Me & Grandma Anne A Few Weeks Later
So much happened in that week, which was the last of my second year at Alleyn’s. Here’s the diary page.
Naturally, readers are already writing in to complain that they cannot read my scribble, even though I haven’t even finished writing up this piece yet. Here’s a transcript:
Sunday, 6 July 1975 – Went to classes. Grandma Anne gave me £100. Great.
Monday, 7 July 1975 – more relaxing. Fives good. TV Sportstown, Star Trek, Waltons, Horizon.
Tuesday, 8 July 1975 – classes good. No bar mitzvah class. Uneventful.
Wednesday, 9 July 1975 – we won cricket. I got a hat-trick and eight runs. TV The Ascent of Man.
Thursday, 10 July 1975 – classes good. Picking up mix-up. TV Jacques Cousteau, Comedy of Marriage.
Friday, 11 July 1975 – broke up from school hurrah. TV Walt Disney, Celebrity Knockout. England flop in first test.
Saturday 12 July 1975 – shule in the morning, Andrew in the afternoon. Aussies dish out more punishment. Susan’s wedding.
£100 was a princely sum in those days. This was my bar mitzvah present. Of course I was allowed nowhere near it – straight into a savings account where it probably ended up making a small but significant contribution to the first deposit I made on a flat nearly a quarter-of-a-century later.
Still, no wonder I have a dreamy expression on my face in the headline photo, which was taken at the bar mitzvah party a few weeks later. I have previously written up one quirky aspect of that party. It was Candappa’s fault, sir…
I have also previously written up my hat trick taking heroics in the cricket at Alleyn’s school. A relatively common topic of my conversation, even 50 years later, when talking about my own cricket playing “career”…because there’s not much else of note to talk about.
The phrase, “broke up from school hurrah” sounds like something out of a Billy Bunter book and doesn’t read like me – but it does indicate my enthusiasm for that Alleyn’s school year to have ended – an annus mirabilis (by my standards) in sport but annus horribilis academically.
I had been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to follow England in the 1975 Ashes. I had not fully engaged with cricket aged 9/10 when Australia had previously visited, in 1972. By 1975, I was a proper cricket-mad youngster.
The remarks “England flop” and “Australia dish out more punishment” read like headlines from tabloid newspapers that I couldn’t possibly have seen. Here’s a link to the scorecard from that first test.
I suspect that I spent more time than was good for me watching that cricketing road crash unfold in slow motion. 50 years later, I realise that my habits, in that regard, have not changed much.
I didn’t much follow popular music back then, but I do recall that Van McCoy’s The Hustle was riding high in the charts that summer and was my earworm around the time we broke up from school.
Can you listen to and watch the following vid without trying some of the moves and getting the whole tune stuck in your head as an earworm? Of course you can’t.