Coincidences No.s 266, 267 and 268

Coincidence No. 266: Cold War

16.4.24 I go to a development meeting, for the sci-fi TV drama I am currently working on, with a highly experienced script editor/scriptwriter. (We first crossed paths by chance 11 years ago in a jungle in Zimbabwe). She mentioned her current personal project is a drama around the Cold War.

16.4.47 I happened to know (and mentioned) that this day of our meeting was the anniversary of the term “cold war” being coined. The first use of the term to describe the post-WW2 geopolitical confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union was in a speech by Bernard Baruch, an influential advisor to Democratic presidents, on 16th April 1947.

 

Coincidence No. 267: Nina Simone’s Gum

7.3.24 I finish the book ‘Nina Simone’s Gum’ by Warren Ellis, Nick Cave’s music partner, on this day.

7.3.22 I notice on the final page that Ellis completed the book on “7th March 2022, Los Angeles” which is the final line of the volume.

Coincidence No. 268: Red Pencil

16/17.4.24 I dream about a red pencil, quite well used and with black stripes, a very specific pencil.

17.4.24 I go out to read on the balcony and put an anorak from the back of my bedroom door on over my night clothes as it looks a bit blowy. I put my hand in the coat pocket – I haven’t worn this coat for a few weeks – and I pull out a red and black Staedler HB pencil exactly like the dream one. 

Coincidences No.s 455 and 456

No. 455 Howdah

21.i.24

We are in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire exploring its history as a New Town (established in 1949). There’s a map by the water gardens showing how they were designed to look like a serpent with a seat on its back,  the seat marked by a flower garden. The name for such a seat – the sort people sat in on the backs of elephants in India – is a ‘howdah’. I’d never come across that word before.

That evening we  go to the Cineworld in Hemel to see ‘Poor Things’. Queuing up for drinks and Minstrels I spot some snacks in crisp-type bags. The brand is called Howdah. They seem to originate in Warrington, Cheshire. They donate a school meal in India for every pack purchased.

Serpent head at bottom, Howdah just above on left (flower garden)

No. 456 Howzat

25.i.24

I meet Worthing-based TV director Nicholas Ahlberg at Brighton Beach House and we walk over to a newish bar/restaurant off East Street, Brighton for a drink (in my case a first very pleasant draught of Ascension Sour Cherry Cider made at Ringden Farm, Etchingham, East Sussex). It is called The Permit  Room and was set up by the people behind Dishoom.

In Bombay back in 1949 alcohol was banned in the city. “Enterprising Aunties” set up shebeens in their houses. A boiled egg seller was stationed outside as a sign for those in the know. In the 1970s the law was relaxed and permits became available for citizens to buy liquor (“for the preservation or maintenance of health”) in these Permit Rooms.

26.i.24

The next morning I am looking at Facebook when a group pops up called Classic Captures. Today it offers “Vintage Color Snapshots of Brighton in the 1970s”. These include a photo of “East Street, 1974.” The building it shows, set back from the street in a small yard, is the one which now houses The Permit Room. Back then it was called Zetland (a suburb of Sydney, Australia or an archaic spelling of Shetland).

Coincidence No. 240 – Cyprus Avenue

21/3/23

My friend Stuart comes to visit me in Brighton and is pleased to see that I have a poster in my bathroom from the Bruce Springsteen gig we saw in Dublin together in 2003 – possibly the best gig I have ever seen.

21/3/23

That night we go to Komedia, Brighton to see a gig – Robert Forster (The Go-betweens). Standing in the crowd Stuart spots a face he thinks he recognises. He leans over and asks this bald, middle-aged man: “Are you called Adam?” He is. “We met at the Bruce gig in Dublin in 2003. We were in touch about it on [the Chelsea fan site]. We had a drink before the gig.” How Stuart recognises him is amazing – he must have had a lot more hair two decades ago. (The other) Adam is with his brother, sister-in-law and friend, Aidan, who lives in Hove. We chat. It turns out that Adam grew up in Windsor Road, behind where my late grandparents’ house was, in Cyprus Avenue, Church End, Finchley. Aidan, who he has known since childhood, grew up in Village Road which is the continuation of Cyprus Avenue. And Stuart’s mum has just moved to Cyprus Avenue.

