Month: January 1981

Winter Draws On At Keele, FY & The Union & Lindsay Bar & My First Concourse Article, 18 to 31 January 1981

Photo © Brian Deegan (cc-by-sa/2.0)

My flurry of diligence at the start of my second term does not seem to have made it to the second full week.

My markings in the Foundation Year (FY) syllabus book tell me that I only made it to two lectures in that second week of term. Then back up to five in the third week.

Worse yet, the handwriting in my diary (both its look and what it seems to be saying) suggests that I spent a lot of time drinking with my friends. Students can be like that – who knew?

Still, I did start a biology topic, I think on Friday 23rd January, Hormones & Reproduction with Peter Chevins. Jolly useful subject for an 18 year old fresher to understand. I think I was the only male student out of nine or ten students in that class. Masterful choice of science topic, don’t you think? Four years later in my Education & Welfare role I wrote a seminal work, Sexplanations, which surely borrowed a little from that FY topic. More explanations of Sexplanations when I write up 1984/85.

The diary notes my FY exam results: B+, B+, B- which is well below the level I would aim for today but under the circumstances (how little work I did that first term) I think I was doing OK.

I also wrote a sessional essay on Thursday 29th. Whether that was the modern history with Mr Jones or the comparative politics with Richard Kimber is lost in the mists of time.

The weekend of 24/25 January has an interesting note:

-> Union -> Horwood -> Lindsay – trouble.

The Strange Story Of Mad Harry

Although I don’t mention “Mad Harry” by name in my diary, I am pretty sure this “trouble” would have been the first of his noteworthy, unfortunate incidents.

Harry is (was) a very bright and charismatic chap, who lived upstairs in F Block Lindsay. He went wild at Keele, I think a reaction to a protected background. I remember him describing his parents as being very strict and religious Christians. I don’t think he had tried alcohol before Keele but was certainly trying to make up for lost time that term.

I also remember Harry claiming to originate from Botswana, for reasons unexplained, as he later recanted that claim. I think his family, of Southern-Asian origin, had come to the UK via an East-African country (Uganda or Kenya or possibly both).

But there was little point trying to fathom Harry’s claims and actions back then. He had a sword in his room, which I think was in a “stage-prop” state of bluntness, but was realistic-looking enough for him to scare the uninitiated. He would run up and down his corridor wielding it, when the mood so took him…which was quite often. I should know; our corridor was just below Harry’s corridor.

Harry was friendly with “Brummy Paul” who lived on our F Block Lindsay corridor. If I recall correctly, the “campus crawl” that ended up in Lindsay Bar that Saturday night resulted in Harry getting banned from Lindsay Bar, while the rest of us were correctly deemed to be blameless for the trouble.

I returned to Lindsay Bar the next night, along with a few of the others, not least to commune with the fellow students who had needed to deal with Harry’s antics.

While remaining on good terms with Harry, I took pains to avoid going out boozing with him from then on. One evening, not all that long after the first incident, Harry got drunk elsewhere, tried to get in to Lindsay Bar and ended up smashing a window there, which got him banned from Lindsay Hall.

One of the priests (I cannot remember whether Harry was Anglican or Catholic; I think the latter so it would have been Sandy Brown) took pity on him and gave him sanctuary at his house to try to recover his Keele career. But that kind effort was in vain and Harry ended up dropping out of Keele.

This tale does have a happy ending though, as I ran into Harry again about five years later in the canteen of Financial Training College in North Kensington. Professor Fishman had recognised Harry’s ability at economics and maths, so recommended Harry to Birmingham University where Harry was given a second chance, which, he told me, he took with great relief. Harry told me he realised how wild he had been at Keele, but he had learnt a lesson and turned a corner. He still had that charismatic twinkle in his eye, though and I’m sorry I only saw him the once in that canteen. I wonder what has become of Harry since.

Mark Bartholomew, Anna Summerskill & My First Concourse Article

During that first year, living in halls of residence, I would regularly eat with Simon Jacobs in the refectory, but of course we got to meet & eat with some interesting characters. None were more memorable than the dynamic duo that was Mark Bartholomew and Anna Summerskill. Sadly, I learnt some time ago that Anna died long before what should have been her time; in 2012.

A duo, not a pair or a couple, Mark & Anna tended to dine together and “hold court” at meal times with people they found entertaining. Simon and I seemed to fit that mould for them reasonably often. At that time, both Mark and Anna were in their second and third years (respectively) of four year courses I believe, so well ahead of us. They were also both into the student politics.

Anna Summerskill was a member of the SWP and very much of the organised left. Here is one of the few mentions of her on the web, a Marxist scan from 1980. She had been Union treasurer the year before our arrival. Having suffered the ignominy of losing the election for treasurer to abstentions the first time she ran, she had the guts to run again against abstentions and scrapped through the second time. Respect.

