link to find reviews, most of which are very good.

A humorous aside – the play was performed in the round at the Finborough, with the audience seated on benches. The usherette (who admitted it was her first day) told us all that we needed to sit five to a bench as the show was sold out. I think she meant that some of the benches seated five people and that those would need to accommodate five people – some of the benches (ours for example) were quite modestly sized even for four people.

The result was a fair bit of jostling for position before the play started. I wondered briefly whether the mistake was deliberate, to get the audience into a “there’s not enough space for all these people…how do we resolve this?” frame of mind. But in truth I think it was just an honest mistake. It soon became clear that common sense could prevail and that, as long as four people sat on the four-seaters and five people sat on the five-seaters, there was enough room for everyone. If only the Israeli/Palestinian problem could be solved so easily.

Returning To Haifa is a fascinating play, extremely well acted and produced – it deserves a much larger audience than a short run at the Finborough will provide for it, which is a shame. I do hope it gets a transfer on the back of its success.

Keele Alumni Gathering At The Red Lion, Parliament Street, Then Dinner With Bobbie Scully At Roux, 7 March 2018

The above photo of The Red Lion is courtesy of TripAdvisor

When the e-mail came through from the Keele Alumni office, suggesting an informal “Keele In The City” at The Red Lion on Parliament Street, the timing seemed perfect to me.

I expected, by chance, to be in Westminster that afternoon, a few hundred yards away from The Red Lion pub.

This photo of The Red Lion is courtesy of TripAdvisor

I e-mailed Bobbie Scully (who is often at work in the Supreme Court, across the road) and John White (who often hangs around in the Palace of Westminster lobbies) to see if they were around and/or up for it. John said no, while Bobbie said yes to meeting around there, but suggested that we make it a quick drink and then a longer meal to catch up after so long – good thinking in my book.

As it turned out, my afternoon meeting in Westminster was somewhat curtailed, so I sloped back to the flat for a couple of hours, waving at the pub as I descended into the underground, then sloped back to Westminster early evening.

Down in the tube station at mid-afternoon, I ran into my photographer friend, Steve, who proudly showed me the pictures he had just taken of Theresa May with Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) – one of which looked rather like the one at the top of this article – click here – but clearly is not exactly the same photo.

I hadn’t seen Steve for ages. He wasn’t an official photographer for this MBS visit, but apparently he had been the Prime Minister’s official photographer for the general election. He told me one or two things about our dear leader that didn’t surprise me but still horrified me. The word “chaos” is the one that sticks in the memory, perhaps due to frequent repetition.

I returned to Westminster about 18:50, some 20 minutes after the appointed hour with the Keele Alumni but 40 minutes ahead of the sort of time I figured Bobbie might show up.

Derby Street – the side road on one side of the pub – was chock full of police vans, which were themselves ram-packed with policemen. I recalled the wise words of Malcolm Cornelius, formerly of the Keele parish in our day:

“it is extraordinary how many policemen you can get inside one of those vans”.

I wondered whether the police had been tipped off about the Keele Alumni gathering. Facebook, after all, is said to be a fine source of security intelligence. The Keele Alumni announcement was full of key words that might trigger security concerns for the authorities…

Keele…Law…Moot…Court…Parliament…Basement…March…Red…

…sounds well dodgy, algorithmically.

I wandered through the pub in search of the basement, then saw the roped off stairs, jumped the barrier, went downstairs and found it was all locked up. Confused, I wandered back through the pub and then got caught up in a massive swarm of policemen on Parliament street, all heading from the vans towards Downing Street.

Now dazed as well as confused, I was unwilling to go back inside the Red Lion, which was absolutely heaving with people – unlike my previous visit there, to decompress  after the Payroll Giving Awards. 2011 I think that was, when we held the event at Number 11 Downing Street and I met GOD – I’ll certainly retro-blog that evening in the fullness of time.

