Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
Oh joy – ’twas the new cricket season and I took a day off work to see cricket with Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett.
I rather like that write up in retrospect. I think you get a sense of the joy to be had just passing a day with a friend (or friends) watching cricket.
If anything ever happens to King Cricket, I have scraped the above report page to here.
If anyone reading this is desperate to know what actually happened in the cricket that day, here is a link to the scorecard.
I had a funny feeling I skived the Middlesex AGM in 2014. My diary says “day off”, but by reviewing my electronic records, it seems that I took most of the day off, then went to the Middlesex AGM via a bit of work at the flat.
I don’t recall much/anything about that AGM, but I did exchange e-mails with Richard Goatley about it afterwards, setting up a lunch with him the following week (9th), so cannot deny that I was there.
I better recall the Seaxe Club AGM, which took place four days later. We were still in the old Middlesex Room that year. My memory of that event assisted by the report in an electronic version of the subsequent newsletter – a novel development for the Seaxe Club that season, partly as a result of “youngsters” such as me and Barmy Kev pushing the idea.
The panel discussion was an especially good one that year; Gus Fraser, Mark Ramprakash and Ryan Higgins.
A rather unusual round trip, taking a week or so off work, for cricket, walking and stuff. This short break was a substitute for the longer trip we had planned for Malawi, which we ended up deferring to September and was well worth the wait.
But back to our Midlands and the North trip. We started with a couple of nights in Nottingham, in order to enjoy the second day of the county cricket season as guests of Nottinghamshire CCC. I wrote up our Nottinghamshire day, 11 April, for King Cricket – click here for that King Cricket (cricket-free) report.
Just in case anything ever goes awry with King Cricket, here is a scrape of that piece.
Here’s the match card – in case you want to know about the cricket.
Then on the 12th to the village of Wormleighton, in Warwickshire the spiritual home of Janie’s family. No-one knows how the family came to have that name. Probably because someone in the dim and distant past came from there and probably not because Janie is descended from the Spencer family (which pretty-much owned the village), despite the Churchillian and Princess Diana resemblances in Janie’s family.
There is an ancient video of “the Worms” visiting the village of Wormleighton en famille in 1971 – here or below
On this trip, Ged and Daisy made a little video of their own search for the ancient village of Wormleighton – here or below.
For the uninitiated, Ged and Daisy are our pet names for each other and have been so for over 20 years.
We stayed at Wormleighton Hall, which is a rather grand farm house just outside the village – formerly the squires residence I shouldn’t wonder and now the home of the tenant farmers who make the whole thing work commercially by running the place as a small hotel as well as a farm. Lovely family; into all the local countryside stuff. We visited the Mollington point-to-point which they were attending on the 13th and took some excellent pictures of the local tribes at leisure.
All 80 pictures from the whole round trip are contained in this Flickr album – here and below.
On 14th we went to Chipping Norton to visit brother-in-law Tony and his lovely second wife Liz.
Hockney says you cannot properly photograph these Wolds scenes
On 15th, off to North Yorkshire, driving the eastern-side to see and photograph Hockney country before reaching The Star, where we stayed and ate in great style for a few days.
On 16th we went on a Farndale walk in search of daffodils, surprisingly successfully as the cold start to the spring had delayed the daffs, but they were just starting to show well our day – good fortune.
Some more nice pictures in the Flickr link above; also another little Ged and Daisy video – the attack by a savage sheep (mistaken for a ram) and the skipping lambs at the end being delicious highlights – click here or below .
17th we drove South-West to Saltaire and had a look at the town and some art gallery-style Hockney stuff. 18th we spent at leisure and walking around the Star’s vicinity (Harome).
19th we drove home. Middlesex were again in action against Derbyshire (Day 3) and as we drove home we realised that an improbable early result to the match was on the cards. After stopping off at the house, I went on (alone) in the car to catch the end of the match and witness a Middlesex win – here’s the card. Quite a week for us and for Middlesex.
At some point in the future I might…just might…be able to provide a multi-faceted piece on this particular evening at Lord’s.
At the time of writing (January 2018), only my King Cricket piece, published October 2011, survives to tell the tale.
Yet tell the tale it does, I think – certainly from my perspective. Internationalism, scandal and some improbable, impromptu games…not bad.
