NH & Co is Newman Harris & Co, SB is Stanley Bloom. I don’t recall where we went for lunch.
Had leaving do in eve. Drinks at Phoenix. Meal at Melati.
I’ll write more about Newman Harris elsewhere no doubt. The Phoenix on Cavendish Square was often the pub of choice by virtue of being the nearest, not the dearest. Thirty years on, a Google search finds the description…
…Shabby chic pub with worn-in tables…
…which surely applied back then too.
Melati was one of my favourite South-East Asian eateries back then – gone now it seems:
The location would have pleased the several South-East Asian colleagues I had at NH&Co and also would have pleased me as an echo of my “leaving do” ten years earlier when, as a 15 year old finishing my first holiday job, at NH, we went to a Malaysian restaurant named Rasa Sayang – I believe long gone and unrelated to any current restaurant of that name.
I cannot remember who joined me for the 1988 leaving do, but I shall list a few names of those I am pretty sure would have been there. Ashley Michaels, Mike and Sandra King, Dilip Vora, Terry, Duncan, Lelash Shah, Varsha Yadav…
…perhaps someone who was there and who has a phenomenal memory will stumble across this piece and help fill in the details.
I think the meal at Le Caprice was my parents’ idea – to celebrate my qualification as a Chartered Accountant along with Uncle Michael, Auntie Pam, Stanley Bloom and his good lady (Sharit?).
Le Caprice was a trendy place even then – I’m not quite sure what would have made mum and dad choose it. Perhaps to show off a bit. Perhaps because they had heard that it was a restaurant that was able to cope with fussy eaters…we had at least one in our party that day in Auntie Pam.
Roll the clock forward 30 years and I note that Kim likes that place, perhaps for similar “trendy but able to cope with a fussy eater” reasons.
I don’t believe any photos were taken that evening to mark the occasion – such meals were not seen to be the thing of photos necessarily back then. But it is just possible that I’ll stumble across some pictures when I delve into dad’s “late works” box of negatives and prints, which still awaits my trawl.
“Kates” means Kate (Susan) Fricker’s place. I’m pretty sure Kate was, at that time, living in a pied-à-terre flat in Hampstead, part of the house that had been the family home before her family moved to York.
Evenings with Kate were always pleasant. We both enjoyed cooking and eating good food. We both liked decent wine and we would always have interesting conversations. I’m sure that Saturday evening would have been such an evening.
I’m guessing that we would have both been in celebratory mode, work-wise, at that time – Kate was called to the bar around the time I qualified.
I did a holiday job at Newman Harris that first Easter holidays of my Keele life.
My motivation for working was purely financial. I was enjoying/wanted to enjoy my time at Keele. The student grant only went so far. There was no bank of mum and dad (BOMAD) for me. Getting into debt was anathema.
I hadn’t worked for Newman Harris since 1978 – that first experience being a subject I shall most certainly Ogblog in time. (I had worked full time during the summer of 1980, for BBYO – which should be another rich seam of Ogblogging once I get my head into that topic.)
The Easter 1981 vacation was the first time I worked for Stanley Bloom; he wasn’t at the firm in 1978. Yes, that’s right pop-pickers:
I got a job with Stanley, he said I’d come in handy.
Anyway, here is my diary from the first couple of weeks of that experience.
Graham in this instance must be Graham Greenglass. We were going through a process of swapping music on cassette at that time. Coincidentally, Graham furnished me with a fair smattering of Elvis Costello material, including rare groove such as Hoover Factory.
Jimmy (Bateman) was a friend from Alleyn’s. I wonder what has become of him? We met up a lot when working the University holidays those first couple of years at least.
David Robbins is Wendy Robbins kid brother. No longer a kid of course.
Caroline Freeman and I lunched and dined a lot in the holidays back then.
In fact, if my older adult self might be so bold as to observe my young adult self, according to that diary page, there seems to have been a heck of a lot of lunching, dining and going out generally. As a result, I’m not sure that the bank balance replenishment exercise could possibly have gone as well as I had intended. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t work Easter holidays again after that first year. But heck, I was having a good time.
On Friday 27th, a meal at Borshtch N Tears (posher and pricier now, I’d guess) followed by Elvis Costello and the Attractions at the Hammersmith Odeon, with Anil Biltoo (my friend from school, with whom I went to Mauritius in 1979), Caroline Freeman and Simon Jacobs, who I met through BBYO but with whom (and indeed through whom) I went to Keele.
Simon always claims not to remember anything from those days, although he might make an exception for Elvis Costello. Example: which tracks did Elvis play that night, Simon…
How Simon got allocated a whole page for an album review is anyone’s guess, but let’s just note here that the Concourse editors were sacked before the next edition went to press. That edition had to be cobbled together at the last minute by me and Dave Lee, with predictably hilarious results, which I shall write up soon enough. Simon got a regular-sized column that time.
Anyway, we must have really enjoyed the gig because we went back for more Elvis that summer; at least I know I went back with Simon for a second go and I think Caroline also joined us in the summer.
Here is a great vid of Clubland (from Trust) to give you a taster of the gig, although the Hammersmith Odeon didn’t look like the vid as far as I can recall…
