While technology can enable us to read the Herculaneum Scrolls, despite their c2000 years of antiquity and the fact that they were burnt to a crisp…some elements of my juvenile diaries are beyond redemption.
No idea what sort of cheap pencil I was using at the end of 1975, but very little of it survived on the page. The headline picture is the best that photoshop can do with it – the image below is what it really looks like.
Fortunately, judging by the readable entries around it, we can surmise that I was enjoying Christmas at home with my parents very much and watching lots of TV.
Trawling the TV listings for Christmas Day, I’m pretty sure I will have watched:
Morcombe & Wise Christmas Show – which was compulsory viewing in the UK back then if I remember correctly. Failing to watch it was deemed to be treason which was still technically punishable by death.
On Boxing Day, dad and I would have gone for a walk together after lunch, but not before I’d watched Let It Be in the morning. Almost certainly I’d have watched Disney Time in the afternoon and we’d all have watched the Mike Yarwood Christmas Show together in the evening. Almost compulsory, was the Mike Yarwood Christmas Show.
The following day I think I can make out the words “Played With Andy”, which means I probably went to the Levinson’s house. I can also just about decipher (Carry On) “Don’t Lose Your Head” as the TV viewing that evening.
I’m Camembert! I’m the big cheese!…
…as Kenneth William’s character, Citizen Camembert, put it. Well the jokes most certainly were cheesy.
I have only an impressionistic memory of the shock that ran through Alleyn’s School on that day in mid December 1975, when we were told, I’m pretty sure it was in Assembly, that our headmaster, John Fanner, had died. It was sudden and unexpected – he had gone into hospital for a seemingly routine operation.
My diary entry for that day is a little strange. Written in ink at a time when I was mostly writing the diary in pencil. A couple of question marks as well:
Tuesday, 16 December 1975 Mr Fanner died yesterday. TV Invisible Man, Are You Being Served? Gym?
Are You Being Served? – with a question mark – is the correct title for that programme. But “Gym?” for the International Gymnastics that followed it feels like a discombobulated diary entry, perhaps not really remembering the extent to which I watched those programmes.
I didn’t know Mr Fanner well. In fact, my only other diary mentions of him are in the first month of my “career” as a diarist, January 1974, when I was relieved of my travel money by a local rough (probably a Billy Biro) on the way to school and was sent to the Headmaster to report and obtain temporary financial relief – see 14 & 15 January entries in the piece linked here:
I suspect that my January 1974 episode was my only interaction with John Fanner, apart from, perhaps, an occasional “nodding acquaintance” gesture in the corridor.
I sensed that he was a kind man and realised, even at the time, that this was far more of a shock for the teachers than it was for most of the pupils. It was the day before we broke up for the school holidays and I don’t remember dwelling on the matter once school was out.
Others with whom I am in touch 50 years later might have more insightful memories of this event. Mike Jones, for example. Simon Barton for another.
The rest of my diary in the run up to Christmas is unsuitably mundane:
Wednesday, 17 December 1975 broke up. Good report. TV Superstars, Benny Hill.
Thursday, 18 December 1975 played with Andy [Levinson]. Went to library. TV $6 Million Man, Likely Lads, Mastermind, Carry on Christmas.
Friday, 19 December 1975 – Lloyd’s [Green] in morning. TV Pot Black, The Good Life.
Saturday 20 December 1975 all ok. Andy afternoon. TV film German something or other? [Mosquito Squadron]
Sunday, 21 December 1975 – no classes. TV last Upstairs Downstairs, Al Capone.
Monday 22 December 1975 Andy all day. TV Invisible Man, Are You Being Served? Mastermind.
Tuesday, 23 December 1975 – meeting today. Andy afternoon. TV Carry On film [Carry On Up the Khyber], Liver Birds.
Wednesday, 24 December 1975 lovely Christmas eve, Andy all day TV Oliver Twist, Jim’ll Fix It, something something [Dick Emery Christmas Show] and Porridge
Not much insight there.
I have used the opening line from Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen as the headline for this piece. That record was part of the soundtrack of our lives that late autumn and Christmas.
But my earworm that season was the other record that did astonishingly well. Actually, not just an earworm – loads of us in the Alleyn’s School playground (and other playgrounds all over the country) tried to emulate its nonsense:
Perhaps you had to be there.
