Tag: Rohan Candappa

“You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Immature Forever”, Dinner With Fellow Alleyn’s Alums, Then Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve, The Other Palace, 8 October 2024

Olly Goodwin having received his Olly-Vier Theatre Award from Rohan Candappa

The above quote comes from Germaine Greer. It is apposite to both elements of the enjoyable evening I am about to describe.

“It was Candappa’s fault, Sir”. That non-quote is nevertheless true – this evening would not have happened, had it not been for Rohan Candappa doing his thing, both in terms of keeping us ’73-’80 Alleyn’s alums together and in helping to promote writing and theatrical talent.

Kat Kleve first came into my orbit when she worked with Rohan on One Starts in a Barber’s, One Starts in a Bar, which several of us Alleyn’s alums first saw at the Gladstone Arms in the autumn of 2018, after which it went to Edinburgh the next year and ultimately Kat’s bit ended up being Rohan’s first Lockdown Theatre production, And You Are? You can read all about it by clicking here or the link below.

And You Are? by Rohan Candappa, Lockdown Theatre Company, 24 March 2020

At the time, I gave that piece the wildest praise I could conjure at the time:

Better than watching Boris Johnson telling you what to do and what not to do – Ian Harris, Ogblog.

Strangely, neither Kat nor Rohan latched on to that quote for promotional purposes at the time. Pearls…

…anyway, this time around Kat is performing her own show, written with Lizzy Connelly, named Tink. The play did famously well at Edinburgh in 2023 and now has a London run at The Other Palace. Book early to avoid disappointment.

Hence Rohan’s idea for us alums to meet up there for a bite, a drink and a show.

As coincidence would have it, Olly Goodwin was a Trustee of The Theatres Trust back when The Other Palace was just an idea. Olly was instrumental in helping that project get its planning permission. If you have ever wondered why that building has a glorious but perhaps incongruous-looking marble staircase…

…ask Olly. And if you have ever wondered why Rohan thought fit to award Olly Goodwin with an Olly-Vier Theatre Award…see headline photo…the answer is intrinsically connected to the above coincidence.

The food was pretty good and the serving staff delightful at The Other Palace, even when Olly exclaimed:

Hey, why have you served Ben with his drink before serving mine, which I ordered earlier?…

…ignoring the large glass of wine that the waitress had placed in front of him a few moments before serving Ben. That wine glass is also commemorated in the headline picture.

Here is the whole scene just before we went into the theatre…except that my lens isn’t wide enough to have captured all the group and I have cruelly left out our ringleader, Rohan.

You’ll just have to take my word for it that Rohan is like a kid in the proximity of a candy store on such occasions.

Ah, there he is…

Actually, we all tend to display our inner overgrown schoolboy modes when we get together, which is at least some of the point behind getting together. As Germaine Greer said:

You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Immature Forever.

Anyway, recollecting our youth over dinner will have helped prepare us for the coming of age musical, Tink, which we then went down the Olly Goodwin Memorial Marble Staircase to see.

Tink by Lizzy Connolly & Kat Kleve

Here is a link to the Other Place information and resources on this show.

Here’s the trailer:

The conceit of the piece is that the central character – this is a one person show – is a modern Tinkerbell, growing up in the early 21st century rather than the early 20th century character in Peter Pan.

Not in truth my type of show, but Kat Kleve is a very talented and versatile performer, so there was plenty to enjoy in the performance.

It’s basically a coming of age story set in a fairies and elves context, which seemed startlingly like a human context to me. I liked the agonies Tink goes through around trying too hard to be the best at everything (which, it seems, is not guaranteed to make you popular – who knew?) and the social mores around how to dress and behave at teenage parties.

Especially interesting, to me, was the business around social media, which hadn’t been invented when we were kids. I’d long suspected that it is probably even harder to bee a teenager now than it was back in our day – this play illustrated some of the reasons why.

The songs are not really my type of songs either. They reminded me a little of Ed Sheeran and Meghan Trainor style singer-songwriter songs. Very well delivered, though. Here is an example of one of the songs:

That style of song might be spot on for the intended audience for this show, which I imagine to be a bit younger than me. We were there for the opening night and didn’t feel out of place, but I suspect that the average age of the audience will come down a decade or two on most other nights…

…apart from the nights for which Rohan is taking a posse of his friends.

The show runs until 20 October, so if you are reading this in time you might well want to click this link and grab some tickets, before dynamic pricing takes Kat Kleve out of your price range.

The Phone Call by Nashmash, Royal National Theatre, 27 February 2024

“I can’t talk now, darling, I’m performing at the National”

Yes, this was the night that I and several others from Threadmash performed at the National Theatre.

Threadmash Begets NashMash

Threadmash is one of Rohan Candappa’s bright ideas. We have been meeting on and off for five years now, writing short pieces to order and then performing them to each other (and occasionally also to invitees). Here is a link to my write up of the first event, which includes my first Threadmash piece:

The Rohan Thing, My Short Performance Piece As Part Of Rohan Candappa’s Inaugural Threadmash, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2019

The idea needed to morph into ThreadZoomMash during the pandemic and now seems to have retained the capital M for mash. If you are a real glutton for this sort of thing, this link here is a tag for all of the ThreadMash pieces on Ogblog, which will include this one.

Anyway…

…Rohan decided to try the National Theatre foyer bars as a venue this time around – cunningly timed with two quite long plays at the Olivier and Lyttelton both starting at 19:30. That gave us ample time to perform in the relative quiet between the start of the plays and the intervals.

The relative quiet was rather noisily broken by the bar staff hoovering up around us, very early in the reading of Geraldine’s piece, but we’ll put that temporary disturbance aside. The venue worked.

And we can all honestly claim now that we have performed at The National Theatre.

Rohan threaded our pieces together, as is his way. In this instance, with the topic “The Phone Call”, Rohan’s thread covered Alexander Graham Bell‘s innovation, the practical telephone. Also the contribution of the lesser known but colourful Florentine, Antonio Meucci, who largely invented that communication method before Bell, but was too polite to patent the critically novel elements of the technology he had discovered.

Geraldine’s piece came first. A charming throwback to 1973, Geraldine recounted her mother’s almost infeasibly regular long-distance calls to Geraldine (who had escaped to New York). Geraldine’s mum persistently tried, in vain, to persuade her daughter to return to “Hicksville” and resume the “normal” life into which Geraldine had, to her mother’s perception, been born.

Rohan then reminded us all that Alexander Graham Bell’s first phone call was to an employee who awaited his call…

Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you

…starting the mighty tradition of bosses using such devices to issue instructions to underlings.

Rohan was rather sniffy about my ability to follow a simple instruction – i.e. to write a story about a phone call. I cannot imagine what Rohan’s beef might have been.

