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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.
No clues about what we did.
Very little, presumably.
We were no doubt busy celebrating my birthday and the anniversary of our first date:
Nothing wrong with that.
According to Janie’s diary, she came to the Canal Cafe with me on the Thursday evening (24th) to see NewsRevue.
We’d both booked the Friday out, so my guess is that the idea was to sort out the food for Saturday’s dinner party together on the Friday.
Janie’s order is written on the Friday page and is Lebanese food, so this party will have been a smaller scale version of the New Years do a few months earlier:
We’ll have gone to Mrs Saad’s place in Notting Hill/North Kernsington together to place the order – and what an order for six people. My guess is that this was one of those occasions when Janie and I ended up eating Lebanese left-overs for a week afterwards…
…worse things can happen.
Look at the order/notes:
The veal and pork mixed mince is my prescription for cha chiang. Did we serve the odd Chinese dish as well? Or perhaps the deal was that I would cook a noce meal on the Friday ahead of the party-style feast on Saturday.
It was Janie’s birthday after all – our first of those together.
Janie’s diary also mentions Jill the aromatherapist visiting us at the house on the afternoon of her birthday/birthday bash.
In those days, I was seeing John Chaney at Lampton Place for massage during the week.
The visit from Jill (Wootton) was probably the first time Janie and I had a massage-type therapy treatment together.
Bless.
We both remember Jill moving away and giving up maassage/aromatherapy quite soon after we started working with her. It seems that Jill is now (2019/2023) a hypnotherapist and psychotherapist instead.
As for the dinner party; it is clear that we got Mrs Saad to deliver the food and I am pretty sure it is safe to say that the evening was a great success.
Looks like a lot of food – that can’t have been just for six of us. I’ll guess that the guest numbers went up without additional names being written down.
The diaries are pretty consistent on this weekend.
Friday evening, Michael and Elisabeth came over to Sandall Close fot dinner at 8:00 after work.
Janie and I went to the hygenist’s together at lunchtime the next day; I think Dentics in Kensington at that time.
Then I cooked dinner at mine for Janie and Andrea (and possibly Andrea’s then beau).
These are unconnected incidents: dinner-hygenist-dinner – I’m just reporting what the diaries say.
My diary says that I played bridge with my gang at Tessa’s place on the Thursday evening. That would have been Tessa, Andrea and Maz.
Janie’s diary says that Phillie & family were arriving that day and that they were having dinner “at mum’s” that Thursday evening from 6.00 and that I would be coming over 12.30.
I think I had a key by then. Or this might have been the occasion that resulted in me having a key.
Anyway, Janie’s diary says that we all went for a meal at North China on the Friday evening. This is the gathering of Pauline, Phillie, Tony, Charlie, Janie and me, all around a Chinese restaurant table, that i recall so well from our early time together. I think we only ever did that as a group of six the once.
The diaries are very light on what we did. Possibly we didn’t do much.
To some extent Phillie, Tony & Charlie were probably using Sandall Close as a base to do other stuff.
Where the heck did everyone sleep at Sandall Close?
Anyway, we were all still talking to each other come the Tuesday, as the diary says we six (including Pauline) had a dinner party at Sandall Close on the Tuesday evening.
Janie and I both worked that day too.
I think the family stayed on with Janie until the Wednesday afternoon.
This was not one of the more successful evenings. In some ways it was a reprise of the charming Kim & Micky & ossobuco evening which helped cement me and Janie together…but a sort-of dystopian version of it.
It was not dustopian because of the food. Oh boy, the food was terrific. Janie’s Friday diary reads…
…collect ossobuco & Langues de chat biscuits & mascarpone [from La Pasena]
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It was the company that made the evening dystopian.
Rita is one of Janie’s colleagues – even 25+ years later Janie still refers work to Rita when appropriate.
Now don’t get me wrong, I liked Rita. Rita is absolutely fine.
The problem at that time was that Rita was with a chap named Tony and Tony liked far right politics of the most venal kind. Rita and Tony as an item didn’t stand the test of time for all that long beyond this dystopian evening…
…nor indeed did Tony make it very deep into middle age. Stonk in the brain or something of that ilk. It isn’t ONLY the good who die young.