18/3/23

Two days before, after not having been in or near Cyprus Avenue for ages, I am being driven home by a friend when she overshoots and we try to correct ourselves by turning into the small group of streets by Cyprus Avenue and getting a bit lost, stuck in the dead-end of Cyprus Gardens which sits where Village Road becomes Cyprus Avenue.

And I’m caught one more time
Up on Cyprus Avenue
I’m caught one more time
Up on Cyprus Avenue
And I’m conquered in a car seat
Not a thing that I can do

Van Morrison – Cyprus Avenue

9/5/23

Exactly 20 years on, Stuart and I are going to Dublin in May to see Bruce again.

Coincidences No.s 238 & 239 – Retirement

Photo: David Parry

Coincidence No. 238

27.8.22

I am driving to Herne Hill past the Oval and wonder why the rugby mural on a cricket ground. Then I wonder who Shaunagh Brown is, as I don’t follow women’s rugby.

28.8.22

I hear on the radio news that Shaunagh Brown played her final match at The Stoop yesterday, the day I passed the mural, more or less at the exact time of kick-off.

Coincidence No. 239

27.8.22

Enfant Terrible No. 1 is chucking out a large green flask and asks me if I can make use of it or if anyone might want it. We can’t figure out why anyone would want such a big flask. I politely decline.

28.8.22

I am watching ‘A Man Called Otto’ for BAFTA Film judging and I notice Otto/Tom Hanks has the same large green flask when he goes to visit his wife’s grave.

Coincidence No. 366 – Time & Timing

Sandy Denny with John Bonham, Robert Plant & Jimmy Page, September 1970

30.iv.22

I go to see the brilliant play ‘Jerusalem’ by Jez Butterworth at the Apollo, Shaftesbury Avenue with a friend (it’s my second time seeing Mark Rylance do this career-defining performance – I first saw it at the same theatre in 2011). Towards the end of the play we hear a hippyish English folk song – at first I think it is Vashti Bunyan, then realise it is actually Sandy Denny’s ‘Who Knows Where the Times Goes?’, which she wrote at the age of just 19. However I can’t recall her name (or that of Fairport Convention) on leaving the theatre (even though I used to lead historical walking tours of Muswell Hill and environs which included a stop at the house called Fairport where they originally rehearsed). 

The next day I am (unusually) reading the Sunday paper when her name crops up. I text it to my friend (along with the word ‘chaperone’ which I also couldn’t recall on the day). 

2.v.22

The day after that my young friend texts back the name of the song. (We also discuss Coincidence No. 367 which is that we happened to walk together past the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho on the way back from the play – he hadn’t heard of it, I explained the bombing outrage – it turned out to be the exact date of the carnage in 1999.) I text him back to confirm that that’s the song and send him a brilliant podcast about it – ‘Soul Music’ from BBC Radio 4. At just that moment the very song plays on BBC Radio 6.

 

Mark Rylance at the curtain call for ‘Jerusalem’ last week

Coincidences No.s 605-607

Coincidence No. 605 6/3/22

I read The Week over breakfast. The first Good News For… item is about the village of Cartmel in Cumbria where the L’Ecume restaurant has just got its 3rd Michelin star – the first restaurant in the North of England to do so and only the 8th in the UK.

We drive past a sign in Ditchling to Plumpton. It makes my Other Half think of the races and then the one & only race meeting she’s always wanted to go to – Cartmel.

I’d never heard of Cartmel before today.

Coincidence No. 606 5-6/3/22

I open my phone this morning and there is an enigmatic video clip sent to me by clothes designer/filmmaker John Pearse. It is a woman saying some lines from The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The day before yesterday: I want to look smart for a job (facilitating a senior management team process) and try on my wedding shirt made by John Pearse in 1995. In the end I pick another shirt.

Yesterday: I go into an exhibition at the Fashion & Textiles Museum in Bermondsey. It is entitled Beautiful People: the boutique in 1960s counterculture and the first exhibit is about Granny Takes A Trip, the legendary Kings Road boutique co-founded by John Pearse. One of the next exhibits is a jacket of George Harrison’s from that shop.