Seconds later, a drove of legal-looking folk marched purposefully down the side of Derby Street. Although I recognised no-one, the look and demeanour of this flock could only possibly have been the Keele Law Moot lot.

I joined the throng, as the advanced members of that party threw aside the basement rope and stormed the basement.

“I tried that five minutes ago – it was all locked up down there”, I said, dolefully.

“Oh, don’t worry, they’ll soon negotiate our way in”, said a cheery member of the moot party…

…which indeed they did. Very rapidly. Of course they did. They’d just been mooting all day.

I was assured that no actual donkeys were separated from their actual hind legs in those negotiations. On reflection, by the standards of mooting in the Supreme Court, persuading a publican to open his doors and sell drinks to thirsty Keele Alumni was probably not an especially tough argument to win.

So we were in.

I didn’t recognise anyone, but soon I was approached by a gentleman named George who had studied Psychology and Sociology in the 1970s. We chatted for a while as the moot brigade got their drinks orders in and started to quench their debate-weary thirsts.

Soon after that, Zoë Hollingsworth from the Alumni team came up to me. She had clearly mugged up on some of my post Keele activities and we chatted about charities a bit – a shared interest.

Then a very pleasant surprise – Andrea Woodhouse (formerly Collins) showed up; unexpectedly (to me), although she insisted that she had mentioned her intention to visit on her Facebook page. Perhaps I live on Facebook less than most people, but unless a Facebook posting specifically hails me, I’m unlikely to see a friends posting, unless, quite by chance, I am on-line around the time it is posted. But no harm done – it just made it a nice surprise for both of us on the evening.

Then Bobbie showed up.

Then we all chatted and drank for a while – drinks gatherings are a bit like that.

Around 20:00, Bobbie and I figured we should go and claim our Roux At Parliament Square table, so said goodbye to the drinks party. A shame in a way, as it was a very jolly, not overly noisy and not over-crowded gathering. We’d have enjoyed meeting some more of the people there.

Still, Bobbie and I really wanted to catch up with each other – we hadn’t had a chance to do that for a long time – so a quiet restaurant with some fine food and wine was probably a more suitable setting for that.

Out on the street, the police vans had all gone. The mean streets of Westminster had returned to a more tranquil state – perhaps those dodgy-sounding key words from the Keele Alumni message had now been reinterpreted as benign. Bobbie and I strolled the couple of hundred yards to Roux.

Roux at Parliament Square

The food at Roux really was superb. They sort-of specialise in tasting menus, but I didn’t really fancy those and Bobbie was happy to go along with a more regular choice of dishes, so we had:

  • Dorset crab with Apple, Fermented chili, Dashi (Bobbie’s starter);
  • Pork cheek with Carrot, Ale, Mangalitsa black pudding (my starter);
  • Venison with Savoy cabbage, Pine, Alsace bacon (Bobbie’s main);
  • Halibut with Cauliflower, Grape, Tarragon (my main).
Dig those mains – mine in the foreground
A closer look at Bobbie taking a closer look at her main

We even both had a desert. Wines by the glass to complement the food.

It was great to catch up with Bobbie – no excuse really for leaving it so long but we have both had a lot of family stuff to deal with over the past few years, not least conclusive parent stuff.

Bobbie insisted on picking up the tab, noting that she (and Dave) had enjoyed our hospitality several times in succession…

…then Bobbie suggested that, on that basis, she probably should have taken Janie out to dinner rather than me.

I passed on that last reflection to Janie, while showing her the above photos.

Janie expressed envy at the sight of the meal and agreed with Bobbie that she has suffered an injustice…

…I don’t yet know how Janie expects me to redress this matter, but no doubt I’ll find out soon enough…

…I might need some of those Keele moot people to help argue me out of this tight corner.

Heck, but whatever the penalty, it was worth it – a most enjoyable gathering and then dinner.

Thank you, Keele Alumni team, for setting up the evening.

