Tag: MTWD

Dinner With John White at Hereford Road, Preceded and Followed by a spot of cricket at Lord’s, 3 September 2008, plus a snippet on 4 September 2008

Wednesday 3 September 2008

One of the regular/irregular meet ups between me and John White. John had not yet been to Lord’s to see proper (i.e. red ball, white clothing) cricket, nor had he yet done the pavilion thing.

As it was my turn to choose the eating venue, I hatched a plan for the meal to be at Hereford Road (which I was sure would be to John’s taste) and for both of us to finish work early for a change, starting our late afternoon at Lord’s. My e-mail to John a couple of days before:

We’re meeting early at Lord’s if you are still on for that – I have 4:30/4:45 in my diary.  I have booked Hereford Road for dinner – excellent restaurant between Lord’s and my place – owned and cheffed by the former chef from St John.

So John joined me at Lord’s for an hour or so of cricket and the informal tour of the pavilion, then the restaurant, both of which he seems to have enjoyed – John’s subsequent e-mail words:

As always a lovely evening.  It was very kind of you to let me into Lord’s.  Although nobody is really that interested I have been endlessly describing the various bars, characters and atmosphere of the place.  I don’t know if you won?  Orient managed a 2-0 win away at Walsall on Saturday if you’re interested.

The restaurant got and still gets good reviews:

As for the cricket, I did return the next day…

Thursday 4 September 2008

…but again only for the last couple of hours, primarily as a convivial meeting place with Steve Tasker to go through some UNISON business; probably thinking through project budgets for 2009. I’m sure we got to see a bit of cricket and enjoy a beer at the end of the day as well.

As for the Friday and the remainder of the match – I wrote that up at length at the time for both MTWD and King Cricket – all linked up and explained through the following Ogblog piece – click here. Rain-affected draw for those uninterested in clicking through to read the slapstick exploits of Ged and Charley “The Gent” Malloy, yet interested in an ancient match result.

Barmy Kev Grapples With The Authorities While I Do Some Judging, Middlesex v Leicestershire Days 2 & 3, 22 August 2008

I tended to get strange e-mails from Barmy Kev in those days, while I was editing Middlesex Till We Die (MTWD):

“Can’t get me poll up”…

…being one that caught my eye as I tried to do forensics on my strange diary scribbles and the even stranger MTWD match reporting for some of this match.

Then I found the Barmy e-mail I was actually looking for:

We seem to be just about OK with reporting for 5 days…
…I will attend 1st session Thurs morning.  A strange irony, luckily I realised over weekend my passport has just expired.  I have arranged emergency passport re-issued at Victoria Thurs morning which takes 4 hours. While waiting I’ll be at Lords.  May ask some Leics players if I can help them out while I’m there.
It is very unlikely I’ll be attending another game this season.

The joke about Leicestershire players was born of the feeling at that time that a couple of counties were relying very heavily on the Kolpak ruling to import a great many players rather than grow their own. Frankly, at that time, Middlesex were not doing much better in the home grown v imports department, but at least had been sowing the seeds of a much improved youth system.

Anyway, it seems that Barmy Kev sort-of produced a report and I sort-of filled in the gaps and here is a link to that sort-of report – credited to Kev feat. Ged. 

My diary suggests that I wasn’t at the ground on the Thursday but was there on the Friday… …I think I managed to rejig things a little and get to the ground for some of the day both of those days.

My main task at the tail end of that week was going through the Payroll Giving Awards; an event for which I was chairing the panel of judges at that time. Lord’s was an ideal venue for going through the thick file of applications and that match perfectly timed for the task. I just didn’t want match reporting duties as well.

Unlike the Thursday, on the Friday it seems we had an embarrassment of riches in the reporting department; Daria and Seaxe Man. It seems I had tried to relieve Seaxe Man of the duties but that he had missed the message, so I published two very different takes about the same dull day of cricket – click here.

Derbyshire v Middlesex In Spirit But Not In Person For Half A Day – MTWD Match Report, 12 August 2008

Monkey-face – writer.

Sometimes we found it hard to recruit reporters for every day; especially for away fixtures such as, with all due respect, Derbyshire.

So on this occasion, we “recruited” Hippity and Monkey-Face to report for half a day – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – Bunny and Monkey Spend a Half Day in Derby

Astute Ogblog followers might read between the lines and conclude that I perhaps did some work that day and/but was able to spend some of the day at home with the internet radio on…

…there was no happy ending to this match for Middlesex supporters a few days later – click here for scorecard.