But the Rita and Tony partnership had, by then, lasted long enough to produce young Mark who was 10-12 years old. By all accounts, Mark has subsequently settled down but at that time he was a fully paid up member of the Tony-Loony-Tunes-Yoof and not averse to doling out a bit of lip.
None of the Mark and Tony shenanigans went down very well with me and Micky. I don’t think it went down too well with Rita either when the extent of the mismatch inevitably spilled over into the evening.
I seem to recall Kim subsequently finding it all rather amusing; she rather thrives on conflict in a funny way. Not to say that she found it acceptable; just that she preferred to laugh it off afterwards while Micky and I sought solace in incredulity.
That particular evening grouping was a one-off.
The food was terrific though.
We’d got to the stage, by the end of 1992, that most of our getting togethers didn’t get specific mention as “Jane” or “Ian” in our respective diaries.
Yet this particular weekend, 5th to 7th February, is marked in Janie’s diary:
Ian over for weekend…
…and marked in mine…
Jane [with an arrow and a line through the weekend]
The significance of this, I think, is that we had not, untilt hat point or slightly beyond that point, considered spending the whole weekend together as a given. In fact, with Janie still taking a fair bit of weekend work and with me spending some weekend time writing the book with Michael etc, we rarely spent several days together.
Clearly we blocked this one out to spend the whole weekend together.
Janie also wrote:
Arab party?…
…in the Saturday, but I don’t think that happened. I think the New Years Eve party with lebanese food…
…became that party instead – probably because most of Janie’s lot used to go off skiing in the early weeks of the year.
There are some notes on Janie’s Friday page about food:
Strips of top side or buttock flattened out for beef olives…
…sounds like we ate well at Janie’s fair hand.
I’m pretty sure we spent that first Christmas together apart, as it were, with our respective families, regathering at the bank holiday weekend after Christmas, which fell on a Friday that year.
Janie’s diary for 28 December reads:
1.00 Ian, Kim & Micky lunch – at Kim’s
I believe that.
I’ll guess that we ate some yummy food and drank far too much wine.
My diary suggests that I played bridge on 29th or 30th December. There are no clues as to where we played, nor which day, although I’m guessing the original idea was 30th and the eventual was 29th.
Janie’s 1992 diary for 31 December reads:
11.00 collect food…
…Jane’s party…
…while mine simply indicates a new year’s eve do of some kind, unspecified.
Janie is pretty sure that the term “Jane’s party” in this context means that she threw a small party at Sandall Close, as she was wont to do back then – the “collect food” bit clinching it for Janie that her use of the term “Jane” at that time would have been self-referral.
Her 1993 diary contains more clues, with an additional page stating that the food collection was from Mrs Saad’s place on St Mark’s Road. Lebanese if I remember correctly.
I’ll guess that it was a relatively small gathering – probably Kim & Micky, plus anyone else from Janie’s inner circle of friends who happened to be around. I suspect 10-12 people.
I’ll guess that we all ate some yummy Lebanese food and drank far too much wine.
Janie’s diary says:
8.00 Kim & Micky & Ian Dinner. Victor & Kim.
Victor was Kim’s dad who, after being widowed, had remarried, confusingly a woman named Kim. Janie used to refer to Victor’s Kim as:
Kim The Chickidoo
…to distinguish her from “our” Kim.
Not much memory remains of that particular evening. I’m sure Janie will have cooked a super meal and I’m sure that, by then, Janie and I took it for granted that I’d stay.
Janie’s diary says that she went to an SAC (chiropody committee) meeting on the Sunday afternoon. I recall that she was quite frustrated with committee stuff when we first met and that her “being on the committee” days didn’t last long into our relationship.
Nor did Janie’s midweek French lessons, not that they were getting in the wway of anything we wanted to do together…I think Janie felt she wasn’t getting much out of them.
Not too sure what we got up to this day. In the early days of our relatioship, we had other commitments already pre-arranged. This particular weekend, Janie had her twin Phillie for the weekend, but was expecting to be clear for lunch at Kim’s on the Sunday.
I saw Caroline on the Saturday evening – almost certainly a dinner in a quite fancy but not OTT place) and had another of those “Bridge?” things in my diary for the Sunday. I’m pretty sure that means it fell through.
I have also written:
…not Kim…2.00…Jane
…so I’m guessing the Kim lunch idea fell through and that this was one of the first occasions that Janie and I had a late lunch and spent the latter part of a Sunday together.