Coincidence No. 607 25/2/22

I am going on a run and want to choose a podcast. I decide on Radio 4’s In Our Time. I look through recent episodes and consider for a moment one on Peter Kropotkin, but decide in the end in favour of Walter Benjamin.

Two minutes later a link arrives from my Other Half. It is for the book Peter Kropotkin: Memoirs of a Revolutionist from Freedom Press. It’s not a book I would ever pick out but she reckons it is because we went on a walking tour of the Radical East End together recently at my instigation.

I have never bought a book about Kropotkin or any similar revolutionaries.

 

Coincidence No. 347 – Keats

A post on Simple Pleasures part 4, prompted by a Poem on the Underground eight days ago, quoted a famous line from John Keats’ Endymion. 

Three days ago a gift was received at ArkAngel HQ – an 1894 copy of selections from Keats’ poems published by Routledge (with whom ArkAngel is currently in discussions about a book).

Tawney was 16 at this time

The subject of the recent post

Just before drafting this post a quick search for RH Tawney revealed he is not some long-forgotten Victorian reader but a significant figure in British economic history. Richard Henry ‘Harry’ Tawney, according to that other double-initialled historian AL Rowse, “exercised the widest influence of any historian of his time, politically, socially and, above all, educationally.” Tawney was a leading Christian Socialist and a vocal champion of Adult Education.

He was born in 1880 (so was 16 when he acquired this volume) and died in 1962. On a plaque to him in Lissenden Gardens near Parliament Hill he is dubbed “Founding Father of the Welfare State”.

 

RH Tawney

Coincidence No. 541 – J’accuse

Raquel Welch & Ringo Starr in ‘The Magic Christian’ (1969)

When I look at Facebook this morning the first thing I see is a post from the past (2015) on its anniversary. It was a reminder that today’s the day (13th January in 1898) that Émile Zola accused the French government/establishment of anti-semitism in the letter J’Accuse. Yesterday was the day (in 2015) the French government sent armed troops in to guard Jewish schools. I also published a second post on the subject that same day 5 years ago (the Charlie Hebdo shooting had been the previous week on 7th January 2015): Today’s the day (in 1898) Émile Zola published the letter J’Accuse in a French newspaper. He was convicted of libel. Then took refuge in London. #jesuischarlie

I am watching the 1969 British film The Magic Christian this evening. It contains a Who’s Who of the 60s of swinging London including Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Spike Milligan, Christopher Lee, Roman Polanski and Raquel Welch. Raquel plays a bikinied Amazon (echoes of her fur bikini in One Million Years BC, 1966) in a scene parodying the slave galley scene in Spartacus). Among the first words out of her mouth are “J’accuse!”.

Priestess of the Whip (Raquel Welch):

In, out.
[Groaning]

In, out!
[Groaning continues]

In, out. In…

During my reign as Priestess of the Whip, I’ve never seen such unmitigated sloth.

Passenger: My god! What’s going on here?

Priestess of the Whip:

J’accuse!

How dare this intrusion? Who are these people?

Youngman Grand (Ringo Starr): Oh, these are me mates.

Priestess of the Whip: Out! Out!

[Groans]

Passenger: Oh, I say! Do that again.

Priestess of the Whip: Out! Out! Out of my galley!

I was watching the film because tomorrow night Entertainment Attorney and Executive Producer Vinca Jarrett, who I met last year in Duluth, Minnesota when I was doing a speech on diversity in TV entitled Not The Usual Suspects, is putting on an online film discussion group which I’m really looking forward to. These kinds of online communal activity, like Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties, at their best are one of the silver linings of Covid Lockdown, generating a genuine sense of shared experience and contact. 

While I was at it I made an edit to the Magic Christian entry on Wikipedia, noting the fleeting appearance of John & Yoko in the movie. My first ever article published on Wikipedia was the one on User-Generated Content. And here we are some two decades later with WordPress and its over-refined self-publishing service with these difficult to manipulate Blocks and generally over-boiled interface. In two days’ time it is the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia – launched 15th January 2001. The scale, accuracy and relative lack of conflict around this pooling of the world’s knowledge online is a testimony to what people can do together for no money. In contrast to the theme explored by The Magic Christian, which is that everyone has their price.

