Neil Innes by Unknown photographer, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL
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.
The gig is well reviewed in Dave Lee’s fab book, The Keele Gigs!
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.
The mists of time have, perhaps mercifully, entirely extinguished from my memory, forty years on, whatever it was that made the K Block party heavy. Indeed, forty years on I might choose to assert that no such party occurred.
We should all move on.
I love my diary description of 11 December:
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.