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.

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.