On the first stub, as indeed it read in the Wigmore Hall brochure, it says:
The Wigmore Hall Restaurant will serve dinner after the concert. Please contact the Box Office on 020 7935 2141 to make your table reservations.
This absolutely clinched it for us. The food at The Wig is pretty good these days and we know that they can deal with the sort of meal they can serve between concerts.
But what a palaver we had booking the meal.
“We’re not sure that we’ll be open still at that hour on that evening…”
“…but it says in the brochure that you will be open…”
“…ah, well if it says it in the brochure then we will be open…
“…great, we’d like to book please…”
“…I can’t take bookings yet, because I can’t be sure we’re going to be open…”
It all came right on the night (indeed before the night) of course.
The first concert, mostly blending Monteverdi and Piazolla, was an exceptional classical ensemble concert with several ensembles and soloists involved.
Then the relatively simple meal that Wigmore Hall can serve in these circumstances, all done with speed, efficiency and smiles in the end. We know many of the staff there; indeed any who stick around for a while.
The second concert was jazz with the Svante Henryson Quartet. We weren’t quite sure what Monteverdi had to do with it; perhaps some links in the musical themes being extrapolated. Still, it was very good jazz, although Janie, as usual in such circumstances, felt that it fell short of Tord Gustavsen, which is a tough, indeed perhaps unreasonable benchmark to set. But Janie has set that benchmark for all visiting jazz ensembles since Tord graced the Wigmore Hall with his presence some years ago – an event which I shall Ogblog in the fullness of time.
In short, our O/MODƏRNT evening was a great success and well worth the effort.
A day out in Chelmsford, reported upon at length on the King Cricket website.
This season my possessions are taking an increasing role in proceedings, writing many of my King Cricket match reports for me. Dumbo, the Suzuki Jimny started this trend while we were in Ireland – click here. Dumbo continued this trend on a half-day out to Uxbridge, linked through this posting here. There will be more to come from Dumbo, once King Cricket gets around to publishing it.
To understand my King Cricket match reports you need to know that:
Ged and Daisy are nicknames/noms de plume for me and Janie. Friends are all referred to pseudonymously;
King Cricket match reports have strict rules: “If it’s a professional match, on no account mention the cricket itself. If it’s an amateur match, feel free to go into excruciating detail.”
Janie has a terrific track record of getting tickets in the Wimbledon ballot in recent years.
This year, we didn’t get, but then quite late in the day she was offered two returns for the first Wednesday on No.2 Court which were not together but were relatively cheap. I thought it would be a good way to get a day at Wimbledon, see some tennis on that court and spend some time doing that thing we’ve never done – just wander around and take in the atmosphere on the outer courts.
To all intents and purposes it worked.
At first we couldn’t sit together on No.2 court as everyone was set in their seats. We therefore watched a very good match between Grigor Dimitrov and Steve Johnson from separate seats.
It was a very hot day – perhaps the hottest of the year.
Once Maria Sharapova started to demolish qualifer Richel Hogenkamp, we decided to take a wander.
I had marked up some interesting looking stuff on outer courts and we soon found a doubles on Court 10 between Garbine Muguruza / Carla Suarez Navarro and Alexandra Dulgheru / Silvia Soler-Espinos. We’d never seen Muguruza before but she was absolutely the stand-out player in that game, not least in the matter of court presence.
As we wilted in the heat, we sought some shade and some refreshment, as indeed many people were doing that day.
As the day started to cool a little, we returned to No.2 Court, by which time we were able to sit together in excellent seats. We caught the end of an excellent match between Marsel Ilhan and Kevin Anderson. Finally, we saw a spunky little Kazak named Yulia Putintseva almost pull off an upset against Venus Williams.
We won’t do that again if we are offered two separate seats; we’ve done the outer court wander bit now and much prefer to know that we’re all set in our prearranged seats for our picnic and tennis.
But we had a lovely day and were especially pleased for the early glimpse at Garbine Muguruza, who so nearly went on to win the Women’s Singles that year against all odds.
Actually taken in 2014, but the blustery moment looks more like 2015 – thanks to Kim for the picture
After the great success of our lunch at Gravetye Manor last year, DJ asked us again for 2015.
We arranged to stay over on the Sunday night, driving down on the Sunday morning. I’m not sure whether we played tennis – I have a feeling we did play, early.
Once again it was a lovely lunch. The food is very good there. Such a relaxing place.
Somehow it didn’t quite have the magical atmosphere of the previous year, perhaps because we were doing the same thing for a second time, perhaps it was just the vibe of the place this time around.
