Mike Jones – Ian Louis Harris

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.

A Long Weekend Catching Up With Long-standing Friends, 6 to 9 April 2017

It was no real coincidence that I worked up several pieces about parties of my youth by way of introducing Rohan Candappa’s guest piece last week. I was due to see the Alleyn’s crowd on the Thursday and several old youth club friends on the Saturday.

Thursday 6 April 2017

The Thursday evening was a semi-regular-style gathering of the old Alleyn’s clan in the City. John Eltham tends to organise it and who would have bet against Johnny being the “get together monitor” back in the school days? He wrote:

here is the plan:

7.00pm Walrus & Carpenter public house- 45 Monument Street

8.30pm wander a whole 10 yards to Rajasthan curry shop ( our usual)

I pre-announced that I didn’t expect to get to the pub until 7:30/8:00 – as I had long-since arranged a game of real tennis early evening.

Fun, it was, playing doubles with my allocated doubles partner for this season’s doubles tournament – which will be my first go at the trophy – indeed at any physical sports trophy, since my glorious quarter-final fives victory against Johnny Eltham himself in 1975.

So I arrived at about 7:50 to be told by Mr David Wellbrook (who else) that I was late and needed to assume drinks monitor duties.

Fortunately (and quite naturally) it was John Eltham who was holding the float, to which I added my share and then three of us (Ollie Goodwin the kind third) shared the burden of getting the round in. A small float of “poppadom money” survived the round.

Fifty billion here and fifty billion there soon adds up to real poppadom money

Early April but such glorious weather – we were gathered outside the Walrus and Carpenter enjoying the setting sun and getting a bit cooler, yet not cold.

Indeed it was quite close to 8:30 when Johnny remarked that it was starting to get a bit parky…nippy even…but in any case it was time to regroup in The Rajasthan.

That restaurant runs like a well-oiled machine. Long-used to getting unco-ordinated groups of city folk to gather themselves and place their orders – it all just sort-of happens in that restaurant and it is always a decent (if not exceptional) meal.

My eye was caught by Hariali chicken, which is minimally-described as “Cooked to Chef’s special recipe”. I asked the waiter, who mumbled, “curry-leaf, lemongrass, lots of herbs and spices, very very nice” and I was convinced. Most if not all the others at our table paid far less attention to the detail of their chosen dishes than that.

Most drank beer, but Ollie Goodwin, Lisa Pavlovsky, one other (was it Jerry Moore?) and I formed a small gang of four for white wine, specifically Nika Tiki Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. Not the best I’ve ever had but a decent example; I’m sure Sir Nigel Godfrey would approve.

At my end of the table I was within chatting distance of Gavin Hamilton, Martin Brassell, Paul Driscoll, Ollie Goodwin, Jerry Moore, John Eltham and Mike Jones. Sadly I missed out on proper chat this time with Rohan Candappa, David Wellbrook, Lisa Pavlovsky, Steve “Peanut” Butterworth and the late Chris Grant. By “late”, I mean “arrived half way through the meal”. Not “deceased”, nor “arrived at 7:50, roughly the time I said I would arrive, Mr Wellbrook”.

As always it was a very pleasant evening indeed. What a treat to be able to take pre dinner drinks outside The Walrus and Carpenter.

Saturday 8 April 2017

Let’s gloss over the Friday, which I had intended to be a “do my own thing/get some blogging done” day but which turned in to a mostly work day. Bitty, stressy work at that, with a shocking game of real tennis thrown in mid-morning.

Saturday, the weather was truly glorious, although Janie and I weren’t really able to take full advantage of the weekend’s exceptional weather until the Sunday.

Still, it enabled us to start our evening with friends at the house in the garden terrace, which is a bonus in April and was a very pleasant way to start the evening. Our record for this feat is a mild 7 January evening with David and Steph – click here, but this April evening in the garden had the added benefit of enjoying light in the earlier stages of the evening and thus enjoying the sunset.

The guests were Jilly Black, Andrea Dean, Simon Jacobs and Wendy Robbins; all originally friends of mine from BBYO, i.e. going back to when we were teenagers. It is a testament to Janie that she gets on so well with all of them and likewise they have all taken Janie to their hearts.

It wasn’t long-planned as precisely this group of six, but we had wanted to invite Jilly for ages and she had particularly mentioned that she regretted not being able to see Andrea and Wendy at the party, which Jilly missed, last May.

