Today’s itinerary included some real tennis at lunchtime, then hot wheels from Lord’s (where Middlesex meetings would normally take place) to Saracens/Allianz Park where today’s “Middlesex in exile” meetings were taking place; then on to a jamming evening with DJ in Cricklewood.
No sense in taking Dumbo on those rounds, so I needed to get smart about my luggage. I discovered that there was but one sweet spot in Benjy’s ukulele case where both uke and racket could fit and the lid would close without difficulty.
That configuration (pictured above) raised a few smiles (and even photographs) as I did my rounds.
The day went well. I won my tennis (just), the Middlesex meeting was very productive.
The low point was the “greasy spoon” at the end of DJ’s road, where I squatted for 45 minutes before the jam. It neither looked nor was rated “greasy spoon” on-line…and since when did greasy spoons have fancy coffee machines with every conceivable variety of coffee available?
The jamming session with DJ was great fun, although DJ doesn’t think that the marriage of tennis racket and uke in one case is a good idea on a regular basis.
The Handmaiden is everything we were told it would be, hence our reservations about it. Beautifully shot with exquisite settings, absolutely no problem with that aspect.
But the film is extremely long for the relatively straightforward thriller plot (just a few twists and turns) and fairly predictable ending.
The female leads are both very beautiful and the soft pornish love scenes between the two of them are all in the best possible taste, as a well-known arbiter of such matters used to put it.
The torture scene towards the end, which we knew to expect, simply had me looking away from the screen for a few minutes.
We both found the whole experience a bit disappointing, but at least we can now tell people that we’ve seen it, which makes them stop lecturing us on how we would definitely love that movie.
On leaving the movie theatre, I checked the cricket score and it looked as though Middlesex had bowled themselves into a position where they were likely to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat against Gloucestershire.
So we diverted to Lord’s on the way home and watched the last 90 minutes of the match from the President’s Box (temporary Middlesex Room), witnessing Middlesex then snatch defeat from the jaws of the victory that had early looked like the jaws of defeat.
So that was two cringe-making torture scenes in one afternoon; the second of which panned out far more slowly than the first and it would have been a bit peculiar to have looked away from the field of play for the whole of the last hour.
We ran into Brian and Judy as we were leaving, so at least we had a pleasant chat with friends before departing the day’s second torture scene.
At last, the new season proper, i.e. a day of live cricket at Lord’s with Charley “The Gent” Malloy.
I made something close to our traditional picnic, with Alaskan salmon bagels, plus some variations on a theme, using Brunswick ham and some soft cheese with chives for a slightly more smokey-flavoured afternoon roll.
A bottle of Gewurtztraminer to help the salmon go down – I might have gone Gewurtz rather than Riesling before, but tend to go Riesling for Chas (who likes that stuff) but thought that today was the day to broaden his horizons just a tad. Thanks to Edwardian over on King Cricket for recently tweaking my memory on that idea.
The white wine aspect worked for sure; Chas was so convinced that Mrs Malloy would like the Gewurtztraminer, he even photographed the label so he could hunt down the wine.
Chas’s desire to please his good lady was a charming and endearing theme, until his ulterior motive was revealed. This Monday is Mrs Malloy’s birthday and also day four of this Lord’s match. Chas was hoping (I think more than expecting) that Mrs Malloy might enjoy part of her birthday treat being a visit to Lord’s. Given the match position, the weather forecast and Mrs Malloy’s predisposition towards the shorter forms of the game, I’d offer long odds on seeing the Malloys at Lord’s this Monday.
We sat in our traditional, back-breaking death row seats (front row of the pavilion terrace) for the first session and quite deep into the second; unable to move until Sam Robson had secured his hundred.
A charming brand new Middlesex member, named Barry (not Father Barry I hasten to add), joined us on death row for a while, towards the end of the morning session – he really seemed to be delighting in the benefits of his new membership.
When Chas and I finally moved, we went for the further reaches of the Grandstand, to which we had to walk the long way round while workmen are putting the finishing touches on the new Warner Stand. We found a nice quiet spot at the front of the Grandstand, wonderfully close to the action, as the pitch in use for this match is well to the north of the square.
Shortly after tea, play was suspended for bad light. I was hopeful that some slightly better looking light might be on its way but only the umpires returned periodically to test the light and shake their heads.
This is a picture from the Eric Hollies Stand in 2008, you understand, not the charming couple we met in the Lord’s Grandstand in 2017. Thanks to Charles for the picture.
It started to get quite cold, but Chas and I naturally braved it until the umpires bowed to the inevitable.
