Tag: David Wellbrook

“You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Immature Forever”, Dinner With Fellow Alleyn’s Alums, Then Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve, The Other Palace, 8 October 2024

Olly Goodwin having received his Olly-Vier Theatre Award from Rohan Candappa

The above quote comes from Germaine Greer. It is apposite to both elements of the enjoyable evening I am about to describe.

“It was Candappa’s fault, Sir”. That non-quote is nevertheless true – this evening would not have happened, had it not been for Rohan Candappa doing his thing, both in terms of keeping us ’73-’80 Alleyn’s alums together and in helping to promote writing and theatrical talent.

Kat Kleve first came into my orbit when she worked with Rohan on One Starts in a Barber’s, One Starts in a Bar, which several of us Alleyn’s alums first saw at the Gladstone Arms in the autumn of 2018, after which it went to Edinburgh the next year and ultimately Kat’s bit ended up being Rohan’s first Lockdown Theatre production, And You Are? You can read all about it by clicking here or the link below.

And You Are? by Rohan Candappa, Lockdown Theatre Company, 24 March 2020

At the time, I gave that piece the wildest praise I could conjure at the time:

Better than watching Boris Johnson telling you what to do and what not to do – Ian Harris, Ogblog.

Strangely, neither Kat nor Rohan latched on to that quote for promotional purposes at the time. Pearls…

…anyway, this time around Kat is performing her own show, written with Lizzy Connelly, named Tink. The play did famously well at Edinburgh in 2023 and now has a London run at The Other Palace. Book early to avoid disappointment.

Hence Rohan’s idea for us alums to meet up there for a bite, a drink and a show.

As coincidence would have it, Olly Goodwin was a Trustee of The Theatres Trust back when The Other Palace was just an idea. Olly was instrumental in helping that project get its planning permission. If you have ever wondered why that building has a glorious but perhaps incongruous-looking marble staircase…

…ask Olly. And if you have ever wondered why Rohan thought fit to award Olly Goodwin with an Olly-Vier Theatre Award…see headline photo…the answer is intrinsically connected to the above coincidence.

The food was pretty good and the serving staff delightful at The Other Palace, even when Olly exclaimed:

Hey, why have you served Ben with his drink before serving mine, which I ordered earlier?…

…ignoring the large glass of wine that the waitress had placed in front of him a few moments before serving Ben. That wine glass is also commemorated in the headline picture.

Here is the whole scene just before we went into the theatre…except that my lens isn’t wide enough to have captured all the group and I have cruelly left out our ringleader, Rohan.

You’ll just have to take my word for it that Rohan is like a kid in the proximity of a candy store on such occasions.

Ah, there he is…

Actually, we all tend to display our inner overgrown schoolboy modes when we get together, which is at least some of the point behind getting together. As Germaine Greer said:

You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Immature Forever.

Anyway, recollecting our youth over dinner will have helped prepare us for the coming of age musical, Tink, which we then went down the Olly Goodwin Memorial Marble Staircase to see.

Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve

Here is a link to the Other Place information and resources on this show.

Here’s the trailer:

The conceit of the piece is that the central character – this is a one person show – is a modern Tinkerbell, growing up in the early 21st century rather than the early 20th century character in Peter Pan.

Not in truth my type of show, but Kat Kleve is a very talented and versatile performer, so there was plenty to enjoy in the performance.

It’s basically a coming of age story set in a fairies and elves context, which seemed startlingly like a human context to me. I liked the agonies Tink goes through around trying too hard to be the best at everything (which, it seems, is not guaranteed to make you popular – who knew?) and the social mores around how to dress and behave at teenage parties.

Especially interesting, to me, was the business around social media, which hadn’t been invented when we were kids. I’d long suspected that it is probably even harder to bee a teenager now than it was back in our day – this play illustrated some of the reasons why.

The songs are not really my type of songs either. They reminded me a little of Ed Sheeran and Meghan Trainor style singer-songwriter songs. Very well delivered, though. Here is an example of one of the songs:

That style of song might be spot on for the intended audience for this show, which I imagine to be a bit younger than me. We were there for the opening night and didn’t feel out of place, but I suspect that the average age of the audience will come down a decade or two on most other nights…

…apart from the nights for which Rohan is taking a posse of his friends.

The show runs until 20 October, so if you are reading this in time you might well want to click this link and grab some tickets, before dynamic pricing takes Kat Kleve out of your price range.

The Phone Call by Nashmash, Royal National Theatre, 27 February 2024

“I can’t talk now, darling, I’m performing at the National”

Yes, this was the night that I and several others from Threadmash performed at the National Theatre.

Threadmash Begets NashMash

Threadmash is one of Rohan Candappa’s bright ideas. We have been meeting on and off for five years now, writing short pieces to order and then performing them to each other (and occasionally also to invitees). Here is a link to my write up of the first event, which includes my first Threadmash piece:

The Rohan Thing, My Short Performance Piece As Part Of Rohan Candappa’s Inaugural Threadmash, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2019

The idea needed to morph into ThreadZoomMash during the pandemic and now seems to have retained the capital M for mash. If you are a real glutton for this sort of thing, this link here is a tag for all of the ThreadMash pieces on Ogblog, which will include this one.

Anyway…

…Rohan decided to try the National Theatre foyer bars as a venue this time around – cunningly timed with two quite long plays at the Olivier and Lyttelton both starting at 19:30. That gave us ample time to perform in the relative quiet between the start of the plays and the intervals.

The relative quiet was rather noisily broken by the bar staff hoovering up around us, very early in the reading of Geraldine’s piece, but we’ll put that temporary disturbance aside. The venue worked.

And we can all honestly claim now that we have performed at The National Theatre.

Rohan threaded our pieces together, as is his way. In this instance, with the topic “The Phone Call”, Rohan’s thread covered Alexander Graham Bell‘s innovation, the practical telephone. Also the contribution of the lesser known but colourful Florentine, Antonio Meucci, who largely invented that communication method before Bell, but was too polite to patent the critically novel elements of the technology he had discovered.

Geraldine’s piece came first. A charming throwback to 1973, Geraldine recounted her mother’s almost infeasibly regular long-distance calls to Geraldine (who had escaped to New York). Geraldine’s mum persistently tried, in vain, to persuade her daughter to return to “Hicksville” and resume the “normal” life into which Geraldine had, to her mother’s perception, been born.

Rohan then reminded us all that Alexander Graham Bell’s first phone call was to an employee who awaited his call…

Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you

…starting the mighty tradition of bosses using such devices to issue instructions to underlings.

Rohan was rather sniffy about my ability to follow a simple instruction – i.e. to write a story about a phone call. I cannot imagine what Rohan’s beef might have been.

The Phone Call by Ian Harris

We don’t go out so much anymore. Not since the pandemic. It’s not a fear of infection or anything like that.  It’s just that we have got out of the habit.  It now takes something especially interesting or unusual to lure us back to the theatre or concert hall. 

