Month: January 1974

What On Earth Was Downing Doing? Alleyn’s Aghast At 1S Drama Friday Outrage, 25 January 1974

Sometimes the handwriting in my juvenile diaries is hard to decipher.

Other times, the scrawl is legible but the text is hard to interpret. The entry for 25 January 1974 is such an instance, rereading it 50 years later.

P.E. good + drama good. trial me a witness Downing made a mess of it.

Let us not fret about my pre-teen punctuation and sentence structure…or lack thereof.

My main concern here is with the reference to Downing.

There was no-one named Downing in 1S.

I asked a few 1S pals to hive mind this problem. Who was Downing and what on earth might Downing have done to “make a mess of it”?

Dave French suggested:

I remember that Drama class well, it was in the afternoon. Mistakenly, the dinner ladies served up magic mushrooms with lunch that day. That probably explains it – Downing was just ‘in your head’. It was quite embarrassing really; I still have nightmares.

Rohan Candappa offered an alternative theory:

Actually I remember the boy ‘Downing’. Downing was his nickname. It was a Cockney rhyming slang thing: Downing Street – Warwick Frearson.

To be honest, I think none of us really knew how rhyming slang worked.

Hmmm. The half-century-old 1S hive appears to be a bit of a struggling colony these days, especially in the matter of remembering the finer details of class activities. I can’t imagine any of the above evidence holding up in a jury trial.

“Erase from your minds inadmissible, hearsay evidence…”

I decided instead to seek help from the internet. I put the name “Downing” into the Alleyn’s 1970 Facebook Group search and found “Mike Downing” in our group, stitched up (or should I say “introduced”) by Steve Williams some years ago.

A Google Search of “Mike Downing Alleyn’s” found the gentleman on LinkedIn, asserting that he spent 1972-1979 at Alleyn’s (a year above us) and again a visible connection with Steve Williams.

There was nothing else for it. I contacted Steve Williams. Steve confirmed that Mike Downing was indeed a year above my 1S year, two years above Steve. Steve also confirmed that Mike was and still is a top bloke, who would no doubt enjoy the fifteen minutes of fame (or infamy) and rise to the challenge of trying to recall what might have happened.

Frankly, I can only imagine a few possibilities for this mystery diary entry.

The most plausible in my mind is that Mike Downing inadvertently entered our classroom half way through a double lesson. Opening the wrong classroom door by mistake during another class’s lesson was not an uncommon occurrence at Alleyn’s.

But in order to make it into my diary – a very rare mention of a specific event – the interruption was, presumably, during a key dramatic moment while I was giving evidence. I imagine myself fully in character. Lost within my back story and the highly-charged dramatic circumstances in which my character found himself. Such an interruption would, in those circumstances, have utterly demolished the fourth wall. My potentially monumental acting career thus cruelly interrupted, never again to find the giddy artistic heights that were just that moment about to blossom. A mess of it indeed.

The other possible answer to the Downing mystery is that Downing was part of that drama class and somehow muffed his lines. Perhaps he got tongue-tied or incriminated himself or failed to cross-examine me well enough to expose the implausibility of my evidence.

Is it possible that we occasionally (or even regularly) combined forces with a second year class on drama Friday? Or might Downing have been attending remedial first year drama classes, having made a mess of drama when he was a first year…only to go and make a mess of it again as a remedial member of our class?

I put it to you, dear readers (aka members of the jury) that we need to call at least two additional witnesses to the infamous “made a mess of it” event. Mr Ian Sandbrook (Sir) and Mr Mike Downing. Unless someone else who was there on that fateful day has memories to share.

For sure the sentencing needs to be a lot more incisive than the 25 January 1974 diary entry

Postscript One: Mike Downing Writes:

I seem to recall that I was in the end of year production of Dr and the Devils by Dylan Thomas for which I received critical acclaim in the school magazine 😉 but that may have been 1973. A later foray into Drama spanning some 40 years revealed that I was always late to put my book down and could paraphrase with the best of them when the lines were not forthcoming! I was also in the G & S society production of Trial by Jury so maybe that makes sense and I may well have messed up but old age has reduced it all to a vague blur! Shame you didn’t get to critique some of my later efforts as I definitely got quite good at the whole drama thing in the end🤣. Came close to going professional at one stage but rather preferred the security of a regular pay cheque. Does that jog your memory at all? I doubt it refers to my older brother 1968-75 who never went near a stage in his life.