Mark Bartholomew was more of the non-conformist left. Very bright, very sharp-witted, he enjoyed an intellectual tussle and could find tiny holes in a lesser debater’s argument more easily than water finds small gaps in a leaky roof. I recall he was one of the student reps on the University Senate, which seemed to me, at that time, to be an incredibly grown-up thing. I think I have found a properly grown-up Mark, in a 2019 article, in Dhaka – click here. If that link ever goes awry, I have scraped that piece here.

They both had wicked senses of humour, which was not always abundant in those with pronounced political views. Anna’s refectory party trick was to eat a banana in as sexually provocative a manner as was possible to achieve. Only occasionally could she do this while keeping a straight face.

Anna with duffle coat but without banana

Anyway.

Anna had gone off to NUS Conference as the leader of Keele’s delegation over the Christmas vacation and a shit-storm controversy (by Keele’s standards) had kicked off about it at the UGM in mid January. You can read all about it in the following article.

I was a cub Concourse reporter. I got the gig to interview Anna and get to the bottom of the matter. The students needed to know. Apparently neither Bob Woodward nor Carl Bernstein were available, so I was chosen. The fact that I was friendly with Anna was not deemed to be an impediment. Indeed, I think the editors thought my refectory-style access to Anna would be an advantage.

Thus, my first piece as a Concourse writer.

I’m not at all happy with my mis-spelling of University’s as Universities. No need to point it out.

I can’t even blame the typist, as I will have typed this piece up myself, as I indeed typed up quite a lot of that February 1981 issue of Concourse. That issue of Concourse turned out to be even more controversial and consequential than the NUS delegation I reported upon within it. But the February 1981 “Concourse-gate” debacle is a story for my next Ogblog piece.

Back To Keele For A Second Term OF FY, Even Did Some Work, 8 to 17 January 1981

I returned to Keele with Simon Jacobs on the Thursday, having stayed with him and his family in Pinner the night before. This might have been the only time in my Keele years that I joined the train at Watford Junction rather than Euston.

My 1981 diary suggests I had a little surge of diligence towards my Foundation Year (FY) at the start of my second term. The word “work” or “worked” appears three times in that first proper week of term.

Maybe it’s that New Year resolution thing, although I don’t remember ever embracing that tradition. Actually, on reflection, I am guessing that the FY exam on the Friday after my return made me realise that a little more effort might be in order.

The evidence for this “new found diligence” shows more in the above diary than it does in the FY lecture programme below, where it seems I managed a bare 50% of FY lectures attended that first week, excluding the additional 12:00 lectures which I more or less ignored throughout FY.

In truth, 50% of FY lectures was probably about my maximum. Some of the FY lectures were cracking good, but many were more or less recitations from a set of lecture notes that could be picked up and read with more speed and efficiency than attending a lecture. I especially found it difficult in those days to motivate myself to attend a 9:00 lecture unless it came recommended.

Still, it’s a shame I missed Dr Morgan’s lecture, “The Conquest of Infectious Diseases”. Writing this up forty years later, in January 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic, I realise that a deeper understanding of infectious diseases can come in handy.

As it happens, post Keele, I have been tangentially involved with Gresham College which is a sort-of perennial FY that has been running since Tudor times. So, if some readers are bemoaning the fact that they too missed the opportunity to learn about infectious diseases from Dr Morgan, I can commend Professor Whitty’s 2018 (pre Covid-19 pandemic) lecture on Epidemics and Pandemics:

In addition, Chris Whitty’s special Gresham lecture on Covid-19 in April 2020, early in the pandemic – which you can click here – is hugely informative and prescient.

But I digress.

It was the topics and sessional courses that really got me going during FY, in terms of “learning how to learn”, which my FY year unquestionably helped me to achieve.

I clearly threw myself into Colin Bonwick’s American Studies topic on the American Revolution. Indeed my references to “work” in the diary seem to relate to the essay I wrote for that topic, the exact details of which are lost in the mists of time.

Writing in January 2021, of course, not only was knowledge of infectious diseases going to come in handy forty years later, but knowledge of the origins of the United States of America and the US Constitution, as covered in that topic, becomes, once again, topical.

Colin Bonwick “wrote the book” about The American Revolution, some years after that topic. It is also possible to obtain his book second hand at a modest price – I have just one-clicked a copy for fun. The fascinating appendix bundle, including the constitution and much skimmable stuff is in the public domain and downloadable free, here. This will enable the reader rapidly to become a pundit on matters such as “can a former president be convicted following impeachment?” and “who is next in the pecking order if something goes awry with the President, Vice-President, etc?”

I realise, of course, that we were awaiting the inauguration of Ronald Reagan on 20 January 1981. Back then, some of us thought Reagan was as dismal as it could get in terms of totemic right-wing showbiz Presidents – we were mistaken.