One such interesting concert caught our eyes recently – a concert of African chamber music at the Wigmore Hall, led by Tunde Jegede, who is both a virtuoso kora player and a classically-trained cellist. The kora is a large West-African 21-stringed plucking instrument, sometimes described as a cross between a lute and a harp. 

Janie and I like the Wigmore Hall. It is one of the few remaining public spaces where we still normally bring down the average age of the audience quite significantly. But we soon saw, on arrival at the Wigmore Hall for the kora concert, that this audience was different. Only sparsely populated with “the usual suspects”, the average age of the audience was, horror of horrors, below ours.

The front row still had a comfortingly senior look. Next to Janie was a beaming, white-haired woman you might have got from central casting had you requested “a left-over hippy”.  The woman was very friendly and chatty – clearly not part of the regular front row mafia. Familiar with the kora – she had spent time in West Africa when younger – she was a fan of Tunde Jegede’s playing but had not previously managed to see him play live. She was, as the young folk say, super-excited.

The first half of the concert was truly magical. Tunde had brought with him a posse of chamber musicians from Lagos, together with a wonderful percussionist. We were transported by the music, not least the entrancing sound of Tunde’s kora-playing. 

During the interval, our friendly neighbour said that she was delighted with the live music experience and thrilled that we had enjoyed it. She recommended and wrote down the names of a couple of Tunde’s albums for us to follow up, which we did. 

I wondered what those silky-sounding kora strings are made of. Our otherwise-expert neighbour didn’t know. More or less at that moment, Tunde came on to the stage to rearrange the setting for the second half of the concert. As he was standing, with his kora, about three yards away from me, it seemed only polite to ask him about the strings.  

I was expecting the answer to be something along the lines of, “skin from an antelope’s anus or a sitatunga’s scrotum“. But instead, Tunde simply said, “Nylon”. “Just Nylon”, I asked, hoping for more enlightenment. “Just Nylon”, said Tunde, gently.

The second half of the concert was also good but less to our taste. Tunde didn’t play his kora – instead he demonstrated his skills as a cellist. The fusion theme was retained, as the pieces were arrangements of traditional African music, but to us the real magic had been the kora.

I tried to work out the common theme in Tunde’s unusual choice of devices for his multi-instrumentalism.  I concluded that Tunde likes making music while holding his instrument between his legs.

525 WORDS

I smiled to myself as I hit the save button and e-mailed my piece to Rohan Candappa for review.

Ninety minutes later, my iPhone buzzed.

It was Rohan.

“Ian, old chap”, said Rohan. “A charming vignette, but it has nothing to do with the subject and title – The Phone Call”. 

“I beg to differ”, I said.  “The piece is absolutely about The Phone Call”.  The introductory story about the kora concert is a MacGuffin. The main story is about the phone call.

“Well”, said Rohan, “I did consider e-mailing you, but then…”

“…never explain”, I interrupted. “You and I have collaborated on and off for over 50 years now, Rohan. Many things don’t need to be said.”

I pressed the “end call” button.

Koras Of Approval: Tunde Jegede & Friends At The Wigmore Hall, 17 February 2024
AKA “The Phone Call”

Returning To NashMash

It seemed that everyone else was able to understand and obey a simple instruction from Rohan…even Jan.

Strangely, Jan, like Geraldine, had set her story in 1973. Without conferring. The central conceit of Jan’s story, which revolved around an uprooted little girl whose family had recently moved to a different town, was a troubling phone call aimed at one or both parents, inadvertently picked up by the little girl.

Similarly strange was the structural similarity between Jan’s and Julie’s story, which was also about a troubling phone call picked up by someone other than the intended recipient of the call. Julie’s was not set in a particular bygone year, but the details within the story suggested 1970s as well.

David’s story was about a character who bought a vintage GPO rotary telephone through the internet and, as a result, got a phone call more than he had bargained for.

All of The Phone Call stories were charming, thought-provoking and enjoyable to hear. It was also very pleasing to spend time with the ThreadMash gang again, even though we were a somewhat depleted group on this occasion.

Sadly, Kay, who was going to join us, was unable to attend due to the recent death of her mother. Yet Kay made a charming contribution to the collection of stories by e-mail a couple of days later:

“Here is my belated contribution to “The Call”. In the endless process of clearing out my mum’s house, we found the tin in which I used to save my phone money when I was a kid. Like many others, I was expected to pay for my calls!”

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and my goodness that picture of Kay’s is worth at least that many. But Rohan had instructed us to limit our stories to a maximum of 800 words. Honestly, some people can’t comply with the simplest of instructions from the ThreadMaster.

Blooming Heck I Was Out A Lot That Week, 23 to 26 May 2023

Thanks to David Wellbrook for the above picture of me, him & Rohan Candappa

Tuesday 23 May – Brasserie Zédel With Wellbrook & Candappa

I’ve known Rohan Candappa & David Wellbrook for very nearly 50 years now. Rohan is very good at keeping in touch and occasionally just saying, “let’s meet” and/or “there’s something I want to chat through with you fellas”.

We responded to the call. David booked Brasserie Zédel, a favourite place of his. As it happens, I had wanted to try the place for some time, ever since I discovered that my grandfather, Lew Marcus, worked there for decades as a barber in the Regent Palace Hotel, rising to the giddy heights of manager I am told:

Turn It Up To Max & Spit: The Baltic Origins Of My Mother’s (Marcus) Family Revealed

Lew’s older brother Max no doubt played music there on occasions, although David de Groot’s Piccadilly Hotel Orchestra was his main gig.

The interior is like an Art Deco fantasy. Here’s a link to someone else’s photo of the glitz.

Anyway, we were there to chew the fat, catch up and the like. I think I have persuaded Rohan and David to provide some “Fifty Years Ago” reflections on the opening overs of our Alleyn’s School career, as I remember so little about the very early days and didn’t start my diary until January 1974.

Rohan wanted to discuss his thoughts on positive proposals following his extensive fundraising around mental health, not least reframing the language used around that subject.

It became a little difficult to have profound conversation once the jazz trio got started. With two of them sporting flat caps, I thought they might name themselves “Jazz & Dave”.

Always good to catch up with those two. Good food & drink at that place too.

Wednesday 24 May – Kapara With John White

My turn to choose, John’s turn to pay. I Googled for new restaurants that are getting rave reviews and soon landed on Kapara, ironically located just across the way from the slightly crazy Manette Street Shule where my father’s family hung out in the 1920s.

The Only Known Relic Of Grandpa Harris Reaches Its Hundredth Birthday, October 2022

The service was sweet and attentive (apart from one lad who kept approaching our table with other table’s dishes) and the food excellent.

They are big on small plates there, which made the tasting menu a sensible way to try the place out.

This is a link to a similar set menu to the one we ate. Ours had bream rather than snapper and didn’t have the soup.

Always great to catch up with John – it had been a while so we had a bit of catching up to do. But we shall be seeing each other again within the month, along with “the girls” and Pady. Part of our catching up comprised planning that gathering.