Postscript Two: Ian Sandbrook (“Sir”) Responds:

IAN SANDBOOK: I am very sorry, but I have absolutely no recall of Downing’s intervention in the drama class of Jan 25th 1974…

IAN HARRIS: Don’t worry about your lack of memory. It’s my diary and I cannot remember this stuff, so I cannot realistically expect others to remember it for me.

Scapino, Young Vic, 23 January 1974

I started to keep a diary in January 1974.  The 23 January entry is my first record of visiting the theatre, although I went with my parents to see pantomimes and children’s shows before then.

This visit I’m sure was my first school trip to the theatre, an Alleyn’s School outing.  I think just for my class; 1S, probably Ian Sandbrook’s initiative.  It was a revival of the first production at the Young Vic Theatre, which I think therefore makes it the Young Vic’s first production as an independent theatre company.  It seems the revival was a precursor to a glittering US transfer.

All the 11 year old “critic” wrote at the time was:

“Scapino v good indeed.  Jim Dale good.  Got to bed very late.”

Yet the evening stays quite clearly in my memory.  I remember liking the patter song about Italian food and I also recall catching a plastic facsimile of a glass of wine and keeping it in a bottom drawer for years and years.  It survived many clear outs, but I think it came a cropper in the end.  Who knows, it might turn up in one of my junk boxes some day.

This Michael Billington piece about that production and the early days of the independent Young Vic is charming, click here.

This archive review from the Columbia Daily Spectator was written only a couple of months after our visit.  The late great Ian Charleson gets an honourable mention in this piece.

There is some material on this production right at the beginning of the Young Vic’s 50 year celebration on-line article – click here.

Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry for the production – whether or not some of the cast changed for the independent revival is lost in the mists of time. I think the main cast was those on the Theatricalia list.

Below is Milton Shulman’s review of the opening night, in September 1970, which he pretty much raved about:

Scapino Shulman StandardScapino Shulman Standard 14 Sep 1970, Mon Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

The Guardian did an Arts Diary picture piece on the p[roduction:

Scapino GuardianScapino Guardian 11 Sep 1970, Fri The Guardian Journal (Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England) Newspapers.com

If you want to read the script on the Internet Archive, I think you might need a (free) login to borrow it but you can preview it here:

The First Couple Of Weeks Of My Second Term At Alleyn’s School, 6 to 22 January 1974

When 10p really was 10p. Images borrowed from coincraft.com who, fifty years later, can sell you one of these 1974 coins for £6.50

The meaning of the two bob bit in this context will become apparent a bit later.

It is not the two bob that Mr Sandbrook offered to pay any of us if we spotted him make a spelling mistake on the blackboard. Mercifully, Mr Sandbrook did not similarly threaten to fine us 10p for every spelling mistake we made. Had he done so, he’d be a wealthy man and I (and several 1S colleagues) would each be a fair bit poorer.

My diary is riddled with dreadful spelling. I apologise unequivocally to Mr Sandbrook and to those who tried to teach me English before and after him. In the end, it was WordPerfect, AmiPro and Microsoft Word who drummed better spelling into me by dint of their spellcheckers. Teachers and parents, despite their entreaties, got only so far.

Week 6 to 12 January 1974 – Return To Alleyn’s School On the Thursday

My last few days of Christmas holiday freedom were not very eventful.

Sunday 6 January 1974 Missed [Hebrew] classes, went out for lunch with Grandma Anne. A rather bad day.

Lunch with Grandma Anne was probably at Feld’s restaurant in 1974, as I think Folman’s was gone by then.

I quite often mentioned having a good day or a bad day in those early diaries, without so much as a clue as to what might have made the day deserving of the chosen adjective.