The Phone Call by Ian Harris

We don’t go out so much anymore. Not since the pandemic. It’s not a fear of infection or anything like that.  It’s just that we have got out of the habit.  It now takes something especially interesting or unusual to lure us back to the theatre or concert hall. 

One such interesting concert caught our eyes recently – a concert of African chamber music at the Wigmore Hall, led by Tunde Jegede, who is both a virtuoso kora player and a classically-trained cellist. The kora is a large West-African 21-stringed plucking instrument, sometimes described as a cross between a lute and a harp. 

Janie and I like the Wigmore Hall. It is one of the few remaining public spaces where we still normally bring down the average age of the audience quite significantly. But we soon saw, on arrival at the Wigmore Hall for the kora concert, that this audience was different. Only sparsely populated with “the usual suspects”, the average age of the audience was, horror of horrors, below ours.

The front row still had a comfortingly senior look. Next to Janie was a beaming, white-haired woman you might have got from central casting had you requested “a left-over hippy”.  The woman was very friendly and chatty – clearly not part of the regular front row mafia. Familiar with the kora – she had spent time in West Africa when younger – she was a fan of Tunde Jegede’s playing but had not previously managed to see him play live. She was, as the young folk say, super-excited.

The first half of the concert was truly magical. Tunde had brought with him a posse of chamber musicians from Lagos, together with a wonderful percussionist. We were transported by the music, not least the entrancing sound of Tunde’s kora-playing. 

During the interval, our friendly neighbour said that she was delighted with the live music experience and thrilled that we had enjoyed it. She recommended and wrote down the names of a couple of Tunde’s albums for us to follow up, which we did. 

I wondered what those silky-sounding kora strings are made of. Our otherwise-expert neighbour didn’t know. More or less at that moment, Tunde came on to the stage to rearrange the setting for the second half of the concert. As he was standing, with his kora, about three yards away from me, it seemed only polite to ask him about the strings.  

I was expecting the answer to be something along the lines of, “skin from an antelope’s anus or a sitatunga’s scrotum“. But instead, Tunde simply said, “Nylon”. “Just Nylon”, I asked, hoping for more enlightenment. “Just Nylon”, said Tunde, gently.

The second half of the concert was also good but less to our taste. Tunde didn’t play his kora – instead he demonstrated his skills as a cellist. The fusion theme was retained, as the pieces were arrangements of traditional African music, but to us the real magic had been the kora.

I tried to work out the common theme in Tunde’s unusual choice of devices for his multi-instrumentalism.  I concluded that Tunde likes making music while holding his instrument between his legs.

525 WORDS

I smiled to myself as I hit the save button and e-mailed my piece to Rohan Candappa for review.

Ninety minutes later, my iPhone buzzed.

It was Rohan.

“Ian, old chap”, said Rohan. “A charming vignette, but it has nothing to do with the subject and title – The Phone Call”. 

“I beg to differ”, I said.  “The piece is absolutely about The Phone Call”.  The introductory story about the kora concert is a MacGuffin. The main story is about the phone call.

“Well”, said Rohan, “I did consider e-mailing you, but then…”

“…never explain”, I interrupted. “You and I have collaborated on and off for over 50 years now, Rohan. Many things don’t need to be said.”

I pressed the “end call” button.

Koras Of Approval: Tunde Jegede & Friends At The Wigmore Hall, 17 February 2024
AKA “The Phone Call”

Returning To NashMash

It seemed that everyone else was able to understand and obey a simple instruction from Rohan…even Jan.

Strangely, Jan, like Geraldine, had set her story in 1973. Without conferring. The central conceit of Jan’s story, which revolved around an uprooted little girl whose family had recently moved to a different town, was a troubling phone call aimed at one or both parents, inadvertently picked up by the little girl.

Similarly strange was the structural similarity between Jan’s and Julie’s story, which was also about a troubling phone call picked up by someone other than the intended recipient of the call. Julie’s was not set in a particular bygone year, but the details within the story suggested 1970s as well.

David’s story was about a character who bought a vintage GPO rotary telephone through the internet and, as a result, got a phone call more than he had bargained for.

All of The Phone Call stories were charming, thought-provoking and enjoyable to hear. It was also very pleasing to spend time with the ThreadMash gang again, even though we were a somewhat depleted group on this occasion.

Sadly, Kay, who was going to join us, was unable to attend due to the recent death of her mother. Yet Kay made a charming contribution to the collection of stories by e-mail a couple of days later:

“Here is my belated contribution to “The Call”. In the endless process of clearing out my mum’s house, we found the tin in which I used to save my phone money when I was a kid. Like many others, I was expected to pay for my calls!”

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and my goodness that picture of Kay’s is worth at least that many. But Rohan had instructed us to limit our stories to a maximum of 800 words. Honestly, some people can’t comply with the simplest of instructions from the ThreadMaster.

Blooming Heck I Was Out A Lot That Week, 23 to 26 May 2023

Thanks to David Wellbrook for the above picture of me, him & Rohan Candappa

Tuesday 23 May – Brasserie Zédel With Wellbrook & Candappa

I’ve known Rohan Candappa & David Wellbrook for very nearly 50 years now. Rohan is very good at keeping in touch and occasionally just saying, “let’s meet” and/or “there’s something I want to chat through with you fellas”.

We responded to the call. David booked Brasserie Zédel, a favourite place of his. As it happens, I had wanted to try the place for some time, ever since I discovered that my grandfather, Lew Marcus, worked there for decades as a barber in the Regent Palace Hotel, rising to the giddy heights of manager I am told:

Turn It Up To Max & Spit: The Baltic Origins Of My Mother’s (Marcus) Family Revealed

Lew’s older brother Max no doubt played music there on occasions, although David de Groot’s Piccadilly Hotel Orchestra was his main gig.

The interior is like an Art Deco fantasy. Here’s a link to someone else’s photo of the glitz.

Anyway, we were there to chew the fat, catch up and the like. I think I have persuaded Rohan and David to provide some “Fifty Years Ago” reflections on the opening overs of our Alleyn’s School career, as I remember so little about the very early days and didn’t start my diary until January 1974.

Rohan wanted to discuss his thoughts on positive proposals following his extensive fundraising around mental health, not least reframing the language used around that subject.

It became a little difficult to have profound conversation once the jazz trio got started. With two of them sporting flat caps, I thought they might name themselves “Jazz & Dave”.

Always good to catch up with those two. Good food & drink at that place too.

Wednesday 24 May – Kapara With John White

My turn to choose, John’s turn to pay. I Googled for new restaurants that are getting rave reviews and soon landed on Kapara, ironically located just across the way from the slightly crazy Manette Street Shule where my father’s family hung out in the 1920s.

The Only Known Relic Of Grandpa Harris Reaches Its Hundredth Birthday, October 2022

The service was sweet and attentive (apart from one lad who kept approaching our table with other table’s dishes) and the food excellent.