In the meantime, we made some more headway into the delicious bottle of Rioja Chas had brought. This was ideal for the Brunswick ham and soft cheese rolls; it also warmed us up as the afternoon got cooler.
I was being a little careful with my wine intake – my limits are lowering as the years go on – but Chas was keen neither to waste any nor take any of the red home with him, so he polished off the Rioja before we went our separate ways home.
As Chas said in his e-mail to me the next day:
I must have seen the Red off too quickly as I was a little wobbly on the way home!!
Here comes the summer – as evidenced by the Seaxe Club and Middlesex AGMs.
Seaxe Club AGM, Thomas Lord Suite, 5 April 2017
I managed to arrange my day sensibly for this one, with a game of real tennis scheduled at 16:00 ahead of the AGM which was due to start 18:00/18:30.
I had a good game that afternoon, winning against a gentleman I hadn’t played since my early days. Back then, he had to give me a significant handicap – this time I had to give him some points through the handicap system. Proof positive of progress, albeit painfully slow progress.
Buoyed by my win, after a chat with Daisy on the mobile, I joined the meeting.
This one was supposed to be in The President’s Box as last year (a suitable size of venue) but had to be moved to The Thomas Lord Suite (ridiculously oversized) due to some flooding problems and the need temporarily to relocate some MCC staff to The President’s Box.
Despite the supersized venue, this was still a cosy gathering of the Seaxe clan; depleted in numbers this year but always a joy to see those friendly Middlesex faces again.
The meeting part is dull enough, but it did give Chairman Mike O’Farrell an opportunity to rehearse Middlesex’s statement/position on the new T20 tournament with a group of loyal members/supporters, which went well.
The panel discussion, with traditional libations before and during the panel, was quite lively, with Richard Scott and Shilpa Patel bringing very different perspectives to the questions.
A shame we didn’t get to hear from any of the younger players this year, but the later date for the AGM than usual (presumably because of the champions match this year in Abu Dhabi) and the Champions Party commitments for the following week, probably made the scheduling a bit tricky for players.
Middlesex AGM and Champions Party, Nursery Pavilion, 12 April 2017
Not such clever scheduling on my part for this day (my own fault), so I ended up hot-footing it from the City to get to Lord’s on time. My timing issues were exacerbated by the early start scheduled (17:30) and a late change to the AGM venue, which was supposed to be in the Thomas Lord Suite, as last year, but was switched to the Nursery Pavilion at the last minute.
Anyway, I think the AGM started a little bit later than intended; to allow time for the bemused and confused (like me) to be stewarded to the right part of the ground.
The AGM was no more dull than usual, in the main. The contentious issue of the new T20 tournament was handled very well, with Mike O’Farrell signalling what was to come in his opening remarks and Richard Goatley then reading out the statement, getting early applause when the gist of it became clear to the throng.
A big turn out for the AGM with many AGM attendees staying on for the party and some there for the party but not the AGM.
I sat at the AGM with one of my real tennis friends, Barry, together with his son Freddie. At the party, the three of us then got together with another friend/retired client of mine, David and also Barmy Kev joined us at our table.
Barmy Kev got a bottle of wine quite early in the event and kindly shared it with me. I now owe Kev a couple of drinks; a point that needs stating and on the evening was oft-repeated.
The meal was a buffet, with infeasibly small plates – although you could go back for more once everyone had been fed – which a few people (not I, Sir) did.
Before and after the buffet, Gus Fraser hosted a show; basically a reprise of the 2016 County Championship campaign. There were several sections and subsections (Gus got mightily confused/confusing over the segmentation aspects of the show), including video clips and discussion, with the whole 2016 squad forming a large panel.
The final section (or was it sub-section) of the show as a smaller panel discussion with four former Middlesex greats; Mike Brearley, Mike Gatting, Clive Radley and John Embury – the latter being Middlesex’s new President, btw.
In truth, not really my kind of entertainment; personally I would have preferred more time to socialise. But the entertainment clearly went down very well and it was great to relive the successful 2016 campaign and also to hear from those Middlesex greats.
I can’t look at this photo too many times – here it is again!
With thanks to Toni Friend for the picture, taken during the famous match between MCC and the visiting Australians in September 2016
I took some real tennis lessons in January 2016 and started playing tentatively in March, perhaps in earnest since April when I started playing twice a week.
This end of year piece builds on that July piece and reflects on my whole first calendar year playing this intriguing game, including some astonishing statistics.
