I cannot leave behind my first full calendar year at Keele, 1981, without talking a bit about money.
Students were always short of money back then, much as they are now.
For most of us, there was no “Bank of Mum and Dad” (BOMAD), but there was a student grant (and a strange “signing on the dole” rule for the non-term weeks, that meant an element of direct financial support from the state far greater than students enjoy today.
But no student loans from the state. If you couldn’t make the grant go far enough, you needed to be a rare BOMAD-ista, or find a source of income.
Bad Example: The Rise & Fall Of David Perrins
Actually It Was The Bank Manager Who Gave David “The Finger”
I remember David Perrins getting into financial difficulties quite early in our time at Keele (probably around the middle of the second term). He told me and Simon Jacobs that he was going to see the bank manager to explain that he needed a loan so that he could continue to live in the style to which he was accustomed.
I remember Simon and I doubting whether this approach would work.
David returned from his meeting looking a little crest-fallen. The bank manger had told him that he would have to become accustomed to a less salubrious style.
It was an unprecedented, interregnum arrangement. I asked for £30 per week, which had been my previous summer wage in 1978, but after a couple of weeks, my boss (Werner Lasch if I remember correctly) insisted on increasing my wage to £40 per week, which he considered fairer. Especially as the deal included board and lodgings in Hillel House’s student digs, that felt like a good rate back then, from which I was able to save.
But still, even with some savings and an absence of extravagance, I knew I would need to supplement my grant, hence my Easter…
In short, I “washed my face” financially by dint of holiday working and limiting my spending (once Halls fees had been paid) to essentials – drugs (mostly legal ones), rock ‘n’ roll (gigs and discos), and a few other small matters such as food, transport and books.
Two Sets Of Accounting Books
There is an adage in forensic accounting, which is to search for the “other” set of books of account whenever dodgy accounting is suspected yet absent from the visible books of account.
In my Ogblogging of old diaries, I can assure you that there is no intention to conceal, but I have recently, forty years on (Autumn 2021) discovered a second diary in which I kept financial records.
First, have a look at the main diary from which my forty years on ramblings about 1981 have been derived:
For those Keele students “of the right” who were convinced that I must be a Soviet Commie spy, the above image must be gold dust. But in truth my father, who was no Soviet and no Commie, had simply made a commercial decision in the 1960s that his shop in working-class Battersea near Clapham Junction (yes, really, back then) should specialise in cheap, sturdy, reliable, well-serviced equipment, which happened to come from the Soviet Union.
How or why I got a TOE diary that year, I cannot remember. Until then I had always received a Letts Schoolboy diary at Christmas (who didn’t?). Dad might have been sent two that year and handed down his second, as he always used one of those TOE diaries.
But it seems I did also receive a Christmas gift diary – a rather inadequate little Collins thing…
I have just a few additional observations about the money aspect of being a Keele undergraduate in 1981:
I had forgotten about the existence of the £1 note and the fact that you could configure your drawings from a campus ATM to a specific number of individual £1s in those days;
Even with my savings trove, I sailed close to the wind in my second term, with the little book stating “balance at 19-3-81 £10.52” just before I started my Easter holiday job…
…but the next entry reads “balance at 10-4-81 £189.32“. I was only keeping notes of the detailed drawings and occasional top-ups when the dosh was running low.
To that end, I didn’t keep records at all during the summer term of 1981 – I presumably knew that I’d be alright and started keeping records again during the summer to keep tabs on that top-up;
No sign of drawing to the individual £1 in the autumn of 1981 – possibly I had simply got into the habit of drawing money from the ATM to the nearest £5 or possibly the campus machines were reset at that time;
I drew out £65 in the first week of October 1981 – a princely sum back then – it was a long time ago. That will have been for textbooks no doubt – mostly law ones.
There is an internet adage known as Godwin’s Law, which states (I paraphrase) that any internet discussion will eventually descend into a Hitler comparison.
But surely my own safe space, Ogblog, can be a Hitler-free site? Well, up to a point.
I had a massive recovered memory over New Year 2018, because Janie, bless her, decided to treat us to a quiet caviar-fest:
I don’t suppose this is making any sense at all to the casual reader, so I had better get on with it and explain.
Edwina was a GP who went way beyond the call of duty.
