Was it Mud at the Lindsay Summer Ball that year?
I have a very strong, impressionistic memory of enjoying myself thoroughly during the last few weeks of the summer term of my Foundation Year at Keele.
Unfortunately…perhaps because I was having such a good time…my memories of specific details are less than special and my diary entries pithy to say the least.
I’ll do my best, but could seriously use some help from the hive mind of those who were also there at the time.
A Short Trip To London, Then Caroline Came Up To Keele With Me, 9 to 12 June 1981
Tuesday 9 June 1981 – Up quite late – had lunch came home. Supper – early night.
Wednesday 10 June 1981 – Haircut in morning – met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch – Cyril Monty. Job – early night.
Not many mentions of haircuts in my diaries from that era – a rare event which, I suspect, came as a result of some serious emotional pressure from mum, combined with the reality that I would need shorter hair for my summer job and was not allowing time between coming down from Keele on the last Sunday of June and a presumed work start date of the Monday!
Meeting Caroline for lunch was quite a regular thing in those days. I think she was at Harrods then, so it would have been one of those quite up-market but affordable eateries in Knightsbridge, of which there were plenty at that time.
Cyril Monty was an orthopaedic surgeon who, along with his family, were friends of my family. I had suffered an industrial injury while working during the Easter holidays that year:
Cyril Monty told me that I was likely to be prone to back problems throughout my life, but if I did plenty of exercise and avoided injury I might get away with it. I invested in a second hand exercise plan book (along with many other books) on the following Friday…
…and did exercises from that book for the next few years. But I am getting ahead of myself.
“Job” will simply mean that I popped around from Cyril Monty’s Harley Street consulting room to 19 Cavendish Square to confirm my summer job starting arrangements.
Thursday 11 June 1981 – Dentist [Harry Wachtel] in morning – shopping – cataloguing tapes etc. Early night.
Friday 12 June 1981 – Up for lunch – taping etc. – met Caroline. Came up to Keele – lazy evening.
On reflection, the taping sessions I described for my unscheduled visit to London in May…
…were probably undertaken (or at least were completed) on this June visit.
Caroline’s Visit, Segueing Into Richard’s Visit, 12 to 16 June 1981
Saturday 13 June 1981 – Hanley for lunch – Gladstone Museum – Mis’s party in evening.
I was rather hoping that Caroline would remember some details about this visit and Mis’s party. Simon Jacobs (as usual) drew a blank. Caroline’s response to my request for further information:
I’m with Simon, if you think my memory is going to be better than your diary!. I do remember the weekend as described, particularly a boozy party, but unable to add anything to enhance the description!
I describe the next (Sunday) morning as an early start, although what one did with an early start at Keele on a Sunday is a mystery to me. “Early” might be a relative term, of course and I suspect that we went to the campus store to get some food in, as Simon apparently made lunch and I made dinner that Sunday.
Sunday 14 June 1981 – Early start – buying…lunch at Simons [D Block Barnes], lazy afternoon. Dinner here [F Block Lindsay] lazy evening.
Monday 15 June 1981 – Late start. Lunch – Caroline left in afternoon. Richard [Marks] came. UGM -> party – up till late, v drunk.
Neither Simon nor I remember this visit from Richard. I clearly remember his earlier visit during the first term;
I wonder what he made of a Keele UGM and the “v late, v drunk” party. I suspect Richard only stayed around for a day or so (the diary is silent on this) as I suspect he was visiting us as part of a road trip which included friends in Manchester and/or Leeds.
Tuesday 16 June 1981 – Good for nothing today – did likewise. Lazy evening etc. Film bad.
Wednesday 17 June 1981 – Earlyish rise – cat etc. Went to disco etc. in eve – played snooker
Thursday 18 June 1981 – Up really early for J-Soc exec meeting. Went to Sneyd in evening.
I wonder how early “really early” was for that meeting. I didn’t have anything else to report until the evening, which might be a clue.
Sue Jacobs Visit & The Mystery Lindsay Ball, 19 & 20 June 1981
Friday 19 June 1981 – Lazy day. Bought Books. Susan came in evening. Film Salon Kitty, Lindsay Ball. Mark [probably Bartholomew] & [Liz?] came & stayed late
That book buying session did a great job of getting me started with summer holiday reading plus some basic texts for my impending P1 year.
Salon Kitty was an X-rated movie and Sue was only 16 at the time, but the experience does not seem to have done Sue any harm, nor does it seem to have stuck in her memory.
I have a feeling that this Lindsay Ball must have been the one at which Mud played, but neither Sue nor Simon reckon that they have ever seen Mud. Then again, Simon didn’t even remember that Sue visited us that year. Forty years on, Simon says:
Just because you claim that my younger sister paid us a visit, doesn’t necessarily mean that we attended the Lindsay Ball. Which brings us back to Mud. If they were the top attraction of the night, I might well have found a reason to do something else… x
Sue’s “forty years on” take on all this was as follows:
Fancy Simon not remembering me visiting….no surprise there! I did visit, although no idea of the details at all. Except that we saw a hypnotist show? Simon also did take me back to his room to put me to bed and then to go off again himself…I have no idea about his return…! Happy days!
The hypnotist would have been at the ball and I have a feeling that we did all go to the ball and/but that Simon (& thus Sue) dipped out ahead of the band. So I’m sticking with Mud, as it were, as my best guess for the band for that occasion.
I certainly did see Mud there on one occasion and cannot find another Lindsay Ball mention in my diary that might have been Mud. Hopefully someone amongst the Keele alums out there can confirm or deny my theory.
On the occasion I did see Mud, I recall the Keele audience all-but ignoring the band until they played the only hit of theirs that tended to catch the imagination, at which point everyone danced and chanted wildly:
Muddy Postscript
Helen LeGrand has helped to confirm that Mud’s visit to Lindsay must have been that summer ball in 1981. She adds a very specific memory of her own: “Don’t think it was the original Mud line-up. Memorable for the encore when the lead singer [Les Gray – the only survivor of the original Mud line-up by then] came back on stage completely naked. I’m sure I’m not misremembering that. 
“
I am pretty sure I didn’t hang around long enough to see the encore, which explains why that mental picture (more smutty than muddy) mercifully does not form part of my own memory.
Saturday 20 June 1981 – Simon & Susan for lunch – went to Newcastle shopping – lazy evening – late night.