I do hope that residents and lovers of Bournemouth forgive me for my damning four word review of the place…or at least understand the context of that diary statement from the 18-year-old me.
I had just completed an exciting three months over the summer, running the BBYO office, dashing up and down the country visiting BBYO projects, learning in late August that I had messed up my A-Levels and yet somehow (with Simon Jacobs’s & Colin Page’s help) blagging my way into Keele University by mid September.
I was eagerly anticipating the next phase of my life by late September and I don’t think I was especially keen on a “Jewish holidays” stay in Bournemouth with my parents and Grandma Anne.
The compromise we agreed (not least because I had BBYO commitments) was that I would join them for a week in Bournemouth and then travel back to London for a Sunday commitment and then my own holiday week “training to be a student”:
I went to the Bournemouth BBYO meeting on the Sunday. The phrase “nothing to do here” was clearly a reference to Bournemouth as a town, not the warm hospitality I was no doubt afforded by the youth group there.
I suspect that the phrase “there’s nothing to do here” was handed to me by one or more of the BBYO-niks when I asked them on the Sunday for suggestions that might spice up my week.
We stayed at the Cumberland on this occasion…
…until I found the above photo, labelled “The Cumberland” by my mum, I mistakenly thought we had stayed at the New Ambassador, as we had three years earlier – a mini-holiday from 1977 that I shall certainly write up in the fullness of time.
But whereas the fifteen-year-old me had revelled in the company of fellow youngsters in a Jewish hotel during the half-term week of October 1977, this 1980 visit was clearly not to my taste.
To add to the boredom factor for me, this holiday coincided with Sukkot, which, to religious Jews, is a major festival, observed strictly at kosher hotels such as the New Ambassador.
The food would have been plentiful and all-inclusive; breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner, with several courses both to lunch and dinner. Grandma Anne will have massively over-eaten, especially at lunchtime. Then, every day, she would have gone through the four stages of post-lunch gastro-grief: irritability, wind, sleep and finally hope (i.e. hope for a few hands of kalooki before tea and cakes are served).
On the main Sukkot festival days (the Thursday and Friday that year) plus shabbat (Saturday every week), games like kalooki were forbidden, thus worsening Grandma’s afternoon mood when her kalooki hopes were dashed.
Still, a week in “Borschtmouth” was quite a pleasant change for someone, like Grandma Anne, in their late 80’s.
But not what I was looking for in my early 18’s.
In fact, if we go by the diary, nothing at all memorable happened during that week in Bournemouth. But I have one very strong, abiding memory from that trip.
Master Blaster Jamming Revolving Doors
Neither my parents nor I were particularly interested in the religious holiday element of the visit. Grandma Anne was a rabbi’s daughter and dad had been raised in a very traditional Jewish household. Mum far less so. Once I had shown little and diminishing interest in the religious side of things, our household had become pretty secular.
Anyway; we had one mission while we were in Bournemouth which was to sort out my combined 18th birthday and going away to University gift. I wanted a ghetto blaster, so I could listen to radio and cassettes in the confined space I knew was to be my lot for several years at University.
Having left matters until late in the week, mum, dad and I hatched a cunning plan to get this piece of shopping done during Sukkot. The hotel basically acted as a synagogue for such a high-holiday and the vast majority of residents – not least all of the religious ones – would attend the service.
We worked out that we would have plenty of time to sneak out of the hotel, procure a suitable item and get back with the booty while all the religious lot were still ensconced in ritual and prayer…
…except that…
…shopping expeditions with my family were never particularly timely affairs and this purchase required thought and due diligence.
I bought a Philips Spatial Stereo Ghettoblaster/Boombox (see above picture) and very pleased with it I was too, all packaged up in its great big box .
We realised that we had cut it a bit fine and hurried back to the hotel.
We realised that we had goofed as we saw people started to come out of the makeshift hotel synagogue. But rather than slowing down and unobtrusively braving our way in by sneaking through the doors and up the stairs while the assembled frummers were preoccupied with chat and thoughts of lunch…
…we panicked. In our rush, Dad and I got in the same section of the revolving door – a potentially door-jamming mistake at the best of times, but with the additional space-taking-device that was my ghetto-blaster in its box, we were stuck.
Mum tried to rectify matters by pulling the revolving door in the reverse direction, but revolving doors don’t work like that – or at least this one certainly didn’t. I think a receptionist spotted our embarrassing circumstances and helped to rescue us. Goodness only knows how many people saw us and if any of those who might have seen us really cared. No-one said anything to us about it.
In later months and years, mum, dad and I would joke about the incident. It would have made a good scene in a sit-com or sketch in a comedy TV show.
Anyway, I had my ghetto blaster and it gave me good service at Keele for my first two or three years, until I traded it up for an armour-plated Grundig one…but that’s another story.