Tag: Marianna Smith

A Gentle Start To 2020, Including Music & Food With The Smiths & The Neighbours, Early January 2020

4 January 2020: The Smiths

Our first outing of the decade was a visit to Mike and Marianna Smith’s house; an opportunity to eat together, make some music together and to see their kids, Eva and Bob, now that they are teenagers.

For those Ogblog readers who don’t know…

…and who are looking for somebody to blame for my music-making…

…it was Mike Smith who got me into the idea of playing the four-string guitar.

Mike makes & refurbishes stringed instruments of many varieties – the picture below depicts Mike playing a mandola, with a cello-like thing made from a half-baked mandolin by his side:

The pictures imply that Mariana did all the cooking and that Mike and I did all the playing, but that would be unfair on Mike (who prepared much of the delicious Mexican meal we enjoyed) and indeed on Eva, who is cultivating pie making skills, as illustrated above.

Bob & Eva chilling in gadget corner

We also spent plenty of time chatting too, about the kids school activities, Mike’s latest initiatives and learning some more about Mariana’s Slovak family and background.

One strange coincidence vis-a-vis the music and Mariana. Amongst other things, I was tinkling the renaissance song Belle Qui Tiens Ma Vie, which I am currently working on with Ian Pittaway, my early music teacher.

A few days after our delightful evening with The Smiths, I read Ian Pittaway’s essay on this piece and its context:

The pavan, the priest and the pseudonym: ‘Belle qui tiens ma vie’ and Arbeau’s ‘Orchésographie’ (1589)

Ian has added an annex to that essay about the Czechoslovakian folk group, Spirituál kvintet, who wrote and recorded a “Czechoslovakian protest” version of this song in the 1960s:

On discovering the coincidental link between the song and Mariana’s origins, I sent the link to Mike and Mariana. In typically subdued language, Mariana resonded:

I was slightly blown away by Spirituál Kvintet’s Pavana…

12 January 2020: Marcena & the Neighbours

As if we didn’t eat and drink enough with friends and neighbours in December, Marcena very kindly invited us in for drinks and nibbles on the second Sunday of the decade.

Coincidentally, Marcena’s centrepiece was also Mexican, a very tasty tacos dish, although there were also potatoes and chicken cutlets which bore the hallmarks of her southern Asian and southern African backgrounds.

Ged, Daisy, Marcena & Isabel
Marcena, Isabel, Joy & Piers

It was a very enjoyable evening. Janie (Daisy) tried to construct an alternative narrative for everyone else’s life…

…in fact at one point I wondered whether the full moon a couple of evenings earlier had got to her…

Any howl you might hear is likely me pretending to be a dog, in a vain attempt to scare a cat away from tormenting our visiting birds

…but in the end the truth would out and we all found out a bit more about each other, over some very tasty food and wine.

Chilled times.

Indeed, to add to the chilledness of the past two-three weeks, I also enjoyed:

  • a couple of music lessons with Ian Pittaway,
  • a jamming evening with DJ on 14 January at my place, with some yummy grub from Speck,
  • several games of real tennis at Lord’s, including club night on 16 January.
Kinda sums it up

Two Visits To South London For Dinner In Two Evenings, Including An Etiquette-Breaching Early Exit In Streatham, 16 & 17 March 2001

One For The Road sent a driver on something like this

Friday 16 March 2001 – Dinner At Mike & Marianna Smith’s Place In Kennington

I have written at length about me and Janie spending occasional evenings with Mike and Marianna, either at their place or ours. My favourite memory of those – sadly my last memory of seeing Mike, is this one:

A Gentle Start To 2020, Including Music & Food With The Smiths & The Neighbours, Early January 2020

There won’t have been music-making in 2001 – that element came later – but there will have been good food and convivial chat. I think, on that occasion, Janie drove and therefore drank little. Mike and Marianna evenings were not particularly boozy affairs, but they were very pleasant ones.

Saturday 17 March 2001 – Dinner At Doug & Paul’s Place In Streatham, Featuring The Duchess And “One For The Road”

Doug and Paul were a couple that Janie and Pauline had met on holiday together before Janie and I got together – presumably 10 years at least before this evening. Pauline had kept in touch with them and they invited the three of us to their house in Streatham for dinner. Their place was just a few blocks away from my parents place, but visiting my folks didn’t come into it.

What did come into it was the use of a chauffeuring service that Janie and I had previously used couple of times, named “One For The Road”. You booked the service to drive you home in your own car. The chauffeur would arrive at an appointed hour on a collapsible bike, which they would stow in the boot of your car while they drove you home.

There was only one problem with this service, which we encountered to our shame on this occasion; you had to pre-book the time of departure.

Janie thought 10:45pm would be ideal after a 7:00 arrival, but she hadn’t accounted for the perfect storm of Doug & Paul’s desire to show off every last feature of their new home, their painstakingly slow preparation/serving of food, together with Pauline’s classic ability to spin out every one of her many yarns when holding forth, interspersed with inter-course cigarettes a plenty.

“…and let me tell you another thing…”

Doug and Paul seemed to be luxuriating in showing us their feature-packed home and listening to Pauline’s fables.