But it wasn’t all FY lectures, American Studies topic essays and Politics sessional classes.

I went to the union most evenings. Simon Jacobs and I were still playing a traditional game or two of table football over a beer after refectory dinner most days. I was also becoming even more addicted to pinball than I had become over the summer, where I had learnt to play quite well on a Hillel House machine that was rarely used by anyone other than us residents and which could be cajoled into yielding free balls quite easily.

In truth the above is an older machine, but The Black Knight – see link here – was one of the machines I remember at Keele back then.

I also went to Mary (Keevil)’s birthday party on the Friday evening and then to a Barnes C Block party on the Saturday. My recollection is that Simon Jacobs lived in D Block and I cannot recall who (if anyone) we knew in C Block. Perhaps they were Roy’s connections rather than Simon’s. Party invitations were not exactly exclusive, coveted things at Keele in those days. But the parties were fun.

An interesting 10 days or so on return to Keele for my second term.

Prior To My Second Term At Keele, Some Unfinished BBYO Business, Mostly In Pinner, 4 to 8 January 1981

Some Pinner BBYO Grandees, 1979

Probably because I had become so friendly with Simon Jacobs & Caroline Freeman during my BBYO years, I spent a fair bit of time in Pinner during my last couple of BBYO years. Not as much time as Streatham, my home club, of course, but still a fair bit.

In fact, there seemed to be a general affinity between the two clubs, perhaps because our groups had been “new kids on the BBYO block” and then received our full BBYO charters around the same time, in the late 1970s.

Or perhaps it was simply because we had quite a few friendships emerge betwixt and between Pinner & Streatham.

Mixture of Pinnerites and visiting Americans, 1979

Anyway, just a few days after handing over the National BBYO batons at convention 1980/81…

BBYO Convention 1980/81, Grange Farm Centre, 29 December 1980 to 3 January 1981

…I found myself in Pinner helping Simon, Caroline and others to hand over the Pinner batons at their club AGM, as my diary attests.

Sunday 4 January – returned home [from a visit to Portsmouth BBYO with Jenny Council via Barry Laden’s place] (via Feld’s). Rather tired. Easy day. Early night.

Monday 5 January – Lazyish day. Did v little.

Tuesday 6 January – Another lazyish day. Popped up to Hillel (lunched with Caroline) – early night

Wednesday 7 January – Packed etc. Went To Pinner – AGM -> Caroline’s etc. Stayed at Simon’s.

Thursday 8 January – Simon & I returned to Keele

That tradition of meeting Caroline for lunch (Tuesday) continued through my holiday jobs and my return to London in the mid to late 1980s. If, as I suspect, she was already working for Harrods back then, I would have tubed it from Euston to a location near to her place of work, as she was the one with the fixed lunch hour.

On the Wednesday evening, I suspect the deal was that I dined with Caroline and her family, then stayed with Simon and his. The number of times I must have dined at Caroline’s place in that period goes uncounted. I did at one time work out that I had eaten at Caroline’s house more often than I had eaten at my parents’ house over a period of several months during 1980. (I had probably eaten at Hillel House many times more than at either or even both of those homes!).

I’m trying to recall who at Pinner would have taken up the cudgels at that time. The era of Richard & Ros Marks, Paul Sass, Paul Dewinter, Simon Jacobs, Caroline Freeman, Paul Ley, Graham Greenglass, Alan Tucker and many others was done, I think. Jilly Black, Sue Jacobs and several others of the next BBYO generation were coming to the fore. Between Simon, Sue, Paul, Caroline, Jilly and others, perhaps we can get some names and serial numbers from the hive mind of memory banks.

The installation ceremony would have looked a bit like this regional one from 1979

The reason I stayed at Simon’s place was that we were both going back up to Keele by train the next morning, with predictably hilarious results in the days following:

Back To Keele For A Second Term OF FY, Even Did Some Work, 8 to 17 January 1981

BBYO Convention 1980/81 Recovered Memories, Skits and Songs

I asked the hive mind of the BBYO alums from back then to help try to recover some memories of the BBYO convention 40 years ago:

BBYO Convention 1980/81, Grange Farm Centre, 29 December 1980 to 3 January 1981

Oh boy did some of you deliver! Many thanks for all the contributions.

Several of those contributions referred to skits and songs. This one from Jilly Black, for example:

…this is the one where I remember Jonny Rose doing lots of guitar playing and also acting as a sort of security guard (taking us out to check in the fields one evening with a torch, saying “check in the corners”!) throughout. I also remember there being an awful lot of women who were in love with and falling over Simon Jacobs. That happened quite a bit anyway, but specially at this convention, and I’m also wondering if it’s the one where Pinner did it’s unforgettable welfare-based skit, with Alan Tucker playing the part of our unforgettable Mrs Kushin, re-enacting one of the visits we made, where I think she’d accused someone of breaking a window with a stone from her lawn mower (amazing, what you remember).