They are big on small plates there, which made the tasting menu a sensible way to try the place out.

This is a link to a similar set menu to the one we ate. Ours had bream rather than snapper and didn’t have the soup.

Always great to catch up with John – it had been a while so we had a bit of catching up to do. But we shall be seeing each other again within the month, along with “the girls” and Pady. Part of our catching up comprised planning that gathering.

Thursday 25 May – Lord’s For Sunrisers v South East Stars & Middlesex v Surrey, With Janie

Cullen Bowls To The Curran Brothers

Our plan, which more or less worked, was to get to Lord’s around 15:00 and watch as much of the double-header as took our fancy. The weather smiled on us, for sure, so we took root in Janie’s favourite place, the pavilion sun deck.

In truth, the afternoon women’s game, between the Sunrisers and South East Stars, was somewhat of a damp squib, both in terms of the cricket and also the atmosphere…or lack thereof. Midweek afternoon games work great when youngsters are off school. In term time, the timing virtually guaranteed a tiny crowd before the evening.

A reasonable number of member stalwarts (MCC and MCCC) turned up for both matches, but there was almost no atmosphere for the women’s match, which is a shame.

There was a decent (but not full) crowd for the Middlesex v Surrey fixture.

Anyway, we were enjoying ourselves. But the Surrey score batting first seemed high and the chill of the evening was starting to tell, so we decided to go home and watch the almost inevitable ending of the match on TV.

You probably don’t want to see the scorecards but here they are anyway:

Sunrisers v South East Stars

Middlesex v Surrey

Friday 26 May – Dedanists v Jesters At The Queen’s Club

I was delighted to be selected again to represent The Dedanists in this absolutely crucial real tennis fixture with The Jesters.

If anyone from Alleyn’s School is still reading at this juncture, you might be interested to know that the very first Jesters fixture was in late 1928 – a Rugby Fives match between the nascent Jesters and Alleyn Old Boys.

Actually, in truth, this is one of those fixtures where half the people playing are members of both clubs and half the time it’s hard to work out who is representing which club. Indeed on this occasion I found myself (together with Simon Cripps) playing for the Dedanists but playing against our team captain, Martin Village, who paired up with Anton Eisdell.

I’m glad to say I managed to maintain a winning streak in the matter of match play in Dedanists fixtures at Queen’s, having recently lost my Lowenthal Trophy crown there to, amongst others, Mr Eisdell. The piece linked here and below also describes this Jesters fixture from last year.

Finally…Unprecedented Success At Tennis, The Queen’s Club, 11 May & 27 May 2022

It was a thoroughly delightful afternoon and evening – my first (but hopefully not last) opportunity to partner Simon Cripps – who kept getting me out of trouble and who in truth was the key to our success as a pair. Also an opportunity to meet and chat with lots of delightful and interesting people.

It also gave me the opportunity to check up on the progress of the seats I have booked for me and Janie to enjoy the Wednesday of Queen’s this year.

Ah yes, coming on nicely.

Pass Time With Good Company, With “All Good Sports” For A Few Days, Mid October 2022

Rohan “Candy” Candappa & David Wellbrook

Violets & Fatt Pundit With Mark Ellicott, Simon Jacobs & John White, 17 October 2022

For some reason we were all being too grown up to take photos, but this was a special get together reuniting people who had all known each other at Keele for one reason or another.

I had re-engaged by e-mail with Mark Ellicott during the latter stages of the pandemic while writing my “Forty Years On” series, not least to compare notes over Princess Margaret debacles, a cricket match for which I got picked for the craziest of Ellicott-induced reasons and more recently some exchanges over playlists (or, as we used to call them, mix tapes) from 1982.

Mark Ellicott (right), next to Neil Baldwin of Marvellous fame, 2016

In particular the musical aspects intrigued Simon Jacobs, who wondered out loud to me why I hadn’t set up a get-together with Mark.

Simon, in 2019, trying to make a silk purse out of my (then) sow’s ear voice

Actually, John said something similar when I shared my Mark correspondence with him when we met up in the summer. I had no excuse, so I felt duty bound to act.

John questioning my judgement with his eyes and body language, August 2022

I booked a table at Fatt Pundit in Berwick Street and chose Violet’s as a suitable close-by bar for us to meet for a pre-dinner drink.

I played tennis at Lord’s – a draw at singles seeing as you were going to ask – before hot-footing it (via the flat) to Soho.

I arrived at Violet’s, grabbing a table – just inside but suitably quasi-open to the street – about five minutes before Simon arrived. From that vantage point, we observed Mark walk straight past us and then four or five minutes later he returned having got as confused as everyone else by the Berwick Street door-numbering. John arrived fashionably but not ridiculously last.

We had a good chat and a drink at Violet’s before heading a block or two up the road to Fatt Pundit, where the food was excellent and the chat got even better.

A few comedy moments with the sweet waitress whose high-pitched voice is possibly in a register that none of us, given our advancing years, could hear. But the menu was pretty-much self-explanatory, so a mixture of sign language, reading the menu and common sense allowed us to order a cracking good meal.

It was a really enjoyable four-way catch up.

Goldmine With Rohan Candappa & David Wellbrook, 18 October 2022

This gathering was originally conceived in Soho when Rohan and I met for dim sum a couple of months ago:

Dim Sum At New Loon Fung In Chinatown With Rohan Candappa, 2 August 2022

It was basically a “barbeque meats challenge” based on my assertion that the Queensway specialists therein, especially Goldmine, are better than those in Chinatown.

It turned into a small-scale Alleyn’s School alum thing. David Wellbrook, being Wellbrook, needed to join in the challenge, not least because Queensway is an alma mater of his where he attended the University of Romance (his wife used to live there when they were courting).

We tucked into plenty of barbeque meats, diverting briefly at the start and end of the lunchtime feast for some dim sum, just in the interests of science.

At school Rohan Candappa was always known as Candy, so it was with great mirth and merriment that David spotted “Candy World” across the street.

Rohan Candappa’s world

After lunch, we retreated to my flat where I showed the lads my centennial family relic, on what was, after all, its century day.

Hamsters v Dedanists At Hampton Court Palace, 20 October 2022

Almost everything that needs to be said about this match is contained in my match report on the Dedanists web site – here…or perhaps best to read it from the scrape here, scraped before the current piece drops down the running order.

For those who don’t like to click and/or who don’t want all the tennis detail – here is an extract:

“It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall,” said your intrepid reporter to Carl Snitcher, having braved the 3.5 mile high-pass journey from Notting to Primrose Hill in just over 35 minutes.

“There’s a bad moon on the rise,” agreed Carl, gnomically.

