Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
Having learnt the previous week that Lisa’s new flat was more or less ready, we arranged to pop around and have a look after tennis on a Saturday morning.
It became a brief impromptu housewarming:
I vaguely recall one of those Champagne flutes biting the dust, resulting in me and Janie getting Lisa another pair as an additional housewarming present.
My deal with King Cricket is basically that I write what I want, when I want. The reciprocal part of the deal is that he’ll publish what he wants (almost all of it) when he wants (perhaps months or years later).
So it is often a pleasant surprise when one of my older pieces pops up out of the blue, as this one did on 9 January 2017, to remind me what I was up to back on 12 August 2015 – click here to read the King Cricket piece.
Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, I have scraped the above page – to here.
Dumbo, my normally law-abiding Suzuki Jimny (although he does think that he is a horse) tells this tale.
This piece was, for Dumbo, the conclusion of a small build (through several adventures) towards him getting inside Lord’s and actually seeing the ground.
…so the 12 August 2015 net visit evening proved most exciting for Dumbo, as he actually did make it into Lord’s – click here to go straight to the King Cricket piece.
One of the ironies of all this, of course, is that Dumbo has subsequently become a regular visitor to Lord’s Cricket Ground, when I visit Middlesex CCC for meetings and/or the real tennis court. On quieter days, Dumbo sometimes even gets to park with a view of the hallowed turf itself. On such days, I think I detect Dumbo getting quite dewey-windscreened.
Still, nothing a short blast of air conditioning can’t put right.
The plans were laid back in late June – me to John:
I have booked Bocca di Lupo in Archer Street for 19:30 on 10 August. Happy to meet for a drink beforehand and/or turn up at the restaurant a little earlier, of course.
Then the day before the event, John to me:
Let’s meet at 6.30. Is there a pub near the caff were eating in?
I replied:
That was a really tough assignment you set me – finding a drinking house in Soho. But after many hours of research I discovered just one, Graphic Bar, hidden away in the corner; 4 Golden Square W1F 9HT, within spitting distance of our caff:
Graphic turned out to be a gin palace more than a wine bar, with a young, trendy clientele and even younger and trendier staff. The waitress seemed a little disappointed in us, drinking wine rather than gin.
When I called for the bill, she asked if we wanted it split. “Oh no”, I said, “our tradition when we meet is to alternate who pays for the dinner and the other pays for pre-dinner drinks – so this is on me. We’ve been doing it this way for thirty years, since we left University.”
“Awesome,” said the waitress, “you’ve kept in touch with each other all those years, that’s really amazing. How did you do that back in the days before Facebook?”
She wasn’t joking; she really couldn’t imagine how keeping in touch might have been done. We mumbled about telephones and post; I might even have made a quip about carrier pigeons.
Then on to Bocca Di Lupo, which was really good food. The thing there is to try small plates, so we shared lots of those. I’m hoping John can remember what we tried, as my glance at the menu (in December 2016) draws mostly blanks or vague recollections, the only one really sticking in my mind being Pappardelle with wild boar ragú.
John – help!
I do remember that the food was very good, though. That I do remember. Not rush back good. Not “must take Mandy and Janie” good. But still very good.
It’s strange how we sometimes don’t connect two things that have happened. Or in this case, connect one thing that didn’t happen with another thing that did happen.
Stumbling across my diary entry for Thursday 6 August 2015, I see a line through the day (which means that I had booked a day’s leave) and then the following notes:
E v A @ Trent 1, Notts @ Lord’s, Paul Deacon.
Ah yes. Paul Deacon…
Visiting Record & Tape Exchange With Paul Deacon, 29 April 1978
…my old school pal who relocated to Canada with his family a few years ago now, was over for a few weeks. We had hatched a plan to meet at Lord’s that day. Paul enjoys a bit of cricket and “the girls” (Christine & Anya) liked the idea of some shopping in Central London during those hours.
Then we learnt that the threatened tube strikes for that day were indeed going ahead. We exchanged some notes the day before about trains and buses, but in the end the Deacons very sensibly decided to steer clear of Central London on a strike day.
In truth, I am not wild about 50 over cricket. Great as a day out with a friend, but I certainly didn’t feel motivated to trek to Lord’s on my tod to see that game. No.
And there was an Ashes Test match due to start the same day. So I decided instead that I’d stay home, get a bit ahead of myself with work and stuff. Oh, and of course keep at least half an eye on the test match.
So I plonked myself in front of the TV to watch the first ball of this match – click here.
This now famous utter routing of Australia became compelling viewing within 5 minutes and I basically didn’t move from the TV for a couple of hours until the lunch interval. That is not normal cricket viewing behaviour for me.
Bert, one of King Cricket’s regular readers, correspondents and occasional reporter, provided an epic match report in the KC style, i.e. somehow managing to avoid mentioning the cricket – click here.
So, I had all that fun, instead of traipsing to Lord’s to see this match. If you can be bothered, I mean really don’t feel obliged, but you may, if you really want to see the scorecard, click here.
