Tag: Micky

Jo & Sheyda’s Cyber Party, A Warehouse Venue In Tottenham Hale, 29 To 30 June 2019

Janie and I had hot tickets for a Royal Court preview on the evening of 29 June, but when Jo insisted that the cyber party she and Sheyda were to be throwing would only be getting started by the time we got to Tottenham Hale “no earlier than 23:00”, the idea of us going on to the party after theatre was very much on.

Only problem was, the party was a cyber party and Kim was very insistent that we do our bit by dressing up.

When Janie and I tried to apply our gadgetry and make up in the theoretically gender-neutral washroom facilities at the Royal Court, there was possibly more drama in that space than there had been on stage – as reported here and below…

The End Of History… by Jack Thorne, Royal Court Theatre, 29 June 2019

…but we got it done in the end, with just a few thumbs up and comments from the Royal Court bar flies who saw us leave.

Janie was convinced that we’d get stopped by the police driving through North London dressed like cyber-creeps, but my guess is that, in some of the neighbourhoods we drove through, we looked totally in place.

Taking excessive chances though, we drove past Pentonville Prison:

That’s me, trying to look normal
My cyber-moll took a selfie while on vehicle look-out duty

Once we got to the right postcode (thank you, Mr Waze) it still took us a while to find the venue…until we saw some vaguely-cyber-looking people waving at us from the distance.

We donned our cyber-lights and practised our cyber-moves a little before entering the fray.

Ah, there they all are. Cyber-Daisy with Cyber-Kim, Cyber-Millie and Cyber-Becky

It was a steamy hot evening, so most people spent plenty of time hydrating (and dehydrating) with liquids, but we were up for plenty of dancing.

Young people in search of instruction should study these moves
There’s Cyber-Micky
Cyber-Jo wondering where her brother, Cyber-Max might be?
Ah!
Cyber-Sheyda briefly addressed the throng

By about 1:00, we felt a little spent, dance-moves-wise and decided to retire from all forms of cyber-dancing while we were still on top.

I thought that I had been a big hit with the girls and that my cyber-moll in particular would be in awe of me, but unfortunately she found true love elsewhere that evening:

Size isn’t everything, you know.

Still, we both had a super time and I’m sure Cyber-Daisy must be happy with her new chap. As one of the gang explained to me, as I disconsolately left the venue

That new chap doesn’t answer back as much as you do, Cyber-Ged!

If you want to browse all of the photos we took that night, the link below takes you to a Flickr album with the whole lot of them:

Sunday Lunch At The Orange With Kim, Micky & DJ, 16 September 2018

Well ahead of time, DJ invited us to lunch at The Orange in Belgravia/Pimlico. We had been looking forward to the day for much of the summer.

We weren’t disappointed for sure. It is always good to see DJ, Kim & Micky. As it turned out, it was a beautiful late-summer’s day, sitting in a very airy, well-spaced restaurant upstairs.

None of us had eaten in the restaurant there before, although Micky had previously been to the pub. We were all most impressed by the food the wines and the service. Janie and I both majored on the Sunday roast beef with all the trimmings, as did DJ.

Kim and Micky furnished me with a thoughtful bespoke birthday card and gifts, one of which was a tee-shirt emblazoned with the same legend as the card:

DJ, Kim and Micky told us about the Dalmatian coast, which they had recently been exploring. We pondered the lack of Dalmatian dogs in Dalmatia and wondered whether a themed boutique hotel, Villa De Vil, might be a winner. I expect Dodie Smith’s estate might have a question or three to ask about that one.

We didn’t realise that there is a glorious upstairs terrace at the back of The Orange, acting as a sun trap in the late afternoon. But under the guidance of excellent, interesting and kind waiter Gareth, we took up residence out there for after dinner drinks and to carry on chatting.

On learning that there is no house guitar, we tried some a capella singing…very badly.

Gareth was not only a maestro at serving food & drink, he is also a selfie maestro. The photograph below, achieved without a selfie-stick, is clearly the act of an experienced, steady hand.

Gareth also took a few pictures in a more regular or old-fashioned style, with the photographer excluded. A couple of those are shown below.

