Ian Louis Harris

The 2016 Cowdrey Lecture by Brendon McCullum, Lord’s, 6 June 2016

Janie had kept most of the afternoon clear and I had arranged to play real tennis before the lecture, so we hatched a plan for Janie to join me at Lord’s early and use the dedans gallery for a spot of watching and reading. She was yet to see me play until that day.

The plan worked well; Janie arrived soon after me, so by the time I’d changed she was already in the dedans gallery having a look at the combatants. Meanwhile, I had found out, somewhat to my surprise, that I was to play doubles that day, with Chris Swallow the coach as my partner and a couple of experienced doubles players as our opponents. It would be good experience for me but quite a challenge as I had only played doubles a couple of times before. It all went well enough and Janie said she enjoyed watching it.

I watched the next pair with her for a while, then went to sauna, shower and change before watching the end of that later pair’s game for a while. Then we put my equipment into the car (Janie had found a top spot on the St John’s Wood Road) and then wandered round to the Nursery Pavilion for the event.

The first hour was a drinks reception; very pleasant. We met Ian Lovett as we went in and spent some time talking with him, Mike O’Farrell, his wife Sue (whom we met for the first time that evening), Geoff Norris and a gentleman named Tim whom I’ve spoken to at Middlesex events in the past. Ian also introduced me to Colin Graves, who seemed very pleasant once you get used to his slightly scary grimace-like smile.

We spotted a little late that most people had filed into the lecture area, but I also realised that it was the central block and the near block that had almost filled up. We quickly walked around the front to the furthest block, where we were able to get excellent seats in the second row quite near the podium. I realised how good the seats were shortly after, when I realised that Mike Brearley and Andrew Strauss had taken up seats in the row behind us.

We sat next to a couple of antipodean gentlemen, both named Mike, which was easy to remember as I observed that the podium stood empty except for two mikes awaiting McCullum’s speech. The antipodean Mikes reported that they had been drinking in the tavern before the reception and had shared a jar with Brendon McCullum in there; they showed us photographic evidence which seemed pretty incriminating. The two Mikes were jolly company for the few minutes we waited for the speech.

Roger Knight welcomed us all to Lord’s in his inimitable style. He’s far more convincing in the welcoming role of President than he was as Secretary, if my Guardian-reported “Cow Corner: Up The Revolution” tussle with him in 2003 over women in the Bowlers’ Bar is a fair way to judge his previous tenure. Probably isn’t.

Then the speech, the full transcript of which is available here. Public speaking is clearly not what Brendon McCullum does best. Janie said afterwards that she didn’t think Brendon McCullum was coherent. Actually I think he was both eloquent and coherent in the content of his material, which was scripted, but he was a little garbled in delivery. Whether that was nerves or the Dutch courage he took before the lecture or a bit of both it’s hard to tell. In any case, it was very interesting and it was a privilege to attend and hear the lecture live.

Then after a quick podium change, video malfunction and tie-clip mike malfunction, a round table discussion led well by Mark Nicholas, with Kumar Sangakkara and Eoin Morgan joining Brendon McCullum to answer questions. Interesting, but our tummy’s were rumbling by the end of it, especially as Janie had been led to expect Big Al DeLarge’s veal meatballs with pasta and salad for dinner, which in the circumstances was a relaxing and enjoyable alternative to the grand pavilion dinner which we had considered and rejected.

We discussed Kumar Sangakkara’s erudition, relative to that of Brendon McCullum, but Janie opined that she had heard enough of Sangakkara for now, “we all know how clever he is”, so she awarded higher marks to McCullum for bravery. An interesting echo of their relative cricketing skills/appeal too, perhaps.

Regardless of all that, we’d both had a very enjoyable afternoon and evening at Lord’s.

Giving by Hannah Patterson, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 4 June 2016

Janie wasn’t sure that she was in the mood for the theatre when we set off for Swiss Cottage that evening, especially when I said that the subject matter was big donor philanthropy. “More your sort of subject than mine,” she said.

Still, there was the promise of a different oriental restaurant to try afterwards, Singapore Garden, a result of Janie’s research. Plus the fact that the play was billed as a short one; 90 minutes without an interval.

