Tag: Simon Jacobs

The June 2024 Social Whirl Part Two, Plus Jazz In the Crypt With Emma Rawicz & Dave Preston, Mid June

It’s been a long week

Lots of pleasant events in my diary in one mid-June week:

  • 18 June – MCC real tennis club night;
  • 19 June – lunch with Stuart Harris after session with accountants;
  • 20 June – real tennis follwed by a bit of Middlesex v Surrey at Lord’s followed by Jazz in the Crypt at St John Smith Square…or should I say Sinfonia Smith Square;
  • 22 June – dinner with Simon & Timothy… & Ella.

Club Night

The last tennis club night of the current season – we’ll resume in September – had seven of us engaging in various doubles battles until the last four of us standing were worn out.

Lunch With Stuart Harris

The next day, I met up with my very first former tennis doubles partner – albeit “lawn” rather than “real” – Stuart Harris. (No relation).The tale of our great seminal tennis tournament victory in 1974 can be seen by clicking here or below.

I Didn’t Just Learn Tennis In The School Easter Holidays Of 1974, I Smashed It

Following a most enjoyable Zoom, we decided to meet up properly for lunch. Fitting that Stuart suggested John Lewis’s 5th floor restaurant, as that location was well suited to Cavendish Square accountants and was also faintly reminiscent of Pratts restaurant at the John Lewis store in Streatham, where my dad used to like to take me for tea on rare, cherished occasions during my childhood.

It was great to catch up with Stuart again after all these years. We had lots to talk about and a couple of hours flew by. Stuart’s jokes have not got better over the decades, whereas mine have. That’s one of my jokes, btw. Why isn’t anybody laughing?

LOrd’s For Tennis & T20

Real tennis was fun. Then I had some time to kill, not least because the T20 match was to be a late kick off due to the football Euros match. I got some reading done on the pavilion sun deck while holding some suitable seats for me and Janie. Janie arrived in such good time for the match that we were able to eat first. Good idea, really, as we’d neither of us had lunch.

Yum

Middlesex did its usual “flatter to deceive” bit, looking good for the first 15 overs of the Surrey innings.

Janie and I were not heavily invested in this match, as we had long-since planned to abandon ship in favour of SJSS and a jazz evening there.

Jazz In The crypt with emma raWicz & Dave preston

Emma Rawicz is seen as one of the brightest young jazz talents around. Saxophone too – Janie’s favourite. She, together with her friend Dave Preston, another bright young thing in the jazz world – guitar in his case – were to do a jazz impromptu set of their latest stuff.

No second innings at Lord’s for us – off to collect Dumbo who drove us across London to St John’s Smith Square.

But wait…

…there are balloons and signs of a party as we arrive. The place is no longer named St John’s Smith Square – it had that very day been rebranded as Sinfonia Smith Square. Get it right.

Thus, instead of the promised St John’s Smith Square crypt jazz concert, we saw a Sinfonia Smith Square crypt jazz concert.

Here’s a link to the Sinfonia Smith Square stub for that concert.

It was very good.

Here is a video of the two of them, plus a pianist on this occasion, playing one of the cool jazz pieces they played for us: Vera:

Emma comes across as a warm-hearted young woman, who spent more time plugging Dave Preston’s latest album, Purple / Black…

…than she spent plugging her own latest material. The album Chroma, seeing as you asked:

We really enjoyed the concert and for sure will now be looking out for Emma and Dave – yes we feel as though we’ve done enough to be on first name terms with them both.

Dinner With Simon, Timothy & Ella at their place

Simon & Timothy have a recent addition to their family: Ella. One of the purposes of our visit was to have dinner and a good chat with Simon & Timothy. But the main purpose, obviously, was to meet Ella and take her the present that we have been accumulating for her since we learnt of her imminent arrival – our spent, balding tennis balls.

“Ella” depicted by a lookalike actress

Naturally we didn’t take photographs of young Ella – Simon and Timothy don’t want her to turn into a vain, lens-loving gal…

…in any case, she’d probably just eat the photos. Apparently Ella will try to eat almost anything. She certainly made a good attempt at one of my elbows while I was eating and made headway with the first of the 15 balls we took for her. That collection of balls is not expected to last long. Janie and I will need to play yet more tennis.

Simon cooked a splendid meal:

  • asparagus soup;
  • roast chicken with roasted vegetables;
  • strawberries and cream.

Very English summer, which, coincidentally, is the way the weather seemed to be turning that weekend. At last.

