After the frenzied weekend during which I showed my Keele friends, Sim & Tim, my weird world…
…a rather sedate week of work with very few socials thrown in: lunch with Caroline (Freeman, now Curtis) on the Tuesday and dinner at Anil (Biltoo)’s place on Saturday evening.
“Lazyish day” on the Saturday would have mostly comprised watching the third day of the Old Trafford Ashes test on the TV, much as “relaxing evenings” on the two preceding days would have included hunkering down in front of the old B&W TV in the tiny spare room to watch the highlights.
My faint memory only recalls that Saturday as “Ian Botham going berserk, scoring runs for fun, all-but winning the match for England, as usual”, because, to the youthful me, that was an unremarkable norm in the summer of 1981. The Ridiculous Ashes podcast provides more detail on that match and that day, in particular the contrasting sloth of Chris Tavaré that day. Scorecard ? – the match panned out like this.
Then, on the Sunday, what turned out to be our last visit to Feld’s Restaurant for lunch with Grandma Anne. If you want to know more about Feld’s, I “reviewed” Feld’s “Restaurant” in an earlier Ogblog piece:
I probably discussed the cricket with Mr Feld that day, as was our wont by that time. Feld might even have been listening to the match on his transistor radio behind the counter, as Day Four of this match was played on the Sunday – an experimental thing for some of the tests that year, I believe.
There is no doubt in my mind that Grandma Anne will have implored Mr Feld to shake the borscht jar, eaten her last plate of borscht that day and that she would have berated Mr Feld with the phrase, “your borscht tastes like vorter today” had the borscht not been up to snuff…which, frankly, it almost certainly wasn’t.
As the diary scribbles attest, Grandma Anne was taken into hospital in the early hours of the following Tuesday morning. Apart from a dinner at Anil’s on the Thursday and dinner with Michael and Pam on Saturday (who were no doubt primarily in the area visiting Grandma), my life was all work and visiting Grandma for a few days.
Forty years on, I have written a reflective piece about Grandma Anne’s last visit to hospital for ThreadMash:
Here’s what I wrote in the diary for the following few days:
Sunday 23 August 1981 – Went to hospital – bad news – returned – back to hospital – G. Anne died.
Monday 24 August 1981 – Went round sorting out admin side. Met Uncle Michael – returned home.
Tuesday 25 August 1981 – Lavoyah (funeral) & shivah (mourning) today – tiring and gruelling.
Wednesday 26 August 1981 – Back to work – too much of – did little in evening.
Thursday 27 August 1981 – Met Jilly [Black] for lunch. Spoke to several people in evening.
Friday 28 August 1981 – Nothing special for b’day – work as usual – slap up meal in evening.
Saturday 29 August 1981 – Lazy day – went to Grandma Jenny for lunch – shopped a little – lazy evening.
At that time Grandma Jenny still lived in Sandhurst Court on the Acre Lane in Brixton. I’m pretty sure that shopping spree was “down Brixton Market” to gather some bottles and jars of condiments to take back to Keele with me in a few weeks’ time, in order to try and perk up the otherwise rather bland weekend diet.
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