Janie’s spirits were further dampened when we took our seats, as a group of four people asked us to budge along our row to the end. At first Janie simply said no, so they split their group around us. Frankly, I couldn’t understand why they hadn’t gone to the other side where there were at least two blocks big enough for their group. Still, I told Janie that I thought she had responded rather abruptly, so Janie relented and we ended up tucked in the corner. “They didn’t even say thank you and I’m stuck with a lousy view,” fumed Janie.

After a while, I turned to the gentleman next to me and arranged for us to sit more centrally while they took the four corner seats, which seemed fairer in the circumstances. One woman in front of us turned round and said to Janie, “good on you; I hate it when people badger me like that.” Oh for the relative simplicity of allocated seats.

Anyway, it turned out that this was a really good play/production. The set is simple but clever, as furniture representing different locations get tucked away into the walls of other locations; not original but well done in this play. The acting from all four was excellent.

The plot satisfying enough. We aren’t really made to dig too deep into the moral dilemmas around conscience-salving donors, but there is enough intrigue, love interest and moral uncertainty to keep you guessing and to make you think. Well worth the 90 minutes and the modest price for tickets downstairs. We continue to see the Hampstead Downstairs as a gem of a place with a terrific hit rate from our point of view.

Downstairs productions don’t get formal reviews, of course, but it is covered well on monkeymatterstheatre.com, also on the oughttobeclowns blogspot. The latter points out how very special Sinéad Matthews is as an up and coming actress. We first spotted her more than 10 years ago, in The Wild Duck at the Donmar, when she was but a nipper.

Later, to add compliment to remedy, we thoroughly enjoyed our Singapore Garden dinner. Where has that place been all our lives? Well, it’s been in Swiss Cottage/South Hampstead for some while I gather.

A Rather Strange Mix of a Day, 3 June 2016

Unusually, I spent Thursday night at the house, as the kitchen ceiling at the flat was being done over the Thursday/Friday.

I spent a couple of hours first thing, working on my latest “why Brexit would be an act of collective commercial and geopolitical seppuku” article.

Then I set off by tube for a mixed day of peripatetic work and leisure. First stop; Lord’s for a game of real tennis. I thought I played well again today; perhaps starting to get my head round some of the tactics needed to win big points and close out games.

I didn’t hang around too long at Lord’s, as I wanted to visit Lock and Co. before meeting Chris Harrison for lunch. My beaten up old Chepstow trilby really had become an embarrassment and yet was still a favourite hat; I probably wanted a direct replacement. I tried a few different ones, but basically concluded that in the Chepstow “I look like me” so went for it.

About 150 yards down the road, as I was walking past St James’s Palace, I walked past two young American women, one of whom said to me (without pausing for breath in the middle of her conversational sentence with her friend), “I really like your hat”, which I felt endorsed my buying decision.

Another 150 yards towards Chris’s offices, I am crossing The Mall at the pelican crossing there and I see a cyclist, who has stopped for me at the lights, who looked the spitting image of Boris Johnson. On closer inspection, I realised that it WAS Boris. “You’ve made a really bad call to go for Brexit, Boris”, I said, “a shocking and dangerous decision. Think about the geopolitics of it. Think about the world”.

“No I haven’t, no it isn’t” mumbled Boris as we parted company. I wonder whether I made him think at all? I wonder whether he liked my hat?

Postscript: November 2018

I realise, in retrospect, that my intervention with Boris might be considered to be a microaggression, or even a macro-aggression, frankly.

Imagine the scene; a be-suited gentleman in a sharp Paul Smith suit and a brand new Chepstow from Lock & Co, carrying a rather peculiar looking bag, which happens to contain nothing more than a real tennis racket, waving the bag in anger at a stationery Boris on a bike:

Here are some of the items for you to peruse

That real tennis bag, a kind “hand-me-down” gift from Angela Broad, has some antiquity to it and is a rarely seen thing these days. Indeed, when I was playing as a refugee at The Queen’s Club in September 2018…

Tennis At Queen’s Followed By Dinner With Simon Jacobs At Brasserie Blanc, 12 September 2018

…the young professionals there were convinced that my real tennis bag contained a sawn-off shotgun rather than a tennis racket…

…which is a bit odd at one of a handful of places in the world where there is more than one real tennis court.

