Phillie loved a birthday party, but by 2009 the zest for a big do with lots of old friends had passed. But 2009 did mark Pauline’s 80th, so we arranged a small, just family evening in Janie’s garden.
What could possibly go wrong on 27 June? Well, for one thing, the weather turned locally awful on us that late afternoon and evening. While some parts of London got away with it, Ealing copped huge amounts of rain. We braved it in the garden for a while between showers until a heavy deluge came, which led to our retreat indoors.
There are some pictures from that do, but the indoor ones (most of them) have more red eye than a New York to London overnight flight. Click here to see them in Flickr.
I made up a pretty decent play list for that do, one of my earlier efforts, but it still sounds pretty good on the old iTunes – here’s a pdf of it: Worms Party 2009 pdf.
There are a few in jokes and references on that list. Firstly, a lot of jazz from 1929, which was the year of Pauline’s birth. Secondly, more Barry White than you might expect on one of my playlists; Phillie was especially partial to the Walrus of Love. Thirdly, rather a lot of Neil Young. That is because Neil Young was playing in Hyde Park that night. Tony, Chris and I had secretly plotted to sneak off to see “The Youngster” if Pauline played up at all. She didn’t play up and/or we didn’t have the courage to mutiny, beyond the knowing grins and glances when the Neil Young tracks came around.
Traditional gathering for the breaking of the fast, not that many of us fast. Even fewer this year, as this was the first such gathering without dad. I’m not sure anyone was quite on best form that year with the shock of it all, apart from Jacquie who will have laid on a magnificent feast as always.
Briegal table from a later year but the look would have been similar.
26 September: Middlesex AGM?
This cannot have been the AGM, which has to be in April, so perhaps it was just an end of season forum. Sportnetwork has lost the vital 2007 MTWD reports, but fortunately this one was written by Barmy Kev who sent his report to me for editing and uploading. So here it is:
Janie and I went to see Micky’s new offices in Hatton Garden and then went on for a meal with Kim & Micky. I cannot remember where we ate that time but it might well have been The Bleeding Heart.
29 to 30 September
We went out to Chipping Norton to help Charlie celebrate her 21st birthday. We stayed in the Crown and Cushion, where the event was held. Janie and I took The Duchess with us.
I remember we hated staying in the Crown and Cushion. Several times we hinted to Tony that we’d prefer to stay somewhere else, but he would insist that the management had changed or a refurb had been done since the last time…
…but in truth our sense of the place was that it simply got worse every time we stayed there.
You’re not exactly spoiled for choice in Chipping Norton.
Anyway, it made sense to stay there on this occasion because it was the venue for the big event. The family gathered as did friends and in-laws. Charlie seemed very happy with the event and I recall some informal gatherings before and after the main event to make a bit of a weekend of it.
Janie (Daisy) and I weren’t there for the tense ending of that match either. But we were nearby – there in spirit if not in body.
We had been eagerly following the match all day.
But that day was also the birthday of Daisy’s mother, The Duchess of Castlebar. I had bought tickets for the three of us to see a Bach concert at the Wigmore Hall for that evening.
Janie had quite recently acquired a taste for chamber concert halls and baroque music, perhaps a year or two earlier. The Duchess tended to prefer large scale concerts of the Proms variety; we mostly booked those for her. But the Proms don’t get going until a bit later in the summer and it was the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death that year. So Bach at The Wig it was to be.
Anyway, that afternoon the Lord’s Test Match was beautifully poised and/but for reasons I cannot recall – had there been a lot of overnight rain? – the day’s play had been delayed and was playing out until quite late.
The Duchess is an avid follower of the cricket as well as a music aficionado. We called her to let her know that we were on the way to collect her. We could all listen to the ending of the cricket match together on the car radio on our way to The Wig.
As we drove to the Duchess’s residence, England wickets fell and the match seemed to be drifting in The West Indies direction. Daisy and I anticipated a dark mood and we were not disappointed.
Thrown it away, they’ve thrown it away…
…said The Duchess. We set off for Marylebone (the southern end thereof).
The Duchess explained to us, as she had several times before, that Denis (Compton), Ted (Dexter), Colin (Cowdrey) Ken (Barrington), Geoffrey (Boycott) and players of that ilk – whom she had met together with her late husband in the good old days- would not have thrown it away like this.
We arrived at The Wigmore Hall. England hadn’t lost a wicket for a while. Was it possible that they could snatch victory from the very jaws of defeat?
Daisy parked up – it was a warm sunny evening so we sat in the car with the roof open and the car radio on, listening to the denouement of the cricket match.
The Duchess Of Castlebar
Try to imagine the scene, dear reader, as it must have looked to passing tourists who understand little or nothing about cricket. A distinguished-looking septuagenarian with her family sitting in a car leaping around in their seats, oohing and aahing every 45 seconds or so as the commentator spoke.
Then, those same seemingly dignified folk whooping for joy for a while, before sealing up the car and entering the Wigmore Hall. Tourists: meet the English.
Basically it was an organ recital of JS Bach works by Jennifer Bate. When you click that preceding link you get some eye candy as well as the organist in question, as Jennifer Bate shares her name with a subsequent Miss England and sporting WAG.
Click the pic to read about the organist Jennifer Bate
It was a fine concert of mostly well-known Bach organ works. An example of one of the pieces (Bach after Vivaldi as it happens) can be seen and heard below.