Many hours passed. It got dark. Eventually (at 21:00), the terrace had to close for regulatory/licensing reasons. Janie and I decided to call it quits at that juncture, leaving DJ, Kim & Micky to have “one for the road” by relocating to the pub’s outdoor seating, by the road.

Special, memorable times with special friends.

Caution: This Restaurant Might Contain Nuts, Dinner At Sanzio With Kim & Micky, 13 July 2018

After a morning’s work, I played tennis and then drove out to Noddyland for the rest of the afternoon. Janie went over to Kim’s to do some gardening or what-have-you, while I followed the Wimbledon tennis quite avidly:

  • Clarke & Dart v Murray & Azarenka (short and a bit disappointing);
  • Draper v Mejia (boys semi – absolutely compelling to watch);
  • Isner v Anderson (almost failed to resolve until after I left for the restaurant).

Here is a link to the Wimbledon results for that day.

Meanwhile Janie called me to instruct the closing of windows about 5 minutes after I had closed all the windows. It was already bucketing down in “The Suburb” whereas in Noddyland it was just starting to look ominous.

In fact, I got to the Uber while it was still just spitting, but by the time we got 100 yards down the road it was proper rain and by the time we got to Gypsy Corner there were surface water flash floods starting.

Anyway, I got to Sanzio eventually.

Micky and Kim were on good form. Janie and I both ended up eating the same dishes; calamari followed by a veal and mash dish.

For afters, I fancied ice cream. The gelato of the day was nougat. I asked what type of nuts were in the nougat (due to my walnut allergy), which kicked off a precautionary sequence of events, even when I relented to a simple choice of vanilla and chocolate.

“Out ice cream might contain traces of nut”, I was told. I explained that my allergy is mild and that I have no concerns about “might contain traces of nut” warnings…

…at which point Kim told the waitress that she should get me to sign a disclaimer…

…which the waitress duly produced and indeed insisted that I should sign.

This was all done in a gentle and friendly spirit…

With thanks to the waitress for taking the picture

…but I’m pretty sure that I’d have had no pudding without the form filling. I considered explaining that I am very allergic to form filling…

…but in the end decided that I wanted my ice cream.

I think that covered the necessary waiver comprehensively.

Readers of a nervous disposition will be delighted to learn that I suffered no ill effects from eating the ice cream.

It was a fun evening with Kim and Micky. The staff at the restaurant are very charming and friendly, which more than makes up for the quirky aspects.

Festive Dinner At The Chelsea Physic Garden With Kim & Micky, 13 December 2017

Janie has become very fond of the Chelsea Physic Garden, following our Gresham Society visit in the spring:

I DID Want To Go To Chelsea, Gresham Society Visit To Chelsea Physic Garden, then The Other Side Of Hope, Curzon Chelsea, 30 May 2017

Janie’s subsequent joining (thanks Toni) and a couple of splendid dinners there, not least with John and Mandy for the birthdays:

Birthday Dinner With John and Mandy At Chelsea Physic Garden, 29 August 2017

So Janie was very excited when Marc tipped her off to the idea of a December festive dinner indoors.

Not quite the magical atmosphere of summer dining in the garden itself, of course, but an excellent opportunity to get together with Kim and Micky during the festive season.

It was a super meal; similar in cooking style to the summer fare but using seasonal winter ingredients.

Here’s the menu:

From coincidence corner, a fellow member of Bodyworkswest, a gentleman named Lance, was sitting at the next table to us. We all had a chat for a while.

Micky won a tiny pack of  cards in his cracker, so we played poker, black jack, beat your neighbour and snap for a while. Micky wanted to play canasta but we’d need to mug up for that game.

You get the idea – we had a very good time. Kim and Micky are really looking forward to trying the summer experience at the Chelsea Physic Garden next season…as are we.

A Return Visit To Paradise by way of Kensal Green, 8 October 2017

No comedy moustache this time…

…nor festive cracker hats!

We returned to the scene of last year’s Christmas festivities (those December 2016 ones depicted above).

It was almost the same group of us too, except was around and Micky joined us this time.