Coincidentally, one of those young professionals, Jack Clifton, transferred to Lord’s when it reopened in October and spotted straight away that one of the real tennis exhibits in the reception is a very similar bag; that which belonged to the late, great actor, Sir Ralph Richardson:

The inscription in part reads, “Although not a very gifted player, Sir Ralph was a real tennis devotee…” Sounds like my kind of guy.

Anyway, point is, I did not intend my intervention with Boris Johnson to be quite as aggressive as it might have seemed. Further, I apologise unequivocally for my unintended aggression towards Boris. I should, to use language that lawyers and Boris understand, have aligned my mens rea with my actus reus.

Back To the Original 2016 Piece

A delightful lunch with Chris, at which I handed over his ticket for Friday at the test. A small family-run Italian place near his offices; I had a very tasty seafood pasta. Good strong coffee afterwards too. I had texted Janie to let her know that I had accosted Boris in the street, so she phoned to make sure that I wasn’t joking and/or hadn’t had a psychotic episode. Chris and I wondered why Boris was cycling away from the Commons at lunchtime and where he might have been going.

After lunch, a tube ride to Hammersmith and time to do a spot more on the Brexit paper before my one client meeting of the day, which went very well. Then a simple tube ride back to North Ealing, beating Janie back to the house by a good few minutes.

After clearing my e-mails, it was time for a little ukulele practice with Benjy the Baritone Ukulele, who thus photo-bombed the above picture of me sporting my new hat.

Janie and I then enjoyed an unusually early Persian food supper from Boof, a very good local Persian place.

A strange but pleasant day.

A Groovy Happening In Cricklewood, Kim and Janie’s 60’s Party, 28 May 2016

This party was rather a long time in the planning. The date was set at least 18 months before the event. Kim’s birthday is late April, Janie’s is late June, so the last Saturday in May, which is also a bank holiday weekend, seemed ideal.

60’s as the theme, given the “big zero” milestone year both of them were to be reaching. It did help just a bit, of course, that Kim is in the themed party planning business. It also helped that several vivid imaginations went to work on the ideas.

On arrival, everyone was given a little bottle and a pewter cup (see photo above). People only heard 1960s style sitar music – the following playlist was playing on a loop: 60’s Warm Up Ravi Shankar To Beatles Playlist Final.

People were kept in a relatively small reception area, part courtyard, part entranceway to the Theme Traders site.

Actors dressed as Hari Krishnas welcomed new arrivals and mingled with the guests.

Then the Hari Krishnas led all the guests through the warehouse, past all the nooks and crannies that would later be party breakout rooms. At that stage the 60’s Warm Up Ravi Shankar To Beatles Playlist Final was playing throughout the warehouse.

In the garden at the back of the site, the guests were crowded into an enclosed area, not realising that the walls were paper and that behind the walls was a band ready to play and a barbecue ready to grill. In that area one of the actors was dressed as a guru. Janie had briefed him on the sorts of things to say, which ended up being a mixture of Timothy Leary, Beatles lyrics, general “peace and love” messages, getting people to chant back his incantations and the like.

It’s hard to explain why this was very funny, but it was. Some people seemed to be really into it. Only a small handful of us knew what was really going on; we of course egged on the guests, although they didn’t need much egging. Everyone must have realised that it was all meant to be a bit of fun.

Then the guru started to get very excited and even more rambling in his incantations, the drums started to roll and the guru tore down a paper wall to reveal the band.

With everyone looking towards the band, I realised that someone needed to make a start on the wall to reveal the food, which I did and found rather cathartic after all those months and especially the last few days of preparation. Soon others were helping me and the whole process probably took 5-10 seconds.

The band, Never The Bride, were really excellent. They are friends of Kim’s, or is it fairer to say that Kim is one of their groupies? Both statements are true I think. We’d seen them perform before at a small party at Kim’s house, but I hadn’t realised from that scaled down performance they had the oomph and repertoire to create a “60’s rock fest” atmosphere – but they did just that.

They performed two sets during the evening. The first had the most impact, naturally, but the second was a good “watershed” period for the party…

…a different atmosphere in the dark and a good foil for presenting the cake, butlers removing their trousers and other such merriment.