For those who are desperate to hear/see Bohemian Rhapsody again and don’t know how to use a search engine:
Not A Matter Of Life & Death – Far More Important Than That!We had some fine footballers in my year at Alleyn’s – I was not among them.
Sunday, 30 November 1975 – performed play. Very good. Mug taken good. TV Upstairs Downstairs.
I have no idea what the play was, nor why my mug shot was taken. Presumably something at cheder. Any mug shot from that performance is (probably mercifully) lost in the mists of time.
Monday 1 December 1975 all OK. Goodies & Waltons.
Tuesday 2 December 1975 – swimming good. TV Invisible Man, Musical Time Machine.
Wednesday, 3 November 1975 CCF Picture Lecture. TV Superstar, Our Man Flint.
I have no idea whether the picture lecture was something to do with CCF (Combined Cadet Force) or unconnected.
Thursday, 4 December 1975 – drama cancelled, came home early. TV $6 million man, Mastermind.
Friday 5 December 1975 – all OK, TV Tom & Jerry, Pot Black, The Good Life.
Saturday, 6 December 1975 – school morn. Finished play fitting. TV sinking film The Last Voyage.
Sunday, 7 December 1975.– Classes good, lost 7P [at kalooki] boo-hoo, all OK.
Monday, 8 December 1975 – Auntie Alice died last night. Grandma Jenny came to stay.
Alice in the 1950s
Auntie Alice was Grandma Jenny’s sister. Alice had lived with Grandma Jenny for as long as I could remember – indeed quite possibly since before I was born. Alice suffered from hyperkyphosis, which in those days we referred to as hunchback, to such an extent that it caused her respiratory issues. In truth I only really remember her ever sitting in her armchair doing very little. But she was a sweet lady.
Tuesday, 9 December 1975 – goalkeeping – great achievement, TV Superstars, Time Machine.
Yes, I have found it. The sole reference in my diaries to my football playing “career”. My epic goalkeeping performance in an end of term house match. If memory serves, it was my house, Cribbs, v Duttons. My house was playing merely for pride (which might explain how I ended up in the team at all), whereas our opponents needed the win for top of the table glory.
My goalkeeping will not have looked anything like this
Presumably Cribbs had injury/absence issues which resulted in my being selected at all. Presumably Paddy Gray (our Cribbs skipper) knew enough about my two left feet to conclude that I could do the least harm, or even vaguely be of use, by having a go in goal.
As football stalwart Nigel Boatswain would tell you:
some idiot was playing in goal for Cribbs. He didn’t have the faintest idea what he was doing in goal, yet somehow he managed to keep saving the ball and we couldn’t get the ball past that idiot.
I know that Nigel would put it in language of that kind, because that’s pretty much what he said to Johnny Eltham, on one occasion in the 2010s, when we were all gathered for dinner. Johnny replied,
yes I remember and yes I remember who the goalkeeper was…he’s sitting next to you.
Nigel recalls that his team won, so is convinced that they got past me eventually. My recollection is that Paddy Gray decided, towards the very end of the match, that our best chance of keeping a clean sheet was for him to swap in a more competent goalie for the last few minutes…it might even have been himself. It was during those last few minutes, while I was grazing in the long grass trying to stay out of trouble, that the winning goal was scored.
This is a bit like the story at the end of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, when Tom Brown captains his team to a glorious narrow defeat at the hands of the MCC, yet is carried aloft by his teammates because of the narrowness and glory of the defeat.
I’m glad to have found this small yet oft-remembered moment in my diary and I’m glad to see that it occurred in 1975, which was my annus mirabilis sports-wise, what with my quarter-final victory at fives…
But enough about my single year of sporting glory.
Wednesday 10 December 1975 – no CCF. Grandma Jenny stayed again. TV War Film [Ice Cold In Alex].
Thursday, 11 December 1975 – drama good. TV $6 Million Man, Water Rats, Mastermind, Q6
Friday, 12 December 1975 – all OK, TV Pot Black, The Good Life.
Saturday, 13 December 1975 – Party went well, good fun.
I have no recollection of this party. Possibly an end of term party at the school. I’d have thought I’d have named the friend whose house party it was, had it been a friend’s house party. Anyway, whatever it was, wherever it was, it went well and was good fun according to my diary, which I suspect is all that has survived as a written record about that particular party.