We arrived at a rain-soaked Hampton Court Palace in the nick of time; just as well, as your intemporal reporter was playing in the first rubber. Some might argue that our arrival was actually “worse than two”, but a more substantial discrepancy soon revealed itself; the marker’s sheet was showing a lesser handicap for the Dedanists than the sheet that James McDermott & I had been sent.

In order to avoid a major diplomatic incident, James & I acquiesced to the lesser handicap, yet still somehow contrived to win our rubber, albeit narrowly…

McDermott hitting, me watching

On finally staggering away from the court, your incognizant reporter picked up a message that the Prime Minister had resigned. “That’s the second Liz whose expiration has been announced while I was on the real tennis court in the space of six weeks”, I mused, having been informed of the late Queen’s demise by Tony Friend while I was on the Lord’s court.

I thought I might be the tidings-bringer this time, only to discover that most of the group had learnt the demise of Liz Truss some 45 minutes earlier.

Anyway, this was no time to ponder the fate of shambolic politicians – it was time to tuck into the pies before they too were to become a footnote in history. A positive footnote in the case of the pies of course – once again a delicious choice of
• Chicken Ham & Leek;
• Steak & Ale.

Bread and cheese (yes please) and two species of yummy desert that self-discipline allowed me to avoid, along with the jolly wines on offer…

Pictures by Tony Friend

There’s no better way to lift the spirits on a gloomy, worrisome day than a day of pastance with Dedanists and Hamsters. Symbolically, as the nation’s political shenanigans moved on to its new phase, the heavy clouds and rain of the morning had lifted to reveal a gorgeously bright, sunny evening as we all left.

“So foul and fair a day I have not seen”, said Carl, gnomically, as I dropped him home.

“Pass time with good company”, I replied.

Dim Sum At New Loon Fung In Chinatown With Rohan Candappa, 2 August 2022

Are you a fan of dim sum?

…asked Rohan, while we were messaging each other to make the arrangements for a lunchtime meet up.

Is the sky blue, is the Pope a Catholic, do bears shit in the woods and is a pig’s arse pork?

…I felt like replying, but instead I sent Rohan a link to the Ogblog piece about my first ever dim sum experience, so long ago it was before I had even met Rohan…whom I met when we started Alleyn’s School in September 1973:

From Yan Chow (Or Do I Mean Yang Chow?) In Streatham To Dim Sum In Soho, Chinese New Year, Probably February 1972

In that case, let’s meet at 12:30 in the middle of Gerrard Street.

Great, I thought, this will be my first visit to Chinatown for years and I miss the place.

My childhood memory of trying dim sum for the first time must be my favourite anecdote about dim sum in Chinatown, but I do have another treasured memory on that topic.

In the mid to late 1990s, while working with the late, great Professor Mike Smith, we found ourselves nearby and decided to continue our discussions over a dim sum lunch. Studying an extensive card, I wondered whether Mike had ever tried duck tongues – a dish I had tried before (I think in Hong Kong) and rather liked. Mike said he was up for anything and thus we ordered, amongst several other things, a portion of tongues.

Mike Smith, normally calm

On tasting the anatine delicacy, Mike freaked out.

Oh my God – they’ve got bones in their tongues! Ducks have bones in their tongues! Uggh.

Even after we agreed that the bone-like core of the duck’s tongue was probably hard cartilage rather than bone, Mike was too discombobulated by the discovery to eat any more of that dish…

…which, to anyone who knew Mike well, proves that he was seriously discombobulated. Indeed, Mike told the “dim sum discovery that ducks have bones in their tongues” story to anyone who’d listen for ages after the event.

Returning to 2022, I wondered whether Rohan had chickened out (or should I say ducked out) of picking a venue, but it turned out he had a specific venue in mind all along: New Loon Fung. As we entered, I was pretty sure this was the same venue as the Mike Smith tongue incident all those years ago. Seeing duck tongues on the menu pretty much confirmed my theory – you don’t see those on the menu in many dim sum places in London.

I told Rohan the story. Of course he agreed we needed to order some, along with the several other things we both wanted to try.

Perhaps the waiters had a sense of foreboding about non-Chinese people ordering a delicacy so quintessentially Chinese as duck tongues. The restaurant was heaving by the time we placed our order, almost exclusively with people who were visibly Chinese or at least of Chinese origin.

We asked a couple of times for the tongues, once it was clear that all our other dishes had long since been delivered. Eventually our portion came:

Duck got your tongue, Rohan? He sure doesn’t look 100% sure

We “toasted” Mike, each of us with a tongue on our chopsticks, Rohan tried that one tongue, then he deferred the rest of the plate to me, leaving me in a similar position, plate of tongues-wise, as I had been in 25 or so years ago with Mike Smith.

I’m old enough and ugly enough now that I don’t do anything I don’t want to do…

…said Rohan, when I pressed the point, just to be sure he wasn’t simply deferring my chosen delicacy out of politeness.

I guess I might be on my own in the matter of liking the duck tongues dish – I recall Janie not much liking it either.

Rohan and I chatted about many things, including how most of the eateries we knew from the old days had gone from Chinatown – New Loon Fung being a rare perennial. I think it was known as Dragon Phoenix “back in the day”, but it looks and feels like the same place of old.

After parting company with Rohan, I took a stroll around Chinatown, confirming that most of my old haunts had vanished.

Strangely and most coincidentally, I got an e-mail from Michael Mainelli about 48 hours later asking me if I could recommend a place in Chinatown for him and the family to go to after a show – all the places he remembered had closed down since his last visit.

I was able to provide some helpful advice. Really I should put the time from my afternoon off onto my timesheet as R&D for the business. Only joking, only joking.

Serious business, this dim sum eating

Three Vignettes From The Adverb Colander, December 2021

Rohan Candappa’s Adverb Colander

In a month during which almost everything was cancelled, apart from work, charity, exercise and political shenanigans…

…the adverb colander has literally (did you see what I did there?) helped to keep me sane. This relative sanity, despite the fact that the adverb colander is one of Rohan Candappa’s crazy ideas.

Last year, Rohan wrote and narrow-casted (within our little ThreadMash writing community) an adverb-inspired vignette each day during advent, having asked the ThreadMash community to send in three adverbs each. Rohan would draw that day’s adverb from the colander depicted above.

This year, Rohan again asked us all to chime in with adverbs, but this time the colander randomly allocated out those pesky modifiers for all of us to have a go…or two…or three.

I offered up:

Undeniably, Infrequently & Tediously.

The colander responded with the following adverbs for my inspiration:

Deeply, Rigorously, Nerdily.

Here are my three vignettes.

Deeply

An Spailpín Fánach, Tuckey Street, Cork by Mac McCarron, CC BY-SA 2.0

I don’t much like soccer football. I’m certainly not one to be deeply affected by a football match. But one match is deeply embedded in my psyche.  The Republic of Ireland v Albania in May 1992. 