Thursday 25 May – Lord’s For Sunrisers v South East Stars & Middlesex v Surrey, With Janie

Cullen Bowls To The Curran Brothers

Our plan, which more or less worked, was to get to Lord’s around 15:00 and watch as much of the double-header as took our fancy. The weather smiled on us, for sure, so we took root in Janie’s favourite place, the pavilion sun deck.

In truth, the afternoon women’s game, between the Sunrisers and South East Stars, was somewhat of a damp squib, both in terms of the cricket and also the atmosphere…or lack thereof. Midweek afternoon games work great when youngsters are off school. In term time, the timing virtually guaranteed a tiny crowd before the evening.

A reasonable number of member stalwarts (MCC and MCCC) turned up for both matches, but there was almost no atmosphere for the women’s match, which is a shame.

There was a decent (but not full) crowd for the Middlesex v Surrey fixture.

Anyway, we were enjoying ourselves. But the Surrey score batting first seemed high and the chill of the evening was starting to tell, so we decided to go home and watch the almost inevitable ending of the match on TV.

You probably don’t want to see the scorecards but here they are anyway:

Sunrisers v South East Stars

Middlesex v Surrey

Friday 26 May – Dedanists v Jesters At The Queen’s Club

I was delighted to be selected again to represent The Dedanists in this absolutely crucial real tennis fixture with The Jesters.

If anyone from Alleyn’s School is still reading at this juncture, you might be interested to know that the very first Jesters fixture was in late 1928 – a Rugby Fives match between the nascent Jesters and Alleyn Old Boys.

Actually, in truth, this is one of those fixtures where half the people playing are members of both clubs and half the time it’s hard to work out who is representing which club. Indeed on this occasion I found myself (together with Simon Cripps) playing for the Dedanists but playing against our team captain, Martin Village, who paired up with Anton Eisdell.

I’m glad to say I managed to maintain a winning streak in the matter of match play in Dedanists fixtures at Queen’s, having recently lost my Lowenthal Trophy crown there to, amongst others, Mr Eisdell. The piece linked here and below also describes this Jesters fixture from last year.

Finally…Unprecedented Success At Tennis, The Queen’s Club, 11 May & 27 May 2022

It was a thoroughly delightful afternoon and evening – my first (but hopefully not last) opportunity to partner Simon Cripps – who kept getting me out of trouble and who in truth was the key to our success as a pair. Also an opportunity to meet and chat with lots of delightful and interesting people.

It also gave me the opportunity to check up on the progress of the seats I have booked for me and Janie to enjoy the Wednesday of Queen’s this year.

Ah yes, coming on nicely.

Pass Time With Good Company, With “All Good Sports” For A Few Days, Mid October 2022

Rohan “Candy” Candappa & David Wellbrook

Violets & Fatt Pundit With Mark Ellicott, Simon Jacobs & John White, 17 October 2022

For some reason we were all being too grown up to take photos, but this was a special get together reuniting people who had all known each other at Keele for one reason or another.

I had re-engaged by e-mail with Mark Ellicott during the latter stages of the pandemic while writing my “Forty Years On” series, not least to compare notes over Princess Margaret debacles, a cricket match for which I got picked for the craziest of Ellicott-induced reasons and more recently some exchanges over playlists (or, as we used to call them, mix tapes) from 1982.

Mark Ellicott (right), next to Neil Baldwin of Marvellous fame, 2016

In particular the musical aspects intrigued Simon Jacobs, who wondered out loud to me why I hadn’t set up a get-together with Mark.

Simon, in 2019, trying to make a silk purse out of my (then) sow’s ear voice

Actually, John said something similar when I shared my Mark correspondence with him when we met up in the summer. I had no excuse, so I felt duty bound to act.

John questioning my judgement with his eyes and body language, August 2022

I booked a table at Fatt Pundit in Berwick Street and chose Violet’s as a suitable close-by bar for us to meet for a pre-dinner drink.

I played tennis at Lord’s – a draw at singles seeing as you were going to ask – before hot-footing it (via the flat) to Soho.

I arrived at Violet’s, grabbing a table – just inside but suitably quasi-open to the street – about five minutes before Simon arrived. From that vantage point, we observed Mark walk straight past us and then four or five minutes later he returned having got as confused as everyone else by the Berwick Street door-numbering. John arrived fashionably but not ridiculously last.

We had a good chat and a drink at Violet’s before heading a block or two up the road to Fatt Pundit, where the food was excellent and the chat got even better.

A few comedy moments with the sweet waitress whose high-pitched voice is possibly in a register that none of us, given our advancing years, could hear. But the menu was pretty-much self-explanatory, so a mixture of sign language, reading the menu and common sense allowed us to order a cracking good meal.

It was a really enjoyable four-way catch up.

Goldmine With Rohan Candappa & David Wellbrook, 18 October 2022

This gathering was originally conceived in Soho when Rohan and I met for dim sum a couple of months ago:

Dim Sum At New Loon Fung In Chinatown With Rohan Candappa, 2 August 2022

It was basically a “barbeque meats challenge” based on my assertion that the Queensway specialists therein, especially Goldmine, are better than those in Chinatown.

It turned into a small-scale Alleyn’s School alum thing. David Wellbrook, being Wellbrook, needed to join in the challenge, not least because Queensway is an alma mater of his where he attended the University of Romance (his wife used to live there when they were courting).

We tucked into plenty of barbeque meats, diverting briefly at the start and end of the lunchtime feast for some dim sum, just in the interests of science.

At school Rohan Candappa was always known as Candy, so it was with great mirth and merriment that David spotted “Candy World” across the street.

Rohan Candappa’s world

After lunch, we retreated to my flat where I showed the lads my centennial family relic, on what was, after all, its century day.

Hamsters v Dedanists At Hampton Court Palace, 20 October 2022

Almost everything that needs to be said about this match is contained in my match report on the Dedanists web site – here…or perhaps best to read it from the scrape here, scraped before the current piece drops down the running order.

For those who don’t like to click and/or who don’t want all the tennis detail – here is an extract:

“It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall,” said your intrepid reporter to Carl Snitcher, having braved the 3.5 mile high-pass journey from Notting to Primrose Hill in just over 35 minutes.

“There’s a bad moon on the rise,” agreed Carl, gnomically.

We arrived at a rain-soaked Hampton Court Palace in the nick of time; just as well, as your intemporal reporter was playing in the first rubber. Some might argue that our arrival was actually “worse than two”, but a more substantial discrepancy soon revealed itself; the marker’s sheet was showing a lesser handicap for the Dedanists than the sheet that James McDermott & I had been sent.

In order to avoid a major diplomatic incident, James & I acquiesced to the lesser handicap, yet still somehow contrived to win our rubber, albeit narrowly…

McDermott hitting, me watching

On finally staggering away from the court, your incognizant reporter picked up a message that the Prime Minister had resigned. “That’s the second Liz whose expiration has been announced while I was on the real tennis court in the space of six weeks”, I mused, having been informed of the late Queen’s demise by Tony Friend while I was on the Lord’s court.