Acceptance by Amy Ng, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 3 March 2018

A truly gripping and fascinating moral drama about a young musical prodigy from Hong Kong applying to an elite university in the USA.

Here is a link to the Hampstead resource on this play/production. 

As the rubric infers, all is not as it seems in this play. Our assumptions and prejudices get tested to the limits, as do those of the characters.

Below is the trailer, with short interviews with the cast and creatives:

The young prodigy obsesses about some Bach, so I was tempted to headline this Ogblog article “Baroque And Enroll”, but Janie says that such a headline would be crass for such an emotive play.

It is certainly a very thought-provoking play and it is potentially a very moving production too.

We saw the second preview of this play/production, so it is possible that one or two of the wrinkles we observed will have been ironed out by the time it gets to press night.

The main wrinkle for us was the see-through screens that divide the stage from the audience. The purpose (if any) behind this device was unclear…as was some of the sound that emanated from the stage as a result of these clear screens. More importantly than the slightly muffled sound was the sense that we, as audience, were somewhat separated from the action. This is a highly emotive piece, yet the audience seemed strangely numb to it – I think the audience would far better be able to embrace and respond to this piece without the screens.

Another wrinkle, for me, was the complete absence of the particular piece of music that seemed so central in many ways to the story; the Mercy Aria – Erbarme Dich, from Bach’s St Matthew Passion.

While I imagine that the cast and crew didn’t want the play/production to be compared too readily with Death And The Maiden, the differences between the two plays are great and the similarities are there whether you use Erbarme Dich or not.

Erbarme Dich is described in so much detail, referred to so often and is so significant to the plot. Even if they simply played the violin part of Erbarme Dich right at the end of the play, I think it would have helped.

Even as seasoned Baroque-oholocs, Janie and I had to dig out Erbarme Dich and listen to it when we got home to remember exactly what the piece sounds like – most of the audience would have been even more in the dark.

Below is a beautiful rendition of Erbarme Dich:

I really thought Acceptance was a superb play – just the second play by Amy Ng, another new playwright to watch. The disturbing issues raised by this play are covered with a confident blend of subtlety, sensitivity and visceral moments.

The acting was truly excellent.

I would thoroughly recommend seeing this play/production even if the production team doesn’t make a few changes, but I sincerely hope that they will gauge audience reaction and make the few tweaks I think it needs to turn this production into an absolute stunner.

No reviews yet at the time of writing – this search term – click here – will find them when they come.

Lunch With Cousins Ted & Sue Marcus, Followed By Artificial Intelligence At Ethical Reading, 27 February 2018

The weather was getting cold and frightful – the Beast From The East and Storm Emma were on their way.

But did that make me even the slightest bit nervous about driving beyond Zone 3 of Greater London to Reading in Berkshire? Well, yes, to be honest, I was slightly nervous, except that the weather report was pretty sure that we weren’t to expect too much snow to the west of London until Wednesday or Thursday.

In any case, I had arranged to have lunch with cousins Ted and Sue in Woodley and then go on to talk and lead a discussion at Ethical Reading on the ethics of artificial intelligence.

I needed to do some work before I set off, otherwise I’d have taken up Janie’s suggestion and popped in to see George and Amal at Castle Clooney before seeing Ted & Sue – it’s only a couple of miles up the road and I’m sure Amal and George would have been pleased to see me.

Anyway, Ted and Sue were glad to see me, as was the newest member of the Marcus family, little Max.

Little Max Marcus

Little Max showed his approval of my visit by yapping at me incessantly and giving my shins a violent hug.

It is a tradition in our tribe to name youngsters after passed but fondly-remembered family members. Ted and I share the Grandpa and Great-Uncle shown below, the latter being Max Marcus; Little Max’s great-great musical forebear.

Grandpa Lew, sitting, with Great Uncle Max standing

Janie says she can see the resemblance between Little Max and his Great-Great-Uncle Max.