Thing is, though, from then until today (in December 2016) I had not once made the connection between my availability to see that extraordinary session of Ashes Test match history unfold and the earlier disappointment of having to abandon the proposed trip to Lord’s with Paul.
Therefore not once had I even thought to thank Paul for making his sensible decision to avoid Central London, thus allowing the day to unfold for me as it did.
Until now.
Thanks, Paul.
England v Australia at Edgbaston Test – day one match report
This is a link to Ivan’s Day Two match report, which was published by King Cricket on 22 June 2016.
England v Australia at Edgbaston – day two match report
Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, here is a scrape of that day two report.
Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, here is a scrape of that day three report.
I couldn’t have put this stuff better myself…
…no, really…
…so I think I should simply let Ivan tell the tale.
A link to the scorecard might help demystify the material for the less well-informed reader – here.
Everybody loves a happy ending.
We didn’t attend Day One of the Edgbaston test on this occasion, as the test started on a Wednesday. We booked our traditional Heavy Rollers Thursday and Friday at Edgbaston.
With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been great to have booked Wednesday through Friday, but you can’t have everything.
Ivan Meagreheart, my smart phone, took up the King Cricket reporting duties for the whole of this Edgbaston adventure. In June 2016 King Cricket published Ivan’s report on our travelling day, Day One, here.
England v Australia at Edgbaston Test – day one match report
Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, here is a scrape of his report.
Ivan summed it up very well, I don’t think I could possibly improve on Ivan’s piece.
Trio Mediæval are the Norwegian early music answer to Bananarama. Need I say more?
We’d seen them at the Wigmore Hall before, bought one of their albums and everything.
Now they were back for one of those midsummer Wigmore Lates, to perform Aquilonis: a musical journey from Iceland to the Mediterranean via the coasts of Scandinavia and England.
Click here for the Wigmore Hall Stub for the concert.
They were also to be followed in the bar by live music (unspecified on the site). I have a funny feeling none emerged that evening, although there might have been a combo who played without handing out any notes.
We arranged to go and see the Sonia Delaunay at the Tate Modern earlier – click here for that piece – then eat at the Tate Modern, then leg it back across town.
What could possibly go wrong?
Nothing. That’s the simple answer. The logistics and timings worked perfectly.
The Trio Mediæval concert was delightful. Not as jaw-droppingly wonderful as the “Words of the Angel” concert we saw some years ago; that album – click here – we still listen to a lot. But still delightful.
What an amazing evening we lined up.
This exhibition early evening at the Tate Modern; grab some grub at the Tate-Mod, then on to the Wigmore Hall to see a couple of short gigs there – click here.
The Sonia Delaunay was really interesting; fascinating life and I like much of the work too.
Top stub from the Tate itself with links etc. explains it all, reviews, the lot – click here.
Great start to our evening.
Our now traditional Z/Yen outing to see the Middlesex v Surrey T20 fixture at Lord’s.
We had a few late dropouts this year which allowed us the opportunity to treat some other people; Mark Duff, Sebastian Yeandle, Clive Hyman and Niclas Ljungberg to name a few.
We did the usual “everyone chip in to a picnic” thing; I was in the office that afternoon, so went round the supermarket with Linda to ensure we had good food coverage.
I recall that Sebastian was keen to see round the pavilion, so came suited and booted for that purpose – I took him round during the break between innings and showed him some cricket from the Long Room at the start of Surrey’s reply. We saw several wickets fall but, because of our Long Room location, we didn’t see Nick Gubbins ignominious tumble, failing to celebrate a catch – click here.
Niclas Ljungberg is but one of a long line of people from non-cricket playing countries whom we have tried and mostly failed to get into cricket.
Niclas, with typical Swedish politeness yet directness, wrote the following in his thank you note:
Many thanks for hosting the picnic at Lord’s yesterday, and for the enjoyable combination of plenty good food and introductory sports education.
Mark for some reason still seems to think this is a superior form of athletic activity to cross country skiing, I guess he just hasn’t quite seen the Northern light yet.
For those, like me, of the Middlesex persuasion, the important bit was that the ground was heaving with people and they saw Middlesex play really well on this occasion – click here for the scorecard.
King Cricket published Dumbo’s report of almost surreal happenings on the way to Lord’s, click here.
My conversation with the police and Dumbo’s paranoia combined makes Kafka read like a level-headed guy’s straightforward narrative.
An irony of all this, as I write this up for Ogblog some nine months after the event, is that Dumbo is now a surprisingly regular feature at Lord’s, what with the Middlesex strategy (work) and real tennis (rest and play).
For collectors of the Dumbo pieces (there must be loads of you out there – don’t be shy about it), this is Dumbo’s third report; the previous two in reverse order are:
Dumbo fans can also rest assured that this piece is not the last word from Dumbo; there are two more 2015 pieces by Dumbo which will be Ogblogged once King Cricket has done his worst with them.