I thought I might be the tidings-bringer this time, only to discover that most of the group had learnt the demise of Liz Truss some 45 minutes earlier.

Anyway, this was no time to ponder the fate of shambolic politicians – it was time to tuck into the pies before they too were to become a footnote in history. A positive footnote in the case of the pies of course – once again a delicious choice of
• Chicken Ham & Leek;
• Steak & Ale.

Bread and cheese (yes please) and two species of yummy desert that self-discipline allowed me to avoid, along with the jolly wines on offer…

Pictures by Tony Friend

There’s no better way to lift the spirits on a gloomy, worrisome day than a day of pastance with Dedanists and Hamsters. Symbolically, as the nation’s political shenanigans moved on to its new phase, the heavy clouds and rain of the morning had lifted to reveal a gorgeously bright, sunny evening as we all left.

“So foul and fair a day I have not seen”, said Carl, gnomically, as I dropped him home.

“Pass time with good company”, I replied.

Threadmash 5, Rohan Candappa’s Thing Has A Birthday Bash, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2020

How does one describe Threadmash? It is sort-of a writing club, where people write and recite pieces, often being encouraged outside their safe places, by ringmaster Rohan Candappa.

But it is not so much about what we do as it is about how it makes those of us who participate in it feel. I probably described that for the first time at the end of the Ogblog piece in which I set out my second threadmash piece:

In Search Of Lost Time and Found Memories, A Performance Piece For The Second Theadmash, Gladstone Arms, 28 March 2019

But the very first threadmash was exactly a year ago. The piece I produced for that inaugural event is set out here and below:

The Rohan Thing, My Short Performance Piece As Part Of Rohan Candappa’s Inaugural Threadmash, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2019

Rohan is not one to let a birthday or anniversary go unmarked…

…nor is he one to miss an opportunity for a party of sorts.

So Threadmash 5 was cunningly scheduled for the first anniversary of Threadmash. Well played, Rohan.

There were several new faces this time, observing the readings and whole-heartedly participating in the party atmosphere. Several of them had “Sh” names, such as Shirani, Shivangi, Shazia and Rowan.

Eight of us wrote pieces to Rohan’s brief this time. Mine is published here:

Dear William, My Peformance Piece For Threadmash 5, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2020

Terry went first. He wrote a job application letter, to become a taster for Mr Kipling cakes. He used the application as a mechanism to tell us all about is “work experience” as a youngster. It was very amusing and touching in parts.

Jan then read us a letter to a plate of food that she was forced to “study” outside the headmistresses office for the whole afternoon, when five years old, because she had the audacity to abstain from eating the ghastly gunk that was her school dinner. This too was a very funny and touching piece.

Jan’s piece reminded me of a lovely piece of writing I published recently on Ogblog as a guest piece, by cousin Garry Steel, about a similar incident and the “truth and reconciliation” events that occurred decades later:

Truth And Reconciliation 55 Years After A Dastardly Custardy Battle: Guest Piece By Garry Steel

This was the first of several unexpected, surprising and in some cases downright weird coincidences in the evening’s pieces.

I went next…

…followed by Chris who wrote a letter to his own testosterone, explaining how their relationship had changed and was likely to continue changing over the decades. Not only funny and engaging, this piece was also moving and quite risky in the level and nature of its confessional humour.

Flo’s piece was the fifth one. A letter, decades later, to a youth with whom she had enjoyed extended correspondence and an unfulfilled dalliance “back in the day”, probably because she was less ready for romance at that time than the young man. As with all of the pieces, there was a mixture of drama and humour; this one especially bittersweet because the mismatch was one of those timing things that so many of us probably, if we put our minds to it, experienced one way or another when we were in the early stages of romance. I probably wasn’t the only man in the room thinking, “crickey, I never, ever put THAT much effort into wooing a girl. Poor chap.”

The strange coincidence in Flo’s piece was that she described the young man, on reflection, as “her troubadour”, which seemed a strange, coincidental echo of my references to William of Aquitaine and his reputation as the first troubadour.

Next up was David Wellbrook, who wrote a very moving letter in the part of a soldier on the front line in WW1, writing home having just killed a man in hand-to-hand combat. David is a very versatile writer. To a greater extent than most of us, he is able to pick up on Rohan’s entreaties to stretch ourselves beyond our safe zones and make that stretch comprehensively.

Strangely, Kay’s letter was to her late Grandfather and talked a great deal about his active service in WW1.This seemed like a particularly coincidental echo, coming immediately after David’s WW1 story and also in relation to mine, which was also a letter to a dead relative of the grandfather generation, albeit “grandfather-in-law” in my case. Kay’s piece was very touching, not least because clearly her grandfather had been unable to communicate feelings very much when Kay knew him and also because it is clear from the letter that Kay feels she might not have communicated with him sufficiently either.

Geraldine’s letter was directed by Rohan to be a letter of resignation, but Geraldine cleverly and delightfully twisted the idea to make it a letter of resignation to her former husband, explaining why she felt she simply had to escape the drudgery of the “American dream, American housewife” role in which she found herself cast as his wife. It was a beautiful piece of writing, full of love combined with a steely determination to explain herself and not to apologise. As with all of the pieces, the letter was probably the right length for such a performance piece but (and because) it said so much while leaving me wanting to know more.

After a short interlude, Rohan took us through a 10 point agenda. Is this is all getting a bit business-like?

…not as business-like as it looks, once you read the items

The brief for Threadmash Six is to write about an unknown woman named Charlotte Thomas. All we know of her is that Rohan managed to acquire a cheap moleskin-like notebook that had been customised with her name but never collected from the shop. Our job is to write about whosoever this person might be.

It did cross my mind to recycle my Theadmash One story, which is about a youthful dalliance with a young woman who I only ever knew as Fuzz, thus not even knowing her real first name, let alone her second name. She might very well be (or have been) Charlotte Thomas…

…but that would be cheating – I won’t do that. I think I have already decided on my Charlotte Thomas idea – it will be a bit of a stretch but I guess it is meant to be.

There was an awards ceremony, during which Rohan’s Edinburgh nemesis Rowan presented Adrian (in absentia) and Julie “Croissanita” with awards which, given their origins from the same stable as the Charlotte Thomas moleskin-type thing, I suggested should henceforward be known as “Charleys”.

It was a birthday party so of course there was cake…

…and goody bags.

Even the awkward silence was superb.

Then Rohan performed a new piece of his own, a very evocative piece which the agenda claims to be a collaboration with a top musician. But Rohan actually confessed that Brian Eno is…was unaware of the collaboration. I’m hoping Rohan will tell me which ambient piece he used to back up his words, at which point I shall update this piece with the information and possibly (with Rohan’s permission) let Brian Eno know how well he did.

Update: Rohan reports that the piece used was Neroli. You may hear Neroli on-line by clicking here or the embedded thingie below:

Rohan’s new work, about 15 minutes long, is a lyrical, poetic piece named Park.