One highlight of the afternoon was a package of photograph prints and a memory stick from Kim as a gift to Janie. The above picture is one of the hundreds of pictures from that stick; many of which will surely find their way onto the retrospective sections of Ogblog.
The weather wasn’t quite so special, the sun and the showers came and went with regularity. So rather than hanging around digesting our food in that large outhouse/arbour thing and the smaller, more outdoorsy chairs and arbours from the previous year, we relocated inside to a snug spot within the Manor itself for most of the afternoon, although the showers became less regular and passed through as the afternoon went on.
Before too long, DJ, Kima nd Micky all decided to go, so Janie and I sorted ourselves out in our room and then went outside to enjoy the now rather glorious early evening, playing some croquet and badminton on the lawn.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, the King Cricket crowd were much to clever for me and rumbled the set up photograph – as you can see from the comments on this link – I cannot imagine how or why they did that.
We drove back on the Monday in our tennis (lawners, not realers) gear, stopping off at Boston Manor for a hit. We also enjoyed the rest of our Monday off. Indeed, we did little work and had lots of fun that week, as you will see if you read on in sequence, not least the first couple of days in July.
For those readers unaware of the King Cricket rules: “If it’s a professional match, on no account mention the cricket itself.”
Readers should perhaps also be aware that my nom de plume for King Cricket purposes is Ged and that occasionally my possessions start writing match reports for me. This one is authored by Dumbo, my Suzuki Jimny.
Indeed by the end of the 2015 season, inanimate objects had pretty much taken over my contributions to King Cricket, as you will no doubt find out come spring 2016 or whenever King Cricket gets around to publishing some of the later ones from the season. This one was published 13 December 2015.
In case you don’t delve that far into the King Cricket report, the links to the Visa commercials showing old cine footage of my dad slapping on the tanning oil and/or, perhaps even worse, the vine of me and mum on a pedalo, are worth the price of admission to this blog alone.
Mind you, this blog is free. As is King Cricket, which I also commend to you.
This was one of those late night concerts at The Wig.
We rather enjoy these, although sometimes find it an effort to go out after eating dinner, even if just to go a couple of miles down the road for a beautiful concert.
This one for sure was worth it. I’m pretty sure I knocked up a Tavola special pasta and salad for dinner before we went.
The full title of the concert was, “Sonnerie and other Portraits: Musical paintings from the French Baroque”. Lesser-known French Baroque composers, although we had heard some Marais and Rameau before, to be sure.
I was toying with the idea of going to Lord’s that evening, as there was a T20 match, but I hadn’t arranged to meet anyone and those matches don’t tend to make the cut for me these days unless I have made arrangements.
Stentor said he’d been meaning to try the recently refurbished Crocker’s Folly, which I was also keen to try. It is suitably close to Lord’s, so we booked a table from the comfort of the Upper Allen and toddled across at the innings break.
We had a very tasty one course meal at Crocker’s, served with due speed, once we informed Crocker’s that we were at crickers. I kept an eye on the score, within reason, once the game resumed. Stentor very generously insisted on treating me to the meal.
We missed the first 9 or 10 overs of Middlesex’s reply to Hampshire’s quite hefty score, but felt that Middlesex were making a very good fist of it when we returned to our seats at HQ.
But then some wickets fell and the result seemed in little doubt. In any case, Stentor is very much an MCC man, caring for England and good cricket, but not particularly caring for Middlesex, despite being a North-West London man. So Stentor gave up and headed for home after watching for less than 30 minutes after the resumption. I bowed to the inevitable a couple of overs later, to avoid the heave of the exiting crowd. Here’s a link to the scorecard.
Still, an unexpected and very enjoyable evening in NW8, in good company.
I made an early start out of London on the Monday morning, taking the train to Leeds.
This was the first of my sojourns to see County Championship matches away from home this season and possibly catch up with old friends in the process.
I has planned to meet up with Jonathan Rose while in Leeds, but sadly he needed to back out with events having intervened in the days and weeks leading up to my visit.
I dropped my bags (Benjy cunningly ensconced in the larger one) with the friendly staff at The Chambers, then took a cab to Headingley, arriving less than an hour after the start of play.
The match had been very well poised at the end of day one and was looking very good for Middlesex when I arrived at the ground. But Jonny Bairstow got to work with the tail, putting on a final wicket stand to poise the match once again – possibly even tilt it in Yorkshire’s favour.
Thus the cricket went on for the two days I was there – a very exciting match unquestionably between two of the best teams at the time – here’s a link to the scorecard. The match concluded within three days, so I got to see the denouement.