It was a very enjoyable evening which flashed by all too quickly.

A Social Whirl At The Start Of “The” Season: Three Dinners In Six Days – 1, 5 & 6 June 2024

The third event: Streatham BBYO alums gathering at Bill’s Covent Garden

Dinner At Claudia & Richard’s Place, 1 June 2024

Claudia & her pot

The weather didn’t smile on us for drinks & nibbles outdoors – Janie and I had a quick guided tour of Claudia’s lovely garden before dashing back inside to warm up – but the warmth of the hospitality made up for the chilly evening.

Jonathan does the wine waiter bit

Claudia likes to show off her culinary skills and thus chose to serve a coulibiac as the centrepiece of her superb meal.

With thanks to Anthea for taking this picture of the coulibiac on my phone – not all blogs have their food porn pictures snapped by world class fashion photographers, you know.

Anthea tries unsuccessfully to encourage these two “kids” away from their phones and towards their dinner.

Honestly, kids these days with their phones…

Janie’s attempt at food porn photography

My attempt at food porn photography

Janie’s pud

It wasn’t all about food. It was great to catch up with old friends again (Anthea, Claudia and Richard), plus meet some new (to us) folks in Jonathan and Joanne. Jonathan’s greyhound provided some additional entertainment, not least when it went missing in the house for a while and search parties scattered to find it.

A super evening – thanks Claudia.

Dinner At Maurizio Barca With Simon Jacobs & Graham Greenglass, 5 June 2024

A few weeks before this dinner, I saw Graham Greenglass in person for the first time in decades at the sad occasion of Fran Erdunast’s funeral evening prayers. Graham and I had re-engaged by e-mail and I had even put Graham back together again with Fran, who was a cousin of his, back in 2021. We had every intention of meeting up back then, but I let that ball drop at that time. My bad.

Coincidentally, Graham’s name had come up again a few weeks before the sad Fran news, when I attended and spoke at the Gresham Society annual dinner:

Singing…Or In This Case Speaking… For My Supper, Gresham Society AGM & Dinner, Guildhall, 11 March 2024

As a small token of thanks for my speech, Professor Tim Connell presented me with the canonical book about The Guildhall – Guildhall: City of London: History Guide Companion: A History and a Guide:

I had meant to get in touch with Graham about that happy coincidence, but in the end it was Fran’s sad demise that triggered the reunion.

While pondering how best to set up a proper meeting, I recalled that Graham and Simon were also good friends back in the day…

Graham and Simon in 1979

…so I e-mailed the two of them to suggest that we three meet again. The idea found favour.

Simon somehow found time to fit us in, despite his sixth album having just been released ‘n’ all:

Graham’s book you may only sample for free, whereas Simon’s album can be heard in full

Compared with the others, I felt a little bereft of relatively recent published materials…apart from the 3000 or so pieces here on Ogblog.

The Scarsdale Tavern was my initial choice of venue, but that place is especially picky about arrival times, which they felt sure we would understand. We did understand that their proposed timings suited the Scarsdale rather than us, so we chose instead to eat when we wanted to at Maurizio Barca, which was a quiet, friendly, local Italian place on the North End Road. Little did I know that Graham’s mum’s family hailed from that part of London, so it was a bit of a spiritual reunion with his family’s ancestors, as well as a reunion with a couple of relics from Graham’s own past.

We had a very enjoyable evening, despite signally failing to put all of the world’s problems to rights by talking them through. Perhaps it will need another get together or two to complete the solving of those.

Streatham BBYO “Annual” Gathering, Bill’s Restaurant, 6 June 2024

David, Linda, Sandra, Wendy, Liza, Andrea (and me behind the lens).

In a break with tradition, we gathered the week after half term holiday this time, but then Sandra is now the last of our clan still working in the education sector and was able to make this date.

Unfortunately Mark was unable to make it in the end for health reasons, but still seven of us gathered, which isn’t bad at all.

Andrea and Wendy were fashionably late, as always. Except that both announced well in advance that they would be late and ended up arriving earlier than we anticipated given that they had said that they’d be late. Does that mean that they were early?

No matter, we all had a good chat over palatable food and a few drinks.

The stuff I have been writing up from my 1974 diaries proved strangely pertinent to much of the chat.

Sandra seems to have forgiven me for needing to be reminded that she suffered along with me and others at the hands of Miss Aaron at Brixton cheder…

“Freed At Last, Freed At Last…”: Brixton Cheder In Early 1974

…I even seem to be forgiven for bringing back Sandra’s nightmares about those unpleasant experiences.

