Not A Very Good UGM, Several Weekend Visitors, Work, Convalesce & Play, A Keele Fortnight During November 1981

Ballroom Image Borrowed From Keele Oral History Project – John Samuel

This was the business end of my P1 (first year of actual degree) initial term. It seems I did some work.

But that didn’t stop me from having weekend visitors aplenty – Caroline Freeman (Now Curtis) and Alan Tucker braved the journey to Keele on Friday 13 November 1981.

Caroline
Alan

But before that, on Monday 9 November:

Not a bad day – UGM in eve – not a very good one

UGMs tended to be quite argumentative affairs as I remember them, although (by many accounts) relatively peaceable compared with the political bun-fights at some of the larger University’s Students’ Union meetings.

Was this one “not very good” because it was insufficiently pugnacious for my taste at that time, or because it was too pugnacious. In truth I don’t remember, but with Mark Thomas as President at that time, I suspect it was too tranquil by my taste.

Some of us were “cruising for a bruising” over the painful grant cuts being imposed by the UGC at that time and I suspect that, in November anyway, some of us felt that the Union wasn’t doing enough.

On the Tuesday evening I went to see the movie Brubaker. I must admit to little recall of this movie. Whereas the film I went to see the following Tuesday, Bad Timing, really stuck in my mind as a shocking story about sexual violence.

Simon Jacobs was clearly very much involved in the Caroline and Alan visit; not least because they were very much his “friends from home” as much, or in many ways more, than mine.

We went to a disco in the Union on the Friday evening, to Simons, then the Union, then a “party thing” on the Saturday evening. Then, on the Sunday:

Simon, Heather Caroline & Alan came for lunch.

How I catered for five of us in the tiny kitchen in F Block Lindsay I have no idea. I have even less idea how (or where) we all ate lunch in my study bedroom. Not all at the same time, perhaps.

I have written up a similar, early visit from earlier that calendar year; some of those memories might actually relate to the November 1981 adventure in catering:

Then, after Caroline and Alan had gone home, I went down with a rotten cold. It seems I had intended to go to London for a couple of days 18/19 November but didn’t go because of the cold.

The diary says I “watched football” on the Wednesday evening – a World Cup qualifier match – they might have put up a big screen in Lindsay Bar for that. Of course, the sort of screen that qualified as a big screen in those days is the size that many people today would turn their noses up at if proposed for their home. But I digress.

Wendy Robbins arrived for a visit on Friday 20 November.

We “did little” on the Friday night but then made up for it on the Saturday:

Went on cuts march – did work in afternoon, went to two parties in evening – up till late.

Sunday 22 November – Wendy left…

That sounds more like it. A proper Keele weekend day. Guess I must have recovered from that Keele autumn cold quite quickly.

Memories, Angels, Wizards & Plesches, Keele University, 1 to 7 November 1981

I had a lot going on in that first week of November. It was my P1 year, which meant getting down to business a fair bit more than FY.

I have already written at length about planning for the 1 November Anti-Fascist day

…so all that remains to say is that I considered the event to have been a great success, judging by my diary:

My diary for that week shows signs of industry…even to the point of using the word “industrious” on 7 November – not a word often found in my youthful diaries.

Still, I found time to see movies, go to the union several times, see a gig and at least one party. Not bad.

I vividly remember seeing Stardust Memories that week, a movie I loved at that time.

The next night, I went to see The Comsat Angels in the evening. Dave Lee, in his wonderful book The Keele Gigs!, reminds me that the support act was Victorian Parents and that The Comsat Angels were, in his opinion,

“The-Cure-meets-Joy-Division (in a dark alley!)”

It took me quite a while to unpick the Thursday scribble:

Thursday 5 November 1981 – Busyish day – warden, diary, Wizzards [sic], went over to Anjou’s [sic] in evening – quite a few people there.

“Warden” would have meant a visit to the Lindsay Hall warden, J P de C Day. Mr Day, as we all knew him, was somewhat of a walking miracle. Apparently he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, with months rather than years to live, a few years before I arrived at Keele (1980). Mr Day by all accounts refused to accept the diagnosis and simply kept calm, kept fit and carried on…for more than a quarter of a century.

I don’t remember much about this “visit to the warden” but I think it was part of his campaign of pastoral care, inviting small groups of Lindsay students to his home for tea. I remember him mumbling a fair bit but seeming ever so decent and nice.

“Diary” is a rare post-modern reference in my diaries to the process of writing in my little book. My guess is that I had got a few weeks behind, so had devoted some significant effort to writing up.

“Wizzards”, by which I am sure I meant “Wizards”, was a strange animated movie, which I think Film Soc showed as a nod to the Anti-Fascist Day earlier that week:

I’d like to see that movie again now, as I suspect I’d get far more out of it now than I did then.

“Anjous” will have meant Anju Sanehi’s place, in Harrowby House, which must have been a small party-type gathering. I recall thinking of Harrowby House as a rather privileged residence, with larger, seemingly superior rooms to the rest of Lindsay Hall. Yet one early Keele pioneer in the Keele Oral History Project Hut Life piece describes the old Nissen huts as superior accommodation to Harrowby House. Perhaps the latter was renovated/improved in the intervening years. Or perhaps the Nissen Huts were super-luxurious.

Friday 6 November 1981 – did quite a bit of work today. Went to Plesches in evening. Union after.

Traudi & Peter Plesch – picture borrowed from the tribute linked here.

Peter and Traudi Plesch acted as mentors to the tiny community of Jewish students at Keele. This gathering would have been a traditional (although not religious) Friday night meal at their home; something they did occasionally. Professor Peter Plesch was a chemistry professor, who had joined the teaching staff in the very earliest Keele days. Traudi Plesch was a force of nature on the campus – a relentless fundraiser for multiple good causes and part of that social weave that made the rich and wonderful fabric that was Keele life.

I’m sure I didn’t think about the connection at the time, but given that both Peter and Traudi Plesch were escapees from Nazi Europe in the 1930s, that evening was a fitting end to the week that had started with Anti-Fascist Day.

Peter Plesch – this picture borrowed from the RSC tribute linked here.

An evening at the Plesch House was always a treat, but to some extent a daunting treat. Peter Plesch was a polymath and would usually seek a seemingly arcane topic of conversation, which sometimes felt more like a tutorial than an evening of chat. I remember him waxing lyrical about Chinese ceramics on one occasion – it might even have been this occasion – which morphed into a lesson on Chinese history and the science behind ceramics.

Going For a Song – PericlesofAthens at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0