For example, because I was…how should I put this?…more than a little fearful of my jabs as an infant, she came round to our house to dispense the vaccinations. On one famous occasion, when I was feeling particularly averse to being stabbed, Edwina indicated to mum that my rump might make a better target in the circumstances. I worked out the coded message and tried to bolt. The end result was a chase around the room and eventually a rather undignified bot shot delivered by Edwina under the dining room table – I was, later in life, oft reliably reminded by my mum.
Not even the trike was fast enough for me to escape Edwina’s needle
This extraordinary level of pastoral care and attentiveness went beyond zealously inoculating reluctant Harris miniatures – Edwina and her family became close friends with our immediate family, Uncle Manny’s branch of the family and especially Grandma Anne:
Grandma Anne With Dad (left) & Uncle Michael (right), c1930
In the early 1970s, at Christmas-time, my parents would go to Edwina’s house for a seasonal party, along with many other patients and members of the local community. Naturally, my parents plied Edwina and her family with gifts…many of Edwina’s other patients and guests most certainly did the same.
A strange tradition arose around that time, in which Edwina reciprocated our present giving by handing down a generous gift she would always receive from a family of wealthy Iranian patients; an enormous jar (I think a pound; probably twice the size of the jar shown in the photo below) of Iranian Beluga caviar:
By Mai Le [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsEdwina and family didn’t like the taste of caviar. Nor did my dad, as it happens. But mum loved it and I acquired a seasonal taste for it too.
Each year, mum and I would eat Beluga caviar on toast for breakfast for the first couple of weeks of the year.
Even back then caviar, especially Beluga caviar, was very expensive. Not equivalent to the “critically endangered, barely legal, hard to get hold of” price levels of today, but still very much a pricey, luxury item.
I remember mum warning me not to tell my friends at school that I was eating caviar on toast for breakfast, because they would surmise that I was a liar or that we were a rich family or (worst of all) both.
There was only one problem with this suburban community idyll; Mr Knipe. Don Knipe. Edwina’s husband.
Don liked his drink. Specifically Scotch whisky. More specifically, Teacher’s, as it happens. A bottle of Teacher’s always formed part of our family Christmas gift offering, but that sole bottle formed a tiny proportion of Don’s annual intake.
By ramkrsna (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ramkrsna/384365364/) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsEven when I was quite little, I remember being warned that Don Knipe was eccentric, that I shouldn’t pay much heed to some of the silly things he says, etc. But I guess as the years went on, Don’s eccentricities gained focus and unpleasantness. Specifically, Don’s views became increasingly and extremely right wing. He joined the National Front, at that time the most prominent far-right, overtly fascist party in the UK.
I recall one year, when I was already in my teens, my parents returned early from the Knipe/Green party. I learned that Don Knipe had acquired a large bust of Hitler, which was being proudly displayed as a centrepiece in the living room. My mother had protested to Don about the bust, asking him to remove it, but to no avail. Mum had taken matters into her own hands by rotating the bust by 180 degrees. When Don insisted on rotating Hitler’s bust back to its forward-facing position, mum and dad left the party in protest.
Mum explained to Don and Edwina that they remained welcome at our house but that she would not be visiting their house while Hitler remained on show.
One evening, just a few weeks or months later, I think, my parents had Edwina and Don (and some other people) around at our house. The topic of Hitler and Nazi atrocities came up. Don started sounding off about the Holocaust not really having been as bad as people made out.
Edwina And Don At My Bar Mitzvah, Natch.
My father stood up and quietly told me to go upstairs to my bedroom. I scampered up the stairs but hovered on the landing out of view to get a sense of what was happening.
My father was a very gentle man. I only remember him being angry twice in my whole life; this was one of those occasions.
“You f***ing c***!”, I heard my dad exclaim.
I learned afterwards that my father, not a big man but a colossus beside the scrawny form of Don Knipe, had pinned Don to the wall and gone very red in the face while delivering his brace of expletives.
I heard the sound of a bit of a kerfuffle, a few more angry exchanges, ending with “get out of my house”. Then I heard Don and Edwina leave the house. Edwina was weeping, apologising and trying to explain that Don doesn’t know or mean what he says.
