Janie has never kept a narrative diary. But the wonderful thing about Janie’s diary is that she makes copious notes in the diary around her plans, especially if she is preparing a meal and going to specific places to buy specific ingredients.
This meal was Japanese food and Janie no doubt used the services of our now regular sources in Noddyland, such as Atari-Ya, to source sashimi and tempura as noted in her diary.
No doubt much saki was imbibed to help such dishes go down.
This will have been a rare evening out for Michael and Elisabeth at that time, as Xenia was just turned one. I cannot remember whether a babysitter was involved or whether they brought the infant Xenia with them. At that age, probably the latter.
Michael Mainelli’s Birthday Party Aboard Lady Daphne In St Katherine’s Dock, 19 December 1998
Fret not, we were below for this party
Quite a big do. This was Michael’s 40th. Live music if I remember correctly. All the usual suspects were there. And us.
In those days you didn’t take a gazillion pictures at parties. Perhaps someone did take pictures, but I don’t recall seeing any from this party. If Michael and Elisabeth have some and want to provide digital versions thereof, I’ll gladly put a few of them into this article.
We ate, we drank, we danced, we made merry. it was a party.
Christmas Lunch At My Parent’s Place, 25 December 1998
There’s little in the diary about this, other than a tell-tale note that the taxi would cost £32, which was almost certainly an Ealing to Streatham price in those days.
I suspect that Jacqueline, Len and Hils were there that year. I also suspect that this was one of the last times, if not the last time, that my mum did Christmas day at Woodfield Avenue.
It will have been turkey for main, I’m pretty sure.
A Wild Boar Dinner At Sandall Close, Sunday 27 December 1998
The tell-tale note in Janie’s diary is an order for a rack of wild boar from Harvey Nicholls “for next Sunday”. This was one of Janie’s specialities at that time and boy was it good. We have never since found a source of excellent wild boar rack since Harvey Nicks stopped doing it.
The cast for that evening (again made clear from Janie’s diary) was Kim & Micky, Anthea [Simms] & Mitchell [Sams], plus Rupert [Stubbs] & Ana. Janie rather impressively remembered that Ana was Ana Limbrick, who (as well as dating Rupert at that time) was, indeed still is, a physiotherapist to whom Janie occasionally refers clients.
It will have been a jolly evening, despite the fact that several of the guests no doubt said “what a boar” when praising the meal.
…the sort of fortnight that looks, twenty-five years later, like an utterly mad way to over-fill one’s diary and hare around the country like a mad thing.
A tour for Barnardo’s. with whom I was working quite a lot back then, took in Yorkshire, Wales and Barkingside in the space of a few days, interrupted only for some meetings with other clients and a foreshortened weekend which included dinner with Janie’s lovely neighbours, Hussein and Saji on the Saturday.
I guess the frantic aspect of the work was somewhat self-inflicted, as I had arranged a proper long weekend in Stratford only a couple of weeks after returning from a three-week holiday.
Our main purpose in Stratford was to take in a couple of plays, which I shall write up individually and separately. On this slightly extended visit I do recall also having the time to have a proper good wander around the town and take in some of the touristic sites we wouldn’t normally find time to see when visiting Stratford for the theatre.
Was I welcome in these places or was I Bard?
We stayed on until Tuesday 22 April and went to a Seder (perhaps at Jacquie’s, perhaps at Mum & Dad’s) the evening of our return.
Ossobuco – picture by Stu Spivack via Wikipedia Commons
It was that sort of era, really, the 1990s. Dinner parties and small gatherings.
Listing The Events
24 June – “Tessa’s party” – Tessa played bridge with me, Andrea and Maz. She lived in Acton;
1 July – “Duchess Japanese meal” – that would have been at Momos on Queen’s Parade. Janie and I often ate there in those days, quite often making it a Friday evening treat after work. It was a superb, authentic Japanese place, run by Mr Asari. We still miss it. We decided to treat the Duchess to the place for her birthday that year;
15 July – “Kim & Micky [for] dinner” – at theirs I think. Janie and I went to the Canal Cafe to see NewsRevue the next day.
29 July – “John & Jolli” – that will have been John Thompson and his partner Jolita. I think they came to Sandall Close for a meal.
5 August – “Bernie, Heather & Dave” – these are people we met in China in 1993. We owed Heather & Dave hospitality as we had been to a party up their way (Bedfordshire/Northamptonshire). Bernie was a laugh.