Rohan was so pumped for his recital that he even felt the need to change for his performance:

Not only was Park a very charming and thought-provoking piece, it was, in a way, the third coincidence on the topic of troubadours. Of course, we will never know whenether the troubadour tradition was one of singing the lyrical poems to tunes or the dramatic recitation of lyrical poems with musical backing…almost certainly a bit of both depending on the piece and the troubadour. In any case it occurred to me that Rohan’s piece was very much of that 800+ years old troubadour tradition.

As always, the very act of gathering and spending an evening with such super people is a huge part of the Threadmash thing. I have known several of the people for just shy of 50 years now, whereas some of us have just met in the last year and about half the people at this anniversary evening were new to the thing. All were great company.

I’ve written too much already. It was a cracking evening. Thanks as always, Rohan.

Blood On The Cobbles (And Other Stories) by David Wellbrook, E-Book Review, 29 December 2019

Last time I tried to review one of David Wellbrook’s e-books on Amazon, my attempt there was thwarted…

My Good Friend by David Wellbrook, Starting My New Year With A Rejection, An Appeal And A Kurt Denial, 1 January 2019

…the subsequent chain of, what can only be described as a Wellbrookian, events, led to me, in effect, self-publishing that review (above).

Never one to duck a challenge, me. Having just finished reading David Wellbrook’s latest e-book, Blood On the Cobbles (And Other Stories), I thought long and hard about how best to punish Amazon for its ludicrous semi-automated, semi-jobsworth response last time.

Then it dawned on me.

I’ll ignore them completely and just self-publish my review. That’ll show them who’s boss.

So take that, Amazon, you twats. I said that I wouldn’t post reviews on your site any more and I’m still sticking it to you. So there.

Now, where was I? Ah, yes. David Wellbrook’s latest e-book, Blood On the Cobbles (And Other Stories):

It’s rather good.

If you liked the previous book,  My Good Friend, then I can thoroughly recommend it as a continuation and progression from that book, with a couple of actual My Good Friend stories (i.e. stories about the self-same friend); Day Tipper and Xenon. Also there are a few My Good Friend-like stories, about other friends…

…cripes, Wellbrook has more than one friend?…

…such as Edinburgh Fringe (hello John), Fancy Dress (hello Leigh) and Fashion Fail (hello chaps).

Actually, you can read a sample of the new book on this very site, as David kindly granted me permission to publish an earlier version of Fashion Fail, on this very site earlier this year – click here or below:

David Wellbrook’s Performance Piece At Rohan Candappa’s Inaugural Threadmash, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2019

That earlier version of Fashion Fail was the first of several pieces that David piloted at Rohan Candappa’s Threadmash, which is described in the foreword to the above piece.

It is at this juncture that I can promise those who didn’t much like My Good Friend, that many of the stories in Blood On the Cobbles (And Other Stories) are very different in style and tone from the first e-book.

There are several autobiographical pieces in this new book, ranging in tone from the gently touching Metempsychosis through the black comedy of Blood On The Cobbles (both about the aftermath of David’s father dying) to the profoundly heartfelt and moving God I Owe You One, which David bravely recited with terrific effect at the second Threadmash.

A personal favourite of mine in this new collection is Crèche; far less momentous and dramatic than the other autobiographical stories, but I thought it beautifully written and very charming.

In addition, David is broadening his scope in this collection with some pure fiction, playing with genres away from his comfort zone. To my taste the best of those is The Gift, which I had the honour to recite at Threadmash Four in November (if you click that link you’ll find my The Gift, not David’s).

David’s story, The Gift, is more Dahlian than Wellbrookian; a sort-of horror story with twists.

In the two-part story The Visitor, David again plays with twists and weirdness, while ultimately (in my view) reprising some of the themes from his personal stories when he returns to conclude the Visitor story and also the book, right at the end of the collection.

I also very much enjoyed Ennui, which is a spoof absurdist play by a spoof obscure absurdist playwright within a story about going to the theatre with his wife. I’m not sure what the Trafalgar Studios ever did to upset David as I’m sure that place does not deserve to be the only genuine thing named in the story. Perhaps Trafalgar Studios refused to publish one of David’s on-line reviews…

…which brings me neatly back to Amazon, the place I am still boycotting in publishing reviews terms but of course am not boycotting from the point of view of them selling David’s (nor my, nor anyone else’s) books.

Go to Amazon through the following links to buy David Wellbrook’s latest e-book, Blood On the Cobbles (And Other Stories):

Amazon is THE place to buy the book; indeed it is the only place. £2.99. You know you can afford it.

School Dinners Again, Informal Alleyn’s Alums In The City, 28 November 2019

It was about time for another of our regularly-occasional gatherings of the old school clan, so, sure enough, an e-mail came through from John Eltham several weeks ago organising this evening for us.

More than a dozen of us gathered again, most for drinks at the Walrus & Carpenter plus dinner at The Rajasthan, while a handful came to just one or other of the venues.

This felt like a bit of a homecoming to regular City venues, as the last such gathering at this time of year was relocated to different venues, for some reason:

An Award-Winning Evening During Which I Hung Out With The Alleyn’s Old Boys Crowd, Sripur Restaurant, 6 December 2018

Anyway, my need to be in the City this week cunnningly conspired to coincide with this day, so I simply wandered over to The Walrus after work.

The group was already well gathered in the cunningly hidden dowstairs bar. Mostly comprising the usual suspects, the group also included Nick Wahla for the first time. Nick was in my class in the second and third years – here’s some evidence of the former:

My Second Class At Alleyn’s School, 2AK, And Some Nicknames, guessing 1 January 1975

According to the above piece, Nick’s nickname (if you can get your head round the idea of someone named “Nick” having a nickname), was “Gob”. It’s almost impossible to imagine why Nick might ever have been known as Gob. My guess is that the epithet “Gob” was handed down to Nick by our form master, Tony King, rather than an authentic compadre’s moniker.

Mr King, purveyor of synthetic sobriquets

In the Rajasthan, I ended up at the “breezy door” end of the room, next to Nick Wahla and opposite David Wellbrook, who for once in his life was being too polite that evening to promote his latest e-book – click here or the picture link below:

Soon we were joined by Mike Jones, who, coincidentally, had been form master to all three of us in our third year. Simon Ryan enocuraged the whole table to stand up and say, “good evening, Sir” to Mike, which I’m certain caused Mike not one jot of embarrassment.

We did a bit of 3BJ reminiscing at our end of the table…and why not? I particularly remembered Nick Wahla giving “Cyril” Vaughan a hard time in our Latin classes, but Nick claimed not to remember Cyril at all and went all “innocentia effecit imitatio” on the matter of Latin disruption, while admitting to having achieved a record low in his Latin exam. 8%.

