Trevor Tindale – an excellent judge of character
Quite early in this fortnight, my mother emerged from hospital following her hip replacement, grumping at home on crutches during that period. This element gets little mention in my diary after her escape.
Sunday 2 March 1975 – classes good. Visited mum today [in Kings College Hospital] great improvement – TV Cat Ballou.
Monday 3 March 1975 – mum came out of hospital. Adam’s ribs. TV Smith and Jones, Goodies.
Tuesday 4 March 1975 – classes very good. Kentucky chicken. TV The Great Match.
Wednesday, 5 March 1975 – hockey good. Worked on practical. TV Pioneers of Photography, Worldwide, Rhoda, The Evacuees.
Thursday, 6 March 1975 – classes good. TV The Roman Way, Dave Allen, Controversy.
Friday, 7 March 1975 – uneventful school. Went to Doreen and co [Benjamin family] for dinner. TV Porridge, MASH.
Saturday, 8 March 1975 uneventful. TV Doctor Who, Walt Disney, Pot Black, film: Elephant Walk.
Sunday, 9 March 1975 – classes/parents. Went to Pam and Michael’s fish!?!?!? TV Ice Skating, The Great War, The Golden Shot.
Mum was still temporarily unable to cook and dad was not the cooking type – hence the myriad of take-aways and kind invitations by neighbours and family. I remember that there was something memorable about Auntie Pam’s fish dish that Sunday. Dad’s verdict went beyond colourful punctuation.
Monday 10 March 1975 – fives good. TV Likely Lads, Alias Smith and Jones, Goodies (goody goody yum yum).
Tuesday 11 March 1975 fives match v Rutlish, Loftus etc. Tea nice. TV McMillan and wife.
Wednesday, 12 March 1975 yet more fives v Henry Thornton. Cookie and me, 89–64 and all – 13 points Tea nice. TV Rhoda/Mary Tyler Moore.
Thursday 13 March 1975 Psalm 150 practice good. TV Man About The House, Taste For Adventure, Dave Allen At Large.
Friday, 14 March 1975 form dito from PE. TV Porridge v good.
Saturday 15 March 1975 exeat, shule, Gabriel’s bar [bar mitzvah?]. TV Doctor Who, Walt Disney, Pop Black.
A lot of fives there, at the start of the week, including two representative matches; the first against Rutlish School, the second against Henry Thornton. I am pretty sure that these matches were both played at home. Hence, the consistent verdict of “tea nice” is surely a big thumbs-up for the Alleyn’s dinner ladies.
I’m sure there are many readers who would like more detail on the contents of that tea. Sadly, my diary is silent on those details. Alan “Cookie” Cooke might remember the vital tea details. I’ll hazard a guess that white bread with butter and jelly-type jam utterly devoid of solid fruit content would have qualified as “nice” in my book, especially if some sort of spongy cake was also involved. Tea would have been served in the buttery, I’m pretty sure.
I remember taking great pride in representing the school at fives and I also remember getting few chances as a junior to do so. I was a bit surprised to see that we played two representative matches in as many days.
I’m not sure what “Loftus” means in the context of the Rutish game, but I suspect we nicknamed one of the Rutish players for his height and I suspect that he and his mates got the better of us, especially as I document in great detail our superior points tally against Henry Thornton.
Cookie – please chime in if you remember anything about these matches. I do recall thinking that we paired well in doubles, both in internal matches and these representative ones.
Trevor Tindale oversaw proceedings and wrote a small paragraph about lower school fives in Scribblerus that year.
I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to decide whether Trevor was a fine judge of character with regard to my sporting maturity.
In truth my memory of these 50 years ago events is weak. I don’t remember who Gabriel was, on that Saturday; apologies to him.
But I must warn everyone that I not only remember a fair bit about the Psalm 150 “performance”, but the diary, Scribblerus and even my archive of reel-to-reel tapes preserves plenty of…arguably too much…information. To be reported in more detail next time.
I don’t remember the contents of the tea I’m afraid. All that comes back to me is Mr Tindale saying “You’re as slow as an old carthorse Cooke”.
I matured like a sparkling wine, I went flat!
Ha-ha. But at least you haven’t gone sour, Cookie. At our age and stage, “a little flat” is positively expected. I was really hoping that you would recall the particular alleged fruit flavours of the jelly-like substances notionally referred to as jams. Also whether the sponge cake was Victoria, lemon or “so-called chocolate”. I had such high hopes for your memory. I’m just a little disappointed, that’s all. Probably the way you felt on the fives court when I went hell-for-leather at a sitter on my left glove and muffed it.