August to December 2016 News Update And Ogblog Links
Strangely, just a week after writing my July 2016 reflective piece, I was selected to play my first competitive match for the MCC, against a party of visiting Australians in September.
I had in any case decided to have a few more lessons in August, once I had played about 50 competitive hours on court.
I also spent some time in Manchester in September, getting a chance to play a couple of times and have a lesson at the Manchester Real Tennis Club in Salford, which I enjoyed enormously.
Here are some links to pieces I wrote August through October – please note that the pieces might not be exclusively about real tennis:
You might observe that I was having a great time playing real tennis during those months, but there was one small problem. Between early July and late October my handicap signally failed to come down; it simply hovered around the rather inauspicious mark of 67.3 – better than my early mark in the mid-seventies, but certainly not the steady improvement towards 60 and beyond that I had been hoping for.
Apparently, this tendency to plateau at times is quite normal, although I think my first plateau was a little lowly and lengthy for someone of my age and stage.
Anyway, I got a good win the afternoon after the House of Lords (27 October – see the last link in the above list of links) and since then the progress has been relentless for a couple of months, ending the year at a more impressive 64.1 – still a long way to go but definitely back on the improvement curve.
Real tennis is quite a good game for a stats geek – not least because the real tennis on-line system is full of stats and tools through which you can measure yourself and weigh up your opponents. Not that I am even faintly at the stage (if indeed I ever shall be) that such tools would do much for me personally.
Digging deeper into the system, I can see how I have got on against each opponent and how those opponents have got on against other opponents – hours of fun to be had if/when I can be bothered.
However, one set of general stats has caught my eye, as this real tennis on-line system, including the handicapping, is used by every real tennis club in the world. I can see my handicap against pools of other players on various measures.
For example, if I look at my handicap compared with the current handicap of everyone who has ever had their handicap recorded on the system (about 15 years worth of data), I am ranked around 6,300 out of the 10,300 or so people who have ever been ranked. That puts me somewhere around the 62nd percentile. Not bad for a beginner.
To be more accurate for playing purposes, it is probably better to restrict my search to active players – i.e. everyone who has played in the last year. On that basis, I am around the 3,000 mark out of 4,100 or so people who have played in 2016. That is around the 74th percentile or “bottom of the third quartile” mark. Still not too bad for a beginner.
But returning to the larger data set, I am intrigued by this 6,300 figure. Because that really is close to the sum total of people on the planet who could possibly stand a chance of beating me at this game. The game is so unlike other racket sports, it would be virtually impossible for anyone, even an elite sportsperson, to simply pick up a real tennis racket and beat someone who knows how to play, without having a lesson or two and a few goes first.
Think about that statistic for just a moment. If an alien being from another planet were to come to planet earth and select a human being at random to play me at real tennis, there is only a one in a million chance that the other person would win.
I admit that this one-in-a-million stat is not a very useful statistic in practice, of course, but it is a rather awe-inspiring one in theory.
Just look at my technique again in the light of my impressive stats
I didn’t have high hopes for the real tennis skills tournament at Lord’s. As the rookiest, lowest ranked player in the tournament, my hopes and expectations before the day were based around the avoidance of embarrassment rather than realistic hopes of outright victory.
The skills required for this skills challenge tournament are stuff that I do very rarely in the heat of battle: hitting the fiendish “winning targets”, setting unfeasibly good chases and getting serves into the right area – the latter determined by a small “Its A Knockout”-style gayly-coloured plastic padding pool – not very Lord’s, that last prop.
To add to the slightly unnerving nature of the event, I discovered that I had been teamed with friend Tony Friend, who probably also expected little once he knew he’d been teamed with me. I e-mailed him a few weeks ago, getting my excuses in early:
I haven’t done skills night before and am not entirely sure what to expect. Rest assured, at my current level of experience, I am not expecting to find any of the exercises even faintly easy. But I shall certainly try my best.
He responded with a list of the challenges. I replied:
Excellent, excellent. I normally do at least one of those things once during my hour…perhaps that wasn’t what you wanted to read.
The coaches at Lord’s tried to reassure me – “sometimes the novice players on the team do as well or better than the experienced players.” I suspected that they were being kind and/or trying to prevent a drop out.
To add to my sense of foreboding, the third man in our team, David, announced that he hadn’t played for about a year, which I thought probably put the kibosh on any residual hopes I had of being carried by two really good players.
But my negative thoughts were wrong on all of those counts.
Truth is, the skills challenge is wicked hard for all concerned. Not least because many of the skills tested do not often come into the game naturally, so all players, experts and rookies alike, are having to adapt and adjust to the challenges.