Bobbie and I went to Ireland for a week at that time. My first proper break since my back injury two years earlier and my first ever visit to Ireland.  I didn’t take a camera and I didn’t take a notebook, making it the least documented trip I have ever taken abroad.

That football match between Ireland and Albania dominates my memory for two reasons. 

Firstly, I remember that, in the build up to the match, the Irish media was full of news about the visiting Albanian team.  Initially RTÉ news worried, on behalf of the visitors, because the weather was unseasonably cold in Ireland and the visitors reported an insufficiency of warm clothing. Two days later, RTÉ news appealed to the people of Ireland, asking them to stop sending jumpers, cardigans and the like to the Albanian team’s hotel, because the visitors were now inundated with warm clothing.

A deeply charitable nation, the Irish.

Also a nation deeply passionate about their sports teams.

The Republic of Ireland had done unexpectedly well in the 1990 Football World Cup. This May 1992 match was at the start of the qualification campaign for the next World Cup.

By the time the night of the match arrived, Bobbie and I had moved on from Dublin to Cork. Bobbie is a keen football fan whose dad was Irish. We resolved to watch the match in a suitable-looking pub near our hotel.

As usual in Irish pubs, Bobbie and I were warmly received as guests.

There was much genial chatter about the warm clothing news items. The vibe was also charged with keen expectation. The throng expected their now-successful Ireland team to win a qualification match against Albania.

At half time and beyond, with the score still at 0-0, the atmosphere in the pub became tense. Bobbie whispered to me that we should make a hasty exit if the match failed to go Ireland’s way.

Mercifully, Ireland scored a couple of goals in the last half-hour of the game, turning the mood into a memorably shebeen-like party, with plenty of drinking, singing and dancing, until late into the night.

Rigorously Draft v1.0

Not SARS-CoV – other coronaviruses are available…

Sally was super proud of her efforts over the past few months. The Advercol plc Covid Protocol Guide: DRAFT v1.0. Fifty carefully crafted pages, cross-tabulated with government guidelines, referencing journal articles on Covid protocol best practice and in-depth consultations with diverse Advercol stakeholders.

Last Friday, Sally had finally submitted the fruits of her labours for internal review to her boss, Jonathan, The Human Resources & Organisational Development Director.

Around 11:00 on Monday, Sally received a meeting request for a Zoom with Jonathan to discuss the Draft Guide.  A 15-minute slot on Thursday afternoon at 16:45. Jonathan must be pleased with her work, otherwise he would have scheduled a longer session to go through the document with her in detail. Sally clicked the accept button with a satisfied grin on her face.

Over the ensuing days, Sally imagined the reaction her diligence might have engendered. A nomination for a National HR Award, perhaps. Her work would fit well in the HR Innovation category and/or possibly Health & Wellbeing.  A Best In Show award, even, would not be beyond the bounds of possibility.

Yes, this Covid Guide assignment might well turn out to be career-defining for Sally. It had required attention to detail and boy had she deployed her trademark rigor. No wonder Jonathan had chosen her ahead of “Sloppy Simon” for the task.  Simon had acquired his unfortunate epithet before lockdown, when Jonathan had described Simon’s attempt at a revised Diversity and Inclusion Policy as “sloppy”, in front of the whole team. Poor Simon.

Thursday afternoon couldn’t come soon enough for Sally. She clicked the link as soon as the clock on her computer clicked from 16:44 to 16:45.  It seemed to take an age for Jonathan to arrive, just after 16:51.

“Afternoon, Sally”, said Jonathan. “Let’s try and keep this brief.  I need to take the kids to their after-school activities at five. OK? Great. Covid Guide. You’ve clearly put a lot of effort into this.”

“Thanks, Jonathan”, interjected Sally, “I’m glad you noticed”.

“Yes. Right. Thing is, Sally…”, Jonathan continued, “this Covid rules business is a bit of a moving target, don’t you think? I mean, the government changes tack more often than most people change their undies…”

“…indeed, Jonathan”, said Sally, “that’s why I have written protocols to cover so many eventualities…”

“…so we don’t want to over-complicate matters ourselves, do we, with too many in-house rules and stuff?”, continued Jonathan. “We could do with something a little more high-level and generic, don’t you think?”

“…umm, well, I thought…”

“…yes, indeed. So I have asked Simon to come up with a couple of pages. Quick and dirty. That should do us for now. This more detailed material might come in handy later, if or when this whole Covid thing ever settles down. OK? Oh, and Sally – let’s have a little chat about time management and proportionate effort at your next appraisal. OK?”

Nerdily

Oxyman / Covered walkway leading to Ladbroke Grove Sainsbury’s

“I’m leaving you”, said Emily.  “It’s the final straw. Everything I do, you criticise and redo nerdily.”

Stuart was taken aback. “But all I did was rewrite the shopping list in logical, aisle-by-aisle, item-by-item sequence. That’s basic logistics. It saves loads of time at the supermarket. Who wants to trudge back and forth in that crummy place, wasting valuable time?”

“I do”, Emily yelled. “I want to wander aimlessly around the aisles if I choose to do so. Sometimes, I want to spot and buy goods serendipitously.  I want to live – I want to be free”.

There was a long silence. Emily looking for signs of reaction on Stuart’s face. Stuart studiously avoiding Emily’s glare.

“Get real”, said Stuart. “Anyway, there’s no such word as nerdily”.

Emily jolted, then asked, “how the hell do you work that out?”

Stuart explained. “Nerdily is not in the Microsoft spellcheck and, more importantly, it’s not in the Scrabble dictionary. No. Such. Word. As. Nerdily.”

“Be that as it may, Stuart”, said Emily, “but everything you say and do, you say and do nerdily”.

“What If this Adverb Colander Thing Goes Viral?” I Hear Many Readers Ask

We’ll need a bigger colander…

…like this FoodCycle one which Janie and I helped rescue from the Greenhouse Centre kitchen – but that’s another story:

But Me No Butteries, Virtual Buttery Gathering Of Alleyn’s Alums, 14 January 2021

This lockdown business is nobody’s idea of fun, but Rohan Candappa has been putting in some hard yards in setting up some meaningful distractions and social interactions.

This “Virtual Buttery” session was the third such gathering of the Alleyn’s School “Class of 1980”. I wrote up the first of those gatherings in the autumn:

A Virtual Gathering Of People Who Left Alleyn’s School In 1980, 12 November 2020

It wouldn’t be Alleyn’s School without homework. For this third session, Rohan (egged on by Nick Wahla) asked some exam questions:

Nick Wahla’s suggested a question to ponder: “What advice would you give to someone about to leave Alleyn’s?”

It’s a good question, and one which I am obviously going to claim credit for. But I’d also like to twist it around a bit. My question is: “What advice would you give yourself if you could go back and talk to yourself on the day you left Alleyn’s?