Andrea and Wendy keenly anticipate me reintroducing them to Stuart (no relation) Harris, through whom all three of us met before the BBYO days and with whom I have recently re-engaged after finding my earliest tennis memories in that 1974 diary.

I Didn’t Just Learn Tennis In The School Easter Holidays Of 1974, I Smashed It

I didn’t realise that David Heller and Liza Abrahams also know/knew Stuart and the “Naff Harris” family.

Like the club nights of old, it was all over so very quickly. As always, it was such a pleasure to meet up with the old gang again.

A Clubby Week, Mostly At Lord’s For The Ireland Test, Late May To Early June 2023

Jack Leach warming up on Day Three

Tuesday 30 May – A Streatham BBYO Youth Club Reunion At Cafe Pacifico

Waiting for Andrea? Actually this picture from our 2019 gathering at Bill’s

In a minor break with tradition, we gathered at that Mexican institution, Cafe Pacifico, in Covent Garden this year, at Andrea’s excellent suggestion.

In compliance with the strict traditions of our group, Andrea was late. In the modern era, Andrea is able to pre-announce her tardiness by sending a message to everyone explaining why, on this one occasion, she has been delayed. It always feels in keeping with our long-established social mores. If Andrea is ever to be on time I think she should message us to warn us of that – the shock of her timely arrival might be too great for some of our ageing tickers.

Andrea back then

Anyway, it is always worth the wait to see Andrea, just as it is always worth the wait to see everyone from the youth club gang again. We used to gather almost every week, of course – youth clubs tend to be a bit like that.

Time rolls on, but when we gather it feels as though the decades have changed this gang remarkably little. Coincidentally, Cafe Pacifico similarly felt much like the place I remember trying many decades ago; probably because it is little changed.

As always, we had a very enjoyable evening.

Wednesday 31 May – A Redoubtable Bout Of Doubles Tennis At Lord’s

Me & Mr Thirlwell after a previous battle at Lord’s (early 2020)

Our real tennis court at Lord’s has been sequestered by the cricket authorities “for media purposes” during the major matches this year (don’t get me started) so it made obvious sense to have a game the evening before the temporary closure.

Indeed, even without the closure, I realised that it was a personal tradition for me to play the day before an Ireland test at Lord’s – I have now done so every time such a test has ever been held throughout history (both times):

The Week That Ireland Came To Lord’s, 23 to 26 July 2019

This time it was a ninety minute doubles helping to warm up my friends Andrew Hinds and John Thirlwell who are partnering each other in the in-house tournament. We had a three-set epic, which my partner, Bill, and I managed to take at the very last gasp in a decider, having been one-set-all, five-games-all.

Great fun and a good battle.

Thursday 1 June – England v Ireland Day One At Lord’s

Pavilion View

I went to the gym to get a bit of exercise ahead of the excesses of a few days at Lord’s. I togged up for the pavilion and enjoyed 30-40 minutes of cricket from there before lunch, chatting with Nick Brown from Dulwich College, exchanging interesting thoughts and word on our respective initiatives on community participation cricket.

After lunch, it seemed if anything to get colder in the pavilion. Then the sun came out and I realised that the pavilion would warm up slowly, whereas I might warm up more quickly in one of my favoured sunny spots in the Tavern Stand – if I could get there before the stampede from the chilly Pavilion and Warner.

Made it. No sweat. It was still quite cold, even in the sun, so no sweat.

I watched and read a bit, interrupted only by the arrival of Sidney Yankson & his entourage – I was inadvertently sitting behind their chosen patch. Sidney is one of my real tennis pals, whom I first met when he organised a match between the MCC and Honourable Artillery Company five years ago.

Big Match Weekend At Lord’s Part One: MCC v HAC Real Tennis Match, 21 July 2017

Mid afternoon I received a message from Jonny “Twophones” Hurst to say that he had a spare seat in the Compton Lower and was wondering whether I would care to join him and his mate, Huge Morg. Who could say no to such an invitation.

Jonny Twophones & Huge Morg

We spent the rest of the afternoon watching cricket and nattering…which is not exactly an unusual combination of pastimes when a Lord’s.

All very enjoyable.

Friday 2 June – England v Ireland Day Two With Awesome Simo

I decided to get to Lord’s well early to secure good Tavern Stand seats for me and Simon Jacobs. I figured that the previous day’s good weather and the sunny start would make the Tavern Stand very popular, which it did.