Then, when I saw Simon in January, around the time we were setting this evening up, realising that he knows and likes all of these people, it seemed only sensible to ask him too.

It might seem a bit drawn out to some readers, inviting people in early January and setting a date for April, but by our (admittedly rather low) temporal standards, I think we got the gathering planned and implemented pretty quickly.

And everyone turned up.

Janie went to town with exotic nibbles; thai-style fish cakes, some flaky-pastry-meaty-parcels and a wonderful chicken liver pate on toasted french stick.

Between the nibbles and the main course I tried to pacify the guests with a few numbers on Benjy the Baritone Ukulele.

Andrea and Wendy, who are dear, dear friends of mine, appreciative of, but not experts on, music, declared that I have truly mastered the instrument. Jilly and Simon, who are also both dear, dear friends of mine, fine musicians to boot, were both clearly so moved by my performance that neither of them was able to add to Andrea and Wendy’s judgement. I think that says it all.

It did get a little chilly by the time we went inside. Some might even say “nippy” or “parky”. Anyway, inside we went.

The centrepiece of the meal was Janie’s signature beef with wasabi sauce dish, which works so well for gatherings of this size and which we knew would be novel to our guests. We’d have to eat it very often indeed to tire of it.

After the main course, chocolates, tropical fruits etc.

What did we talk about? All sorts.

Old times? – not all that much.

What people are up to now? – much more.

The difficulties involved in grown-up dating and some very funny anecdotes from some around the table reminded me and Janie of the film Through the Wall, which we saw in December – click here.

Less Trump/Brexit talk than usual these days – which was a blessed relief really.

Wendy told us the story of her recent visit to Downing Street, which really needs to be an episode of a sit-com, rather than an after dinner anecdote.

It was really nice to see everyone and (cliche alert) the evening flew by.

We could do nibbles on the patio again this evening, Sunday – the weather remains glorious. As I write, the sun is still streaming in through the window of my little man cave here in Noddyland.

Nibbles in the Noddyland Garden. Janie took the picture so once again she isn’t in it!

Postscript

While I was posting this piece, Simon Jacobs uploaded a couple of tracks from his forthcoming album. It was possibly one of those Brian Wilson/Lennon-McCartney creative tension moments after hearing my exquisite baritone ukulele playing last night. As Simon himself says on Facebook:

After 3 decades of procrastination, I’ve finally recorded some of my own songs – and now the first two of them are on YouTube (one of them even has a video!)
So please take a listen, subscribe, share with your friends and post your comments… Then, sometime in the summer I’ll release a whole album through the usual channels, tour the world and then of course there’ll be the drugs and the groupies, the breakdown and rehab, the bizarre plastic surgery, the invitation to be an X Factor judge – all the usual humiliations.

Ogblog readers might well enjoy one or both of these tracks:

Too School For Cool, Edward Alleyn Club Dinner, 12 November 2016

Formal school alumni dinners are not really my kind of thing, nor are they Janie’s kind of thing. Indeed, both of us have managed to reach a fairly ripe (if not actually old) age without ever having attended such an event.

Until this event.

This event was going to be different. Why? Because Chris Grant was the President of the alumni club this year and he wanted to make the event different. In any case, you turn up to events like this to support your friends when it is their gig.

The first I heard of the matter was the evening back in January when a gang of us gathered at Z/Yen to experience Rohan Candappa’s wonderful monologue, “How I Said F*** You To The Company…” and have a curry afterwards – click here for the Ogblog piece on that evening.

I explained to Chris that I don’t do weekend stuff without Janie, but that notion only reinforced Chris’s view that this year the dinner should be different and that he would actively encourage people to bring their partners.

To add to the “making it different” motif, Chris engaged Rohan to write and perform a short monologue for the pre-dinner reception. Chris also asked David Wellbrook to act as Master of Ceremonies for this additional feature.

The long and short of it was, I ended up being a bit of a cheerleader for the event amongst our generation – although it was naturally down to John Eltham to act as gang-leader for those of us from our era to book and sit as a gaggle.

We’re On Our Way

It seemed strange arriving at the school gates with Janie, but we had the good fortune to run into John Eltham and Steven Butterworth as we were walking in. The pre-dinner function was in a new Edward Alleyn Building, which didn’t exist when I last visited the school, many years ago.