Lunch was a rather grand affair – pumpkin & butternut squash soup followed my salt beef & trimmings, followed by a spotted dick pudding.

Janie remarked afterwards, when I described the meal, that it was a miracle I was able to get up and drive to Reading after that meal, let alone give an address and lead a discussion.

Ted, Sue and I discussed the family genealogy project, with which Sue is making slow but steady progress. She seems to be getting further with the other side of Ted’s ancestry at the moment, having recently traced some Dutch ancestors back to Baroque times.

Ted and I also talked about music, as most often we do. Ted knows a bit about almost any genre you can name, as he has always enjoyed exploring different styles and periods. Like me, he has inherited from our impressively talented musical family a love for music but not the talent for playing it…

…other than playing music on the hi-fi of course, for which he (and I) have an abundance of talent.

Every so often, Sue would gasp that it had started snowing, but in truth these were small flurries rather than troublesome snow proper – it was just horribly cold out of doors. Still, soon enough I did need to set off for Reading, so Sue, Ted and I said our goodbyes.

The Ethical Reading people seemed a very friendly and thoughtful crowd – only to be expected I suppose as the introduction came through Gill Ringland. There were more than 20 people on the night which, given the weather, I thought was a pretty good turnout.

Before the main group of people arrived, I chatted with Gill, Jim Bignal and Gurprit Singh, who comprise the founding team. Gill kindly asked after Janie’s health; I explained that Janie is well and keeping healthy by doing lots of exercise, such as her latest hobby, pole dancing. I think Jim and Gurprit thought this was a turn of phrase rather than a literal remark, as they seemed most surprised when I showed them pictures Janie had sent me from her lesson the day before:

 

But Janie’s physical gymnastics are/were no more impressive than the mental gymnastics demonstrated by the Ethical Reading group, who grappled with truly challenging ethical dilemmas around artificial intelligence with aplomb.

Once Ethical Reading publishes its promised blog piece about the event, I’ll link that piece through to this piece. In the meantime, here is a link to the Ethical Reading events page.

The journey home looked a bit more treacherous than it was – the snow was now falling but not too hard; I got home and to bed long before the worst of the snow landed in London overnight.

I sensed that the event had gone well, but I was still very pleasantly surprised to receive a kind e-mail from Jim Bignal the next day which read:

Many thanks for talking to us last night – you got 100% on the scoring.

…now there’s a first for me.

Trust by Falk Richter, Gate Theatre, 23 February 2018

This was a quite extraordinary piece. Weird, in a way that, it seems, only German plays can be weird.

Janie and I often walk away from such strange stuff baffled and dissatisfied, but certainly not on this occasion – we found the piece compelling to watch and entertaining, as well as baffling.

Sixteen very different scenes, ranging from videos with voice-overs, to seemingly straightforward two-handed romantic strife, to a Mandarin Chinese lesson for the audience…

…I suppose it’s all about the abuse of trust – domestic, financial and governmental.

Here is a link to The Gate’s resource on this production – click here…

…and below is the trailer, although the play only gives a passing mention to Brexit – you might expect more Brexit based on the trailer.

Excellent performances from Pia Laborde Noguez and Zephryn Taitte…and indeed from Jude Christian, the ubiquitous director who chose also to appear in this one.

Exceptional use of an infeasible quantity of props in a small space.

We thought the piece was very imaginative indeed and would recommend it highly. Yet another feather in the cap for Ellen MacDougall and her Gate tenure.

It will be interesting to see how critics and other people react to this piece. We saw a preview, but Daisy and I were interviewed for reaction on the way out – so we might well “form part of the conversation”, as the young folk say.

Update: yes, I got my 1.5 seconds of fame in the vox pop – see below but don’t blink or you might miss it:

Go see this show for yourself, if you are able – at the time of writing it has three weeks more to run.

Once it has reviews, this search term – click here – should find them.