26 August – “Dinner with Anthea”
27 August – “North China restaurant” with Andrea and others?
The menu is absent from Janie’s diary for the above events, but absent for:
An Ossobuco Evening With Daniel, Julie, Michael, Elisabeth, Kim & Micky, 3 September 1995
Daniel had migrated to Australia and paired up with (perhaps already married) Julie. This was their first visit to the UK together. Janie cooked a wonderful Ossobuco meal for all of us that evening.
There’s a “delicacies shopping list” to die for on the Maundy Thursday page of Janie’s diary, with prosciutto ham, guinea fowl breasts and Aberdeen Angus fillet all listed next to “Harvey Nics” opening times. Back then Janie used the butchers there.
On the evening of Good Friday, I went to my parents’ house for Pesach sedar night, which Janie skipped that year. Janie acquired more of a taste for such events than me by the end of my parents’ lives, but at that time, Janie wanted some well-earned rest instead and who could blame her.
We played tennis on the Saturday morning – the first reference to playing that year. Janie booked Court 8 it says.
Court 4 of Lammas Park, as was, more than 25 years later
Janie’s diary says we had dinner at Noughts & Crosses on the Saturday evening, although I am struggling to work out when we were supposed to eat all that yummy grub she brought back from Harvey Knickers. I suppose one of the meals was Thursday night and one intended for the Monday.
Sunday dinner at The Mainellis (or accurately at that time I should say Michael Mainelli & Elisabeth Reuss). This event was at Elisabeth’s place in Chiswick/Gunnersbury. It was possibly revenge…I mean reciprocation…for the Wild Boar evening a couple of months earlier:
Elisabeth proudly served us sauerbraten, a German national dish. We had a very pleasant evening and of course sank more-than-reasonable quantities of alcohol; it would have been churlish of us as guests to do otherwise.
Both Janie and I struggled to digest all of that in the night. What I didn’t realise was that my “almost to be expected” digestive struggle was as nothing compared with the pain Janie was feeling.
We called the doctor, who suggested that she brave out what was probably just over-indulgence or food poisoning. Once Janie was doubled with pain, we called the doctor again and a locum came to Sandall Close to see her. He diagnosed food poisoning, “which can be very painful” and gave her a pain-killing shot.
The pain-killing shot provided Janie with some temporary relief. But once that shot wore off and she was doubled over again in agonising pain, I called for an ambulance.
Which was just as well.
Because it transpired that Janie had pancreatitis resulting from a gall stone getting trapped in her pancreatic duct. Her gall bladder was over-flowing with stones. Just the thought of it is agonisingly painful.
The A&E doctors seemed very young and they gave us reassurance in the way that only well-trained, following all the protocols doctors can.
They told us that they thought they had the matter under control and that most people of Janie’s age and health (normally very good) would recover fully from the ordeal…but that pancreatitis is an extremely dangerous and serious condition so it was possible that Janie wouldn’t survive.
I had driven to the hospital in my own car, behind the ambulance, as advised by the ambulance crew. I drove back to Sandall Close alone in the early hours of the Tuesday morning. I put on the car radio for that short journey. The DJ was playing Miserlou by Dick Dale & His Del-Tones on the radio…
…well it was 1995 when Pulp Fiction was all the rage. I can no longer hear that tune without thinking of that lonely drive home.
SPOILER ALERT! Janie didn’t die. In fact, she recovered well and quickly.
A fortnight later, she had her gall bladder removed on the Monday to ensure that no such episode could happen again. She had the stitches removed on the Saturday and we played tennis the next day and the day after that, which was Bank Holiday Monday.
Tough cookie, is Janie. But I haven’t noticed her choosing to eat sauerbraten again since that Easter weekend.
Actually that was the second of the weekends, when Michael Mainelli & Elisabeth (then still Reuss) came over to Janie’s place in Sandall Close for a feast of wild boar. Almost certainly not the handsme fellow depicted.
The week before, we went to Paul James’s place in Enfield for a party, possibly a housewarming as he was living in Wallington the previous time we went to his place.
We were pretty sure the funding was secured and wanted to keep the funders, not least Eli, sweet.
Word was, Eli’s favourite dish was Lobster Thermidor. Janie, bless her, decided to invite Eli and his family and Michael and Elisabeth over for a Lobster Thermidor fest.
After all, how difficult can it possibly be to prepare Lobster Thermidor from first principles?
Reader, I am here to tell you that it is a heck of a lot of work to prepare Lobster Thermidor from first principles and it is really, really difficult to prepare Lobster Thermidor for seven people in a small domestic kitchen.