Dad – a supremely gentle fellow…usually
The story gets weirder as the years roll forward. Edwina remained our family doctor, although social visits were now at an end. Uncle Manny’s branch of the family and Grandma Anne continued to spend a great deal of time socially with the Knipe/Green family.
Most importantly, for this story, the seasonal exchange of gifts remained sacrosanct.
For reasons I find hard to fathom, I became the conduit for the seasonal gift exchange. Why my parents (specifically, my mother, who organised the errand) felt that I would be less defiled then they were by visiting a household that displays a bust of Hitler, I have no idea.
Maybe it shows that mum had great confidence in my judgement such that, even as a teenager, I wouldn’t be corrupted by Knipe’s vile views…or his habits. But perhaps the lure of a huge jar of Beluga caviar was so great that all other concerns and considerations went out of mum’s mental window.
Anyway, for several years I would go to Edwina and Don’s house to deliver our presents and collect the fishy swag. I think there was an unwritten rule that I didn’t go into the large living room where Hitler’s bust lived; the Knipe/Greens had quite a large house – I would usually be received in a smaller front drawing room.
As I got a bit older, Don would ask me to join him for a whisky and a cigarette on these occasions; offers which I accepted.
My diaries are utterly silent on this annual ritual, other than, each year, the mention of the word “shopping” on one day in the run up to Christmas. I vaguely recall that I would always bundle the errand with my single little shopping spree to get small gifts for my immediate family. The shopping trip provided a suitable time window; a smoke screen (as it were) and a bit of a sobering up period from the underage drinking involved.
Don never raised political topics when I made those seasonal visits. He’d make the occasional oblique reference to it being a shame that he didn’t see my parents socially any more. I can’t recall what we talked about. I think he just asked me how I was getting on and we chatted vaguely about my family and the weather.
But I do recall what we talked about on my last visit in this ritual. 1981.
Grandma Anne never really recovered from the shock of Uncle Manny’s demise and died in the autumn that same year.
By late December 1981 I had completed four terms of University at Keele and was far more politically aware/sensitive than I had been in earlier years.
Don greeted me at the front door, as usual, but this time said, “come through to the living room and have a whisky with me.”
“Not if Hitler is still in there,” I said.
“Oh don’t start all that”, blustered Don, who I think must have made a start on the whisky before I got to the house that morning. “I really want to chat to you about your late uncle and your grandma.” Don started to cry.
I relented and entered the forbidden chamber.
There was the bust of Hitler, resplendently positioned with books about the Third Reich and such subjects on display around it.
I accepted a generous slug of Teacher’s and a Rothmans; then I reluctantly sat down.
Don was crying. “I miss your Uncle Manny and your Grandma Anne so much”, he said, “you have no idea how fond of them I was. I love your family.”
I remember saying words to this effect, “Don, I understand that you sincerely love my family, but I cannot reconcile that love with Hitler, Nazi memorabilia, your membership of the National Front and you keeping company with those who hold such views. Those are antisemitic, out-and-out racist organisations and people. It makes no sense to me.”
“It’s not about Jewish people like your family. I love your family.”
“So what sort of people is it about?” I asked.
“Other people. You don’t understand”, said Don.
To that extent Don was right. I didn’t understand. I still don’t understand. It isn’t as if members of our family were so secular and Westernised that you wouldn’t recognise the family as ethnic. Uncle Manny’s branch of the family were (I believe still are) traditional, orthodox practitioners of Judaism.
“Godwin’s Law, Godwin’s Schmo, Don Was Always A Mensch Towards Me”
So I don’t understand who or what these “other people” might be, nor why someone like Don Knipe would be attracted to racist ideologies, despite knowing (and even loving) plenty of good decent local people from diverse ethnic groups.
I think I was polite in making my excuses and leaving fairly quickly. The visit certainly didn’t end in any acrimony or hostility. But I did resolve not to run that errand again and (as far as I recall) didn’t visit the Knipe/Green house again.
Strange case.
All that memory came flooding back simply as a result of sampling caviar with Janie…
With many thanks to Dave Lee for the “loan” of this snow picture from 1981.
Even before the extreme weather set in, I had pre-arranged to return to Keele immediately after the Christmas Bank Holiday, during the period that we now call Twixtmas. I was to stay in Rana Sen’s flat, which I think was G Block Barnes, until the halls of residence reopened. I’ll write up that fag end of 1981 and start of 1982 soon enough.
