Unable To Face It – picture from a 1970s Scribblerus
OK, which of you horrible other classes led to my humiliating diary confession:
Monday 13 January 1975 – lost football match 16-1…
Was it you, 2BJ? Or more likely you, 2BM? Surely not 2AS? If no-one owns up to this, I might have to put all of you into detention.
16-1. How must that have felt at the time?
All was lost, but that the heavens fought…
…that’s what I probably said at the time…or words to that effect
Coincidentally, I received some cheery correspondence the other day (just shy of 50 years after the events described in this article), from Nigel Allott, who was in 1s and 2AK with us “back then”, but fled England with his family for New Zealand of all places about a year after The Carnage Match.
What is it with New Zealand and Alleyn’s alums named Nigel? Sir Nigel Godfrey might choose to help answer this question.
Anyway, Nigel Allott writes:
I’ve just stumbled across your site while browsing other Alleyn’s information. I am the Allott that appears in your diary class lists. We left for New Zealand after the first term of Year 3, but I remember a few of the class well, and enjoyed my time at Alleyn’s.
Given that I was planning this article at the time, I thought it only polite, as part of my reply, to ask Nigel about THAT match:
…Do you remember us (2AK) losing a football match 16-1 to another class on 13 January? That must have been a tough score line to take…
Nigel responded:
I can’t remember the football match, but it is likely I was in goal watching the ball go past. I knew so little about football when I started at Alleyns that I was always put in goal because it kept me facing the right way!
I do remember enjoying field trips along the South Downs, although there was one field trip when our bus slid off the M4 on black ice near Heathrow (we might have been going somewhere else that time).
Yes, I have written up one of those field trips:
As for keeping goal, which became my gig on the rare occasions I played football after that season, I suspect that it was only Nigel’s superior skills at lobbying for the goalie role that kept me and my two left feet away from it until Nigel and family abandoned the school. My memories of house football in the year or two following 2AK are solely about me being in goal.
I hope it wasn’t the humiliating 16-1 defeat at football that drove Nigel and his family to flee to the furthest-flung corner of the dominions, where word of this sporting humiliation would probably not have reached…until now.
Let’s trawl the rest of my diary around that time. It wasn’t all about losing football matches 16-1. But, I mean, 16-1?! I wonder who scored the one? No, I’m over it again now.
Sunday, 5 January 1975 – Classes morning. Afternoon Grandma Anne Kalooki lost 5p. TV Planet of the Apes, Colombo, and No honestly. V good.
Monday, 6 January 1975 – Cloudy. Morning uneventful. Afternoon Andrew [Levinson]. TV Likely Lads, Alias Smith and Jones, Call My Bluff, and Churchill’s People.
Tuesday, 7 January 1975 – Fair. Went shopping in morning. Played in afternoon. TV film Right Left and Centre with Ian Carmichael and Alistair Sims v good.
Actually that film was called Left, Right & Centre. You can watch it on Daily Motion if you wish:
Wednesday, 8 January 1975 – Returned to school. TV Benny Hill v good indeed.
Thursday, 9 January 1975 – Classes good. Improved on model aeroplane – Cessna Skywagon.
Ah, the model kit that Auntie Pam and Uncle Michael gave me was a balsa wood Cessna Skywagon kit. The kit looked a bit like this. I vaguely recall the smell of the glue being the best bit of this exercise from my point of view. Not really ideal for cack-handed 12-year-olds, balsa wood model airplanes.
Friday 10 January 1975 – PE – swam butterfly. Nearly finished model. TV Rhoda and MASH v good.
Saturday, 11 January 1975 – School in morning. Bonfire in afternoon. TV ?!!!
I let the side down there, not noting the viewing. BBC Genome to the rescue. I’m going to guess Pot Black, Lulu and Kojak.
Sunday, 12 January 1975 – Classes morning. Afternoon Grandma Anne at home. Kalooki 19p. TV Planet of the Apes, film Billy Liar v good.
I vaguely remember doing Billy Liar in class, either with Ian Sandbrook in 1S or Michael Lempriere in 2AK. I don’t suppose we were able to give it the Tom Courtney treatment in class. here’s the film trailer.
I remember at one time, a few years later, my mother wondered out loud whether I should apply to “work for Keith Waterhouse”. As I was dabbling with comedy writing at the time, I thought she might, uncharacteristically, be encouraging me to pursue my avocation ahead of knuckling down to a reputable job. Then I realised that mum must have been confusing Keith Waterhouse with Price Waterhouse.
Monday 13 January 1975 – Lost football match 16 –1. TV Likely Lads, Alias Smith and Jones, Call My Bluff and Churchill’s People.
Tuesday, 14 January 1975 – Rouse switched with handicraft. [50 years later, I have no idea what that means]. Classes good. TV, The Mighty Continent.
Wednesday 15 January 1975 – Fives v good. TV Till Death Us Do Part.
Thursday, 16 January 1975 – Physics good. No drama. Classes good. TV After That…This and The Two Ronnies
Friday, 17 January 1975 – Biology – bacteria. TV Sportstown, MASH.
Saturday 18 January 1975 – School morning. Afternoon uneventful. TV Pot Black, Thriller and Kojak.
Actually, the diary entry the following Monday provides some unintentional comedy in the light of the 16-1 defeat at soccer.
…games choice – hockey…
After a 16-1 defeat at soccer, switching to hockey instead seems like a sound move.
Actually, I now have a sneaking suspicion that my 2 December diary entry which mentions “extra with Rothbart” after the football, see the following linked piece…
…might well have been a taster of hockey with Bernard Rothbart to encourage some of us to switch to his favoured sport. No doubt he had spotted a glimmer of talent for “hard ball and stick” games…or more likely Mr Rothbart had spotted an utter absence of talent for footy-type games.