Just in case anything ever happens to the King Cricket site, I have also scraped that report to here.
For those who have the stomach to look (i.e. most often neutrals and Surrey fans for these occasions), actually it looks as thought his was a pretty good match, despite the fact that I must have missed quite a fair chunk of it – click here for the scorecard and reports.
One extra bit of evidence on who, from “Ged Ladd & Co”, attended that time, in addition to “The Tiberellis”, comes from Jez’s e-mail to me a few week’s before the match:
Mark
Monique
Steph
Ben
Rich
David
Simon Strez would also like to come as it’s his last chance to see a cricket game in England before returning home to New Zealand. I also have 3 friends that will be coming to the game.
Mum was especially keen on this Balham eatery towards the end of her time at Woodfield Avenue. It was conveniently close to the house too, so I would sometimes pick her up and take her to The French Cafe for dinner. This was one of those occasions.
Daisy came along this time around – a rare visit to one of these parties by her. I seem to recall that the event had been especially good the year before and my report had triggered a “may I come to one of those?” question to which the answer was, “of course you may!”
I think this one was in the press bat of the old Warner Stand, if my memory serves me well.
I think this was the evening we spent quite a lot of time chatting with the late, lamented Derek “The Diamond” Britain and some members of his family. We also chatted with some of the players, nibbled at food and drank wine.
Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinners had been going for just over 10 years by then. In fact, I missed the 10th anniversary one, in June. I am writing this soon after the 20th anniversary one was wiped out by the Covid lockdown in the spring of 2020.
The headline photo was circulated by John Random ahead of that June 2010 get together, which I missed. So I never discovered the context of the regal look. Perhaps John, feeling a little insecure, wanted to assert his authority with regard to our gathering.
Anyway. he was certainly in charge in September and circulated some more pictures and bants:
Many thanks to all those who came out to the Cafe Rouge on Thursday. If you weren’t there you were either sorely missed or we all slagged you off behind your back. No, seriously. We had a good turn-out, including – may I say – the Three Graces in the form of the lovely Harriet, the lovely Victoria and the lovely Jasmine, who is not only lovely but can show you all how to save up to 10% on Travelodge. Harriet came in her pyjamas. OK, with some pyjamas. In a bag. From La Senza. Anyway, it’s not often we have so many women come to the Ivan Shakespeares and I hope this trend continues.
Personal highlight of the evening, though was Keith Wickham reading out the scores to the quiz in the voice of James Mason.
Finally, Where Are They Now No. 127: Mark Flitton spotted on location in legal drama Silk playing the owner of a dangerous dog. Many of you will have fond memories of Mark in Noel’s wonderful Smoking Doctors sketch. He also went to Edinburgh for us and performed in both the Newsrevue show and Whoops Vicar.
I do recall Keith Wickham’s James Mason impression that evening. I have always liked his James Mason, but there was something about Keith reading out the quiz scores in the style of James Mason that especially tickled me and I do remember giggling a lot. Perhaps it was the fourth glass of vino wot dunnit.
Anyway, as always a fun evening with the NewsRevue alums.
I must be honest and admit that I remember very little about this particular forum and party, other than ending up at the Robert Browning Pub with Barmy Kev and others, where we continued the libations and played bar billiards until chucking out time.
Mercifully, I don’t need to remember much, as Barmy Kev documented the forum, party and even the bar billiards in a ball-by-ball report – click here to read it in all its gory…I mean, glory.
Coincidentally, the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinners were, for a while, held at the Robert Browning, until the inhospitable nature of the place (last orders for food were taken ridiculously early) drove us across the way to Cafe Rouge.
Writing 10 years on, I note that the Robert Browning is under new management and has been rebranded as The Eagle. Bar billiards is still listed. Might be worth giving it another try once lockdown is over.
The family gathering which includes the Pickled Herring Of The Year awards has been described at length in other years, e.g.
In 2010, mum would have been there, as would Michael and Dorothy, me, Janie, Hils and possibly some special guest stars, such as Jacquie’s grandson Josh. Mum might even have had a sleepover at Jacquie’s that year; I think she did that once or twice after dad and Len had died.
The 2010 spread would have looked much like the 2016 spread depicted. But the winner of the award that year has been lost in the mists of time.