The place is probably better suited to a regular Sunday lunch feast rather than the Christmas feast. The regular Sunday lunch is gargantuan enough, but within a tolerance that doesn’t require several days of overindulgence-recovery-time.

Good food too. Janie and I both especially enjoyed the crispy belly pork. I found the Sunday roast trimmings (not least Yorkshire pudding) went surprisingly well with it. Yummy starters too – mine was a seared tuna salad, Janie’s a crab thing.

But of course it was the company that really made the day so good. Even after Micky, Max and Kim had gone, Janie and I stuck around chewing the fat with DJ until long after dark. Winter is setting in!

Now That’s What I Call A Good Friday, Lunch With Kim & Micky In Noddyland, 14 April 2017

The night before, Janie and I had a super dinner with Toni Friend at Il Baretto.

Prior to dinner, Janie had picked up huge quantities of Lebanese food from Karam (formerly Crackers) and stored it in the Clanricarde Gardens flat fridge, while I played a losing game of real tennis at Lord’s en route to Il Baretto.

After dinner on Thursday, we stayed at the flat, then took ourselves and all that grub to the house early Friday…

…”are there four of us or forty of us for lunch?” I asked, as we lugged bag upon bag into and then out of Dumbo…

…before we headed off for an early game of modern tennis at Boston Manor Park.

Kim and Micky came over around 14:00.

Along with the wonderful Lebanese nibbles, Janie also served up some superb organic smoked salmon from Helga’s local Ummera smokehouse – thank you Helga.

It was too cold to sit outside, but we could admire the wonderful Noddyland bird life from the warm comfort of indoors.  Micky had never seen one of our woodpeckers before:

Wine flowed throughout the afternoon. I was being fairly abstemious, as it happens, as was (to a lesser extent) Janie.

Just around the point that everyone was feeling replete, Daisy then served up kebabs (for three of us) and falafels for Kim.

Then fruits and chocolates, just in case anyone still had some room.

Soon after we’d eaten, Kim, full of advice, as always, asked me if I knew what the phrase “fair weather friend” meant.

I explained that I had written a lyric about the Fair Weather Friend many years ago – click here for a link to the lyric – and indeed had been working up a performance of it on the baritone ukulele lately.

Janie chimed in that she really likes my Fair Weather Friend song. So I played and sang the song.

“We can do better than that,” announced Kim, dragging Janie off to the surgery room for about five minutes, after which they returned with their own lyric ready to “sing” and instructed Micky to video the result.

Here is their result…or I should say, here WAS their result…

Censored text block, by antonella.beccaria (flickr) http://www.flickr.com/photos/_shalom/548635280/
The original uploader was ChildofMidnight at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
Frankly, it is not bad for five minutes’ work by a somewhat tired and emotional duet. But one of the performance artistes has subsequently requested that the video be removed from the public domain. Very close friends might ask for sight of the material…at their own peril.

By way of comparison, I laid down a one-take, unplugged cut of my Fair Weather Friend song – click the play icon on the MP3 below…

…and originally asked the court of public opinion to decide between the two songs in a mini Ogblog/on-line Eurovision-style contest.

Whether the self-censoring contestant decided to withdraw their entry for reasons of modesty/manners, or simply decided to award themselves “nul points” in the contest will remain an unanswered question until the end of all time.

Still, it was a fun afternoon – what better way to start the holiday long weekend than with friends?

The next day, Kim and Micky outdid us in the bird life department by somehow attracting a grey heron into their garden…

Thanks to Kim for this stunning photo of “her” grey heron

…but now it seems that Kim and Micky no longer have any fish in their pond. I suppose you can’t have everything.

A Lunch At Gravetye Manor With DJ, Kim and Micky, Then Overnight 28 and 29 June 2015

Actually taken in 2014, but the blustery moment looks more like 2015 – thanks to Kim for the picture

After the great success of our lunch at Gravetye Manor last year, DJ asked us again for 2015.

We arranged to stay over on the Sunday night, driving down on the Sunday morning. I’m not sure whether we played tennis – I have a feeling we did play, early.

Once again it was a lovely lunch. The food is very good there. Such a relaxing place.