Despite being on picnic duty which included some hand-made onion bagels from Papa Joseph’s place, I was still early enough to secure a brace of end of block seats in the second row.

Tavern Stand seats with excellent view of Jonny Bairstow’s warm-ups

I also wanted to tell Janie, pictorially, that I had arrived safe, sane & sound

Simon arrived around 11:30, but not before my row had been invaded by several real tennis “stars” in exile from our beloved court with only cricket to watch: Tony Friend, Simon Martin & (latterly) James Coley.

An engineer trying in vain properly to equip a 19th century tennis court for 21st century media.

A day of cricket is always a good opportunity to chew the fat with Simon. Or “a good old chinwag” as one of his local Hammersmith places once suggested as a raison d’être.

A Good Old Chinwag and Dinner With Simon Jacobs, Old Suffolk Punch, 10 January 2017

Unfortunately, much like the chinwag occasion, Simon simply couldn’t help himself in the matter of mentioning the names of despicable politicians, usually just after I had eaten a few mouthfuls of delicious smoked trout bagel or some of my “salad-in-a-cup” morsels. “Cruella” being the cruellest mid-mouthful blurt of the lot.

Still, we managed to get over all that and enjoy a glorious sunny day watching the cricket.

I did so little getting up and walking around on this day that I thought my right leg had utterly gone to sleep when I finally gave up on the day about 15 minutes before stumps – Simon had baled out about 10 minutes earlier. Fortunately the walk to Edgware Road tube brought my leg back to life.

I have no idea why a day of doing more or less nothing is so tiring, but I always feel in need of a long deep sleep after such a day of cricket and achieve same without any difficulty. Some people sleep during the cricket, of course, which is an entirely different matter and not usually my thing.

Saturday 3 June – England v Ireland Day Three With Daisy

We might only be here for six balls

We had no idea what to expect of Day Three. The result was pretty much no longer in doubt, but we wondered whether Ireland might collapse within an hour or make a day of it. They did the latter, very well.

We got to Lord’s well early, mostly to get a decent parking space rather than a decent seat but the early arrival meant that we achieved both.

That allowed us plenty of time to observe the England team warming up and interacting with the crowd.

Josh Tongue

Matty Potts

Chris Woakes

Chris & Ollie

We need help to identify these three. Any ideas?

Early morning autograph hunters

We did a bit of strolling around but mostly watched the cricket during the hours of play and chose to stroll during the lunch interval. The place was busy but not heaving on Day Three.

Daisy’s mum, The Duchess, seems to be moonlighting as a fast food outlet

I ran into yet another of my real tennis pals, Alastair Robson, during a pit stop, or “in the jacks” as Alastair so politely put it. Janie and I chatted with him for a while before the resumption, although we’ll hopefully have plenty of time to chat with him in Leamington in less than two week’s time on our way to Edgbaston.

The match even went on until tea, during which time, while politely putting away most of our things as the end was clearly nigh, I also did a bit of stretching.

A dedicated follower of fashion at tea

When England took the final wicket we made our escape ahead of the crowds, realising that a lead of 11 runs was not going to take much hunting down.

Here’s a link to the scorecard and other Cricinfo resources on the match.

We’d had a glorious day in the sun…

…I’d had best part of three such days.

Not the most competitive match ever but a very enjoyable few days at Lord’s.

Let Them Eat Cake: Dinner At Jilly’s Place, 18 February 2023

Photo by Janie: Clockwise – Ruth, Daniel, Simon, (Janie’s chair), Me, Jilly.

We don’t go to people’s houses much for dinner any more. We don’t have people round to our house much either.

I guess the dinner party has sort-of gone out of fashion, but it really shouldn’t have done so, as it is a very pleasant way to spend an evening with friends old and new.

I have known Jilly for many decades – since we were youngsters at BBYO. Similarly Simon – in fact I have known Simon for longer than I have known Jilly…and Jilly has known Simon for even longer than that blah blah.

Simon…so sensible back then.

Jilly was even more sensible…and in colour

We were also supposed to be joined by Timothy, but he had somehow managed to get a diary clash, having agreed to accompany Simon’s mum to see András Schiff at The Wig.

Ruth and Daniel are good friends of Jilly’s from the locality, which means Watford and also means that they too have known Jilly for decades…just not as many decades as me and Simon…about as many decades as Janie has known Jilly.