One thing our team did right was to agree a rota and relentlessly move around quickly during each challenge to maximise the number of shots we got in each two-minute time-trial round. That practice alone must have upped our chances.
The other thing that went well for us was complementary skills; at least one of us did OK or well on each of the seven challenges. On two of the challenges – lay an excellent chase and force the dedans, all three of us got into a rhythm for a minute or so and clocked up a lot of points in a hurry. I didn’t score as many points as the other two, but I don’t think I scored that far shy of them and certainly pulled my weight as the team rookie.
In short, against the odds, we won by a short head. (Aptronymically, our team had been named “Three-Thirty at Haydock Park”).
But far more than the sweet taste of unexpected success, as usual with real tennis at Lord’s, the whole evening, in particular the company was excellent; a really friendly, pleasant crowd. Naturally, the food and beverage was excellent too – it was at Lord’s after all – a curry night, done very well.
Writing as the presidential polls close in the USA, I’m hoping against hope that our real tennis tournament result is the only major against the odds surprise of the night.
Did I mention that David, Tony Friend and I were the winning team? I probably should mention that somewhere, just for the sake of completeness.
I think it went OK. I said what I really feel AND they let all four of us panellists go after the hearing, rather than “taking us by boat to the Tower”, so by that criterion I think it went really well.
Back home to clear my backlog of messages and the like, then after a quick bite of lunch on to the other Lord’s to play real tennis. Perhaps liberated from the fear of noble shackles, I played well today, in contrast with the shocker I played yesterday.
I was due to have a jam with DJ this evening, but he deferred to another date as he is a little poorly. So I ended up having a quiet pasta supper and an early night – probably just as well as I was very tired and had another busy day lined up for tomorrow.
Not all that many people are familiar with the Pickled Herring Of The Year competition. But if you are part of the wider cousin-hood of my mother’s family, in particular the Briegal branch, then you probably know all about it.
Briegal table, minimally laden when the photo was taken, thanks to Hils for the photo
For more years than I can remember, Jacquie Briegal has hosted a fast-breaking dinner at the end of Yom Kippur. Breaking the fast, for most of us who attend, has become a nominal term for the family gathering, as hardly any of us now participate in the fast itself. But that is no reason to abstain from a jolly family gathering and feast for theoretical “fast-breaking”.
I worked in the morning and into the afternoon, but had taken the opportunity to arrange some real tennis late afternoon, with a view to using Shanks’s pony to get from Lord’s to Jacquie’s place in Swiss Cottage.
A couple of days prior to my real tennis game I was asked if I could stay on an extra hour. As I have reported before, click here, this quite often happens in the Lord’s real tennis fraternity. As it happened, I realised that I could do that and still get to Jacquie’s in reasonable time. What I didn’t realise (or at least didn’t think about) was quite how much two tough singles matches on the trot would take out of me.
First up was my old friend from NewsRevue, Chris Stanton. I have mentioned running into Chris at the Lord’s real tennis courts before, click here, but I had not played him before today. A tough gig for me, even with the handicap adjustment, which we both thought a little understated. Still, it was good to chat with Chris again before we started, remembering NewsRevue friends, songs and sketches gone by. Then after Chris, another gentleman I hadn’t played before, with vast real tennis experience and a less than generous handicap adjustment to compensate; I somehow got a draw out of the second match.
Suffice it to say that I started my two hours on the real tennis court feeling like a leaping salmon and ended it feeling like a pickled herring…
…which segues us nicely and effortlessly (well, actually the walk from St John’s Wood to Swiss Cottage felt far from effortless that evening) to the Pickled Herring Of The Year Contest. I neglected to mention above; part of the family tradition of breaking the fast at Jacquie’s place is for the meal to begin with a veritable smörgåsbord of starters, focused around varieties of smoked and preserved fishes, primarily various types of pickled herring.
My (self-appointed) role in this herring-fest is to judge the Pickled Herring Of The Year. The rules are pretty straightforward:
I alone decide the results – attempts to influence my decisions meet short shrift in this competition. That might sound a bit dictatorial – it is meant to;
Only the actual chunks of pickled herring varieties are eligible for the competition. Smoked salmon and gravadlax (ever-present) need not apply;
Nor does Jacquie’s delightful chopped herring qualify for the contest, although Jacquie did once get a lifetime achievement award for the chopped herring – the equivalent of Bob Dylan being awarded the Nobel Prize For Literature – controversial but undoubtedly both are achievements worthy of the highest possible praise.
