The diary is pretty clear on this matter:
12 August 1980. Not too bad a day. Went to Chrystal [sic] Palace with PDeW in evening.
Let’s not talk about my inability to spell the word Crystal at the age of seventeen.
Let us instead try to work out, just over forty years on, what the blithering heck might have been going on here.
The not too bad a day would have been at Hillel House working; I was trying to run the BBYO office that summer in the absence of a proper grown-up full-timer, as Rebecca Lowi had left and not yet been replaced.
I do recall an impending governance crisis on the National Executive around that time, which inevitably embroiled both me and Paul, as we were both on that National Executive. We had things to talk about and I do remember having several after work discussions with Paul that summer.
But if you had asked me, the day before yesterday, if I had ever been to Selhurst Park to see Crystal Palace play football, I would have said, categorically, no.
Football is not really my thing. Never really was, although in my youth I could be persuaded to go to football matches and certainly went to a few.
But Crystal Palace with Paul DeWinter on 12 August 1980 makes no sense for several reasons.
Firstly, my Googling of the 1980/81 football season reveals that the season didn’t even start for Crystal Palace until 16 August 1980.
More importantly, despite my limited knowledge of football and Paul DeWinter, one thing I do know for sure is that Paul is a lifelong devotee of Brighton & Hove Albion FC (The Seagulls), not Crystal Palace FC (The Eagles).
Several of my South London friends are devotees of Crystal Palace and I am aware that there is intense rivalry between the two teams. I have often enjoyed, from the metaphorical sidelines, many enjoyable bants between the fans of those two teams, especially when Paul DeWinter is around.
Indeed, as I understand it, there is intense speculation as to whether representatives of the two species (eagles and seagulls) might be observed cross-fertilizing. I’m no ornithologist, but eagles are from the order of Accipitriformes (birds of prey), whereas seagulls are from the order of Charadriiformes, a diverse order which includes waders and auks as well as gulls, so I think it highly unlikely that those two species would even attempt cross-breeding. Certainly not visibly. But I digress.
So did Paul and I go to Crystal Palace to do something other than watch a football match? Perhaps we went to one of those open air concerts I remember my parents taking me to at Crystal Palace Bowl. Handel’s Water Music, Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik…that sort of thing. But I doubt if those concerts would have been Paul’s bag.
What about Bob Marley…didn’t Bob Marley play “The Bowl” that summer? But the bowl was done weeks before August in 1980 and anyway my diary would certainly have noted (and my memory would have retained) such an event.
No. For sure it would have been football.
I’m guessing it must have been some sort of pre-season friendly between Crystal Palace & Brighton; the intense fan rivalry belying an actual spirit of co-operation between the two clubs at an operational level.
Paul might actually remember what happened and put my feeble memory out of its misery.
Anyway – forty plus years on – thanks again for taking me to the footie in 1980, Paul.