…to move into that same Barnes flat and await better weather before travelling. I think Rana had already gone and I stayed in his room pre Christmas. I ended up staying at Keele for an extra 10 days and only going to my parent’s place for a week at Christmas.
Sunday 13 December 1981 – Blizzards – stayed in all day in flat – amused ourselves. Stayed in for evening then…
Monday 14 December 1981 – …saw off Jenny. Went to Newcastle shopping – cooked. Went to Union in evening – Neil White’s for some home brew. Up late.
I’m starting to smell a rat here. It seems to me that, with Jenny able to travel, me able to go to Newcastle shopping and the Union boozing, that my “snowed in” excuse had run out of steam by the Monday.
It seems to me that I was now simply enjoying some extra Keele lifestyle outside term time. This might have been the first time I did that, but certainly it wasn’t the last.
Snow Black & White – thanks again to Dave Lee for the “loan” of this picture
Neil was a junior lecturer in those days – he had just completed his doctorate and started teaching full time when I arrived at Keele in 1980. Computer Science was not my thing back then, but he was a friendly fellow with many interests. He would quite often invite the several stragglers in the bar back to his campus pad for some after hours drinking and deep conversation about life, the universe & everything. His home brew, as mentioned in my diary for that December 1981 visit, was legendary.
There will be further mentions of Neil in my diaries I’m sure and I’ll report further memories as those mentions arise. The story of the night that Neil and Toby Bourgein kidnapped me in 1984 will make for an interesting conversation piece when my forty years on series gets that far.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
It seems I had a couple of quiet days on the Tuesday and Wednesday – perhaps I needed them after the night of Neil’s home brew – but I did enjoy “Tony’s party in evening” on the Wednesday night.
Making students sign on the dole even for short holidays was one of the dafter ideas back then!
I have written before about the ludicrous bureaucracy back then, which required students to sign on and off the dole even for the short holidays in order to claim a pittance of additional money, because the grant only covered certain weeks.
What a waste of paper – what a waste of time. Mind you, the unemployment rate was so bad back then, I suppose it at least provided some honest work – even if such employment was merely bullshit jobs – for many people who would otherwise have been signing on along with us students.
Thursday 17 December 1981 – Signed on today – shopped for this evening – dinner – food good – but Jon & Tru did not get on too well.
I mentioned Jon [Gorvett] & Truda [Smith] traumas the previous week. I have now had an exchange of correspondence with Jon about this and his own recollections are expressed below:
Seems rather ridiculous now, but I recall that her dumping me for Toby B [Bourgein] was quite traumatic, with the backdrop of snowy wastes and blocked roads that it took place against a rather excessive use of metaphor, I now feel. I do recall that both you and Simon [Jacobs] were brilliant company at the time, though – many thanks for pulling me through. First serious girlfriend I’d ever had, and so I think it was the hardest knock (‘first cut is the deepest’, I recall, was a line repeated at the time, ad nauseam..)
I believe that my “dinner party” on 17 December was a futile attempt on my part to help Jon and Truda rekindle their romance. I don’t think I ever again made the mistake of trying to help friends that way. I learnt a lot and quickly from my experiences age 19 at Keele.
Simon Jacobs, who was absent “without leave” for much of the intense part of this unfolding, says the following, forty years on:
And of course, I remember the drama of Jon’s relationship break-up that happened during that winter term before I stomped back down to London to be present (if not correct) at a very annoying family moment.
So it was 1981 and I knew remarkably little about relationships and how they’re supposed to work. So for Jon this was clearly very traumatic. Even for me, one place removed, I remember being quite shocked at Truda’s behaviour. I think I’m right in saying that her dumping of Jon was somehow inextricably linked to her ambition to be President (or at the very least, someone important). I don’t think I’d ever come across this type of ruthless ambition close up before and I suspect it had quite a profound effect on me. I think I learned how not to be. It was pretty unforgivable. And of course, it was all set against a backdrop – as Jon points out – taken straight from Ken Russell’s ‘Women in Love’, which you’ll both recall ends with a dead body in the snow.