This will take a bit of explaining, as the match report I wrote for the Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD) website – click here to see that – is a sequence of haikus.
(If anything by chance happens to MTWD, that article is scraped to here.)
But I do remember the events of the 24 hours or so in question.
In those days, Vic Demain, now the head groundsman at Durham CCC, was the groundsman at Uxbridge. He would organise a charity party night during the county championship match to raise money for a good cause – breast cancer mostly.
This particular year, I was unable to attend the cricket on the day of the party, as it clashed with business meetings of such import I can barely bring myself to read the appointments for them in my diary without trembling.
So, I decided to hot-foot it to Uxbridge after my last meeting (in Kings Cross) and arranged for Daisy kindly to collect my weekend gear from the flat and take it to the house.
That way, I could commute to Uxbridge to the party, cab it to Daisy’s after the party, commute to Uxbridge the next day (Day Three, the Friday) and have Daisy join me for the conclusion of play and a lift home.
Simples.
I recall the charity party was a good one that year. I think I might have ended up with some Middlesex memorabilia and a lighter wallet, but that’s the idea of such things I suppose.
I also remember having terrible trouble meeting up with my minicab driver, as the gate I thought would work for my collection was locked and we struggled to work out how I might get out without walking for 10-15 minutes around the ground and adjacent fields. I think we ended up with me jumping the gate, in the style of the escape Daisy and I had made from Laos some years earlier:
But I digress.
The haikus describe Day Three in superb detail – here’s the link again – but just in case you want to know more, here is a link to the Cricnfo scorecard etc.
It seems the real drama was to unfold the next day.
There aren’t many websites upon which the groundsman might report the day’s proceedings in fine style, but MTWD managed to secure the good services of Vic Demain for the Day Four match report – click here for that report. A thumping good read.
While thinking through what to do with my old MTWD match reports on Ogblog, I stumbled across this one – I think one of the last (or should I say most recent) reports for MTWD. I thought I’d retroblog it right now.
Here’s a link to the article on MTWD, in all its glory with pictures and everything.
Given SportNetwork’s track record, I have uploaded the text of my MTWD pieces into Ogblog, so if the above “proper” link doesn’t work, you can at least read the text here.
Finally, if you are the sort of person who cannot bear to read a match report without a scorecard, here’s a link to the scorecard.
One of my favourite King Cricket “match reports” this – it is the story of a freezing cold day at Lord’s in mid June with Daisy (Janie) watching Middlesex play a match to help warm up the Australians.
Here is a link to the King Cricket match report.
Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, here is a link to the scraped version.
Here is a link to the scorecard and all those geeky details on Cricinfo.
I don’t think we stayed until the end – we went to the National Theatre that evening and I’m pretty sure we went back to the flat first.
I almost missed out on reporting this one – in my diary with question-marks and the like, but it seems we organised a mini-outing for the very keen to this match.
Looks as though Jez did most of the organising:
I’m just dropping you all a quick line with the arrangements for tomorrow night. Firstly, I may be slightly late as I have to go and get my wedding registered in North London, but as long as they run on time (famous last words), I should be at the gates with plenty of time to spare. As a precaution, I have given all of your tickets to Simon S…
I chimed in with some of the more vital logistical details:
I suspect it might be quite busy on the Tavern Stand side again tonight, so I suggest that all those who arrive in decent time come straight in and help me to hold sufficient good seats…I’ll probably aim for a little closer to Father Time in the Lower Tavern Stand, Jez, for the “Turkey Corner” effect. It’s the least we can do for brother Ben.
“Brother Ben” is Jez’s younger brother who, perhaps for contrarian reasons, supports Surrey almost as fervently as Jez supports Middlesex. Other guests that night were the two Kiwi Simons (Strez and McMullen), Ben Morris, Heinrich Groenewald and Louwrens Verwey.
The scorecard – click here – suggests that this was not one of Middlesex’s better matches nor one of the better matches from a neutral spectator’s point of view.
I’ll guess that Simon McMullen’s (first left in the picture) favourite memory of visiting Lord’s was the previous year – click here or picture below.
I don’t remember much about this forum. I wasn’t even 100% sure I was there, even though the date is in my diary.
But Barmy Kev’s MTWD report confirms that I was there – click here.
That report contains everything you need to know…
…and far more besides.
