Testing Times: Working, Seeing Alleyn’s & BBYO Friends, Then The Headingley Cricket, 5 to 21 July 1981

A Few Weeks Earlier: John Sutton / Trent Bridge Test Match, 1981: Alderman to Gower

Once my placement in the Far East (Braintree) had been curtailed, I was able to resume my more habitual holiday job routine, which seemed to have more to do with seeing friends for lunch and evening get togethers than head down graft in the audit and accounts factory that was Newman Harris.

A Social Whirl, 5 to 19 July 1981

A few mentions of busy days and hard work, but mostly a catalogue of non-work events:

• Sunday 5 July – “visited grandma [Anne]”
• Tuesday 7 July – “popped in to see Andrew [Andy Levinson] in evening”
• Wednesday 8 July – “met Helen [Lewis] for lunch. Met Anil [Biltoo] and Jim [Bateman] for drinks in evening”
• Thursday 9 July – “met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch”
• Friday 10 July – “Wendies [sic – Wendy Robbins’s] ->Grannies [Wendy’s granny] for dinner -> Wendies [sic] for night”
• Sunday 12 July – “met Jilly [Black] in town early evening
• Tuesday 14 July – “-> Hillel [House] -> Streatham [BBYO}’s installations -> Lauren [Sterling] & Jenny [Council] coffee”
• Wednesday 15 July – “met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch”
• Saturday 18 July – “Mays [George and Winifred] came in evening”
• Sunday 19 July – “visited Grandma [Anne] in afternoon”

A few local/Alleyn’s School friends at the start of this period. Andy Levinson lived in our street, so “popped in” really did mean walking two minutes up the road. Anil Biltoo & Jim Bateman for drinks was probably at UCL (where Jim did his summer jobs) and/or The Sun, as described in earlier articles.

I’m pretty sure that lunch with Helen Lewis was the occasion that she presented me with Schubert The Sheep. He was named Schubert because there was some classical music playing in the restaurant where we took lunch. Neither Helen nor I could identify the piece but we both agreed that it was not Schubert.

Schubert’s 15 minutes of fame came a few years later, when he appeared on University Challenge as the Keele Mascot. A story for another time.

Visiting Wendy would have been in part as a fun catch up but also probably to help her plan the impending Streatham BBYO installations. I think she must have been outgoing President at that time. With apologies, I cannot recall who succeeded Wendy, but someone might well be able to help jog my memory.

Lauren Sterling and Jenny Council will have attended that Streatham event in their capacities as Regional Grandees. I would have been there in my capacity as a local elder and former National Grandee, now so far past it, I can’t have offered much insight to the local club.

The Grandma Anne visits on Sundays at that time would have been to Nightingale. She had taken the death of Uncle Manny very badly and I think, from memory, that her cleaner/informal carer went away for a few weeks, so she arranged a temporary stay at Nightingale for respite and also as a bit of a tester for possible future need. The latter didn’t materialise as Grandma Anne died later that summer, but I do have an amusing tale from the end of her respite stay at Nightingale – watch this space for the next “forty years on” piece.

And So To Headingley, 20 & 21 July 1981

Hundreds of thousands of people claim to have been at Headingley for the dramatic turnaround and conclusion to the 1981 Ashes test match there, even though only a few thousand people actually witnessed the events.

I am not one of the people making false claims about my attendance…nor am I one of the people who actually attended Headingley on that Monday or Tuesday.

In fact my diary reads as follows:

Monday 20 July 1981 – Work OK did nothing in evening

Tuesday 21 July 1981 – OK Day. Lazy evening.

But I do remember following the cricket at work very clearly, especially on the Tuesday.

I was working in the large, high-ceilinged, “open plan”, Dickensian-look office at the front of 19 Cavendish Square. In that office, there was always a senior whose role it was to supervise/keep order amongst the junior clerks therein.

By the summer of 1981, Newman Harris had replaced Roy Patel (who I think had been promoted to a more interesting role) and hired instead a bespectacled, middle-aged chap, I think he was named John, who spoke with deep-voiced, nasal tones. I don’t think he much liked the idea of summer students – I remember him taking great pains to let us know that he was, “a graduate from the University of Life” and (although not a qualified accountant) he was “qualified by experience”. His management and mentoring style reminded me of Blakey from On The Buses:

Several people in our office were cricket lovers, but in truth there was little interest in the match for most of the Monday. I think word reached us that Botham was scoring runs for fun towards the end of the Monday, but it wasn’t until the Tuesday, after people had seen the highlights on Monday evening, that the interest levels really kicked off.

There were 10 or 12 of us in the office that day – perhaps half of us were interested in the cricket. John was one of the cricket lovers but was also there to maintain order.

Terry, the errand boy, did not reside in our office and I think he kept a small transistor radio in the cubby-hole where he did reside. Terry kept us appraised of the score a couple of times during the morning.

In those days, there was a telephone number you could call to hear the cricket score. It was a sort-of premium rate line. “Dial The Score On 154”.

As the match started to build to a climax, one or two clerks, unable to control their impulses, dialled the score. As a summer lackey, I was too timid to do that but grateful to the others for the news.

John berated the diallers. He explained that there was expense involved in making those calls and that we should all be concentrating on our work. John said that he would dial the score at suitably-spaced intervals and keep us all informed. I think he had 15 or 20 minute intervals in mind.

But as the match came to its climax, John was “Dialling The Score” compulsively, giving us close to ball-by-ball commentary in terms of the score as it progressed. We cheered when John announced that England had won the match. Then he told us all to put our heads down and concentrate on our work for the rest of the day. Goodness knows what John’s dialling did to the Newman Harris phone bill.

My lazy evening will have included watching the test match highlights…probably in black and white on the spare room TV, as neither of my parents cared a fig for cricket.

In case you are wondering, the denouement of that match looked like this.

This is what it looks like as a scorecard and Cricinfo match resources (lots of super pictures).

Below is the Guardian’s take on the matter the next day – a very rare “front page news” day for cricket.

Brearley Bounces Critics 22 Jul 1981, Wed The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com