Now I’m not saying that Nick was the main or only protagonist in the matter of Cyril baiting. Heaven knows, I personally pulled the “varnishing a stash of chalk and swapping the varnished variety for all the serviceable chalk” stunt…I am now prepared at this late stage to confess to that one…perhaps my best ever practical joke…especially the cunningly hidden addtional piece of varnished chalk waiting to be discovered in the master’s desk drawer…

…but I do distinctly remember Paul Deacon’s impersonation of Cyril, which was excellent vocally, normally comprising phrases such as, “…Wahla, please put that hand grenade down, there’s a good fellow…now Wahla, please don’t pick up that machine gun in place of the hand grenade, be a nice chap…”

If we’re really lucky Paul might chime in with a Cyril voice file to enhance this memory.

Bunch of clowns, we were and I’m sure the masters took great pains at the time to tell us that we wouldn’t be able to make a living in the real world writing silly jokes, speaking in funny voices and/or by having the gift of the gab.

Nick Wahla is now deploying his gift of the gab in the world of market research; he warned us all that no shopping visit nor even the supposed security of our own homes would make us safe from a possible approach by Nick at unsuspecting moments in our lives. It’s a minor miracle, it seems, that none of us have yet encountered Nick and his clip board in the field.

Meanwhile we ate Indian food, most people drank Cobra beer, while three of us (me, David Leach and Lisa Pavlovsky) braved the Indian Shiraz – I’m not sure we’ll be making that mistake with that particular wine again – my bad idea.

There was lots of chat.

At the end of the meal, it transpired that it was Paul Driscoll’s birthday and so David Wellbrook hurriedly cajoled the waiting staff into arranging a token birthday sweet, with which to embarrass Paul.

David Wellbrook uploaded a video of the resulting merriment onto Facebook – click here if you dare.

In that vid you can see an excitable-looking me (not sufficiently sedated with wine – one glass of that Shiraz was more than enough for me) jumping up to take the following picture:

As always, it was great to see the gang and especially nice to see Nick Wahla again after all these years. Astonishingly, he was too polite to ask a range of questions about the evening, so I shall provide the answers here.

On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is “totally dissatisfied” and 10 is “totally satisfied”, I would give the following scores:

* quality of food, drink and service 6/10

* quality of company and feeling of bon-homie 11/10

As always, a great evening. Many thanks to John Eltham who always takes on the unenviable task of trying to herd our bunch of Alleyn-cats for these get togethers.

The Gift, Fourth Threadmash, Gladstone Arms, 6 November 2019

It’s been a while since the last actual Threadmash, although we have had a gathering of the clan at The Glad since the previous Threadmash in May:

(Where Do I Begin?) Love Story – A Performance Piece For TheadMash 3, 7 May 2019

Anyway, this time the brief was “The Gift”, with additional instructions to stick to just one page. I took that to mean “one side of a sheet of A4”, but some took it to mean two sides. No matter. I can write something War & Peace epic length next time to get my own back.

I sensed that Rohan Candappa had mischief in mind when he asked us to bring two copies of our text with us.

Once we started Threadmashing, after several of us had dined on goat pie (or whatevs) and made a start on the libations, I also sensed that there might be a mini riot when Rohan announced that we would each be reading someone else’s work rather than our own. But we soon settled down and knuckled down to the additional challenge.

40 years on, Chris Grant still gets head boy privileges.

Chris Grant, a first time Threadmash writer (although not first time attendee) was excused the additional challenge and thus read his own piece as an opener for the evening. It was a charming short piece.

We had each been given a few minutes to read the piece we had inherited.

Quite early in the evening, David Wellbrook read out my piece, which follows below.

David Wellbrook soldiering through my piece

Coincidentally, I was given David’s piece to read; a somewhat Dahlesque horror story, as Rohan had encouraged David to try fiction this time. I did enjoy reading David’s piece I must say. Rohan has strongly encouraged me to try writing fiction for the next one.

He doesn’t look dictatorial, does he? It’s a deceptively gentle form of throat shaking, Rohan’s dictatorial style – sttrong guidance followed by, “but it’s up to you, of course…only if you want to…”

Anyway, here’s my piece which was so capably read by David:

The word “gift” has two distinct meanings as a noun. A gift means something given freely, a present. But it also means a natural ability or talent, such as, “a gift for writing”. When Rohan suggested “The Gift” as his subject for Threadmash Four, I was drawn to the second of these definitions.

These past few years, I have been spending increasing amounts of my time on activities for which I am not naturally gifted, but they are nevertheless activities that I love doing and pursuing. Specifically, I mean sports, such as cricket, plus music.
My mother came from a supremely musical family. One branch of her family yielded several notable professional musicians, especially violinists. Even my barber grandfather could, by all accounts, instantly play on the piano any tune you might choose to hum at him.

When I started secondary school, my mother gave me every encouragement to take up and play the violin. But quite quickly, the sound of me practicing, which resembled cats being tortured in a pitch-distorting dungeon, led mum to encourage me to give up violin and try something else. Anything else.

Actually I was growing quite fond of sport. Cricket, tennis and fives mostly. I wasn’t very good at sports either, but I wasn’t going to let an absence of giftedness stop me from trying. Nor was I going to let my own shortcomings stop me from becoming a fascinated follower of my favourite sports. And indeed also a devotee of many varied genres of music.

In truth, although I didn’t inherit the family gift for performing music, I certainly did inherit “a love of music”. And it has occurred to me characteristics such as “a love of music” truly are gifts to be cherished and celebrated.

Where I got my gift for loving sports such as cricket is more of a mystery. Neither of my parents had any interest in sport whatsoever. Not professional sport and certainly not my participation in sport; I don’t think either of my parents ever saw me play sport, other than me mucking about at some nonsense game at home.

Yet, my father’s very last birthday treat included a sporting revelation. The only way to treat my dad towards the end of his life…actually for most of his life…was to take him out for a good meal. As it happened, in 2006, dad’s 87th birthday, fell on a day that Middlesex were playing at Lord’s. I booked at table with a view in the Warner Restaurant, which followed an informal pavilion tour before lunch. They loved it. As dad said, “there aren’t many places I can go now and see people of my own age…apart from old age homes”. The England & Wales Cricket Board marketing folk may use that quote for nothing.

At one point that day, dad mentioned that he and his kid brother Michael had been given a set of cricket equipment by their parents as a gift, when the family moved to Clapham Common in the early 1930s and the boys started a new school there. Neither dad nor Michael had shown any interest in cricket before the gift, apparently, nor did that gift inspire either of them to take the slightest interest in cricket. My grandparents; Eastern European migrants with accents from central casting, were perhaps striving to turn their sons into quintessential English schoolboys through the peculiar sport that is cricket.

I wonder whether my grandparents’ intention with that cricket equipment gift somehow skipped a generation but still subconsciously fueled my love of cricket? A gift indeed.

Chris Grant remarked that he found it really weird hearing words that were so clearly mine coming out of David Wellbrook’s mouth. We have all known each other for over 45 years, so I suppose that is understandable.

All of the pieces were excellent, as usual. I also thought everyone made a good job of reading out someone else’s work, especially as most of us had not started the evening expecting to read something other than one’s own piece.