Monday 7 January 1974 went to West End and bought 9? books., lunch at Auntie Francis, a very pleasant day. PS Getting lamp from Heals.

The only picture I can find depicting Auntie Francis is the following one from my parents’ wedding, in which everyone looks a bit miserable. Possibly it was a curated moment of reflection on absent friends and relatives. Or possibly everyone was caught on camera just at that “I’ve overeaten” realization moment.

Auntie Francis, Uncle Alec, Grandma Anne, Dad, Mum, Grandpa Lew, Grandma Jenny

I absolutely loved my Heals lamp. It was in the shape of a giant incandescent lightbulb. So cool. You’ll just have to believe me.

Tuesday 8 January 1974 – uneventful. Saw Andrew [Andy Levinson] in morning. G Jenny in afternoon.

Wednesday 9 January 1974 – had lunch with Andrew. Saw Mary Poppins in afternoon. She’s Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Return To School 10 to 22 January 1974

Thursday 10 January 1974 – First day of Lent Term. The t[w]o H’s are on form. No activities so classes early.

Friday 11 January 1974 – Whent [sorry Sir] to Dad after school – lift from U[ncle] Manny.

Saturday 12 January 1974 – School in morning afternoon uneventful.

The two H’s were Keith Handy and Richard Hollingshead, who tended to give me a pretty hard time in those early days at Alleyn’s.

Sunday 13 January 1974 – Miss Aaron [Hebrew class teacher] away. Mr Ragshaw [relief teacher presumably] gave teaser I was right. Lamp is nice.

Monday 14 January 1974 – was robed [presumably I mean to write “robbed”, but I probably, more accurately, “was thieved from”] at school. Mr Fanner [Headmaster] lent 10p. NOTHING ELSE.

I don’t remember the theft incident. I’m sure I would have remembered it had I actually been robbed at school. I suspect my bus fare money “disappeared” from my pocket during PE that morning or games that afternoon.

Still, the incident must have been deemed serious enough for me to have been sent to the headmaster, Mr Fanner, who kindly ponied up a couple of bob to see me home safely. I think I only needed 2p or 4p for that purpose in those days.

I was once actually robbed – i.e. duffed over on the train to school and had my pocket money stolen – but that was certainly not in term two of my first year.

Tuesday 15 January 1974 – repaid Mr Fanner. Biology – no wormery yet. Classes good.

I love the fact that repaying Mr Fanner was a diary-worthy event. I can imagine mum telling me multiple times that it was vitally important that I got that money back to the Headmaster that very day, otherwise he might imagine all sorts of terrible things about me and my family.

I think Bernard Rothbart was our biology teacher that year, making that diary entry especially bitter-sweet thinking about him and Mr Fanner and Mr Tindale (see below) all dying prematurely.

Wednesday 16 January 1974 – Fives good. McG good player. TV good. Man About The House, Bless This House especially.

I’m not sure who McG is/was. Answers, please, on a postcard. McG presumably beat me in order to be assessed as a good player.

Thursday 17 January 1974 – Tindale [French master] away. No violin. Classes good. Prepared lecture for tomorrow.

I’ll talk about my diabolical relationship with the violin some other time. Me and the violin did not get on.

Friday 18 January 1974 – Lecture went well. Drama v good. Heard tape of me 7 years ago.

Not sure what the brief for the lecture was, or indeed for drama that day, deserving of v good. But I can work out what “tape of me 7 years ago” must be referring to, which was the simply delightful recording, which I still have, of my dad reading “Hare And Guy Fawkes” to me on 5 November 1967:

Hare And Guy Fawkes, Daddy Reading To Me, 5 November 1967

Did someone, e.g. Mr Sandbrook, dig out a reel to reel tape recorder and play that recording in class? Or does that diary entry refer to family activity later that day at home? If only I had been more detailed and specific with my diary entries back then.

Saturday 19 January – school morn. Afternoon played with myself. Everything is OK.