Middlesex v Worcestershire Days 1 and 3 at Lord’s, Co-starring Ed Smith & Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 22 and 24 July 2008

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, photo by Sarah Josephine Taleb, via Wikimedia Commons

Tuesday

I’m not certain when I was first approached by Ed Smith at Lord’s, but I am pretty sure it was on the first day of this match, 22 July, “The Longest Groundhog Day”, which I reported (mainly through MTWD) – click here for the Ogblog links.

Ed had been injured early in the T20 campaign – see my Ogblog about the day it happened here. As it turned out, the injury was a career ending injury, but at the time Ed was simply at a loose end around Lord’s hoping to recover quickly.

As I understand it, Richard Goatley suggested that Ed have a chat with me about stuff, possibly in part to clear the office at a crazy time (SGM day), possibly in part because he thought that Ed and I might not only find stuff to talk about, but even be able to tolerate each other while doing so.

First I knew of it was an SMS, which seemed to come from Ed Smith, suggesting we meet for a chat. At first I thought it was a joke/hoax (I was editing MTWD back then) but anyway it wasn’t a hoax. I did wonder whether Ed knew that I was MTWD’s Ged, but we never discussed the matter and (strangely) I have never asked Richard Goatley whether Ed was told/knew. I might ask Richard one day.

In any case, that Tuesday I was reporting for MTWD, but there was so much else going on I was able to fill my report with stuff and not feel that I was giving the readers short change by omitting the Ed Smith bits.

I recall a conversation about Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Ed had been asked to write a review of and/or comment upon The Black Swan. Ed said he was finding it impenetrable and asked if I had read it. I told him I had read it and recommended, as a way in to Taleb, Fooled By Randomness and the essay The Fourth Quadrant; the latter (in my opinion) being much shorter and much more to the point than The Black Swan.

A few months later, Ed wrote a piece (I think for The Times) about Lord’s being the only place on earth where you can strike up a random conversation about Nassim Nicholas Taleb and end up chatting with someone who knows as much, if not more, about Taleb than you do!

Thursday

Originally there would have been no hope of getting to any more of the Worcestershire match, but in the event both of my Thursday business meetings were moved; in the case of the Z/Yen Board meeting brought forward to the Wednesday.

That enabled me to pick up a copy of Fooled By Randomness (we had a few) and take it to Lord’s with me for Ed on the Thursday. So as it turned out, I got to see two days of that match and spend a bit more time chatting with Ed Smith.

The only problem with that was the cricket, which was mostly seeing Middlesex getting beaten up by relatively lowly Worcestershire.

Here’s a link to the scorecard.

The MTWD reporter that third day, Southgate Emerald, is prone to call a spade a bleeding shovel; this day was no exception – click here.

I remember that I did watch the denouement of the Worcestershire match with Ed and I remember that we discussed whether the player’s minds were on topic or whether thoughts of Finals Day at the Rose Bowl were more to the fore. We also wondered whether the extra day’s rest would help Middlesex ahead of Saturday’s massive event. As I recall it, our combined wisdom concluded that we didn’t have a clue.

Sound judgement, that.

The Longest Groundhog Day, MTWD Report on Middlesex v Worcestershire Day One at Lord’s, Followed by the SGM That Wasn’t, 22 July 2008

I previewed the Special General Meeting (SGM) in an editorial piece a couple of weeks before the event – click here.

Basically I spent the day at the cricket and then the evening at the SGM that, in the end, wasn’t an SGM.

Confused? I’m not sure if my MTWD review of the day and evening will help you, but there’s only one way to find out – click here.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – The Longest Groundhog Day – Middx v Worcs Day One

Eight and a half years on, I have nothing to add to that report, other than hope that we never, ever, ever have to go through all that again!

Middlesex CCC Gets Political, MTWD Editorial, 10 July 2008

Between the works outing to the horses on 9 July – click here… 

…and the Lord’s test match weekend 11 & 13 July – click here…

…you’d have thought that I had enough real work to do.

Which I probably did.

But still I wrote the editorial contained in the following link, to encourage people to vote wisely in the forthcoming Middlesex CCC no confidence vote/Special General Meeting.

Here’s a link to the editorial.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – Editorial_ Vote NO, Vote In Advance By Proxy

The irony of course was that Middlesex had got to finals day of the T20 competition and the SGM was scheduled for the Tuesday before the big day. Not ideal.

It all came good in the end. Doesn’t read too clever from my 10 July 2008 editorial though. Here’s the link again.

