The third event: Streatham BBYO alums gathering at Bill’s Covent Garden
Dinner At Claudia & Richard’s Place, 1 June 2024
The weather didn’t smile on us for drinks & nibbles outdoors – Janie and I had a quick guided tour of Claudia’s lovely garden before dashing back inside to warm up – but the warmth of the hospitality made up for the chilly evening.
Claudia likes to show off her culinary skills and thus chose to serve a coulibiac as the centrepiece of her superb meal.
It wasn’t all about food. It was great to catch up with old friends again (Anthea, Claudia and Richard), plus meet some new (to us) folks in Jonathan and Joanne. Jonathan’s greyhound provided some additional entertainment, not least when it went missing in the house for a while and search parties scattered to find it.
A super evening – thanks Claudia.
Dinner At Maurizio Barca With Simon Jacobs & Graham Greenglass, 5 June 2024
A few weeks before this dinner, I saw Graham Greenglass in person for the first time in decades at the sad occasion of Fran Erdunast’s funeral evening prayers. Graham and I had re-engaged by e-mail and I had even put Graham back together again with Fran, who was a cousin of his, back in 2021. We had every intention of meeting up back then, but I let that ball drop at that time. My bad.
Coincidentally, Graham’s name had come up again a few weeks before the sad Fran news, when I attended and spoke at the Gresham Society annual dinner:
As a small token of thanks for my speech, Professor Tim Connell presented me with the canonical book about The Guildhall – Guildhall: City of London: History Guide Companion: A History and a Guide:
I had meant to get in touch with Graham about that happy coincidence, but in the end it was Fran’s sad demise that triggered the reunion.
While pondering how best to set up a proper meeting, I recalled that Graham and Simon were also good friends back in the day…
…so I e-mailed the two of them to suggest that we three meet again. The idea found favour.
Simon somehow found time to fit us in, despite his sixth album having just been released ‘n’ all:
Compared with the others, I felt a little bereft of relatively recent published materials…apart from the 3000 or so pieces here on Ogblog.
The Scarsdale Tavern was my initial choice of venue, but that place is especially picky about arrival times, which they felt sure we would understand. We did understand that their proposed timings suited the Scarsdale rather than us, so we chose instead to eat when we wanted to at Maurizio Barca, which was a quiet, friendly, local Italian place on the North End Road. Little did I know that Graham’s mum’s family hailed from that part of London, so it was a bit of a spiritual reunion with his family’s ancestors, as well as a reunion with a couple of relics from Graham’s own past.
We had a very enjoyable evening, despite signally failing to put all of the world’s problems to rights by talking them through. Perhaps it will need another get together or two to complete the solving of those.
Streatham BBYO “Annual” Gathering, Bill’s Restaurant, 6 June 2024
In a break with tradition, we gathered the week after half term holiday this time, but then Sandra is now the last of our clan still working in the education sector and was able to make this date.
Unfortunately Mark was unable to make it in the end for health reasons, but still seven of us gathered, which isn’t bad at all.
Andrea and Wendy were fashionably late, as always. Except that both announced well in advance that they would be late and ended up arriving earlier than we anticipated given that they had said that they’d be late. Does that mean that they were early?
No matter, we all had a good chat over palatable food and a few drinks.
The stuff I have been writing up from my 1974 diaries proved strangely pertinent to much of the chat.
Sandra seems to have forgiven me for needing to be reminded that she suffered along with me and others at the hands of Miss Aaron at Brixton cheder…
…I even seem to be forgiven for bringing back Sandra’s nightmares about those unpleasant experiences.
Andrea and Wendy keenly anticipate me reintroducing them to Stuart (no relation) Harris, through whom all three of us met before the BBYO days and with whom I have recently re-engaged after finding my earliest tennis memories in that 1974 diary.
I didn’t realise that David Heller and Liza Abrahams also know/knew Stuart and the “Naff Harris” family.
Like the club nights of old, it was all over so very quickly. As always, it was such a pleasure to meet up with the old gang again.