Played with myself is not a smutty and/or euphemistic reference. As an only child, I had a variety of games that I had adapted for solo entertainment when needed. I had a version of cricket darts where I would play both batting and bowling roles. I had my own version of Cluedo which enabled me to play solo – goodness knows how – I think that might have come a bit later.

And I had fridge ball, which I have documented on this blog from a December 1974 reference:

A Marathon Day Of Court Sport; Fives and Fridge Ball, 4 December 1974

Great sport, fridge ball. Fridge ball is to ping pong what real tennis is to tennis.

Sunday 20 January 1974 – Bechat Ha Mazon [Birkat Hamazon – food blessing] went well. [Miss] Aaron not [Mr] Freed – boo!! [Hebrew classes]. Otherwise uneventful.

Monday 21 January 1974 – cricket good. 1 dive. 2 one-handed catches. Rest uneventful.

Tuesday 22 January 1974 – No fencing. Female art teacher is good. Classes good.

There is my first reference to cricket in the diaries. Possibly my first ever cricket lesson. I like the sound of my diving one-handed catches.

…more like this DALL-E reimagined picture.

As for the female art teacher, I cannot remember anything about her and certainly not her name. Sorry, Miss. Perhaps others can recall her. I remember Mr Brew and I remember Mr Friedlander, but no female comes to mind in that context. Still, she was good, in my eyes, in January 1974.

My First Class At Alleyn’s School, 1S, And Some Nicknames, guessing 8 January 1974

I started keeping a diary on 1 January 1974. A little Letts Schoolboys Diary.

In the back of the diary, in a notes section, I wrote down the names of all the members of my class, which was 1S. Against some of those classmates’ names I also wrote a nickname.

1974-diary-1s

Just in case my handwriting, scanning and Photoshop skills are inadequate for your purposes, I set the text out below – apologies for replicated spelling errors and for some of the ghastly nicknames:

Allott

Athaide

Barrett – Bass, Titchbass

Burgess

Candappa – Candyfloss

Corrin

Dallaway – Dallers

Feeley

Foord

Forest

French – Frog

Frerson – Dreary-Frery

Goodwin

Guildford

Handy

Harley – Charley

Harris

Hayes

Hollingshead

Manhood – Manhunt

Masson

Mayne – Miles-Of-Mainline-Railway

Moore

Payne – In The Neck

Rickett – LEFT

Romain

Sim

Stendall

I don’t think Guy Rickett was nicknamed “Left”, I think that is a note to say that he left the school.

Now some of the above nicknames are weaker and thinner than a pound-shop condom; I find it hard to believe that many of them had regular currency at the school, although one or two I remember did.

Further, the rest of us must have had nicknames of some sort at one time or another – frankly my juvenile nickname survey lacks quantitative as well as qualitative merit.

Surely some people out there can help fill in the blanks or put matters right, even after all these years? Comments and suggestions, please. Those from other classes are welcome to add their names and nicknames to the pile.

Timetable For My First Year At Alleyn’s School In Class 1S, c7 January 1974

I started keeping a diary in 1974 and I wrote my class timetable in that diary, as shown above.

Unfortunately, I wrote the 1973/74 timetable for 1S in the space where the 1974/75 timetable was supposed to go.

That was not a great start.

I must have spotted my error when the 1974/75 academic year began; I marked in purple and brackets my 2AK timetable.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I have tried to decode the 1S timetable as best as my memory can manage in December 2020, nearly 47 years after I first wrote it down. See below.

The only bit of code I struggled with was double GC (I think that’s what it says) on a Thursday afternoon. I think it might have stood for “General Class”, as I do recall doing fun stuff like drama, skits and the like with Mr Sandbrook that year and can’t work out when else we might have done that.

Someone out there might remember – I’m sure GC won’t have just been a 1S thing.