Between live sets, there was a DJ. We had supplied him with a strong playlist of sixties dance music…

60’s Dance Soul and Funk Top 100 Playlist Final

…but he played little from that and showed reluctance when several guests (including Janie) made specific requests, unfortunately. Later in the evening, I switched the sounds in the Mods breakout area (see below) to the above playlist so that some of us could have more appropriate bop.

Breakout Rooms and Music

The breakout rooms were fabulous. I curated different music for different zones, the playlists for which (but not the music) are all downloadable here:

60’s Surf, Lounge, Jazz & Tropical Playlist Final

60’s Folk, Hippy and Psychedelic Zone Playlist Final

60’s Carnaby Street, Quintessential Playlist Final

60’s Mods, Go-Go, Ska & John The Only One Dancing Playlist Final

Between the surf lounge area and the hippy psychedelic area was a small breakout room with everything upside down, “Alice In Wonderland”-like. When we went over to set up the sound the day before, Kim’s team were worried because there was so much sound bleed between those two other zones in that area. I listened for a while and realised that the very different types of music, one type coming from one side, the other type coming from the other side, created a very strange soundscape and decided that this was exactly what music in the upside down room should sound like! It became a real feature.

The actors changed from Hari Krishnas to characters from the Sixties and mingled around the party and the breakout areas. By way of example, here is a picture of “Andy Warhol” in the Hippy Zone:

Movie

One of the breakout rooms was a mini cinema, which showed an amazing short movie that Kim and Janie had made a few weeks before the party. It depicts the two of them talking about the heady days of the sixties and mingling with many big names from that era. It is really very funny. If you haven’t seen it and want to have a look at the movie, for the time being drop me an e-mail or a comment and I’ll arrange for you to see it.

Photos

There are loads of photos. For now, if you go to my Flickr albums area, you can see all the mini albums that friends have sent to me and Janie, click here. More are coming through and we plan to sit down with Kim and make up a consolidated album over the next few weeks.

More

I’ll write more about the food and the photos and the music in the fullness of time, but it is (at the time of writing this piece) nearly two weeks since the party, so the public deserves to read something about it by now. Although those of us who were there will struggle to forget this party…

…although they say that if you remember the Sixties you weren’t doing it right…so in that sense, I suppose, this memorable evening was contra-Sixties. Or perhaps uber-Sixties.

Anyway, it was fab and groovy. Peace and love.

A Couple of Days spent mostly at Lord’s, Middlesex v Somerset, 23 & 24 May 2016

Monday

I played real tennis at the convenient time of 10:00 – convenient that is for seeing a fair chunk of county cricket afterwards. I played a good game this morning by my own sporadic standards. By the time I had showered, changed and chatted best part of half the morning session had passed, but I found a nice sunny spot in the pavilion and hunkered down with my book, A Confederacy of Dunces, which I was determined to finish today, along with some more business-oriented reading.

I had taken with me the simplest lunch of nuts and fruit. A resuscitating coffee in the pavilion afterwards and then I went in search of more sun by relocating to the front of the Mound Stand. Fine spring weather it was.

Trego and Gregory were trying to ruin Middlesex’s day, but once Trego fell the wickets tumbled. Then Robson and Gubbins got to work in fine style.

Meanwhile I was making similarly light work of A Confederacy of Dunces; I shall write up that book in its capacity as cricket reading for King Cricket.

Postscript: my “review” was published on King Cricket on 13 March 2017 – click here.

If anything ever happens to King Cricket, I have scraped the piece to here.

Once that was done, I read the Economist and then, as it started to get a little colder, decided to bail out while I was still enjoying myself – after all, I’d be back tomorrow for some more and wanted to clear some work from home.

Tuesday

A couple of meetings first thing towards the Middlesex strategy, then a few minutes before lunch to watch the cricket. I joined Brian and Judy for the first time this season, hoping to witness the completion of a couple of tons and a double century stand between Robson and Gubbins, but Robson fell on 99 with the team score on 198. But Gubbins did go on to complete his maiden county championship ton.

