Tag: Resourceful

Some Weeks Without Theatre, Music Or Overseas Travel, But With People, Late March To Early April 1998

Grand Hotel, Hove (public domain picture)

As we had planned to be away for most of March, but changed our plans due to Phillipa’s indisposition, we had a few weeks of relatively low key activity that spring. Yet we ended up meeting and seeing a lot of people.

Introduced To Nigel Hinks, 20/27 March 1998

I very rarely talk about work-related matters in Ogblog, but by my meeting Charles Bartlett (in Autumn 1997) and Nigel Hinks in March 1998, through The Children’s Society, a tradition that endures a quarter of a century later was established:

Guest Piece by Nigel Hinks: The Birth Of The Heavy Rollers Tradition, Edgbaston, June 1998, Including The Revelations And Acts That Led To The Birth

In the matter of being introduced to Nigel, my diary has clear notes. I had a meeting with Clive Timms on 20 March 1998, at which he gave me Nigel Hinks & Jeff Tye’s telephone numbers. I had an initial telephone call with Nigel the following week (27 March) and the rest, as they say, history.

Charles & Nigel 15 years later, Chester-Le-Street: Clive didn’t mention the singing

A Resourceful Party, Thanks To Rupert Stubbs, 28 March 1998

Then a Chiswick home, latterly a Maldon Tea House

After speaking with Nigel on 27 March I went to play bridge at Maz’s place (almost certainly with Andrea and Tessa on that occasion), then on to Janie’s place.

That Saturday lunchtime Janie and I went to a party on Rupert Stubbs’s Thames Sailing Barge of a home, Resourceful. This might have been my first “return to the scene of the crime that was Michael Mainelli’s stag night” since that night.

Harrendous, A Poem For Michael Mainelli’s Stag Night, 3 May 1996

Janie and I remember this party surprisingly well. Rupie was going out with a lovely lass by the name of Sophie at that time. The party was mostly populated by people we didn’t know – i.e. we only knew a few of Rupert’s friends before the party. Most of the party goers were either Sophie’s fun friends, whom we got to know by dint of the party, and a rather cliquey crowd of Rupert’s colleagues from Saatchi & Saatchi who were, to say the least, not quite so friendly.

Here’s Rupie a few week’s later, at an early Z/Yen cricket match, donning whites in a Saatchi & Saatchi ad man stylee. The hat is an especially telling piece of non-cricket garb.

Anyway, the hospitality was lavish and there were plenty of fun people, so we had a really good time. We weren’t surprised when we learnt that Rupert had left Saatchi’s not all that long afterwards.

A Grand Time In Sussex, 3 & 4 April 1998

Records show that we stayed at The Grand Hotel in Hove – my first return to the place since my Geoffrey Boycott encounter there nearly 30 years earlier.

A Short Holiday In Brighton, During Which I Met Geoffrey Boycott & The Yorkshire Cricket Team, 3 September 1969

I think this visit was primarily to do with Janie doing a CPD course or joining a podiatrtist’s convention of some kind, but we were also able to combine it with a visit to Michelle & Neil’s [Epstein/Infield] place in Balcombe on the way back.

Central Balcombe Nigel Freeman, CC BY-SA 2.0

The hospitality will have been warm and friendly. I think that might have been the only time Janie visited Michelle & Neil’s place.

Harrendous, A Poem For Michael Mainelli’s Stag Night, 3 May 1996

Latterly a tea room in Maldon, at that time Rupert Stubbs’s home in Chiswick.

I wrote this parody poem for Michael Mainelli’s stag night, which was held on Rupert Stubbs’s barge in Chiswick.

A rare example of a piece I wrote and performed myself; given the cosy audience and their state at the time of the recitation, unsurprisingly it went down rather well.

HARRENDOUS
One of the most godawful lays made about the city MCMXCVI
(A poem not entirely dissimilar to Horatius by Lord Macaulay)

VERSE 1

Liz Lizbetchen, she of Chiswick
By the sauerkraut she swore
That the great house of Franken
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the sauerkraut she swore it,
And named a wedding day,
And bade her messengers set sail,
Letters, faxes, calls and e-mail,
To summon her array.

VERSE 2

Letters, faxes calls and e-mail
She let them know real fast,
In hamlet, town and cottage
And little places you’d drive past.
Shame on the false Etreusscan
Who lingers at the stalls,
When Lizbetchen of Chiswick
Has Michael by the balls.

VERSE 3

Now from the dock St Katherine’s
Could young Mainelli spy
The line of blazing bridesmaids
Across the midnight sky.
The buddies of Mainelli,
They sat all night and day,
For every hour some faxes came
With tidings of dismay.

VERSE 4

To London and to Franken
Have spread the Reusscan bands
Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecote
Unrenovated stands.
Bayswater down to Bishopsgate
Hath wasted in a dash;
Our Liz has stormed through Selfridges
And spent shitloads of cash.

VERSE 5

They held a council standing
Before the River Thames;
Short time was there, ye well may guess,
To stop him buying gems.
Out spake the Verschoyle roundly:
“That Liz must great go down;
Mainelli’s sense is truly lost,
We might as well rave on down.”

VERSE 6

Then out spake brave Harrendous,
The one from Michael’s firm:
“To every man upon this earth
Wedlock cometh like a germ.
And how can a man wed better
Than pissed as a bloody fart
Cos he’ll still be window shopping
For a fresh bit of jam tart.

VERSE 7

So start the rave Sir Rupie,
With all the speed ye may;
I with two more to help me,
Will get on down, way hay.
The legal limit of a thousand
May well be drunk by three.
Now who will stand on either hand
And get well pissed with me?

VERSE 8

Then out spake Lucas Clementus;
A boating man proud was he:
“Yo, I will stand at thy right hand,
And get well pissed with thee.”
Then out spoke Ricardus Sealyus,
Of filming man fame was he:
“I will abide on thy left side,
And get well pissed with thee.”

VERSE 9

Then out spake Marcus Schlossmanus,
A photographer proud and tall:
“Don’t mind if I do have a quick jar or two,
Until I’m senseless and I fall.”
Then out spake Julius Mountainous,
A friend from firms gone by:
“I’ll knock them back, build up a stack,
I can drink this damned barge dry.”

VERSE 10

Then out spake Rupius Stubbsius,
A Saatchi man by trade:
“Just hold it a tick with your big swinging dicks,
This is my party I’m afraid.
For stags at stag nights quarrel
Spared either girl or dame,
No maids, no duff, no bits of fluff,
Not even one that’s on the game.

VERSE 11

Imbibers oh imbibers!
It’s Michael we must drown,
A bachelor but a few days left,
So just shut up and party on down.”
So he spake and speaking sheathed
(tho “why sheathed” in this company? doesn’t it make you think??)
And with his wineglass in his hand
Plunged headlong in the drink.

VERSE 12

Years later, you’ll not remember
Much about that night gone by;
But you’ll recall the week of migraine
And that month of sustained red eye.
With weeping and with laughter
You’ll tell the stories right,
How well Mainelli held his drink,
On Michael’s wild stag night.

If you want to know what Horatius At The Bridge by Lord Macaulay actually reads like, click here for the poem. Trigger warning: if you think my parody version is too long, I wouldn’t try reading all 600 or so lines of the original.