Our rabble-rousing had born fruit, so I chatted briefly with several people from our era; David French, Paul Driscoll, Nick Jarmany, Nick James, Tim Moulson, Tim Church and several other people at that reception.

Rohan’s Bit

Rohan’s short monologue was good fun. A meander around the theme “South London, Nah Nah Nah”. The talk included some navel-gazing around the word south itself. Should it be pronounced “sarf” or “sowf” rather than “south”, for example. Is it merely convention that south is shown below north – after all, the world is a globe? Rohan’s conclusions or central theses (I am truly bigging up this talk, aren’t I?) were that:

South London is an edgy underdog that deserves our affection and support, even if some of us have long since migrated north,
we Alleyn Old Boys (at least the cohort from our era) formed exceptionally strong bonds of friendship which have kept us together and/or brought us back together across many decades and in some cases vast geographical spread.

Rohan teased us throughout his talk about a blue joke that David Wellbrook wanted to tell, much against Chris Grant’s better judgement. Rohan then nearly told the joke through audience participation, but concluded that South Londoners do not need to be told the punchline of the joke; they are edgy enough to work it out for themselves:

What do we want?

A cure for Tourette’s.

When do we want it?

…

If you want to read Rohan’s wonderful piece in full, he has kindly agreed to its wider circulation and it is therefore Ogblogged as a guest piece in its own right – click here.

The Dinner Itself

Then across to the school dinning room for the dinner. It seemed strange to be fine dining in that place, all done up to look sprauncy. Chris had chosen a very imaginative meal, based around curry, to symbolise the friendly informal meet ups that invariably end with a curry.

But this was a posh curry-based meal. A starter of slightly spicy scallops, enough to tell you that the meal was posh, that being the first of three interesting courses. Then cheeses, then coffee and petits fours. A well posh curry-based meal.

There were several toasts, speeches and club business in-between, mostly based on the traditional/regular/formal format of the club, I suppose.

Janie and I were honoured and indeed privileged to be seated next to Sir Nigel Godfrey. Sir Nigel, apparently, has recently received a gong for services to the New Zealand beauty pageant industry.

Ged and Sir Nigel Pontificating Nicaragua

Sir Nigel was wearing his Broach of Honour with pride that evening, but sadly he seemed to keep it covered up whenever Daisy was nearby with her camera. Perhaps he thought she might swipe the bauble if he left it unguarded even for a moment. How does he know that Daisy is such a scallywag?

Our table rapt with attention as Sir Nigel orates. Mr Wellbrook taking electronic notes, presumably

Daisy was also sitting next to Mr Wellbrook, who had been Master of Ceremonies earlier. I asked Chris Grant, “what did Daisy and I do to deserve the honour of sitting next to Sir Nigel and Mr Wellbrook?”, but I think Chris must have misheard my question, because he merely said, “there’s always one short straw”, which seemed to me to be an answer to an entirely different question.

Then Chris Grant made a short but touching and excellent speech, continuing the themes of edginess and especially the theme of enduring friendship.

The audience was then subjected to the Headmaster’s Savage response…

…correction…I never was much good with grammar, I should have paid more attention in English lessons…

The audience was then subjected to the Headmaster, Dr Savage’s, response. Dr Savage seemed keener on the friendship theme than the edgy theme. That is understandable really. Can you imagine the mischief that might kick off in the school and end up with pupils sent to the Headmaster’s Study, only to get the phrase thrown back by the miscreant, “but Sir, you told us that it is a good thing for us to be edgy”?

Dr Savage spoke very well and quite wittily, although I did think he missed a golden opportunity to pun on the pronunciation of Suffolk (from whence he hails) and Southwark, the borough in which he now heads a school. After all, the two place names, at least when pronounced by a native of the latter, are indistinguishable. (I think he might have been trying to make such a joke, but he got a bit confused and mentioned Norfolk, for seemingly no reason.)

In short, Savage is a talented speaker who prepares diligently, but he lets himself down at times through hurried delivery and under-rehearsal of the humorous lines. A-, could do better than this.

There is an official report and deck of photos for this event on the Alleyn’s School site – click here.

And Then Home

We thoroughly enjoyed our evening. Janie found the company delightful, both the old boys and their wives/companions, such as Lenneke (Chris’s partner) and Emma Jane Moulson. Similarly, I enjoyed chatting briefly with those two and at greater length with Victoria (Oliver Goodwin’s partner) as well as chatting with old school friends.