Again some reviving coffee at lunchtime, while watching Andy Murray snatch victory from the jaws of defeat against Radek Stepanek in the first round of Roland Garros. Then I wandered over to the Upper Compton stand, in the hope of finding James Sharp of Googlies and Chinamen fame. So much for one man and a dog at county matches – there must have been a couple of hundred people up there. I asked a few people, who I recognised as Middlesex regulars, if they knew James, but they didn’t, so I e-mailed James with my location. But it transpires that James travels incognito, or at least without an e-mail device. He says he also looked out for me, but it wasn’t to be.

One of the more senior regulars up there suggested to me that Middlesex were batting so slowly that they might lose the match. I said I thought they were getting close to the position when only Middlesex could win, although the draw remained the most likely outcome.

Here’s the match scorecard, btw.

Then as 15:00 approached, I wandered back round towards the main gate, as I was expecting cousins Ted and Sue as guests. I ran into Steve Tasker along the way and we had a good chat. Then I saw Harry and Blossom Latchman, and spoke with them briefly, until I spotted Ted and Sue at the Grace Gate. The stewards did their wonderful bit of making guests feel like honoured visitors. I showed them around the lower pavilion and we watched the last few overs before tea from there.

Then I showed them the upper pavilion and Bowlers Bar, where we had a drink and watched for a while, until Ted casually mentioned that he’d like to see the museum. I thought we’d missed the closing time, but the stewards kindly let us follow the last tour in so Ted and Sue could at least see the Ashes. Then I showed them the real tennis court, which they enjoyed for a while, then round to the Presidents Box for the last few overs before stumps.

An early dinner at The Bridge House (home of the Canal Cafe Theatre) and then a walk back to their Paddington hotel, followed by a short hike back to the flat for me.

Splendid, it all was.

Lawrence After Arabia by Howard Brenton, Hampstead Theatre, 21 May 2016

It has been said that his majesty and I bear some slight resemblance… https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Feisal_I_of_Iraq.jpg

Oh dear.

It sounded like a good idea when we booked it. Such an interesting period of Middle-Eastern history. Howard Brenton, who did such an interesting job on Ai Weiwei, taking on an interesting character in T. E. Lawrence. Timely, as it is the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement this year…

The problem is, that period was also a period when English theatre was in its dull Edwardian through 1920s drawing room drama doldrums. Howard Brenton seems to think it a good idea to parody the very worst of that period’s drama for this play. Director John Dove takes the idea further with a staid, static style to the piece. There are some good actors in this play but frankly we couldn’t care less what happened to any of the characters, which doesn’t give the cast much room for manoevre.

Neither Janie nor I could tell you too much detail about the first half; we both slept through much of it. It was a deathly dull hour, even when sleep spares you much of it. It would have been a deathly dull two hours, but we agreed to cut our losses and leave at the interval. So we can’t tell you anything about the second half. I am reliably informed by Grant (someone I know from the gym who did suffer the whole thing) that it gets no better in the second half.

The Hampstead Theatre area for this play has lots of good reviews – here , so it has clearly received good reviews, not least in both of the Telegraphs. The audience certainly looked like they had all been bussed in from Telegraph reader central casting. However:

Congratulations to all of you critics for managing to stay awake sufficiently to review the piece, or alternatively for covering up your lack of wakefulness deftly in your columns.

I did wake up for the bit where Lawrence shows off the thawb, bisht and igal, the garments of a bedouin leader, gifted to him by Prince (later King) Faisal. I liked that bit. Firstly, I am said by some to resemble Faisal (see picture above); I certainly resemble him far more than the actor who plays him in this play.

Secondly I have a fine collection of natty thawbs, bestowed upon me by one of Janie’s wealthy Saudi clients. Indeed I do much of my writing at the flat wearing a thawb; especially in the summer when it is a very sensible way to dress when writing.

But I digress. The play is deathly dull. Did I mention that before? Is irritating when people waste your time simply repeating stuff they have said before? Or is it a quirky, whimsical touch, that could maintain your interest and tickle your sense of humour for a couple of hours.

On a positive note, the programme is a really interesting read. We highly recommend it. The programme is well worth the trip to Swiss Cottage and its £3.50 cover price. Just don’t waste your time and money on this turkey of a play.