Somehow it didn’t quite have the magical atmosphere of the previous year, perhaps because we were doing the same thing for a second time, perhaps it was just the vibe of the place this time around.

One highlight of the afternoon was a package of photograph prints and a memory stick from Kim as a gift to Janie. The above picture is one of the hundreds of pictures from that stick; many of which will surely find their way onto the retrospective sections of Ogblog.

The weather wasn’t quite so special, the sun and the showers came and went with regularity. So rather than hanging around digesting our food in that large outhouse/arbour thing and the smaller, more outdoorsy chairs and arbours from the previous year, we relocated inside to a snug spot within the Manor itself for most of the afternoon, although the showers became less regular and passed through as the afternoon went on.

Before too long, DJ, Kima nd Micky all decided to go, so Janie and I sorted ourselves out in our room and then went outside to enjoy the now rather glorious early evening, playing some croquet and badminton on the lawn.

I also decided on a photo-opportunity for a King Cricket piece I was minded to write about our visit to the test match a month or so earlier.

 

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, the King Cricket crowd were much to clever for me and rumbled the set up photograph – as you can see from the comments on this link – I cannot imagine how or why they did that.

We drove back on the Monday in our tennis (lawners, not realers) gear, stopping off at Boston Manor for a hit. We also enjoyed the rest of our Monday off. Indeed, we did little work and had lots of fun that week, as you will see if you read on in sequence, not least the first couple of days in July.

Party at Kim & Micky’s House, 26 April 2015

Janie and I know what Kim & Micky’s parties can be like, so we hadn’t arranged anything for the Saturday evening and had arranged to take the Monday off.

This was a relatively small gathering by their standards, Sunday during the day, in honour of Kim’s birthday.

The usual suspects were there, plus some of the less usual suspects and of course Kim’s menagerie.

Imagine a smaller version of Never The Bride (shown above at Milton Keynes) performing in a conservatory

It was the first time I had seen Never The Bride, who Kim arranged to perform in the conservatory. In truth Kim’s conservatory is a bit small for the Never The Bride sound, even when the group turns up with just a core of performers and keeps the amplifier’s volume dial well below eleven.

Still, Never The Bride were very good and got everyone at the party singing along by hand picking the sorts of songs that most people of a certain age know well enough to sing along to.

Janie might remember more about the party than I do. We left relatively early in the evening, having been there since lunchtime, but I think a few people stuck around until very late by all accounts.

Not only did we take the next day off (pretty sure we played tennis and used the time pretty well) but we also had nothing arranged for the following weekend either.

I think that was more to do with having left dates clear for our impending Ireland trip than a need for a week or more’s clearance after Kim’s party. Perhaps a bit of both.

Whatever the reason, the next non-work thing in my diary is our visit to Lord’s on the Bank Holiday Monday, just before we set off for Ireland.

Dinner With Micky, Bleeding Heart, 15 April 2015

After an early exit from the office, Micky helps me out by looking at mum’s old engagement ring, I then help him out (not that he needs help) by sponsoring dinner at The Bleeding Heart.

An old haunt of the Binder Hamlyn crowd, perhaps I have known the place for as long as Micky has known it…no probably not quite as long. Since 1988 in my case.

Still, I hadn’t been for years and what a treat to get glorious spring weather so we could take our dinner in the yard.

Micky found a particularly good rose wine with which he persevered all evening; I joined him after trying a couple of the excellent Kiwi whites (a speciality of the otherwise resolutely French establishment).

Micky knows the Bleeding Heart crowd well and has more stamina than me, so in the end he suggested that I leave him to it. Having done plenty of eating and drinking, moreover with fatigue creeping up on me, I was delighted to comply.

Kim Micky & DJ For Dinner, Noddyland, 25 January 2014

My diary is not very forthcoming about this evening.

I have a vague feeling that Janie sourced a high quality capon for this meal.

This is not to be confused with the tough old boiler chickens referred to as capons that I discuss in the middle of this history piece from 1967 – click here.

In any case, you can be sure that Janie cooked a very good meal and that we all had a very enjoyable evening.