I chose to answer this question by Ogblogging about the day I left Alleyn’s School…

The Day I Left (Alleyn’s) School, 27 June 1980

…and confessing to the music I was putting onto my mix tapes at that time:

Mix Tapes From Around The Time That I Left Alleyn’s School, Late May To 28 June 1980

Anyway, loads of people turned up again…but not Nick Wahla – he of the exam question. Typical.

I took the headline screen grab more than an hour into the event, so several people had already come and gone by then.

Again we had participation from across the globe:

  • Neal “Mr” Townley in Sydney,
  • Andrew Sullivan in Phnom Penh,
  • Richard Hollingshead in Washington (desperately trying to convince us and himself that Washington State is a long, long way from security-alert-ridden Washington DC),
  • Paul Deacon and Rich “The Rock” Davis claiming to be in Ontario’s freezing cold lockdown, although I have a sneaking suspicion that they might actually be sunning themselves in the Caribbean, as seems to be the Ontario way,
  • Mark Rathbone, claiming to be in Purley, then Purely and eventually confessing to living in Kenley, a totally different place noted for famous current and former residents such as Des O’Connor, Peter Cushing, Harry Worth, Karl Popper (ironically, given this empirical falsification of the “Mark Rathbone lives in Purley” theory) and Douglas Bader – all together now – Da, da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da-da-da…or do I mean da-da, da-da-da-da-da, da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da-da…?

…I digress.

It is hard to summarise the answers to the exam questions, not least because everyone had a slightly different take on them. One theme that ran through the answers is learning quickly post school how to be yourself and follow your heart/instincts in what you want to become. Many of us suspect that we had more freedom to “find our own way” back in 1980 than pupils finishing their ‘A’ levels have now – as the route from school to career via university seems to be a more defined path now.

Some raised the matter of careers advice (it’s lack or paucity), others the more informal aspects such as teachers instilling us with confidence, arrogance or in some cases diffidence.

Naturally this led the conversation on to discussion about memorable teachers, good, bad or indifferent. Mr Jones got off pretty lightly considering he wasn’t there…

…which is more than can be said for David Wellbrook, who should have known better than to defy the wishes of Rohan Candappa by going AWOL, if Rohan’s opening remarks were anything to go by. Rohan’s willingness to turn on a loyal follower for the slightest slight is almost Trumpian in its intensity.

But then, as Rohan pointed out when the conversation turned to the vexed question of teasing, banting or bullying, we weren’t saints back then and we are hopefully a bit more grown up about it now. Well it was easy for him to say that AFTER the invective of his opening remarks.

Heck, I’m kidding. It was fun again and it seemed astonishing when Rohan pointed out that those of us who were around for the whole event had been gassing and listening for two hours.

ThreadZoomMash Celebrity Edition, Siddharta by Hermann Hesse In My Case, Plus Lots More Fascinating Contributions, 16 November 2020

Tonight, another of Rohan Candappa’s left-field ideas. Choose one page from any book of your own choosing; explain your choice and read out that page.

I railed against the Desert Island Discs idea a few months ago…

Desert Island Diatribe, A Performance Piece For ThreadZoomMash, Plus A Review Of the Evening,29 July 2020

…do I even need to explain that “choose just one page to read” meets a similarly febrile emotional push-back in my mind.

But I quite quickly settled on Hermann Hesse as my choice of author. George Elliot and Hermann Hesse are the only authors about whom I decided, on reading one novel, that I simply must try to read everything this person wrote.

Hesse’s novels are extraordinary and quite exceptional. I commend all of his novels to you. Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game are mind-blowing, but possibly not the place to start with Hesse’s work.

My first Hesse read was Demian. I picked up that novel, pretty much by chance, in a remaindered bookshop on the Charing Cross Road in the mid 1980s. Some of the fictional conversations in that book reminded me of conversations I’d enjoyed with Anil Biltoo, the school pal with whom I went to Mauritius in 1979 and through whom I met Fuzz, the subject of my first ThreadMash piece.

The Rohan Thing, My Short Performance Piece As Part Of Rohan Candappa’s Inaugural Threadmash, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2019

Hesse’s evident fascination with Eastern philosophies and my desire to read more about them took me next to Siddharta. There are two parts to the book; I am going to read you the few hundred words that conclude Part One; a point at which Siddharta reaches a spiritual awakening such that he is, in a sense, reborn in Part Two.

I don’t personally believe in reincarnation, but I did feel a shiver down my spine while researching this preamble, when I read Hermann Hesse’s Wikipedia entry. Hesse died on 9 August 1962. That was the day that Anil Biltoo was born.

Anil Biltoo. Click here or the picture for the Project Gutenberg public domain version of Siddhartha in English

The Events Of The Evening

I went first, so (apart from a short introduction by Rohan before I did my bit), this piece is sequenced in running order sequence.

Kay went next. She read The Owl-Critic by James Thomas Fields, reading from a charming anthology she has kept from primary school. Kay might chime in with the details of the anthology, but I’m guessing it is out of print and hard to find. She had peppered the poem with musical notation as a child, which was a charming additional detail.

Flo read Last Of the MetroZoids by Adam Gopnik. It is a very moving piece about the art historian, Kirk Varnedoe, coaching a boys football team while dying of cancer. It is a very moving piece, which Flo read beautifully.

Next up was Jan, who (Rohan suggested) wanted to style herself as Constance DeVereaux this evening…perhaps an in-joke between “spice”. Anyway, Jan read from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (another book available in the public domain through Project Gutenberg). She read the bit where Jo sacrifices her glorious head of hair to raise money for the family.

Ian Theodorson read a passage from East Of Eden by John Steinbeck (link is to Wikipedia entry, as the book is still in copyright). Ian preambled his reading by explaining some of the biblical references/allusions involved, not least the Cain & Abel story from the Old Testament.

Then a brief half-time discussion. The topic that got the most coverage was about Little Women and books of that kind, specifically whether there is an equivalent literary genre that helps young men to understand their romantic emotions. We concluded that there is seemingly no such genre.

We then had an actual half-time break, but there was no evidence of anyone eating cut up pieces of orange. Nor, mercifully, did Rohan try to motivate us with glib words and phrases such as “momentum”, “play as a unit”, “give it 120%” or “leave it all out there on the Zoom screen”.

There was then a euphemism-fest, using terms such as “recharging my gadget”, when it was clear that people wanted a toilet break.

I used that time as an opportunity to show those who remained my proud collection of decomposing Pooh.

When it comes to decomposing Pooh…if you’ve got it, flaunt it.