Specifically for 1S, though, I cannot recall who taught us what in several cases.  My memory gets as far as (and there might be mistakes in my plugs):

  • English – Ian Sandbrook
  • PE & Games – Alan Berry (sometimes Harry Wale, sometimes Paul Sherlock)
  • Handicraft – Mr Evans and David Midgely
  • Maths – Mr McCartney
  • RE – ?
  • Music – Pop Kennard
  • History – ? [Rohan Candappa reckons Doggie Johnson & I think he’s right]
  • French – Trevor Tindale
  • Biology – Bernard Rothbart
  • Art – James Brew
  • Chemistry – John Clarke
  • Physics – ?
  • GC – well if I knew what it was…but I think Ian Sandbrook
  • Geography – ?

Of course this isn’t just a 1S thing – who taught what, to whom, when, might be a fun memory game for people regardless of which class/year we might talk about. But perhaps for now we can stick with people who taught us in our first year.

Anyway, point is, I’d like to engage the hive mind of our cohort on this problem, so I am posting this piece in early December 2020, a few days ahead of one of Rohan Candappa’s Virtual Buttery evenings.

It’s a bit like homework really, but without the risk of censure if you turn up without having done any.

I’ll update this posting once the hive mind has built its metaphorical honeycomb.

Sherlock surely could work out whodunnit? Paul Sherlock, Alan Berry & Tony King

I Diarist, My First Diary Page, 1 to 5 January 1974

I started keeping a diary in January 1974. So exhausting must have been the process for eleven-on-twelve-year-old me, I took a sabbatical between May and late November that year.

The 1970s diaries cover my secondary school years, at Alleyn’s School. I shall write them up fifty years after the event, in the same way as I have been writing up my Keele University years of the 1980s as a “Forty Years On” series.

The juvenile writing needs some interpretation, both in terms of deciphering the strange symbols that comprised my handwriting back then and in terms of matters stated and omitted. I’ll try to explain and interpret as best I can, fifty years after the event.

I apologise for my atrocious spelling back then. Spellcheck has spared my blushes incalculably often in the IT era that followed my school years, while also drumming in some improvement to my ability at spelling.

Here’s that first page in all its glory.

Tuesday 1 January 1974 – …”Dined At Schmidt’s”…

Dad was at home. Dined at Schmidt’s. Chocolate moose was nice. In evening watched a film. P.S. Traditional walk 6th year.

Menu image borrowed from Writer’s London on Twitter (more recently known as X)

Schmidt’s was an extraordinary place on Charlotte Street. It was a German Restaurant trapped in time from the early part of the 20th century, operated by an aging gentleman named Frederick Schmidt and his moustached sister, Marie Schmidt. I knew them as Mr Schmidt and Miss Schmidt.

We ate there quite often, mostly when Grandma Anne was not with us, as she was kosher and Schmidt’s was quintessentially not so. I recall that Grandma would occasionally come there with us and eat fish there, while dad would choose his favourite dish, eisbein, a Berlin style of schweinshaxe, with dad pointedly asking for the “VEAL knuckle” as he pointed at eisbein on the menu. Naughty daddy.

I would almost certainly have gone for the liver and onions or the schnitzel as my main course. Both of those dishes came on a platter with some pease pudding and sauerkraut as well as potatoes and vegetables. More or less everything came on such a platter, now I come to think of it. The fact that I comment on the chocolate moose suggests that it might have been a new one to me, but whatever desert I chose there, I would insist on lashings of whipped cream, which, at Schmidt’s, was a highly aerated form of whipped cream which I absolutely loved, both in its look, its taste and its texture. Mum loved that stuff too, on her coffee.

We would sometimes see Esther Rantzen in the delicatessen section of the establishment, where we would usually spend some time after eating, perhaps choosing some delicacies to take home with us or just browsing. When I met Esther properly some 20 years later, I mentioned that I remembered seeing her in Schmidt’s several times and we had a joyous reminisce about that lost world.

There is a fascinating blog spot piece by Mark Bowles about the place, with many comments, which you can read here.

If anything were ever to happen to that web page, you can read a scrape of it here.

…”Watched A Film”…

The film was probably Around The World Under The Sea.

