The summer term of my Foundation Year (FY) at Keele was mostly, in my memory, idyllic. The music I was listening to at the time, on the Philips Spatial Stereo Ghettoblaster/Boombox depicted above, still brings to my mind so many sensations from that first spring/summer at Keele, forty years ago as I write.
I have just written up the comedic story of that ghettoblaster’s procurement, in Bournemouth just before I set off for Keele. It should please those who like slapstick sitcom scenarios:
Anyway…
…one thing my memory does not recall one jot is the Friday evening of 8 May 1981, when, according to the diary:
…went to Burslem in evening. Enjoyable evening. Back here [my salubrious new room, Lindsay F4] for coffee.
What on earth was there to do in Burslem back then that was enjoyable? I hope someone remembers and chips in with a memory or two.
I went to see And Justice For All at Film Soc on the Tuesday (heavy, star-studded stuff). They were clearly into star-studded, deep stuff that term, as the following Tuesday I saw The Deep.
I reported several essay and exam results 12 & 13 May (all B+s and B-s, median returns for a 1980/81 FY student, I should imagine), before the utterly unexpected interruption; the sudden death of my Uncle Manny, which I wrote up a few years ago:
That was serious, growing-up stuff, as I explain in my write up of the circumstances and the funeral.
I like the way I wrote up Monday 18 May in my diary:
Decorator moved in – I moved out! Back to Keele – finished politics.
The decorator was named Ron Day. Why I remember that fact, when I cannot remember the names of people I met recently and whose names I have good reason to remember, I cannot fathom. Anyway, it’s good to know that I had completely mastered politics by 18 May 1981.
But before I moved out – almost certainly on the Saturday evening which I describe as an “easy evening”, I made a couple of mix tapes for myself, mostly from the second-hand records I had been buying at Record & Tape Exchange over the preceding few years:
Those readers who like this sort of thing might enjoy the listings and the recordings below. Where possible this time I have used the digitised versions of my actual old crackly records.
A real mixed bag there.
As I have said elsewhere, anyone who lived south-facing in Lindsay D, E and especially F blocks, plus the military outpost that was G Block that year, all enjoyed the benefit of my musical miscellany at high volume on my blaster for the remainder of the summer term of 1981 whenever it made sense to open the windows and/or sit outside – which was quite a lot that summer term if my memory serves me well.