 

Try To Remember/The Way We Won, Middlesex v Lancashire T20 Quarter Final, Oval, 8 July 2008

“The grass was greener
The skies were bluer
And smiles were bright”

…as Gladys Knight used to put it, back in the good old days.

I’m not sure that the grass at the Oval was greener than the grass is at Lord’s, but Middlesex had to play its hard-won home quarter-final away from Lord’s, as Lord’s was already taken for a traditional match of some description; armed services, varsity, eating an arrow, or whatever.

I’m not sure the skies were bluer in SE11 than they were in NW8 either, although the Oval is that tiny bit nearer the equator than Lord’s I suppose.

My smile was especially bright, not only at the end of the match when Middlesex won, but even before the match. I know for sure that I had gleaming gnashers that day, because my trusty diary tells me that I went to see Carita, the best dental hygienist in the world, that very morning.

My smile was certainly absent about 15-20 minutes into the match. Godleman, Shah, Joyce and Scott all back in the hutch for diddly-squat; not just defeat but the prospect of embarrassing defeat loomed. Televised potentially embarrassing defeat too.

I was sitting with MTWD stalwarts in the Oval pavilion. I particularly recall Neil “Lord of the Chairs” Walker and Chris Thomas. We also saved a seat for the late Barmy Kev who I think joined us while we were in the depths of despair. Jez I seem to remember was away, hoping to get back in time, but didn’t/couldn’t show in the end.

In brief, Dawid Malan saved the day, initially with Eoin Morgan, then subsequently with Typhoon Tyron Henderson, avoiding embarrassment and then posting a challenging score. Indeed, it turned out to be a winning score.

Here is a link to the scorecard.

Here is a link to the MTWD match report, an emotive piece by LizzieJ.

The mood in our group improved, to say the least, as the evening wore on. I don’t remember all that much about it, except that huge swing of emotions as the mood turned from despair to hope and eventually joy. I’m pretty sure there was some consumption of beer, unless there was some consumption of wine. I think more likely the former or a fair bit of both.

Perhaps some of the people who were there with me that evening have better memories of it and would care to chime in with some memories.

It was one heck of an evening. And if you were a Middlesex fan, you didn’t need to have seen Carita the dental hygienist that morning for the smiles to be bright, so bright.

A Quieter Couple of Weeks, Ending in Gastro Bistro, Clapham, 6 July 2008

After the wonderful yet strange evening in Uxbridge 24 June, a quieter couple of weeks before the next excitement.

25 June

There was an England v New Zealand ODI at the Oval, which I didn’t attend but I was able to catch the end of it on the TV after work. The scorecard – click here – reveals how close the game was but does not reveal the controversy over Collingwood’s captaincy after he insisted, against the advice of the umpires, on progressing a run out appeal in unusual circumstances, against Grant Elliot – the Kiwis went on to win the match anyway. The Sussex v Middlesex match that evening seemed tame by way of comparison; I’m pretty sure I listened to most of it:

27 & 28 June

The last T20 group match was at the Oval against Surrey. I know I missed it completely, because Daisy and I were taken out for dinner by Jamil and Souad – I’m pretty sure we went to Noura in Belgravia, but Daisy’s diary should confirm or deny when we get around to checking – see “A Couple of nights out”.

27 & 28 June

A yes, we indeed had a couple of nights out:

A Brace Of Birthday Dinners For Daisy, 27 & 28 June 2008

4 July

Following a working week that looked quite light on meetings and evening engagements, but did include another Z/Yen Boat Trip on the Wednesday, on the Friday, I took a day out at Uxbridge. Middlesex were hosting the visiting South Africans in a warm-up match.

I wrote quite a lengthy report for MTWD on that day – click here.

Here is the scorecard from that tour match.

6 July

A relatively quiet weekend culminating in a lunch out with my mum at Gastro in Clapham. I had not seen this Jay Rayner review – click here – when I booked it.

It seems to divide opinion on TripAdvisor too – click here.

Actually, Janie and I rather liked the place, but I do recall that the Sunday menu was not quite as advertised and in any case the dishes on offer were of an kind unfamiliar to mum, who got a bit shirty about it all.

I’m not too sure how the matter got resolved but I seem to recall the lunch event being salvaged somehow, I think through some good staff making appropriate amounts of fuss around mum and looking after her nicely. Or did we move on to another place to get that fuss? Janie might remember.