I caught myself categorising this Ogblog page as both “writing” and “friends and family events” this time. This reflects the fact that Threadmash has become, in my mind and I think those of others, a community of friends who, as it happens, like to gather to read and write together. It’s more than just “a writing thing” now. For all of it, I am grateful to Rohan for innovating and stewarding the ideas.

This time John Eltham came along to be part of the evening, as did Ben Clayson, although the latter arrived after the readings. It became, as always, a convivial gatheirng of interesting and interested people.

I took a few more pictures – all 10 pictures can be found on Flickr by clicking the picture icon below:

Is It Better With Or Without? by Rohan Candappa, The Gladstone Arms, 18 June 2019

In late May, I got this slightly strange message from Rohan Candappa:

Ian, are you around on 18 June? I’m doing a reading of a new piece of work about getting an eye test and the meaning of life at The Gladstone.

As it happened, that afternoon was the only slot I had available to go into the City to do City-based work stuff and that evening also happened to be a free evening.

Also, it was going to be a good opportunity to see old school friends, whom I had meticulously avoided seeing at the formal school 400th anniversary reunion a few days earlier, by sending a video of a mock-Jacobean musical performance rather than attending in person:

In Darkness Let Me Dwell, A Musical Setting To Honour The Founding Of Edward Alleyn’s College Of God’s Gift 400 Years Ago, 13 June 2019

As it turned out, the day became a flurry of unwanted activity (not least a hoo-ha with Axa PPP regarding Janie) and then a bit of a rush to complete my City work, but still I got to The Glad in time for a pie, drink and chat with the pre-show diners, not least Johnny Eltham and Rich “The Rock” Davis.

Johnny Eltham was in especially skittish mood that evening, making some unusually disparaging remarks about my Jacobean music and mode. The Rock was his usually Rock-like self.

Others in attendance that evening included Paul Driscoll, Simon Ryan, Steve Butterworth, Dave French, Terry Bush, Jan and her friend Charmaigne, David Wellbrook and we were also blessed by the presence of The Right Reverend Sir Nigel Godfrey.

Last but not least, some minutes into Rohan’s performance, the late Nigel Boatswain arrived.

Something a bit misty-optic-like about the lighting

The setting; an Optometrist’s practice, is not exactly home turf for me, as I don’t yet need anything to adjust my eyes and have only had my eyes tested twice in that regard.

The phrase, “is it better with or without”, used many times, apparently, in the search for the optimal optical specification, provided the basis for Rohan to wander off on an existential angst-fest in which the said search might be a proxy for the meaning of life.

As is always the case with Rohan’s work, the narrative takes you into some detailed areas about which you have thought little, then makes you think about some big stuff and also at times makes you laugh a lot.

For reasons that seemed to make sense at the time but to which I cannot really back track, Rohan ended up getting the audience, led by John Eltham, to sing (or rather, “dah-da-da”) the theme to The Great Escape.

I feel bound to say that Johnny Eltham’s efforts dah-da-da-ing that particular tune ranged from poor on melody/harmony to utterly dire on rhythm. Elmer Bernstein was no doubt turning in his grave. And after all those back-handed compliments and disparaging remarks from Johnny about my Jacobean musical efforts too.

We have ways and means of making you sing…

Before his performance, Rohan made some moving impromptu remarks, not least praising our visitors from the Great Dominions, Nigel Godfrey for his sterling work raising funds for the Christchurch massacre victims and Rich “The Rock” for the success of his personal battles against cancer.

After his performance, Rohan told the assembled throng about Threadmash and asked David Wellbrook to retell his moving piece on the subject of Lost and Found from Threadmash 2 (below currently is my piece from that Threadmash – but I might at some stage persuade David to let me publish his Threadmash 2 piece as a guest piece:

In Search Of Lost Time and Found Memories, A Performance Piece For The Second Theadmash, Gladstone Arms, 28 March 2019

It was a very stimulating evening and/but I was really quite tired once the performances were over, so I made my excuses and left promptly. Terry also left at the same time as me, so we had a chance to chat pleasantly until we parted company at Bank, where east is east and west is west.

So is life better with or without evenings like this? With – no question. Thanks, Rohan.

David Wellbrook’s Performance Piece At Rohan Candappa’s Inaugural Threadmash, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2019

David Wellbrook (standing) loudly performing, Rohan Candappa (seated) quietly reading

Many thanks to David for allowing me to publish his performance piece as a guest piece on Ogblog. The version below is not only a thoroughly enjoyable piece, but it also explains the context to Rohan’s show, which means that I don’t have to write that bit.

The story in David’s performance piece is not included in David’s delicious short book, My Good Friend, which I tried and failed to review on Amazon much earlier this year:

My Good Friend by David Wellbrook, Starting My New Year With A Rejection, An Appeal And A Kurt Denial, 1 January 2019

Anyway, here is David’s Threadmash piece on clothing:

From my perspective, it all began with a photograph that I had stumbled across whilst clearing out some old stuff a few months ago. It was taken in 1978 at Chris Grant’s sister’s wedding and depicts four young men for whom the word “fashion” was no more than a theoretical concept to be explored by others.

The excellent Rohan Candappa, author of numerous best-selling titles, and now Edinburgh Festival stalwart, decided than an evening of story-telling, with a theme around fashion, would be a good idea, upstairs at a London pub on a wet Tuesday evening in February.

And lo, it was so. There we all were. Nine of us, with stories to tell.
Rohan decided that I would go on first. “You’re the Status Quo of our Live Aid extravaganza,” he assured me, giving my left buttock a gentle squeeze.

“Whatever you want,” I replied, “whatever you like.”

And so, with my “just-in-time” reflections, this is what I said:
Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen. Hopefully you all have an envelope. (I had handed out a number of envelopes by this point.) Please resist the temptation to open the envelope just yet because my piece is entitled “The Story Behind the Photograph” and indeed within that envelope, almost as if it was planned, is the photograph in question. Now, you may find the photograph amusing in it’s own right, who could blame you, but you will have no context and in this instance, context is important. As the famous Italian philosopher Rigatoni Tortellini, once said, and I believe I’m translating from the original Hebrew, “Contexti esti importanti.”

I might have just made that bit up.

Anyhow, The Story Behind the Photograph:

Rohan has dragged me…invited me along here this evening to talk to you about the thorny subject of fashion and how, in the wrong hands, these hands, it can all go cataclysmically wrong. As you can tell from my underpants, I take fashion very seriously. I always have and I suspect I always will.

But where to begin? Marianne was seven years older than us and by a strange quirk of arithmetic and no one having died, she still is seven years older than us. Marianne is also my mate Chris’s big sister. (It was fortunate that Chris was in attendance as I now had someone to blame). My mate Chris has two big sisters and Marianne is the bigger of the two. Certainly in terms of age. She’s seven years older than us as I think I might have mentioned.

But what has this got to do with fashion you may ask?