Mustang, Curzon Mayfair, 20 May 2016

After an intense afternoon of baking in Borough Market, Janie and I sullied forth to the Curzon Mayfair, laden with bread, cheese and charcuterie, to see Mustang. We’d both read about it and had both agreed that this was a rare “must see movie” for us.

It was just that.

Details and reviews about Mustang are available through the usual sources – here on IMDb, for example…

…and here on Rotten Tomatoes.

We thought it really was a cracking good movie. It deserves all the plaudits and awards it is receiving. The acting is terrific and the style captivating. Janie and I were both tired, yet we were both gripped and moved from start to finish.

While I can understand why so many people are comparing it with The Virgin Suicides, I think there are so many differences in plot, context and style that the comparison is positively unhelpful.

Not least, I found The Virgin Suicides an eerie, even creepy micro story about mysterious happenings in a small town. Whereas Mustang, to me, is a far more straightforward narrative mirror, reflecting the schism in Turkish society between modern liberal and traditional conservative cultures.

Anyway, don’t listen to me; the only way to judge this film properly is to see it. Then discuss it with your companion(s) afterwards, as Janie and I did at length. In our case, over bread, cheese, charcuterie and some rather jolly red wine.

Bread Ahead Half Day Traditional French Baking Course, Borough Market, 20 May 2016

“What a monumental fougasse, Ged,”…I think that’s what she said

It doesn’t seem like nearly a whole year since DJ, very generously, gave Daisy this birthday present. A couple of half day baking course certificates for the Bread Ahead Bakery School.

By the time we got around to thinking about booking something, then realising that the conjunction of the course that we fancy with the dates that we can do and the availability of places on a course that we fancy on a date that we could do…

…you get the picture. So there we were on a sunny Friday in late May, just a few weeks ahead of Daisy’s next birthday, heading for an afternoon of baking in Borough Market.

I had in fact taken the whole day off work, playing a couple of hours of real tennis in the morning. I should have learnt my lesson a few weeks earlier about playing two consecutive hours of that game; that’s a bit more than my body fancies these days and once again the physical fatigue set in a few hours later.

Still, we were in good time getting to Borough, but I forgot to take into account Daisy’s excitement at seeing that sort of foodie market. “We’ll be late for school – we can come back and look at the market after class,” I said. That was a wise suggestion for several reasons, not least because later we would be armed with loads of bread in search of yummy stuff to eat with bread tonight.

Our teacher for the day was none other than Aiden Chapman, a self-confessed dough anarchist and bread revolutionary. This man has a passion for artisanal bread-making and a visceral hatred of the sliced white factory loaf. A little reminiscent of the real ale campaign back in the day; indeed he even uses the term “real bread”.

From what we could gather, Aiden Chapman is one of the architects of the Bread Ahead baking courses but he only occasionally delivers them, although he is the very teacher depicted on the promotional picture we were given with our certificates last year:

We are in a class of 12 to learn traditional French baking. We are to make a campagne loaf, a baguette and fougasse. We start with the campagne loaf, which takes the longest to bake. Mercifully, we are provided with a small chunk of (one day old) mother dough to use as part of our loaves, otherwise it would have needed to be a two day course.

Soon enough we have measured and added the flour, salt, water and yeast to make up the complete dough. Then we kneed the dough. All by hand, of course. At this juncture, my fatigue really kicked in, although I didn’t realise it at first. But while all the others, including Daisy, seemed to be getting exactly the texture and consistency Aiden described, I just seemed to be pushing my messy lump of stuff around the table and getting my hands covered in bread-making ingredients.

“Use the heel of your hand and really stretch that gluten,” said Aiden…

…”try standing up and doing it”…

…”like this,” he said, taking over my bundle of disengaged ingredients and with a few swift movements of his hands bringing it together as something a lot closer to everyone else’s lump of dough.

After I spent a couple more minutes emulating the teacher’s firm movements, while mumbling under my breath to Daisy that I didn’t suppose anyone else in the class had exerted themselves to the tune of two hours on the real tennis court that morning, my lump of dough looked pretty much like everyone else’s, although my hands still looked the most anarchic of the lot. Perhaps I was taking the teacher’s ideas about dough anarchy to new hands-on levels.