I walked back to my digs from Headingley on both evenings and to the ground on the second morning; an interesting walk which includes some city centre, some student districts, some inner city residential areas and some leafy suburbs.
On arrival at The Chambers on the first evening, I encountered a well-heeled woman at the reception, the proprietrix it turned out, who gave me some advice about the gym and the locality. Then she said, “you must excuse me, David Guest is staying with me at the moment and we are due to go out soon.” The name vaguely rang a bell and I could tell that I was supposed to recognise the name and be impressed.
“How nice,” I said, “I hope you both enjoy your evening.”
I went up to my apartment, discovering (as so often happens with apartment hotels) that I had paid for a studio but been given a one bedroom flat. I got the wifi working quick as you like and Googled “David Guest”.
Soon enough, I was ready to pop out to get a few provisions to enable me and Benjy to hunker down in my flat for the two evenings, now that my original evening plans had come to nowt. In the corridor I ran into the proprietrix again, with the unmistakable David Gest in tow.
“Hello again”, she said, beaming.
“Once again, I hope you have a lovely evening”, I said, adding “both of you” to include her guest, Gest.
I only needed minimal evening provisions, as the Yorkshire CCC committee hospitality left me with little need for food and refreshment in the evenings, so the recommended local supermarket less than 5 minutes walk away indeed did the job for me.
That first evening Benjy and I focused on some melancholy material; not least Northern Sky by Nick Drake and Vincent by Don McLean, I remember clearly working on both of those. Both songs seemed so apposite for that trip.
Very few Middlesex committee folk made the trip to Leeds that year, so the handful of us who were enjoying the hospitality got a great deal of personal attention. (Although I am not on the committee, I gratefully receive committee privileges for the work I do for the Middlesex committee).
Robin Smith, John Hampshire and Dickie Bird were all very active and welcoming hosts for that match.
On one of the days, I don’t remember which, Ray Illingworth and his wife Shirley were at the game. I sat with them on the balcony watching the action and I chatted with Ray for a while. In my childhood he had been an absolute hero of mine. Ray Illingworth was the England captain when I first took an interest in cricket. He seemed genuinely interested in anyone who shared his love for the game and in talking about anything to do with cricket. Ray told me that he was still involved in running his local club, Farsley, but regretted that he could no longer play a full role as groundsman. He was well into his eighties by then.
On my second day there, the Tuesday afternoon, I particularly remember Dickie Bird getting very agitated about a DRS review on the TV, as the ODI series between England and New Zealand started that day. Sam Billings was given not out by the standing umpire and the Kiwis reviewed it.
‘Ees given ‘im not out. ‘Ees not out. Get on with the game. Get on with the game…
It was a stone dead LBW and the decision was reversed.
I’m not ‘appy about this. I’m not ‘appy about this at all. Umpire sees it as not out, it’s not out…
Meanwhile in the real world, Yorkshire were accumulating the runs towards their win at this point, but losing occasional wickets along the way.
Middlesex tried everything and I tried to dampen the enthusiasm of my hosts with tales of derring do. Thus, when James Harris came on for a late attempt at some wickets, I told them about his devastating spell against Durham a few week’s previously.
Towards the end, when it really was obvious that Yorkshire were heading for a win, Tim Murtagh came on for one last ditch attempt. In jest, I tried to talk up Tim Murtagh’s match-winning skills as well, at which point Tony, one of the Yorkshire Committee Room regulars, snapped, “if I listened to you, I’d think every Middlesex bowler is about to take a fivefer and win you every game”.
Lots of people laughed – I hadn’t realised that anyone on the balcony was still in doubt about the result. But a tense finish is a tense finish I suppose. Naturally, even Tony was in good spirits within a few minutes of that exchange. Click here for the scorecard again.
I took a reasonably early (mid-morning) train back to London the next day, as I had clients to see in London. I think this was the match at which I ran into Vivica at the railway station and we travelled back to London on the train together, which made the journey pass quickly.
We had some wine downstairs in the bar first of all. Busy but not so heaving that you couldn’t hear – helped by the open nature of the bar area on a warm light evening in June.
The restaurant had that shabby chic look of painted wooden tables and chairs – well spaced out though, so upstairs really was spot on for a get together and a chat. The food and wine was excellent.
We ran into Tina Ellis, formerly of Bodyworkswest/Lambton Place, there. Of course I knew that she was a Parsonsgreenista, but still a surprise; a pleasant one I should add.
The young couple still lived in Bow in those days, so it was a relatively easy journey for all of us to get home from that place; not long after dark or possibly even before dark at that time of year.
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