Janie and I, although somewhat refreshed by nibbles and starters, were far from sated, foodwise. More than sated, interior design and Pauline-yarn-wise.

Janie dropped a couple of hints, before expressing significant concern, around 10:00, that our driver was arriving at 10:45 and that we hadn’t progressed yet to the main course.

Doug and Paul hurried themselves to finish preparing and then serve a main dish. The driver arrived while we were still eating that dish. We finished it hurriedly.

Thanks ever so much for dinner, but we really must go now,

said Janie.

But what about dessert?

blurted Doug…or Paul…or both.

The Duchess was a little disappointed. She no doubt had several more tales of her derring-do up her sleeve and had been looking forward to relating them over pudding, coffee and cigarettes.

We never saw Doug and Paul again.

I don’t think we ever used the One For The Road service again either.

On yer bike, son.

The Day I Saw Slade & The Smiths At Keele, 10 January 1995

With profound apologies to lovers of 1970s & 1980s popular music who clicked this page under false pretences; I just couldn’t resist the headline. But I am talking about the day I went to Keele and met Dr Eddie Slade while seeing Professor Mike Smith for the first time. Later, I had dinner and stayed over with Mike Smith and Marianna, at Mike’s house in Church Plantation.

Professor Mike Smith, who sadly died suddenly, 12 November 2020

It happened like this. My business partner, Michael Mainelli, had worked with Mike when Michael first came to The British Isles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Coincidentally, mostly while I was at Keele.

Michael and Mike had kept in touch. Mike Smith went on to become, in 1990, Professor of Health Informatics at Keele in the departments of Computer Science and Medicine. He concurrently held the position of Director of Information at North Staffordshire Health Authority.

Our business, The Z/Yen Group, was starting to thrive. I was looking after the civil society side of the practice and was starting to itch for bright resource, around the time that Mike was starting to look for opportunities to mix some fresh commercial activity in with his academic work.

Michael suggested that Mike and I meet. Knowing that Keele was my alma mater, Michael suspected that an excuse to stop off at Keele the next time I was heading north would be an attractive proposition for me.

So, between client appointments near Euston on the Tuesday morning and client appointments in Manchester on the Wednesday morning…

…Mike Smith said he would be delighted to see me on the Tuesday afternoon & evening, insisting that I should stay with him and Marianna at Church Plantation.

I think that first house might actually have been The Smiths’ house!

Mike also asked if there was anyone still at Keele that I would especially like to see, as he had time that afternoon to wander down memory lane with me.

I suggested Eddie Slade. I had seen most of the people who had taught me and were still active at Keele on earlier visits, but had not seen Eddie since my Education & Welfare sabbatical year, some 10 years earlier, when Eddie was Senior Tutor.

I recall that Mike didn’t rate our chances of getting in to see Eddie, commenting that he didn’t think he’d ever had an audience with the Director of Studies (as he was now titled).

But when I arrived at Keele, Mike told me that, to his surprise, Eddie had remembered me and said that he would like to have a meeting with both of us.

A recent (2020) picture of Eddie, borrowed from the Douglas MacMillan Hospice site, a wonderful cause

It was great swapping stories with Eddie from the distant past…9 to 10 years earlier. We’d not seen eye-to-eye over everything, but on the whole had got on very well and had worked together to resolve some “little difficulties”. Some of those tales might yet emerge in my write ups; some might best remain unwritten.

We also discussed how the Students’ Union had changed in those 10 years. I was delighted to learn that the Real Ale Bar was one of the union’s great commercial successes, as that had been one of our 1984/85 innovations.

I then asked what turned out to be a daft question about the television rooms. In our day, there had been three television rooms and the addition of a fourth TV channel (Channel 4) had caused some consternation. I asked Eddie how they regulate the television rooms now that there are multiple channels…

…Eddie laughed and explained to me that any student who wanted to watch television in the 1990s had their own TV. The former TV rooms had long since been repurposed.

With thanks to Mark Ellicott for this 2016 picture of the Students’ Union

After saying goodbye to Eddie, we had time for me to have a look around the Students’ Union, so I could see for myself the fate of the former TV rooms and far more besides.

This was also interesting for Mike, who confessed that he had never been in the Students’ Union building before, so it was my turn to give him a guided tour for the most part. It hadn’t changed all that much.

In 1995, there were still quite a few staff in the SU from my era. For sure Pat Borsky was there to be seen in the Print Room, for example; I think Barbara also.

Disappointingly, though, nobody said…

…”cards please”…

…as we entered the Union, although I did have my dog-eared life membership card with me, just in case.

Wally…where were you? Thanks to Mark Ellicott for this 1985 picture

Anyway, after having a good look around the union, we retreated to Church Plantation where I met Marianna for the first time, we three ate a hearty meal, enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation and the rest, as they say, is history. Mike and I worked together and became friends for 25 years, until his sudden death so sadly intervened.

I write this piece, the tale of how Mike and I first met, in late November 2020, just a couple of days before Mike’s funeral and just a couple of weeks since I wrote the personal tribute linked here and below.

A Personal Tribute To Professor Mike Smith, 12 November 2020