Front page of the newspaper ‘L’Aurore’ Jeudi 13 Janvier 1898

Coincidences No.s 291 & 292 – A London Boy

No. 291 All Things Must Pass

I go for my last run (of hundreds) in St Pancras & Islington cemetery. It’s only open on weekends at the moment due to Lockdown/Covid so this Sunday is my last opportunity. I am due to move house on Tuesday. I know every inch of this huge cemetery-cum-nature reserve and have deeply enjoyed the hours I have spent here running, walking and meditating. I jog listening to a BBC Radio programme (‘Archive on 4‘) about George Harrison’s first solo record ‘All Things Must Pass’. 

As I reach the gate coming out for the last time the narrator, Nitin Sawhney, reminds us that the record first came out in the UK 50 years ago on 30th November. This is 29th November. On the 30th I am packing up the house and home office of ArkAngel to move out. 

As I reach the side gate of the house at the end of the run George says (referring to the long recording process):

“…and it’s finished.”

No. 292 A New Dawn

I just received the following message (30 seconds ago via Facebook):

“Listening to it myself. Dedicating Nina to you. Xx”

It refers to this playlist, ‘Weekend at Home‘, created by my Best Man, and the track ‘Feeling Good’ (by Nina Simone). I’ve been listening to the playlist all morning on the first Saturday in my new home, where I’m sitting at my new ArkAngel desk.

About two minutes before the message arrived I got an email from a colleague/friend at Little Dot Studios. It was about somebody pirating ‘Surf Girls Jamaica‘ and at the end he asked

“How’s the new place?”

Exactly as I read the email these were the very words I heard from Spotify…

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me

Yeah, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me

And I’m feelin’ good

‘Feeling Good’ was actually written by two Londoners – Anthony Newley (Hackney) & Leslie Bricusse (Pinner) for a musical, ‘The Roar of the Greasepaint’ . As I finish off this post, on the ‘Weekend at Home’ playlist I’ve reached the track ‘The London Boys‘ by David Bowie. It was a 1966 B-side on Deram records which put out his early work. He sings it in a very Anthony Newley London style as Newley was a huge influence on Bowie when he was starting out. My move takes me back to my native postcode: London NW7

It’s a new dawn

Coincidences No.s 288, 289 & 290

No. 288 Black Lives Matter

I finish a documentary entitled ‘Black Rainbow‘. All through the production it has reminded me of a film I worked on a couple of years ago entitled ‘Black Star‘. The former is about black and trans rights. The latter about voluntary repatriation of an Afro-American musician from California to Ghana. They both are firmly in the realm of Black Lives Matter.

I am scrolling through Instagram the same day and I come across a post by the main contributor to ‘Black Star’, Sunru. His Insta name (unbeknownst to me) is blackrainbow333.

(2018)

No. 289 Friedlander

I am talking to my nephew about his Photography GCSE. He has been inspired on his main project by Lee Friedlander, American photographer and artist (b. 1934).

I am moving my whole library and in the process there is one picture book I decide to chuck. It’s because it is so big it doesn’t really fit in the bookcase. It was given to me a few years ago by an old friend who now lives in California. I helped her with a documentary she was working on – the book was my reward. It is a lovely copy – a signed, numbered, limited edition. It is of photographs by a photographer I had never heard of before receiving the book. A certain Lee Friedlander.

No. 290 Olympic Park

I am moving house and the new place is a new build constructed by Barratt Homes. I noticed in the contract that the sales operation was based somewhere in East London. Today, to distract myself from the drawn-out process of purchasing the place I go for a walk along the canal in Hackney. 

At the end of the walk I get to the old Broadcast Centre from London 2012 Olympics. I worked as a volunteer (Games Maker) in the summer of 2012 in the Press Centre. I cycled along that canal in the early morning to get to work there. I decide to go look at the Press Centre for old times’ sake – it was the best summer of my adult life. I look to see what businesses have moved into the building in its new phase. Barratt Homes have.