Anyway, point is, it was a really super evening. Jilly made a wonderful meal, with a slightly spicy tomato soup…

…just a week or two later, you’d probably have needed police protection around your house if it became known that you had enough tomatoes for a home made soup…

…followed by a very tasty chicken-based main course…

…followed by Jilly’s pièces de résistance – cake-based deserts. Enough for a small army.

Qu’ils mangent de la brioche…

But of course such evenings are really special, not only for such good food, but also for the delightful company. Thanks, Jilly.

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.

Back To Life, Back To Reality… Almost, November 2021

Thanks to Giles Stogdon for the above photo.

At the beginning of November, life seemed to be almost getting back to normal. Lots of real tennis in convivial circumstances for a start,

Thursday 4 November 2021 – MCC Real Tennis Skills Night

For my sins, I have inherited, from John (“Johnny”) Whiting, the role of “match manager” for the popular skills nights at Lord’s. A few years ago, on hearing John and the professionals discussing the amount of organising the event needs on the night, I made the schoolboy error of offering to help next time. John saw the offer of help as an opportunity to step down; frankly, Johnny had done it for so many years, who can blame him?

Fortunately for me, Johnny had left comprehensive instructions and spreadsheets rendering the event almost fool-proof, as long as there are a couple of pros who know what they are doing to make the event run smoothly on the court, which, of course, it did.

My review of the event can be found on the MCC website through this link.

Alternatively, if anything ever goes awry with the MCC site link, a scrape of the report can be found here.

Naturally, skills night is as much an exercise in conviviality as it is an exercise in tennis court skills.

However, the assembled throng did have to listen to me waffling on about prizes and the like:

Thanks again to Giles Stogdon for this photo

A Week Of Tennis & Dining Out 6 to 12 November 2021

Quite a week. Janie and I went to Simon Jacobs place for dinner on 6th, where he cooked a delicious soup followed by chicken & mushroom pie. Lots of chat about music and that sort of thing. No photos on this occasion but there are photos from our previous visit, before lockdown 2.0:

A Prescient Visit To Simon Jacobs’s Place, 10 October 2020

I played a fair bit of tennis that week, not least a ridiculous 24 hours during which I played an hour of real tennis singles on the Tuesday evening, two hours of modern tennis on the Wednesday morning (part singles, part doubles), then a match, representing MCC against Middlesex University on the Wednesday, which ended up being another two-and-a-half hours of doubles. No wonder I served a couple of double-faults at the end of my second rubber on the Wednesday evening. Again, no photos from the match this time, but here’s a report with pictures and videos from the most recent equivalent home fixture – a couple of years ago:

A Real Nailbiter Of A Finish, MCC v MURTC, Lord’s, 13 November 2019

On Thursday 11th, I went to the office for the first time (other than for a team meeting) in more than 18 months. Then I met up with Johnboy – initially in “Ye [sic] Old Mitre” (it really should read “þe Old Mitre”, you know) and then on to Chettinad Restaurant (my choice), as I thought a high-quality Indian meal would be a good way for us to “get back on the bike” of dining out. The food was very good.

It had been a really long while since John and I had met up for a simple restaurant meal – our last few gatherings had either been at homes, the four of us or the four of us at homes. This Yauatcha meal might have been the previous one:

An Evening With John White, Including Dinner At Yauatcha, 5 June 2019

Then on the Friday I was evicted from this year’s MCC singles tournament for feeble-handicappers in the Round of 16. I don’t think I’ll try tournament singles again. I love playing singles more than doubles on a friendly basis but doubles makes more sense at my level for matches and tournaments.

Tennis At All Sorts Of Levels, Performances Of Various Kinds & A Bit Of A Boost, 15 to 29 November 2021

On 15 November I spent a very jolly afternoon at The Queen’s Club watching real tennis played by real players; The British Open 2021.

I saw Neil Mackenzie take on Matthieu Sarlangue, then Zac Eadle challenge Nick Howell, then finally (and most excitingly, a five setter) Edmund Kay against Darren Long. Here is a link to the draw/results on the T&RA website. If by any chance that link doesn’t work, I have scraped the file to here.

I spent much of the afternoon & evening with my friend/adversary Graham Findlay with whom, by chance, I was due to battle with myself that very Thursday. I was thus able to reciprocate the coffee and cake Graham kindly treated me to at Queen’s with a light bite in The Lord’s Tavern after our battle on the Thursday, before I went home to perform my latest ThreadMash piece – click here or below.