Simon Jacobs being “oh so cool” with the girls (18 months or so earlier)

Unusually, Simon chimed in with a stunning memory from that convention. I had chided that Simon, “usually pleads amnesia on stuff that far back, unless Elvis Costello was involved”…

…but I didn’t count on Dave Edmunds. Here’s Simon’s recollection:

…hark, there is one crystal clear memory from 80/81 and it absolutely involves Jilly because it was a duet. Of Jilly and me. I don’t remember the context or how the words were altered, but, because I really loved the song, I managed to force a version of ‘Baby Ride Easy’ into the proceedings. Jilly and I became Carlene Carter and Dave Edmunds respectively. I remember being on a stage with Jilly belting this out and loving it.

Jilly doing country (Keele as it happens) three or four years later

If anyone is struggling to visualise Simon and Jilly singing that song, the following video of the original by Dave Edmunds and Carlene Carter might help you. I must say, on seeing the vid, the Simon and Jilly performance came racing back into my brain:

You can visualise Simon Jacobs & Jilly Black…can’t you?

The other thing that came racing back to my brain was the Streatham effort at a skit that year. I can’t remember the details of it, but something had gone wrong and we were bereft of a performable script. I remember sitting up till all hours with Wendy Robbins hurriedly throwing together a script.

Skittish Streatham on a previous occasion. I’m the goon in the green leotard.

Wendy and I had a couple of things on our minds to use. Firstly, the US Presidential election had just happened. Reagan had been elected. Also, we both had seen the recent Hal Ashby film, Being There, with Peter Sellers as a sort-of innocent savant who is mistaken for a wise man and inadvertently becomes an advisor to the President of the USA. Worth seeing if you missed it at the time; a sort of enduring classic. But I digress.

Anyway, we wrote a skit with a convoluted plot about Wendy being a sort-of innocent savant BBYO chapter president who inadvertently, while applying to the USA for some sort of club presidency, finds herself running for the Presidency of the USA…and winning.

It was ludicrously complex, not really suited to a thrown together, unrehearsed skit. Yet somehow, with Wendy’s bravura performance in the lead, the skit passed some sort of “so bad it’s good” benchmark and it all went down rather well.

Wendy in a charitable role, Nightingale, c18 months earlier

Anyway, these happy memories might help to trigger similar ones from others who enjoy looking at this stuff.

So two questions for “advanced students”:

  • Does anyone else have skit an/or song memories from that convention to share?
  • Did anyone take photographs that year? I don’t think I’ve seen a single photo from the 80/81 convention. It would be super to share pictures if there are any.

BBYO Convention 1980/81, Grange Farm Centre, 29 December 1980 to 3 January 1981

Help!

I have almost no memory of my last BBYO convention.

Clearly I spent a lot of time at Hillel House between my return from Keele University (13 December) and the start of convention helping to plan/prepare the thing.

I think I might have made some separate notes at the time, but if I did they have been lost with the other memorabilia from that era that my mother threw out at one time, because she “didn’t think anyone would want to keep all of those old jottings and such rubbish.” I’m still not over it.

The diary says I stayed at Howard’s the night before convention. I’m trying to remember which Howard that must have been. I’m sure I thanked you and your parents at the time, Howard, but thanks again.

Update: Jack Gilbert chipped in to suggest that this was probably Howard Wiseman, as I knew him well from events passim. A skim through my old, ragged address book suggests that it almost certainly would have been Howard Wiseman. Thanks Jack.

I think I sort-of acted as returning officer for the elections that year, as I do recall feeling that I had experience of such matters when I got involved with election appeals and such at Keele a few years later.

I know that we elected Lewis Sykes as President.

I know I was awarded life membership at that convention. I probably cried upon receipt.

The diary says that I went to Portsmouth with Jenny (must be Jenny Council) after convention and stayed at Barry Laden’s place. In truth I don’t really remember that specific visit although I do remember visiting Portsmouth several times. I’m sure I thanked you and your parents at the time, Barry, but thanks again.

But beyond the thin gruel in my diary, most of it is just a blur.

So this time, I am shouting out the the BBAK (BBYO alte kackes) community for help. Please chime in with your memories, however slight. They might trigger some of mine – my memory is quite good at being triggered these days.

For those who find that music helps trigger memories, here is a playlist (we called them mix tapes back then) that I made up at the time. It’s helped me with Keele stuff more than with this convention, to be honest, but it might help you.

Mix Tape Recorded Just After My First Term At Keele, c28 December 1980

So once again, my plea. Help! Please chime in with memories of that convention. Once those are gathered, I might be able to write a better piece than this.