Oh dear! They look like a right poncy bunch of students – not like Keele folk at all
I’m pleased to report that the Keele mini-drama did not result in any dead bodies in the snow. Indeed, all of us protagonists found ourselves campaigning against the cuts at the UGC in London three weeks later. I have a feeling that my planned early return to Keele during Twixtmas was primarily to help plan that 6 January 1982 protest.
Photo from the Evening Sentinel l to r: Toby Bourgein (kneeling), Jon Gorvett, Jon Rees, Mark Thomas, Simon Jacobs, Heather [Morgan?] (kneeling), Me (also kneeling), Lovely Lass Whose Name Escapes Me, Truda Smith
But I’m getting ahead of myself again – let us move on.
It seems as though I mostly took it easy for the last three days of that extended stay at Keele, spending Friday evening in the Sneyd, Saturday evening in the Union, having undertaken a rather ominous sounding:
Jon search in afternoon…
…I don’t think we were searching for his body in the snow.
Sunday 20 December 1981 – Lazyish day. Did some work. Justin came over in evening.
Monday 21 December 1981- Left Keele – fortunately got lift home. Lazy evening.
With apologies to Justin – I cannot place you just now but by all means get in touch and trigger my memory. Also apologies to the unnamed driver who sponsored my journey from Keele to South London.
The end of that Autumn 1981 term weirded out…or rather, was a bit of a white-out.
The diary suggests that I had exhausted myself putting in a bit of academic effort for once; it also suggests that I got reasonable results by so doing:
I went to see the movie 10 on the Tuesday evening, which I remember enjoying.
The following evening I went to see Neil Innes perform and rated it “v good”. I do remember it being a very enjoyable concert/evening.
For those who cannot imagine what Neil Innes might have been like live, here are a couple of vids – the Catchphrase one resembling more the concert as I remember it:
Thursday 10 December …went to K Block party in evening – bit heavy.
11 December 1981 – last day of term – uneventful. The Beat snowed off – went to union and got pissed instead – K Block & Jon’s for [traumas?]
Forty years on, that sounds quite eventful, although I would have been very disappointed to miss The Beat. I’ve made myself feel a bit better after all this time by watching a couple of The Beat live vids from that era:
I feel that I did see The Beat at Keele in the end – perhaps they came in a subsequent academic year during my Keele time…or perhaps that is a false memory based on my wanting to have seen them. Someone out there should remember.
Someone might also remember what Jon’s for traumas might mean – I think it might be to do with Jon Gorvett and Truda Smith reaching the end of their road, which is mentioned more specifically a few days later.
Thursday 12 December – Planned to go home but snowed in – moved into flat – lazyish evening in
The flat in question was in Barnes, G Block I’m pretty sure. It was normally the home of Rana Sen and his flatmates, one of whom was named Tony and I think one was named Jenny. I think I had always planned to return to Keele early and had arranged to stay there
The next exciting episode of this 40 years on series will describe goings on during my unexpected extra week at Keele in December; snowed in.
I needed to get some work done towards the end of my first term of P1, studying Law & Economics, with subsidiaries in Psychology and Applied Statistics/Operational Research.
The words and symbols in my diary suggest that I did indeed get my head down during that period, while still finding time for some fun.
I’d better translate some of that:
Sunday 22 November 1981…went to Alexander’s. Did some work. Asian supper & disco in evening.
I think Alexander was one of my law friends from the Chinese-Malaysian community, as was the lovely Tina, who gets a mention on the Thursday. I’d started to get involved in some of the cultural societies around Keele; keen for combining forces as most were really very small groups when standing alone.
Justice for all?
It will be difficult for modern students to get their heads around this, but, back then, some of the published resources we wanted (or even needed) to prepare our tutorials and write our essays were rare and in very short supply. We were expected to buy our law textbooks of course (quite a large chunk of the grant went on those) but there was also material – such as the detailed law reports on cases or journal articles on specific topics, that we had to borrow from the library’s tiny stock of copies and share amongst our friends who all needed to see the same stuff around the same time of year.
No doubt I could also find on-line the old journal articles that tutors such as Michael Whincup, Philip Rose and Mike Haley were so keen for us to read to enhance our understanding. I especially remember hunting around for a journal article that supposedly would contextualise the High Trees House case for us P1 students -there were three library copies for the whole year to share.
I think “Int Aff” stood for International Affairs and that was the group that had been established to oversee the Anti-Fascist day and follow up on it’s activities. Joe Andrew was the lead protagonist on the academic side and very good at that he was too.