A slightly sad coda to this Ogblog piece was the discovery that Jennifer Bate died in March 2020, just a few weeks before I wrote this piece.
Here’s another video of her playing one of the pieces we heard that night; Concerto in C BWV 595 (Ernst arr. Bach).
A successful night at The Questors with the Duchess (Janie’s mum). I wrote,
very good,
in my log, which will be a comment on the play/production rather than The Duchess’s conduct.
Janie and I subsequently saw a superb production of this play at The Donmar.
I recall having some reservations about seeing an amateur production of this great play, but actually The Questors had actors and creatives of sufficient quality to carry this work well.
Janie’s diary suggests that we went to eat at a place named Rastificia afterwards, on Ealing Broadway, at 10:30. Sounds like Jamaican food from the name.
Just what Janie and I will have needed on a Friday evening after a long week’s work. No doubt the waiters made a fuss of The Duchess and no doubt she wanted to stay for one more cigarette at the end of the meal, so we’ll have got home very late indeed.
Also, no doubt, the deal was that The Duchess did the theatre tickets, Janie did the interval drinks and I did the meal. [Note to historians – The Duchess got several pairs of guest tickets free each year with her membership of The Questors – I’m pretty sure we didn’t go any more often than the using up of the freebies allowed].
“Parsimony is the best policy” – The Duchess of Castlebar
In those days we used to take Janie’s mum, Pauline, aka The Duchess, to the Proms at least a couple of times a season.
She was partial to a bit of Mahler, and a bit of Ludwig van…
…and a bit of verbal ultraviolence, now I come think of it.
Anyway, this is what we heard:
Symphony No 7 in A major by Ludwig van Beethoven
Violin Concerto by Alban Berg
Adagio from Symphony No 10 by Gustav Mahler
Henry V: A Shakespeare Scenario – Touch Her Soft Lips and Part by William Walton, arr. C. Palmer (encore)
The Hallé Orchestra, leader Lyn Fletcher, conductor Kent Nagano, violinist Kyung-Wha Chung.
All that information and more is on the excellent BBC Proms stub for this concert, which also enables you to hear and read about the stuff we heard – click here.
Janie’s diary suggests that we ate at Golden Chopsticks afterwards, with the helpful name “Mr Chow” jotted beside the phone number. (Harrington Road…long since gone.)
Judging by all the scribbles in Janie’s diary, she put a heck of a lot of effort into arranging a family do at Sandall Close for her mum, Pauline (Duchess of Castlebar)’s 70th birthday.
The out of town bits of the family will have stayed at local hotels.
The menu and arrangements look to me as though she got Murray Tollemache aka The Pie Man to cater this one. He was certainly one of our favourite dudes for Z/Yen functions at that time and the order list of pies is a bit of a giveaway.
Strangely, 25 years after the event (and many more years after Murray started The Pie Man business, he’s still going strong under the name TPM Catering.
Most of the family probably appreciated the effort that Janie had gone to. The Duchess almost certainly didn’t.
Coincidentally, Janie and I went to see Dinner With The Family with the Duchess the following week.
We went with The Duchess, as was always the case at The Questors. She was a member and got a certain number of guest passes “thrown in” with her membership. She was determined to take advantage of those.
Janie’s diary informs me that she collected oxtail that earlier day and that we all went to Mama Amalfi for dinner after the show.
We went to the Questor’s with The Duchess (Janie’s mum) that night. Unusually, there is no mention of a meal in a restaurant afterwards, but Janie’s diary has lots of notes about her mum going off to Tunisia on holiday the next day, so my guess is that we agreed to just go to the theatre and separately had light suppers at the respective homes afterwards.
As for the play/production, I noted that this was a:
…very good Questor’s production
Janie and I are especially partial to Tennessee Williams – it is a credit to this production that we liked it, as we sense that Williams is not easy to produce well. The Rose Tattoo is not Williams best/easiest play either.
It is inappropriate to compare the two – Zoe Wannamaker played the lead at The National. Suffice it to say that I remember both productions well and fondly.
I think I have the programme somewhere but this was on my mystery list until I found it in both our diaries while doing one of my “25 years on” trawls.
This was a “birthday treat” for Janie in which I expect i picked up the tab and Pauline, Duchess of Castlebar, graced us with her presence.
Janie’s not much one for opera but we all agreed that Carmen was a good place to really test that hypothesis. I had “done” Carmen as a small child of course – type cast as an urchin boy – another story for another Ogblog.
Anyway…
…this was the Jonathan Miller production at the ENO.
Edward Seckerson in The Independent sort-of liked it:
I think we were fairly indifferent to the production. It certainly wasn’t as good as the Putney Operatic Society’s version 25 years earlier…I wasn’t in it for a start.
But all is not lost – it turns out that The Questors Theatre has one of the best theatrical archives of their own productions on the planet (who knew?), so everything you ever wanted to know about this production (or indeed any Questors production) and more besides, is preserved. Click here for The Journalists.
Ink was not cluttered, although I did get spluttered…
…but that’s another story.
We no doubt took Pauline on to Noughts & Crosses, or possibly Lisa’s, or possibly Wine & Moussaka afterwards.
Pauline will have done the Questors tickets, which was very generous of her (she didn’t have to pay anything for two guest tickets), Janie will have done the interval drinks and I will have sported the dinner. Fair dinkum.