Rohan kicked off the second half by reciting the lyric of What A Fool Believes by Michael McDonald & Kenny Loggins. There’s a bit of involuntary threading in there, as Kenny Loggins also famously produced Return To Pooh Corner, including Loggins song House At Pooh Corner. It’s a fabulous lyric which I looked at a year or two ago with a view to giving it the troubadour treatment; I might just about be able to sing it now.

John read a nerve-jangling passage from Touching the Void by Joe Simpson. It is a heart-stopping true story about a pair of mountaineers in the Andes who survived a disaster in almost-impossible circumstances. It was made into a much-lauded documentary film some years after the book came out.

Jill read a passage from The Book Of Human Emotions by Tiffany Watt Smith. She read the piece about amae, a Japanese emotion which is hard to translate into English. “It means something like the pleasure that you get when you’re able to temporarily hand over responsibility for your life to someone else”, to quote Tiffany herself from this rather fascinating interview with her about the book.

Adrian read an hilarious piece from March Of the Lemmings: Brexit In Print & Performance 2016-2019 by Stewart Lee. The passage Adrian read was a sequence of thank you letters to brexity aunts for their brexity Christmas presents. I learnt that we should all have an Anderson shelter for Brexit; who knew?

Terry read a passage from The Big Book: Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism, explaining after his reading, in no uncertain terms, that this book saved his life.

Geraldine read us three Robert Frost poems. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but it has dawned on me the morning after, that The Road Not Taken, one of Frost’s best known and most debated poems, is a fascinating echo of the East Of Eden “free will” debate regarding the Cain & Abel story from Ian T’s reading. Geraldine read one other poem the title/detail of which has escaped me (she might chime in with the title), plus The Gift Outright, which Frost recited in person at John F Kennedy’s inauguration.

Perhaps they should book Stewart Lee to recite some fitting words for the outgoing president at Joe Biden’s inauguration, if the narcissist-in-chief bothers to show up.

After the event, a few of us stuck around for some further discussion, although it soon descended into weird debates about matters such as the relative merits of Michael Mcdonald & Malcolm MacDonald, two people who are surely very hard to distinguish from one another.

I have had this problem myself in my time. Who hasn’t?

Just one more parting thought, brought to mind by the thought of stories we loved as children and our parents’ influence. I am blessed to still have many recordings of my parents reading to me. I have several still to go through and upload to Ogblog, but one in particular, from when I was five, remains charming and is a complete story. I uploaded it a few years ago and several friends told me that they have played it many times over to their children. Hare And Guy Fawkes by Alison Uttley:

Hare And Guy Fawkes, Daddy Reading To Me, 5 November 1967

A Virtual Gathering Of People Who Left Alleyn’s School In 1980, 12 November 2020

Blame Rohan Candappa.

Rohan Candappa: “I have another idea…”

Actually this was a very good idea. The face-to-face “40 years on” reunion had to be cancelled this summer, so Rohan figured we should have a “40 years on” virtual reunion through the good offices of Zoom instead.

Of course, back in the day, nobody used the phrase “back in the day”…

…and back then a Zoom was an ice lolly, not a meeting.

I paraphrase Rohan’s remarks in the form of a quote.

37 of us gathered, from a cohort of some 120. That’s about a third of us, which, 40 years on and with some of our cohort no longer with us…is a mighty impressive haul.

People joined from places as far afield as Ontario (Paul Deacon & Rich “The Rock” Davis), New Zealand (The Right Reverend Sir Nigel Godfrey), Phnom Penh (Andrew Sullivan), Australia (Neal Townley), Barcelona (Duncan Foord), Crouch End (Rohan Candappa) and Penge (somebody, surely?).

It seemed like a recipe for chaos, yet somehow the mixture of untrammelled chat and a little bit of structured “go around the virtual room for a memory each” worked surprisingly well.

Some of the people are friends I have seen relatively recently, one way…

Ghosts, ThreadZoomMash Performance Piece, Plus Reflections On The Evening, 21 October 2020

…or another…

An Award-Winning Evening During Which I Hung Out With The Alleyn’s Old Boys Crowd, Sripur Restaurant, 6 December 2018

…but many of the people present I had only corresponded with on FaceBook or not at all in the last 40+ years.

The array of memories was varied and fascinating. A lot of stuff about teachers, good, bad and (in some violent cases) especially ugly.

Some observations especially resonated with me and stuck in my mind. Paul Romain illustrated through readings from his first and last school reports that he was a keen scout at first, but by the end at least metaphorically semi-detached from the school…if not detached and several acres from the metaphorical school. That resonated with my experience.

It also brought back to me my lingering grudge against my late mum for throwing out my old school reports (and indeed all my juvenilia from that period apart from my diaries) on the spurious grounds that “no-one would ever want to look at that sort of old rubbish again”. When I challenged this assumption, by letting mum know that I was REALLY REALLY upset that she had done this, she said, “how was I supposed to know that you cared for that stuff?”. To which my simple answer was, “if you had asked me BEFORE you threw my things away, you’d have known.” No, I’m still not over it.

“Renée is an enthusiastic, diligent lass, but she sometimes allows her natural exuberance to mar her judgement”

I think it was Jerry Moore who held up some editions of Scriblerus (the Alleyn’s School magazine), threatening to scan and circulate some elements of them. I do hope he does that. David Wellbrook mentioned his first toe-dip into performing Shakespeare and the rather damning review Chris Chivers gave of his performance.

That all brought back to my mind my own somewhat involuntary performance in Twelfth Night, I think the year after David Wellbrook’s debut. I remember Mr Chivers’ Scriblerus review of my performance as Antonio; in particular I recall pawing over it on a train with my friend Jilly Black, trying to work out whether he was praising me or damning me with faint praise. I suspect the latter, but I would love to see the review again now that I am older and…well, just older.

I have to be honest about this; I really was not in the mood for a reunion come 19:30 on 12 November. I had received some horrible news just a couple of hours before the event; the sudden and totally unexpected death of a friend, Mike Smith:

A Personal Tribute To Professor Mike Smith, 12 November 2020

Indeed I considered sending my apologies to the virtual reunion and spending the evening wallowing instead. But I thought better of doing that and Janie encouraged me to give the virtual meeting a go…I could always switch off the Zoom early if I really didn’t feel up to the gathering…

…anyway, I’m so glad I did join the group, even if I wasn’t entirely myself throughout the evening. It was great to see everyone and I learn that there is every chance that many of us will be doing it again.

I guess I need to dig out those diaries again and see what else I can find!

Desert Island Diatribe, A Performance Piece For ThreadZoomMash, Plus A Review Of the Evening,29 July 2020

Fuck you, Rohan Candappa.

Desert Island Discs? Desert Island frigging Discs!

Writing and performing at ThreadZoomMash can help us forget about the privations of lockdown?

How? By getting us to imagine the ultimate self-isolation, alone on some crappy desert island with JUST ONE poxy record? Even Roy Plomley and chums allow eight poxy records.