I do remember those early meetings concerning themselves rather too much on “assumed” rather than actual problems. In particular, I remember the chaplains worrying about possible strife between Chinese-Malaysian and Malay students, and/or between Jewish and Muslim students, whereas the reality “on the ground” was that those groups tended to get along just fine.
A major upshot of that focus group, once it focussed on accentuating the positive, was the hugely popular Keele International Fairs, which became a twice-yearly feature of Keele campus activity and I believe still features on the calendar today. One of my proudest, lasting achievements; just being involved with the early stages of that development.
Thursday 26 November 1981 – Usual busy Thursday. Went over to Tina’s in evening till late
Friday 27 November 1981 – Work OK – did Economics essay afternoon & eve – went to Simon’s party later ***
Saturday 28 November 1981 – up late – went to town – wrote law essay all evening
Sunday 29 November – latish start – wrote Psychology essay today lazy evening
That’s a lot of essays in a short period of time. No wonder I tailed off for a couple of days, then:
Wednesday 2 December 1981 – Worked quite hard during day. Went to Alexander’s for dinner -> UGM
Thursday 3 December – Busy day – doing odds and ends, meetings etc. Lazy evening in
Friday 4 December – Worked reasonably hard today. Went * to * Lindsay * Party ** in evening – late night.
I don’t remember UGMs being any day other than a Monday, but perhaps some strange circumstance had led to that particular UGM being unusually scheduled for a Wednesday.
I can’t remember or recognise what the symbols in my diary entry for the Lindsay party might mean, so I suspect that the girl or girls in question similarly remember little or nothing about it forty years later.
Saturday 5 December 1981 – up late – went into Newcastle – lazy day – played cards in evening.
I remember playing cards with some of the guys on my block (F Block Lindsay), including Richard van Baaren, Bob Schumacher, Simon Ascough, Malcolm Cornelius and especially Benedict Coldstream.
Never gambling, although I think we might have played some poker and never bridge, although I think we sometimes played whist-based games.
The game I especially remember learning from Ben Coldstream was piquet, which I found fascinating and which we played quite a few times, especially at that tail-end of the autumn term in 1981.
I am fascinated now to look at the game ofpiquet again, learning that it is a very old game, dating back to the Renaissance or earlier. This sits neatly with my more recent interests in real tennis and Renaissance music:
It is even reminiscent of my own (rather unusual) real tennis serve which is, coincidentally, called the piquet – (in truth normally spelled piqué or pique for tennis).
Returning to playing the card game piquet – unfortunately we have so few photos from our time at Keele, but I have managed to find an artist’s impression of F Block Lindsay folk “at piquet”, supervised by appropriate academics – I’m sure I have identified each of the characters correctly:
Seated left to right: Malcolm Cornelius, Bob Schumacher, Ian Harris (at cards), Simon Ascough, Benedict Coldstream (at cards). Standing left: Mike Haley & Philip Rose adjudicating. Crouching centre: Joe Andrew. Standing right (sword in hand): Richard van Baaren.
I’d love to give piquet another try some time. Anyone out there up for it?
Mark Ellicott has managed several of London's iconic venues, including Dingwalls, The London Astoria and more recently Heaven. He cut his teeth as Keele Students' Union Social Secretary in the mid 1980s. But Mark arrived at Keele as a clean-cut, Tory-boy. The Royal Ball in December 1981, Mark's first term at Keele, might have seeded Mark's dramatic transformation. I am thrilled to host Mark's guest piece, in which he reflects on that starry night, forty years on.
The naiveté of youth!
As a Fresher in my first term at Keele, in the autumn of 1981, I was weirdly excited, as were many others, about the prospect of the Royal Ball in the Students Union almost exactly 40 years ago to the day.
At the time Princess Margaret was Keele’s Chancellor and she had periodically in the past ‘graced’ the Union with an attendance at one of its events. I wasn’t particularly pro or anti monarchy at the time, but as an eighteen year old still adjusting to an independent life it did appear to be a vaguely thrilling thing to be a part of. So I eagerly bought my ticket and a day or two before the event headed into Newcastle to hire an evening outfit.