Next up, baguette dough for both the baguette and the fougasse. The base or “poolish” for this dough is a much easier consistency than the mother dough for the campagne loaf. Also, I suspect that the learning from the first experience helped greatly with the second. This time, I felt the consistency of my dough change in keeping with Aiden’s timings and the look of my fellow pupils’ dough. “I’m proud of you, Ged,” was one encouraging remark from teacher Aiden. “You are a complete master baker”…at least I think that’s what he said.

Anyway, the second dough was for both the baguette and the fougasse – it had never occurred to me before that these two very different breads could come from the same dough – small differences in how the dough is rested, shaped and treated before baking making all that difference to the final result. So we rested, shaped and baked our baguettes and fougasses after rescuing our campagne loaves from the ovens.

At the end of it all, we had all made three mighty artisanal breads to take a way with us and got to try Aiden’s example of each with some strong-tasting country butter and pesto.

Daisy and I then whisked around Borough Market buying some cheese, charcuterie and fruit before heading off to the pictures with all our foodie possessions.

It was a great fun afternoon.

Britten Sinfonia at Saffron Hall and Dinner With John & Mandy at The Tickell Arms, 15 May 2016

Janie and I arranged to see John and Mandy in their home town of Saffron Walden. They were keen to show off their new Saffron Hall. Luckily, we were able to find a suitable Sunday for all of us, with an appealing afternoon concert scheduled that day.

Saffron Hall 15 May 2016 — Saffron Hall Addendum

Janie and I played tennis in the morning at 9:00; an hour earlier than our usual Sunday slot. I was hoping to get away at 12:00/12:15, which didn’t seem too ambitious in those circumstances. Anyway, we set off just after 12:30 hoping the traffic wouldn’t be too bad. It wasn’t.

We checked in to The Cross Keys, where I had booked a luxury room. We parked Dumbo a bit awkwardly on arrival, as a large group of cyclists/diners had taken up one of the few proper parking spaces. When John & Mandy arrived, I managed to persuade one of the group to help me by moving the bikes a little so I could park properly, which she kindly did.

John whisked us off to Saffron Hall, which is in the grounds of the County High School. We hadn’t expected quite such a large and splendid hall in the circumstances; it can hold 740 people and has been designed in a modern, acoustically excellent style.

We were warned on arrival that Alice Coote, the intended soloist singer, was ill, so had kindly been replaced at short notice by Ruby Hughes. I think we have heard Alice Coote at the Wigmore Hall more than once; her CV is hugely impressive and her voice superb.

I looked at the addendum piece of paper (see above), half expecting it to say that Ruby Hughes is one of the better singers in the lower sixth, who has almost managed to get through Dido’s Lament without pausing for breath or singing too many wrong notes…

…but actually Ruby Hughes also has a most impressive CV and her voice was also superb. There was a small change to the programme, so we got the pieces shown on the scanned piece of paper above; similar to the original programme really.

It was a bit of a Wigmore Hall outreach gig, as Mahan Esfahani played the harpsichord in the Bach Keyboard Concerto (probably our highlight) and directed the Britten Phaedra (probably our lowlight). Janie and I are seeing one of Esfahani’s recitals at The Wig next month.

We also got two encores:

an orchestral version of a Bartok Romanian Dance
a version of a Chinese Fishing Song, orchestrated by someone who works in the Britten Sinfonia office, apparently.

The Britten Sinfonia had just returned from touring China. Slightly ironic, as John and Mandy were hoping to hear from Yining (their informal protectee) who is currently in Hong Kong trying to get back to Europe from China.

After the concert, we went on to The Tickell Arms for a really pleasant early dinner. Really good food and an interesting Languedoc-based wine list. A great opportunity to have a proper catch up and chat. Highlights were a pea and rocket soup and a superb roast pork dish. Mandy started with scallops and had room for some cheese as well; good for her. John was supposed to be on an alcohol holiday but the smell of the beer in The Tickell soon tempted him to break his fast.

After dinner, we showed John and Mandy our super room at the Cross Keys, then parted company reasonably early (perhaps 21:00 or so). I played Benjy the baritone ukulele briefly and then put on some 60s music, at which point Janie and I both fell asleep. I woke up at gone midnight to realise, to my horror, that the rather loud music was still playing. Just as well that luxury room of ours is quite isolated from the other rooms.