I do recall resolving not to book such a place again for mum – the familiar “old-fashioned Italian or French bistro” places she’d been to before being the best bet for her now. Oh well.

Middlesex v South Africans Day One, Uxbridge, MTWD Report, 4 July 2008

Tour matches between county sides and visiting international teams used to be a major part of the first class cricket summer. Now they are simply warm up matches, occasionally good for the county coffers but (in Middlesex’s case) usually a break-even proposition at best at outgrounds.

But from the cricket-lover’s point of view, a delightful day of first class cricket can ensue, as it did when the South Africans visited Uxbridge in 2008.

I wrote up the day for MTWD – Lovely Day For A Whipping – SA at Uxbridge Day One – here.

Just in case anything ever happens to MTWD, I have scraped the piece to Ogblog – only click the link below if the link above doesn’t work:

Middlesex till we die – Lovely Day For A Whipping – SA at Uxbridge Day One

I do remember that Friday being a lovely day. I especially remember seeing Amla live for the first time. At first i couldn’t work out what the fuss was about, but once he got set, he looked top notch.

Not that such matches matter, but for completist enthusiasts who don’t want to have to do too much clicking…here’s a link to the scorecard. Sadly the weather turned sour on the match over the weekend.

Nuts…Crackers…Sweet, Middlesex v Kent T20, Uxbridge, 24 June 2008

Your nuts, sir…you’re nuts, sir?

After the Richmond debacle on the Sunday – click here-  Middlesex had played seven, won five, lost two. That sounded great, except that the losses were the most recent matches and we knew from bitter experience that Middlesex’s T20 squad could snatch failure from the jaws of success.

This Uxbridge game against Kent was to be the last home game and seemed vitally important at the time. A win would mean qualification for the quarter-finals. Defeat would mean the need to win at least one of the two remaining away matches.

In the end I worked from home that day. I was due to be at a meeting in Westminster early afternoon to discuss a publication on business ethics I was being asked to edit. I did end up editing it, but the meeting that day got postponed.

I ended up taking the tube to West Ruislip and walking from there – a long but pleasant walk – an easier journey on a good weather day than tubing into town and then out again to Uxbridge.

Barmy Jez, who was working for Ged Ladd & Co in those days, tubed it to Uxbridge with some difficulty if I recall correctly, arriving “fashionably late”. But Barmy Kev and I had found a suitable second row seat on the side boundary and saved Jez a seat. Middlesex were in a spot of bother when Jez arrived, but then revived, which also revived our spirits. A couple of beers probably helped revive our spirits too.

In front of us sat a father and son combination; the father quite old, the son middle-aged or perhaps a young fogey. The father turned around and asked us to quieten down, as we were disturbing his peaceful evening at the cricket. I’m not sure that the marketing gurus who invented Domestic T20 quite had “quiet, peaceful evening matches in Uxbridge” in mind when they invented the format. (Ged makes a note to ask Stuart Robertson that question if ever he gets the chance).

I had brought plenty of picnic food with me, so, during the innings break, I tried to placate the irate gentleman by offering him a packet of M&S Sea Salt and Black Pepper Cashews – a not insubstantial offering in the circumstances. The man looked at me incredulously.

“Are you taking the Mick?”, he asked.

“No, I’m sorry we disturbed you and am offering you a small gift by way of apology”, I said.

“You’re suggesting that I’m nuts, aren’t you?” said the man.

I kept the cashews.

The father and son moved their chairs a bit to place some distance between themselves and us; we weren’t regretful.

Barmy Kev suggested later that I should have offered him some crackers instead. Sweet.

The cricket match ebbed and flowed. We tried not to get too noisily excited, which was quite difficult because it was a very exciting match.

It went down to the last over. Kent was one of the better T20 sides and we all knew that team’s capacity to pull off unlikely wins. But on that occasion they fell a few runs short.

Little did we know at the time how much the match was to foreshadow the final, which took place a month or so later. But for sure that was the evening that I really started to think, “gosh, we are capable of beating the best sides even in tight finishes this season. Maybe, just maybe we could win this tournament this year”.

Click here for the Uxbridge scorecard.

The MTWD match reporter that evening was Daria – an excellent writer – I wonder what became of her? It is a superb MTWD match report – click here.

Strangely and unusually, one of the King Cricket regulars, Soviet Onion had a match report for the same game published on King Cricket – click here, describing going to the cricket at Uxbridge with his dad. Surely Soviet Onion couldn’t be…couldn’t possibly be…Son of Nut Man?  No, I really don’t think so.