Let Them Eat Cake & The Tennis Court Oath, ThreadZoomMash Performance Piece, 18 November 2021

Janie and I had an afternoon of adventure on the Friday, having our Covid vaccinations boosted (we don’t get out much these days – all such matters need noting).

Picture actually from first vax

Most people reported a sore arm and aches. We both got the aches but strangely my arm did not feel at all sore at the vaccination site and I was able to play lawners lefty-righty all weekend.

A quieter week followed. I continued to play some doubles in partnership with Andrew Hinds, in preparation for our R16 match – this we did Tuesday 16th and Monday 22 November.

Janie and I were due to see Lydia White…

Hitting The High Notes With Lydia White, 5 May 2020

… star in Little Women at The Park Theatre on the Thursday, but sadly our performance needed to be cancelled due to cast illness (not Lydia) that day, so we’ll miss the run now.

On Monday 29th, Andrew Hinds (depicted wooden-spoon-wielding, left, in the photo below) and I won a place in the quarter finals of the feeble-handicappers’ doubles tournament.

With thanks to Tony Friend for this photo From skills night

Due to competitor/court availability (or lack thereof) before the seasonal break, that means that we shall still be in the 2021/22 tournament into the New Year – the equivalent of getting to week two of a grand slam lawn tennis tournament – but in a very slightly less-elevated way.

FoodCycle, GoodSAM, The Samaritans, 1981 Keele/BBYO Redux & Being Boilered, This Is Lockdown 3.0, 20 February 2021

With thanks to Rachelle Gryn Brettler for snapping us in Rossmore Road, preparing to do our FoodCycle run on a wet winter’s day

We don’t get out much in Lockdown 3.0, other than to buy food and do our charity work.

That is giving me a chance to crack on with my retro-blogging; I’m working through 1995 & 1996 to cover the Ged & Daisy (Ian & Janie) “25 years ago” story. I’m needing to give more thought, though, to the formerly less well-documented, “40 years on” story of my early days at Keele University.

Strangely, 1981 and 2021 seem to have collided, forty years on.

I wrote last summer about my joy at being asked to make our FoodCycle collections from St Paul’s in Rossmore Road…

FoodCycle’s Spiritual Home In Rossmore Road & Other Tales, 24 June 2020

…mentioning the superb tapes Graham Greenglass used to make for me, including quirky numbers such as Rossmore Road by Barry Andrews. I still hum it or sing it more often than not when Daisy and I do FoodCycle from there:

Dreamy use of sax and double bass on that track.

Last week, I wrote up the very weekend during which several visitors descended on Keele and Graham presented me with a few cassettes, including that very track. The piece below is a thumping good read, even if you weren’t there, including an excellent undergraduate recipe for spaghetti bollock-knees:

The Best Pot I Had In Five Years At Keele, i.e. The First Weekend I Tried Cooking In The F Block Lindsay Kitchen, 11 to 15 February 1981

On Wednesday, before Daisy and I did our FoodCycle run, I did an NHS Responder gig to collect a prescription. Strangely the prescription was to be collected at the Tesco Hoover Factory in Greenford. Strange, because also on that little collection of quirky recordings given to me in February 1981 was the song Hoover Factory by Elvis Costello:

So, by some strange quirk of fate, forty years after being given recordings of those two rather obscure (but wonderful) recordings about lesser-known places in West London, I found myself doing charity gigs from those two very places.

I have already written up the ear worm I got from Hoover Factory a few months after first hearing the song:

Uncle Manny’s Funeral & The Hoover Factory, 15 May 1981

But the early 1980s connection this week does not stop there.

While I have been cracking on with the NHS Responder/GoodSAM app as well as FoodCycle, Daisy has been training to become a Samaritan and this week moved on from being a course trainee to becoming a mentee (i.e. doing real sessions with real calls under the supervision of a mentor).

Towards the end of her course, Daisy had been waiting with a little trepidation to find out who her mentor might be. Mentors work closely with their mentees for a few weeks. She knew that it might be one of her course trainers or possibly someone she hadn’t encountered before.

A couple of weeks ago Janie announced that her mentoring instructions had come through and her mentor was a new name to her: Alison Shindler.

GED: Oh, yes, I know Alison Shindler.

DAISY: What do you mean?

GED: She was a leading light in BBYO towards the end of my time there.

DAISY: Might not be the same person…

GED: …Ealing BBYO – bet it is!

Of course it is.

What a pleasant surprise.