To add to the difficulties, I also prepared, for the same meal, my famous wonton soup from first principles in that small kitchen.
Before the soup
And to had to the hard work of it all, it transpired that Eli was one of those people who constantly needs to be entertained…like…constantly. Games, stories, food, drink…no quiet periods just savouring the moment.
Exhausted, post guests, some left over soupExhausted, post guests, some left over Lobster Thermidor
Twas the season of goodwill, a week before Christmas 1994, so we shall not report here Janie’s retrospective views on the subsequent debacle over Z/Yen’s start-up financing arrangements. Suffice it to say that Z/Yen survived it and thrived despite it. So we should, in a way, remain grateful to Z/Yen’s initial finance guarantors.
This date hovered around between the Friday 8th and Saturday 9th, eventually settling, it seems, on the Friday.
Janie finished work a bit early and did the honours for an 8.00 meal. It will have been a good one, but Annalisa’s vegetarianism (was Annie also veggie?) will have irritated Janie a bit.
My guess is that Janie will have done something along the lines of the food she tends to serve Kim. Perhaps ratatouille. Perhaps Lebanese style food.
It will have been good. (I know i have said that twice).
Janie and I went to the hygienist the next day. That incident will have been unconnected with the good meal incident.
I think I possibly flew out to Geneva on the Sunday. For sure I was there on the Monday and I think I stayed a couple of nights.
The following weekend, I played bridge at Tessa’s on the Friday then went on to Janie’s place.
On the Saturday Janie cooked for Kim & Micky. That too will have been a good one.
Janie and I were preparing to go to China, Hong Kong & Bali in the late summer of 1993. An element of prophylaxis was called for, including some vaccination. In particular, we both needed a typhoid jab; I hadn’t had one of those since 1979.
My track record with vaccination was not (and is not) a glorious one. I am a true believer and always take recommended vaccines, but I get irrationally nervous for jabs. One especially ignominious example from my infanthood (some time in the mid-1960s) is contained in the prelude to this (here or below) weird, other story:
For those who choose not to read the above, Dr Green ended up under the dining room table at Woodfield Avenue giving a terrified, bolting infant-version of me one of my childhood jabs in the buttock.
Further, my previous experience with typhoid vaccination, in 1979 ahead of my visit to Mauritius, had not been a great experience. It had left me feeling very sore and a bit poorly for a couple of days.
I therefore planned my typhoid jabs with precision, arranging a Friday end of the day appointment so I could drive straight over to Janie’s, where she had promised to look after me and help me convalesce from the jab.
I seem to recall that she made soup for the purpose. Chicken might have been involved as well. We’d been going out for over a year by then and in any case she had insight into the quintessential cultural mores.
Prophylactic, therapeutic, palliative…chicken soup has got the lot
While all that tender loving care was being prepared in my honour, a trembling version of me turned up at the Colville Health Centre to see Dr Rasheed at 17:40.
Dr Rasheed was a locum, I believe. My regular GP at that time was Dr Catherine Mok. I used to refer to my regular GP as “Mok The Afflicted”, but only because I was addicted to puns. She was a very good GP in my view.
Are you all right?…
…asked Dr Rasheed, perhaps concerned by this trembling wreck of a patient.
Sorry, doctor. I’m a total wimp when it comes to jabs.
Hmmm. Well, the really cowardly people don’t turn up for jabs at all. What are you afraid of?
It’s irrational, doctor, I realise that. But actually, in the matter of this typhoid vaccination, I get a bad reaction to it, so I am anticipating feeling very sore and a bit poorly this weekend.
Dr Rasheed looked puzzled.
When did you last have a typhoid vaccination?
1979, when I went to Mauritius.
Dr Rasheed laughed.
We don’t use those antiquated vaccines any more. You haven’t had Typhim before. You might get a little soreness at the site but side effects are all-but unheard of now.
Back when a jab was really a jab. You knew about it for days. That’s what I call a jab.
It was all over in the batting of an eyelid. I felt like a total fraud as I was driving to Janie’s place, anticipating some 24 hours of tender loving care, realising that my chances of actually feeling poorly were vanishingly small.
Cushions, plumped up pillows, gentle entreaties of the “how are you feeling now?” variety…
…so for how long did I milk that TLC situation before coming clean to Janie that I had been worrying about some obsolete vaccine from a bygone era and didn’t feel sore and poorly at all with this one?
This is the first year I escaped carnival by taking refuge at Janie’s place. It is a tradition that has persisted for over quarter of a century at the time of writing.