Ticket holders – the cost was £8- were advised to arrive before HRH at a certain time – ostensibly for security reasons but I suppose also because it would have looked a bit weird if Mags had had to jostle her way into the Union building competing with hundreds of students and getting asked by the SU porters for some photo ID in order to gain admission.
Everyone was dressed in outfits that veered from the completely over the top to the over formalised absurd. I count myself in the latter category. Sort of Primark meets Brideshead Revisited meets a downmarket magician about to perform in a provincial working mans club.
Some unsavoury looking guests at the ball
HRH arrived resplendent in pink at eight and the then Social Secretary Eric Rose, dressed in a natty black and white suit, introduced her to the Union Committee.
Margaret Rose & Eric Rose
Some members of the Committee, like Treasurer Steve Townsley, took a stand objecting to the whole circus and stayed away boycotting what they and many others felt to be shameless kowtowing to a discredited person of enormous privilege. That was not my view at the time but it was a view that I came to share.
Margaret, once she had worked out who the VP Internal and NUS Secretary and the Chair of Constitutional Committee etc. all were, was then led onto the dance floor by SU President Mark Thomas for an awkward ‘dance’. Mark, a genial Welshman who it was impossible to dislike, looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up whilst HRH just looked indifferent and blandly into the distance with a thousand yard stare etched into her face no doubt having had much experience of similar situations. She shimmied around the floor quite fluently but would periodically flap her arms so that she semi resembled a goose or a swan preparing for flight.
Mark & Marge – Mark wasn’t normally the clenched fist type
I’m not sure she was entirely aware she was doing it but it did look quite funny. I tried to get close to the couple but I got too close and a burly looking security man intervened and shot the sort of look at me that you would normally reserve for those things you see laying on their back at the bottom of a pond.
The intention was I suspect for the look to reduce transgressors to a pile of smouldering ash and to think twice about any possible future spatial intrusion. My friend Paul, a Wolverhampton lad, and already drunk intimated to me he was going to try and ‘get off’ with her. He was optimistic about his chances following her recent fling with a twenty something young man called Roddy Llewelyn. Naturally I encouraged Paul to pursue his dream but I was not confident of his success given the goons around her.
Once five or ten minutes of this nonsense was concluded Margaret was led upstairs to meet the star performer for the event, Newcastle born Alan Price.
Price sang sort of music hall stomping pop anthems that in the 60s were inexplicably popular and who retained for whatever reason some popularity on the student circuit long after his heyday had come to an end. Rather like Gary Glitter and Edwin Starr in that respect. Although I obviously was not invited myself to join Mags and Pricey in their enclave away from the masses downstairs, I was a witness to her much later emerging onto the balcony to watch his performance wobbling unsteadily and needing to be supported by one of the security men, who had shot me the filthy look a while earlier. I’m told she and Mr P indulged in a vast quantity of whisky and that she was flirtatious to the point of nigh on asking him to unzip her dress at one point. That I would have paid extra to see.
Alan Price’s performance was immediately forgettable. Just turgid tuneless fairground ditties that like those bubbles kids make with those bubbles machines which are there one minute and then……pah…just disappear the next. Five minutes after he had finished his entire show had been forgotten.
HRH was supported out of the building looking a little bit like she found something hilariously amusing. It was very apparent that she was pissed out of her head. She seemed to be cackling at one of the bins at one point. This sort of thing happens when you are drunk. I have been there myself. For some reason when off your nut a banal everyday inanimate object can suddenly appear like the most amusing, laugh out loud, clutching your stomach thing ever.
She dropped her cigarette holder as she left. The holder was about a foot long and looked like the sort of thing Noel Coward would have used. One of her flunkies picked it up for her and as he got up he lightly banged his head on her chin. She was peering down at him watching him retrieve it and stood just a little too closely. She smiled at the collision, although again this would have been because she was soused. Had she been sober he would no doubt have been whipped and beaten and made to crawl around on all fours for a month or two.
The Ball continued without her but it was by now a rather dull anti-climax. I went home whenever it finished feeling vaguely deflated.
It wasn’t my last interaction with our Chancellor.
Barely six months later as an indirect consequence of me and a friend trying to sack her from this titular position I got myself suspended for a year from the University.
But that is a different story. For another time.
Ellicott transforming……Ellicott transformed.Ellicott, the hair presumptive