Less of a surprise though, after their first session together, is that Alison & Daisy seem to be getting along really well. I’m confident that the mentoring partnership should be a very good one.

Meanwhile Alison has furnished me with a photo from so far back in the day, the biggest surprise is that we were in colour back then:

With thanks to Alison Shindler for this photo

That’s a c17-year-old me turning around, next to me Simon Jacobs who was central to my “going to Keele” story and part of the “cooking weekend”. In the red scarf I thought was Jilly Black (who has remained friends with me, Daisy and Alison throughout those decades – in fact it is a little surprising we haven’t overlapped before now )…but it turns out to be Emma Cohen disguised as Jilly. Opposite Simon is Lauren Sterling plus, slightly upstaged by Simon’s head, Caroline Curtis (then Freeman) who visited me and Simon at Keele the February 1981 weekend following the “cooking” one.

A Short Visit From Caroline To See Me And Simon At Keele, 20 to 22 February 1981

It’s all too weird, in a good way.

But now, after all that excitement, Daisy and I are in temporary exile at the flat. The replacement of the Noddyland boiler has over-run by a day, making Daisy right and me wrong, as usual.

Stock boiler image: neither the actual old nor the actual new boiler

I’ve been grasping for a quirky early 1980s musical connection for a boiler replacement. So my earworm for the tail end of this tale is by that early 1980s mainstay, The Human League – Being Boiled:

A Prescient Visit To Simon Jacobs’s Place, 10 October 2020

Let’s just do this thing as soon as possible.

That was Simon’s, Janie’s and my conclusion a few days before this gathering, when we realised that Janie & I had been meaning to go and have a nosy at Simon’s house extension and makeover for ages.

We’d known all about the makeover for many months. I saw Simon in late 2019, choosing a venue strategically placed between our two pads for convenience, little knowing that I was dragging him all the way to West London, while he was in fact taking refuge from the builders at his mum’s place in Pinner.

Half Way There, Living On A Prayer, Dinner With Simon Jacobs, The Pembroke, 3 December 2019

Then, a few months later, Simon chose to show the world the wreckage that used to be his lovely house (and was soon to be his even lovelier house) in the video for his song, Make It Happen.

Anyway, it’s just as well we made the “let’s just do this” decision and hastily arranged to meet up that very Saturday…

…because if we had left it even one more week we’d have been unable to visit Simon’s household under the childishly simple rules of the Tier 2 partial lockdown.

Simon shows off the dressing room/walk-in wardrobe adjacent to the master bedroom – Simon looks blasé about it all while Janie gesticulates

We had the guided tour between the starter (pea and mint soup) and the main (roast lamb).

Simon looks a bit more animated when showing off his sound studio room, which is about the size of my “man cave” and/but has padding on the walls and the ceiling
Simon: “It’s compulsory to have a chair that swivels around in one’s sound lab”

The house makeover looks terrific. In particular the loft extension that is Timothy’s studio, which I neglected to photograph…in part because I couldn’t work out how to do justice to that space with my phone camera.

After the lamb, we all enjoyed Janie’s apple strudel. Janie and I had felt badly about inviting ourselves around for a nosy and finding ourselves invited around for a meal. We felt as though we’d invited ourselves around for a meal, which is not the done thing. Simon’s wise suggested compromise was for us to provide a desert. Simon really likes deserts but doesn’t much DO deserts.

The left-overs of the large strudel can just about be made out at the far end of the table.

We talked about all manner of things. Old times, current affairs, putting the world to rights. We were on the verge of putting the world completely to rights when we realised that it was already far too late and way past all of our bedtimes, so unfortunately the world will now have to wait until after the tier-two-lockdown-that-isn’t-a-lockdown, when the solving of all problems can be resumed at our place.

It was a super evening – thanks Simon.

Half Way There, Living On A Prayer, Dinner With Simon Jacobs, The Pembroke, 3 December 2019

I chose The Pembroke very carefully. I dug out my trusty slide rule, compass, protractor and set squares…

…concluding that this place was approximately equidistant between my place and Simon’s…

…it was also one of those places I’d heard good things about and was keen to try.

Everything went according to plan; I turned up a couple of minutes after the appointed hour and Simon turned up shortly after that.

I bet you put some effort into choosing this place on the grounds of its equidistance…

…said Simon. I nodded.

Thing is, I forgot to mention last time I saw you, but I have finally got round to commissioning that work on my house I’ve been talking about for years…so I am currently living with my mum in Pinner.