My only regret is that I barely got a chance to chat with some people I would have very much enjoyed catching up with properly, such as David French, Paul Spence and Nick Jarmany. Perhaps next time, although I hope our next time is a less formal gathering.

Next morning, there was no respite. Daisy and I got up to play tennis in our usual Sunday morning slot. Half way through the game, I realised that I had subconsciously donned a purple top and a purple bandanna. Purple. The Cribb’s House colour. Steeled by my renewed sense of tribal purpose, I naturally went on to win the set.

You can take the boy out of Cribbs House, but you cannot take Cribbs House out of the boy. — You can take the boy out of Cribb’s House, but you cannot take Cribb’s House out of the boy.

Twelfth Night, Alleyn’s School, 12, 14, 15 & 16 December 1978

Malvolio (Martin Brassell), Sir Toby Belch (Chris Grant) & Fabian (David Wellbrook). Thanks to Paul Hamer for extracting from Scriblerus.

Squeaky Newton (John Newton, the Deputy Head) tapped me up for this production, but I didn’t want to act again after the Andorra experience, which I had enjoyed but which had convinced me that, while I loved theatre, the boards weren’t really for me. But Squeaky persevered and suggested that I help with the production behind the scenes. I realised that I wanted to do that. He also suggested that I take a small part, Valentine, otherwise I’d feel a bit spare on the nights of the actual show.

Then, with various droppings out (Mark Stevens was originally cast as Antonio) I ended up with two parts and a fairly sizeable one in Antonio with only about four week’s notice for that one.

Meanwhile, I was so blasé about this production I didn’t mention it in my diary at all until a passing mention of “rehearsal” on Friday 17 November before going on to the grandmothers’ (yes, that apostrophe is in the right place, I did the rounds that night, “G Jenny for dinner, then on to G Anne”) places.

Occasional mentions of rehearsals for the rest of November, then best part of 2 weeks with no diary entries at all – very rare – but I guess the play and my other commitments were keeping me a bit too busy.

Next entry is 8 December “rehearsal for play till late”, then:

10 December “dress rehearsal went quite well for 12th Night”,
11 December “day of ignoring school play completely” (not really completely, because I mention the play in my diary entry),
12 December “12th Night matinee then on to BBYO (youth club) with makeup on still”,
13 December “day off from play”,
14 December “12th Night first proper night, very good”,
15 December “most important night of play – went brilliantly”,
16 December “went to school with Julie – last night of play – party afterwards which went on until one”.

I also have a small recollection of the after show party and its impact on the rest of my life – to follow/linked here.

Two more recollections about the production itself. Neil Kendrick, who was one of the officers, discombobulated one night and forgot to say the “away sir”…or whatever line it was that got Paddy Gray, me and him off the stage. I recall that Paddy and I needed to concoct some ad lib business to get the three of us the heck off the stage that night!!

Because I was late to the part of Antonio, I had limited time to learn lines and rehearse the part. Squeaky had also choreographed a brief sword fight with Sir Toby Belch (Chris Grant) before the law arrives, for which Chris and I were under-rehearsed.

One night, I think the first proper performance, unsurprisingly the fight went awry. Perhaps I got over-excited and forced too hard, or perhaps Chris wasn’t holding on tight enough to his sword. It’s too late now for blame or recriminations. Chris went on to be head boy and on the Board of Sport England, so let’s guess it was my fault.

Anyway, Chris’s sword flew out of his hand and over the edge of the stage. I remember listening out for a yelp from an impaled member of the audience, but I don’t think the sword had actually gone very far. Still, there we were, Chris and me, all dressed up, no place to go with our fight. The law weren’t expecting to come on to stop the fight for another 30 seconds or so. Another ad-lib classic, mercifully lost to posterity.

“Did you get good notices?” I hear you cry. Pretty good, it turns out. My recollection was that I had been damned with some faint praise, but in November 2020 Paul Hamer (thanks, Paul) dug out and dusted off his Scriblerus (as it were) to uncover the following rather charming notice by Chris Chivers, an English master who did not generally look kindly upon my slovenly approach to formal grammar.

With many thanks also to Mike Jones, who somehow survived being my form master and teaching me geography in the third year, preserved the programme and uploaded it to our Alleyn’s Facebook Group.

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