Look – I know that Desert Island Discs is a quintessentially BBC thing that people in Britain have loved for decades. A national treasure. I cannot deny the success of the genre. Nor can I deny its charm. Heck, I have often listened. I have often enjoyed the programme.

But I profoundly dislike the central conceit of the show. In particular the eight-record scenario leaves me feeling sceptical…or do I mean cynical…most times I listen to the show. Who can sum up their musical tastes and satisfy their thirst for music with just eight tracks?

I suspect that most guests go through a “style consultant” process, to help choose eight records that say enough about them to satisfy their fan base, while not turning too many people off them.  That’s why so many people chose some Beethoven and/or Mozart. Unless they are UK politicians, who relentlessly choose a bit of Elgar or Vaughan-Williams; just to prove how very English or British they are.

Actually, that thought about politicians has brought dissembling insincerity to the front of my mind. By gosh, Rohan – this topic choice for ThreadZoomMash reeks of BoJo or DomCum levels of hypocrisy.

After all, YOU are the fellow who recently wrote the lockdown piece, Spotify vs Top Of the Pops. YOU are the fellow who once wrote a live show entitled, “What Listening To 10,000 Love Songs Has Taught Me About Love”. In fact, while you, Rohan Candappa, indulged yourself piloting the latter show at the Cockpit in 2017, a riot kicked off on the surrounding Church Street & Lisson Green Estates. It’s a minor miracle that you and we, your long-suffering friends in the audience, survived to tell the tale.

Anyway, my point Rohan, is that you of all people, the “Spotify, Top Of the Pops, 10,000 love songs” dude, should know how depleting, how devastating, this “one song per island” idea of yours is.

Oh no, not I. I will survive, there, musically. Here is my survival plan.

My object is my trusty friend, Benjy The Baritone Ukulele.

My book, which admittedly has yet to be published…but publishing my choice of book is, frankly, the least you can do for me in these circumstances, is: “The Complete Works Of English Language Song, From The Year c1220 to The Year 2020”.  Ideally with chords & music as well as lyrics for the songs.

My one measly track will be a recording of my own mash-up masterpiece, helpfully spanning circa 800 years of English Language Song. It is entitled Mr Blue Sky Is Icumen In and it sounds like this:

MR BLUE SKY IS ICUMEN IN

Sumer is icumen in, the nymphs and shepherds dance
Bryd one brere, groweth sed and bloweth med
And don't you know, amarylis dance in green–ee-ee-een.

Lightly whipping o’er the dales, with wreaths of rose and laurel,
Fair nymphs tipping, with fauns and satyrs tripping
Mister Blue Sky is living here today hey, hey hey.

Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.

Hey you with the angels face, bright, arise, awake, awake!
About her charret, with all admiring strains as today, all creatures now are merry…(merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry-minded).

Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.

Hey there mister blue, who likes to love, lhude sing cuccu;
Nauer nu, ne swik thu, sing hey nonny nonny nu.

Mirie it is while sumer ilast, in darkness let me fast,
Flow my tears, farewell all joys for years,
Never mind, I joy not in early, I joy not in early bliss.

Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.

Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba

Postscript: The Evening Itself

There were eight of us live on ThreadZoomMash. Rohan Candappa made a short introduction, using John Donne (No Man Is An Island) as a helpful segway into the evening’s pieces.

Possibly it was the Tudor/Jacobean connection that encouraged Rohan to ask me to go first this evening. Possibly he simply wanted to get his own back on me. Who could blame him?

Adrian’s piece followed mine; a really charming rite of passage piece about an evening in 1985 when a 15 year old Adrian was “picked up” and taken to a party by a lovely girl while Live Aid was happening elsewhere.

I guess the Desert Island Discs theme encouraged most of the group to reflect on their lives. Terry certainly did a bit of that, but couldn’t resist the idea of Dessert Island Discs, suggesting that one might be macarooned on a dessert island. Thanks Tel.

Ian Theodoreson made me feel bad about my quip about mendacious politicians choosing Elgar and Vaughan Williams, as Ian admitted that The Lark Ascending would probably be his solo record pick. Sorry Ian – I do not think of you as a mendacious anything; quite the opposite. I guess some people really DO like Nimrod and/or The Lark Ascending best of all.

But Ian’s story mostly focussed on a visit to the Albert Hall to see a Cream Reunion Gig in May 2005. Ian subsequently became convinced that Ginger Baker was making the passenger announcements on Loughton underground station between 2005 and his departure from this mortal coil in October 2019. It’s hard to disprove that theory from where I am sitting.

Jan’s piece was charming and delightful. It focussed on her choice of book: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, which Jan apparently read when still ridiculously young and before she read the book for which Looking Glass is the sequel, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. This I found fascinating as I do recall loving the earlier novel (Wonderland) as a small child but being perplexed and scared by the sequel. Jan’s made of robust stuff. Who knew? I don’t think Make Someone Happy by Jimmy Durante gets much business on Desert Island Discs these days, but Jan would chose it.

Kay also harked back to her youth and the ways she confused people by not conforming to their gender stereotypes. A beautifully constructed piece, full of Kay’s personality and culminating, with predictable hindsight, playing her choice of record, Rebel Rebel.

Geraldine’s poetic piece explored her young adult background; very different from any of ours. Somewhat earlier and in the USA. Evocative without being straightforward narrative, it can do with reading rather than describing, as my describing wouldn’t do it justice. I felt a little badly for the second time of the evening when Geraldine announced that her sole disc would be I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor, the central lyric of which I had flagrantly pinched as a bridge in my short piece.

Then Rohan read a wonderful piece by John Eltham, who unfortunately was unable to join us for the evening. Not a straight line narrative. Like many of the pieces, it had a rite of passage at its core, by which I don’t mean “passage” in a Night Boat To Cairo sense (although that was John’s choice of record), but in a Bildugsroman sense. It was a beautifully crafted piece. Much like Geraldine’s, it defies description or rather I couldn’t do it justice with description. It should be read.

If we’re lucky, I might be able to persuade some of the others, including Geraldine and/or John, to publish their pieces on Ogblog so readers can judge the pieces for themselves.

In John Eltham’s case in particular this is a huge credit to Rohan as well as John. I remember John saying to me only a few months ago that he didn’t have the confidence to write ThreadMash pieces. He has now written two superb pieces, both brimming with self-assurance and flourish. I’m genuinely impressed and delighted.

Rohan, of course, couldn’t resist closing off the evening with a masterful pun, linking his opening, John Donne, with his ending, which was reciting the Eltham piece, or, as Rohan put it, the piece “wot John done”. Perhaps we haven’t progressed as far from the schoolboy skits and word plays as I hoped.

Still, it was a tremendous evening. With thanks to everyone involved, not least Rohan, for making it happen.