Monday morning, we had a superb breakfast at the Cross Keys and then, following John and Mandy’s advice, took a stroll around the stunning Bridge End Garden to walk off our breakfast. We even succeeded in entering and escaping the maze. What a pair of troopers. We won’t mention that the maze isn’t at all difficult, nor that we had to ask a couple of gardeners the way to find the maze in the first place. I admitted to one of those gardeners that needing directions to the maze is not an ideal qualification for a budding maze explorer. He replied, with a smile that “where is the maze?” is the most frequently asked question in the garden.

Enough excitement for one day – we headed back to London and spent the rest of the day picking up some items we need and sorting out some things that only seem to get sorted when you have a day off.

A delightful mini break.

The Invisible Hand by Ayad Akhtar, Tricycle Theatre, 14 May 2016

Wow.

Last week, Janie and I were trying to figure out when we had booked this piece and why. The rubric just didn’t sound like our sort of thing: “thriller…American banker…a cell in rural Pakistan…every second counts…”

We even wondered whether we’d booked it by accident.

Then it started to dawn on me, slowly. Back in October, we agreed that we hadn’t been to the Tricycle in ages and wanted to go. We spotted that this play was by Ayad Akhtar. We had booked ahead at the Bush a few years ago “on the off chance” to see his play, Disgraced, and had been thrilled by it. So we decided to take a punt on seeing a preview of this play, The Invisible Hand at The Tricycle.

As a City trader might put it, we’d made a very good speculative punt back in October 2015 and cashed in on 14 May 2016.

The play is not for people of a nervous disposition. It is full of suspense. Just in case the scenario didn’t remind you of the tragic case of Daniel Pearl, the play reminds you of that terrible story early on.

Ayad Akhtar understands finance and the markets pretty well; he proved that in Disgraced. Whether or not it would effectively be possible to day trade with millions of dollars on the Karachi exchanges from a makeshift cell in rural Pakistan is neither here nor there. Even I was able to suspend belief for that conceit.

Indeed, I think Ayad Akhtar is, to some extent, “having a laugh” with us by making the hero’s protégé a young man from Hounslow. That echoes the peculiar case of Navinder Sarao, the Hounslow chap who is believed to have made up to £30M day-trading from a semi in Hounslow and who is accused of causing the 2010 Wall Street flash crash. Finance doesn’t lend itself to laugh-out-loud in jokes, folks, but I suspect that the linkage is deliberate.

Indeed most of Ayad Akhtar’s writing seems incredibly tight and deliberate, making the audience think about complex issues from several sides while at the same time moving the plot along at pace.

The notion of the invisible hand is of course taken from Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and also, more famously, The Wealth of Nations. It is not novel to bring the fundamental economic idea of the invisible hand into drama. But where others, such as Bruce Norris in The Low Road, for example, managed to irritate the living shit out of me with inept handling of this complex concept, this play by Ayad Akhtar provides a suitably profound and conflicted setting for ideas around the ethics of commerce, finance and money. These subjects are close to my heart, hence my Gresham lectures on Commercial Ethics and The Future of Money, so I was pleasantly surprised at Ayad Akhtar’s deft handling of these tricky subjects.

It would be unfair to say too much about how the play pans out, as thrillers aren’t so thrilling once you know what is going to happen. I am prepared to say that Janie and I both left the theatre quivering from the experience, but in a good way. I guess we’re just about on the right side of the nervous disposition line.

It probably is fair to say that the plot hinges on the uses and abuses of advanced (or inside) information. Now I’m not wanting to get anyone into trouble for insider trading, but actually Janie and I did have advanced warning that this production is a cracker. I got an e-mail from cousin Hilary the day before our visit, which said:

Saw mum yesterday .. & Michael .. took them to 1^st performance of Invisible Hand at Tricycle. Really enjoyed it. Looking fwd to reading reviews when they come out.

Come to think of it, the reviews aren’t out yet (on writing this posting 15 May), so I suppose this Ogblog post is also advanced information. Is that the sound of drones overhead?…

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