The traditional walk was something I did with my dad over the festive season every year for many years – initially I suspect it was mum’s way of getting a bit of peace for an hour or so and giving us the chance to walk off all the food we’d eaten. I think of Boxing Day as the usual day for that event, but it seems it was held back until 1 January that season – perhaps a weather-related change.

Wednesday 2 January 1974 – …”bought 5 History Books”…

Uneventful yet bought 5 history books. I cannot quite reconcile those two phrases.

I can, however, identify the books. They were from the “Everyday Life” series. I still have them:

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted that there are nine books from that series depicted above, but the diary entry reports me buying five books. The even-more-eagle-eyed amongst you might be able to spot that the five “Everyday Life” books to the right of the picture look considerably more thumbed than the four to the left, which I’m sure I purchased at a later date.

I suspect that I spent my own money on those books (I’d have been flush with Christmas money or Hanukkah gelt at that time of year). The list price of the five books I bought that day comes to the princely sum of £1.45, but I’d wager a good few bob that these books were discounted after Christmas and I might have scored the batch of five for around £1 in W H Smith. I loved those books, which is why I have not been able to part with them, even when I cleared out most of my childhood books.

I especially loved the two about life in the stone ages. These related to the period of history we were being taught that year at school.

In both of the Stone Age books, I have written:

Ian Harris 1.S.

If found please return to 1.S.

I must have been taking these books to school with me on history days – possibly leaving them at school overnight sometimes. Only those two have that inscription, but inside the one about Roman Times, I discovered…

…an ancient, small piece of blotting paper, with one quite large blot on it, marking the place between pages 64 and 65 which, judging by the spine of the book, is as far as I got with that one 50 years ago. This discovery felt like a bit of a Pompeii moment, my juvenile reading trapped within a moment of time many years ago, providing evidence of reading interrupted and never resumed. I feel a relentless desire now to finish reading the book, which I think, fifty years later, will require me to start again from the beginning. I’m guessing that I’ll be able to whizz through the 130 or so pages quite quickly. But again I have put off the task to another day. It won’t be another 50 years, that’s for sure.

…”Saw Tommy Cooper”…

The Tommy Cooper Hour will have been this one – Episode 3 – click here. It will have looked a bit like the vid below, an episode from the same series, shown a few months later:

Thursday 3 January 1974

Went to dentist. No fillings yet. Drawn darts match. 5p Kalooki. 2 Rons [The Two Ronnies] good.

The dentist will have been Harry Wachtel, a slightly eccentric Austrian-Jewish refugee dentist who practiced in Streatham for several decades.

How a darts match ends up drawn I have no idea. Neither do I know who I played in that drawn match. Can’t have been one of my parents (dad would have gone back to work and mum would never go near my dartboard…come to think of it, nor did dad). Possibly Andy Levinson came round. Ot possibly I had a game of my own devising which enabled me to play against myself and secure a draw.

Kalooki probably did involve my mum and it seems that I got lucky, skilful or both, making 5p (that’s a shilling in real money).

The Two Ronnies was this episode. Interesting that I was allowed to watch TV that late at that age – it was possibly my starting secondary school that got my bedtime shifted towards and beyond the watershed.

Friday 4 January 1974

1×2 + bull at darts. Saw Fantasia for a third time – it is great.

I’m guessing that Fantasia was not shown on TV that week, so it would have been a visit to the cinema. I don’t say who I went with, but that might have been with mum (she loved Fantasia too) as I think I would have named my companion if I had gone with a friend or even if I had gone with Grandma Jenny. Probably local, at the Streatham ABC or Odeon.

My burgeoning darts career tails off soon, at least in the matter of diary mentions. I suspect that the dart board was a new toy for Christmas 1973.

Saturday 5 January 1974

Mum bought coat £22 reduced to £9.95. Went to Lytton’s. Played Striker with dive goalies.

Striker with dive goalies. That sounds amazing. I have re-established contact with Steve Lytton in the 50 years since that epic event. I wonder whether he still has his Striker set and is up for a rematch.

Borrowed from ebay, click here or image, where this item can be procured (at the time of posting).