As it happens, this is not a photo of the moment Jacquie was garlanded with her lifetime achievement award for chopped herring; perhaps it should have been. Thanks to Hils for the photo.
We were a relatively small group this year; Jacquie and Hils of course. Josh (Jacquie’s grandson, Hils’s nephew), cousin Jane and her daughter Ruth, cousin Michael (always the last to arrive as he does actually go to shule and fast), plus me and Janie.
Hils and Janie – again not from a herring-fest occasion – thanks to our neighbour Joy for the photo.
Jacquie does not adjust the quantity of food served for the number of people who happen to be attending that year, so there were easily as many varieties of herring up for the award as usual (six) and huge quantities of other food. I haven’t even mentioned the main courses, including place goujons, salmon fishcakes, gefilte fish balls…nor the enormous variety of salads, breads, other accompaniments, several varieties of honey cake, other sweetmeats…
…I’m sure you get the picture…
…I’m equally sure that you, dear reader, now rapidly want to know the results of this year’s competition so you can stop reading and go off to eat something – your mouth is no doubt watering by now.
Bronze herring 2016 – wine pickled herring;
Silver herring 2016 – schmaltz herring;
Gold herring 2016 – sweet pickled herring.
Unusual for the sweet to win, but this year one of the sweeter herrings was perfectly balanced in the combination of sweetness and sourness; it also had a superb texture, a little like the schmaltz herring texture that quite often wins.
This was a great opportunity to see the Middlesex crowd one more time this season.
The forum is usually an opportunity for members to vent their spleens, but in a Championship winning season (have I mentioned that fact before?) there wasn’t too much spleen to vent.
Prior to talk about the successful season, discussion centred around the proposed new T20 tournament and Durham’s penalty relegation. MTWD have written up the forum, here.
The Thomas Lord Suite is large enough for a lecture-style room for the meeting and a large open space next door for the party afterwards. The mood at the party was as good as you might expect.
I chatted with several of my regular friends and also met some new people – at least new to me. One couple I chatted with, it turned out that the lady, Miranda, went to JAGS but was taught economics by a young David Stretton at Alleyns, as JAGS had no economics teaching back then. Quite a coincidence and an unexpected line of conversation at a Middlesex party.
I always enjoy these Middlesex events, but my goodness the party felt especially sweet this year with the celebratory mood. I hope the gleeful feeling lasts long enough to sustain us all through the winter.
This photo belies the fact that I saw Angus Fraser smile more that day than I have seen him smile before in total over the years.
After a rather poor performance at real tennis in the morning, I stuck around and Janie joined me for the Middlesex County Cricket Club annual lunch and player awards.
The event started with a Champagne reception on the Mound Stand Terrace – a wonderful location for a bright (albeit slightly showery) noontime gathering.
Then round to the Nursery Pavilion, which was set up for 400 or so guests to dine and hear tales of derring-do told by the actual derring-doers.
We sat with Chris and Shilpa, Richard and Tina, Alvin and Rowena plus Westy and Bridget, making a very pleasent table indeed.
The MCC staff were playing their annual end of season knockabout match on the Nursery Ground, as if to entertain us with some live cricket. That backdrop gave the whole event that sense of “cricket making all well with the world” that makes so many of us cricket lovers tick.
Amusingly, though, several of the big screens (where highlights were periodically shown) were on that window side, making people turn towards the Nursery Ground, perhaps fooling the MCC staff/players into thinking that they were more of an attraction than was actually the case. I did pop out on one occasion to lend moral support to Adam, who manages the real tennis and squash courts.
The lads gather for a group photo
As always with Lord’s catering, the meal was remarkably good for a large-scale catered thing. The wine was plentiful. The mood was, understandably, relentlessly upbeat.
I’d left my real tennis stuff at the real tennis court, so once the event was over we wandered back round that way to get my kit. We ran into Adam again on the academy steps, enjoying a post match drink. Then when we got to the court ran into one of the real tennis regulars who had messed up his knee, so Janie proffered some sage advice.
By the time we got out of the court area, we ran into David Kendix who was taking the trophy back to the office for safe-keeping…at least that’s what he said he was doing. David and I were the only men at the dinner who had dared to wear celebratory light-coloured suits and loud-coloured shirts for the occasion; David could probably explain why that was less statistically unlikely than one might imagine. Anyway, we thought a joint photo with the trophy was in order in the circumstances.
David also very kindly allowed me a solo moment of glory with the prize.
In short, Janie and I had a very enjoyable day at Lord’s.