(I waited a few moments at this stage and as if by magic, everyone shouted:
“BUT WHAT HAS THIS GOT TO DO WITH FASHION?”)

Well, since you’re so kind as to ask, let me explain. Marianne decided to get married. To Alan. I had met Alan several times before and despite originating from north of the Watford gap he seemed like a decent sort of chap. He, Marianne and Chris had managed to get me drunk a year earlier, and at the tender age of fifteen, had dumped me on my parents’ doorstep, had rung the doorbell, and had FUCKED OFF. Not that I bear grudges you understand.
With their nuptials fast approaching, I was invited to Marianne and Alan’s wedding (an expression of guilt if ever there was one), along with Chris’s three other friends, Ben, Nigel and Paddy Gray. Chris may very well have more than four friends, but I’ve never met them.

So, and my point is, at sixteen years of age, what to wear to the wedding of someone seven years older than us? I’m obviously looking at this from a singularly personal perspective, and I’m sure Ben, Nigel and even Paddy Gray suffered an equal number of sleepless nights dwelling on the same dilemma.

I didn’t own a suit, other than the suit I wore to school. I didn’t own a dress either, and although I could drag up quite impressively, to wear a dress I didn’t even own at someone else’s wedding, seemed a little self-indulgent. No one wishes to upstage the bride now do they?

So, what to wear? I went through my wardrobe and having come out the other side, concluded that there was very little of interest in there. C.S. Lewis had promised so much and yet had delivered so very little. At this point I would normally insert a scathing joke about Brexit but I fear I would alienate 51.9% of the audience. If I haven’t already.

So, like most 16 year olds vexed by a matter of clothing, I turned to my parents. Unfortunately, they had already left the room, and so I had to wait a good three or four hours before they came back in again.

“What’s up with you?” they said realising that I was still there.

“I’m worrying about Chris’s sister’s wedding on Saturday?” I cried.

“I have simply nothing to wear.”

In all matters costumery, my parents would often defer to Mr. Schindler. Mr. Schindler was a family friend who owned a gentleman’s outfitters. He was a kindly old man as I recall with a beautifully waxed Hercule Poirot moustache, and a lisp. Mr. Schindler bore his speech impediment with a stoicism that was no doubt forged by his own wartime heroics, and, you know, much like his more illustrious namesake, Oskar Schindler, I’ve always hoped that someone, someday would make a film about Schindler’s lisp.

(There was some genuine laughter at this rather contrived gag, but the groans of comedic pain knocked me onto the defensive).

Look, (I said), this is a cracking joke. (I feigned disgust at the lack of appreciation for such a beautifully crafted punchline). In 2009 I did this joke at the Cheltenham Womens’ Institute and, you know, one woman fainted she was laughing so much. This is possibly the funniest joke in the whole piece. Umm…I might have peaked early just so you all know. It may be all downhill from here…

(I cracked on)…

Anyway, not entirely trusting the wise words of Mr. Schindler, I decided to have a ring around. With a phone. We didn’t have texts in 1978. We had Teletext which was altogether something quite different and we had telex which had a similar number of letters and also an ‘x’, but we didn’t have texts. So, the phone it was. I rang Ben.

(Ben, by the way, was sitting in the front row, and could clearly see where all this was going).

“What are you wearing on Saturday?” I asked. It was a sensible question to start with as it was the only reason I was ringing.

Ben ummed and aahed a bit and then said: “Probably my blue leather jacket with Chelsea tie to match.”

I briefly considered Ben in church with nothing on other than a blue leather jacket with Chelsea tie to match and so I very quickly rang Nigel.

“Light brown three piece suit in wool,” he replied to much the same question as I had thrown at Ben. Nigel was probably the sensible one amongst us four, which kind of speaks volumes for the rest of us.

I rang Paddy Gray. “Pad the Lad”, announced that he would be wearing his big brother’s work suit because the wedding was on a Saturday and his big brother didn’t work at the weekend. I wasn’t at all sure what Paddy’s big brother actually did for a living, but prayed he wasn’t a professional clown, a waitress or the rear end of a pantomime horse.

None of this actually got me any further but it wasn’t really until Friday lunchtime that I began to panic. Mr. Schindler had tried to fob me off with a blue pinstripe suit which he assured me would look really good for work if I was ever kicked out of school early. Mr. Schindler clearly new his clientele.

I went through my wardrobe again and much like my previous journey there was no lion or even a witch, but what I did find was a brown and white striped shirt with white collar, a huge velvet brown bowtie, a pair of green synthetic flared trousers and some brown cowboy boots. Put all this together with my fawn coloured print jacket and they’ll still be speaking about me in forty years time, I thought.

I put it all on. It looked horrendous. “Perfect,” I decided. But actually, there was still something missing.

I rang my girlfriend.

“Can I borrow your school boater for tomorrow’s wedding?” I asked.

“Of course you can,” she replied, clearly either very much in love with me, or not worrying one way or the other whether I looked like a complete cock or not.

So, come the big day, there we all were. Chris looked me up and down and shook his head, not for the first time and certainly not for the last. “Have you been experimenting with the old wacky backy?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, “this is all my own work.”

The wedding, by contrast, went off without incident. Ben’s blue leather jacket with matching Chelsea tie escaped unhurt, Nigel’s light brown three piecer survived unharmed, and Paddy Gray’s big brother’s business suit caused no major international terrorist alert.

Not that that could be said for my brown and white striped shirt with white collar, huge velvet brown bowtie, green synthetic flares, cowboy boots and printed jacket. The boater, which I had chosen to wear at a jaunty angle, proved to be something of a hit however and I’m led to believe that many of the guests were heard to comment on my bravery in wearing such an outfit in public.

Now, many of you here this evening, will question the veracity of what I’ve been talking about. Particularly those of you that know me. I have in the past been accused of exaggeration, of hyperbole, of low perbole, and indeed all manner of perbole. But somebody took a photograph that day, and so in those envelopes is evidence, evidence ladies and gentlemen of the jury, of a young man’s desire to shock, to stand out from the crowd, to present himself as a fashion icon for the 70s; a match for such luminaries as Mick Jagger, Bryan Ferry and Arthur Mullard. Feel free to open the envelopes and marvel at the vestmental mayhem.

(Envelopes by this point had begun to open and a mixture a gasps, laughs and general disbelief filled the room).

How I was ever allowed out of the house dressed in such a fashion remains a mystery to me. I suspect social services cannot be alerted retrospectively particularly after forty years and so I’ll need to cope with the emotional fallout in my own way. But all is not lost. As you can see from the photograph, there appears to be a shaft of sunlight cascading down from the heavens illuminating my bowtie, and so I shall have to console myself with the knowledge that at least somebody up there loved me.

Feel free to keep the photo. Use it as a bookmark. A coffee table coaster. Show it to your friends and neighbours and use it as a warning against ignoring the advice of old men with lisps and recreational drug use.

Thank you all very much.

(I made an exaggerated bow and exited stage left, to raucous applause and a general relief that it was all over).