Last time I saw Simon was his gig at Notting Hill Arts Club:

Simon Jacobs Live Gig, Notting Hill Arts Club, 27 August 2019

I’m not surprised Simon didn’t mention the “staying with mum” business on that occasion; it’s not a very rock’n’roll existence, is it? Even if temporary and in sensible circumstances. Even with Simon’s lovely mum.

We spent a bit of time bemoaning the whole “builders in the house” business.

Then we worked out that half way between my place and Simon’s mum’s place is probably Alperton or Wembley (it is). I have subsequently researched half way houses in Alperton/Wembley – click here. Probably best we booked The Pembroke.

The food was good, the staff were attentive without being overly-so. They had acquiesced to my request for a corner table, not that the place was too full anyway, but that back corner is away from the bar, which is a bit nosiy there.

All very satisfactory.

But the funny thing was, that once Simon had told me that he was living with his mum, he seemed somewhat reverted, somehow boyish compared with his usual self.

Still crazy after all these years

Example. Simon was describing his mother’s house, which is not the house I remember Simon & Sue growing up in; their folks moved to a different house in the 1980s.

Simon described the garden as big. Seriously big. He then went to Google Earth to try locating the garden so I could see it.

At one point, when I wondered why Simon was looking at the Google Earth globe, Simon asserted that his mum’s garden is the only structure of human construction, other than the Great Wall Of China, that can be seen from outer space. Perhaps that assertion was meant to be exaggeration for effect, rather than an attempt to hoodwink me.

In the end, Simon failed to locate his mum’s garden on Google Earth…I mean, it can’t be that big then, can it?

So we discussed other things. Such as the political omnishambles that is the general election.

We also discussed Simon’s latest cracking single, which I had been honoured to hear in preview and is due to be released on the Friday after our get together…

…which is today, now that I am writing this up, so I can share the charming video and song with you:

Cool sound, coming from a self-confessed “old bloke” who still lives with his mum…

…Ok, is temporarily living with his mum while making even more cool studio space for himself and Timothy in his house.

Anyway, we had a very enjoyable evening, as always. I was surprised at how late it was by the time we toddled towards Earls Court, from whence I went the two stops back to my place and Simon…schlepped all the way to Pinner.

Simon Jacobs Live Gig, Notting Hill Arts Club, 27 August 2019

It was jolly decent of Simon to arrange this gig to take place just across the road from Clanricarde Gardens, I thought. Janie and I both made sure we’d be free that evening to support.

Notting Hill Arts Club has had a bit of a makeover since we last attended a gig there, which must be 10-15 years ago.

The main purpose of the gig was to launch Simon’s second album, Baby Boomer, available on Spotify – click here – or on YouTube – click the picture link below.

Simon has used a fascinating technique to overcome the problem of the “troublesome second album following a successful first album”…

…he and his (self)-publicist have deemed the first album to have been a flop. Fiendish. Cunning. Daft. The following “interview” explains:

Anyway, despite all that John Shuttleworth meets Spinal Tap buffoonery, the album Baby Boomer really is very good and I think a big leap forward from the first album, Circle Line, which I also liked, btw.

At the start of the gig, Simon performed alone. In fact, the introduction and first number have been recorded for posterity – you can view those below:

Janie rapt with attention
One of Simon’s sisters, Ruth, shooting the video

After a couple of numbers performed solo, or should I say, “accompanied by laptop”, Simon was joined by a real human being, Nick, on drums.

Timothy, Simon’s husband, rapt with attention.

It all got a bit more complicated when Simon attempted the opening track from the album, Please Hold, with laptop, keyboards, drummer and vocals…

…but after calling back a couple of times, Simon managed to perform that rather intricate piece with aplomb. One of my favourites from the album, that one – it reminds me a little of The Teardrop Explodes at the top of their form – praise indeed coming from me.

Here’s another track from the live performance:

Finally, here is the official video for one of my favourite tracks from the album, Optimistic…

…although, as Simon said when he introduced this number at the gig, he’s a bit less optimistic now than he was when he wrote that track.

Another story.

Actually, in his quest to remain uber-topical, Simon did perform one or two brand new songs. They are, presumably, to form part of the third album and the resulting next launch gig. Janie and I hope so – we are already looking forward to that. We very much enjoyed our evening for the Baby Boomer launch.

A convivial moment of chat after the gig

Did I mention that Baby Boomer is available on Spotify – click here – or on YouTube – click the picture link below?