Barnes flats, as they appear in my cherished memories of living there. The above image, borrowed from https://www.studentcrowd.com/hall-l1004515-s1043587-barnes-hall-keele_university-keele, shows them at their best.
I had arrived at Keele a few days before almost everyone else that academic year, to learn that my flatmate from the preceding few months, Ahmed Mohd Isa, had dropped out of Keele and was to be replaced by an allocated fresher.
Hence, my flatmates for 82/83 were to be:
- Hamzah Shawal – a Bruneian mate of Ahmed and the Malay crowd, who was to be a finalist that year and who seemed like a very nice chap on the one or two occasions I had met him the previous year;
- Chantelle Conlon [I think, surname], a “yeller belly” from the latterly-to-be-internet-unfriendly town of Scunthorpe. Ahmed, Hamzah and I had found Chantelle through the flat share notice board at the end of the previous academic year, as flat application forms needed to have four names and none of us had a chosen fourth. She seemed like a nice young woman and passed the interview by dint of agreeing to join us and signing the form;
- Alan Gorman – the allocated fresher. Provenance entirely unknown until arrival.
This inauspicious sounding team selection resulted in…SPOILER ALERT… a happy final year for Hamzah, two very happy years for me and three such years for Alan in that flat.
Monday 4 October 1982 – Got a few things done today – some new neighbours moved in etc. Went to Union in evening etc. Julia stayed over…
I’m pretty sure the new neighbours in question were Veera Bachra (who became a good friend) and at least one of her flatmates (probably Debbie). Julia was a friend of Veera’s (or perhaps Debbie) who had dropped out of Keele but came up to see her friends there at the start of term. I remember Julia as a sweet young woman whom I had admired from afar in my FY year. The happenstance of Julia visiting my new neighbours presented an opportunity for us to admire each other at closer quarters that night.
This hit from that late summer/early autumn became my earworm for a few days at the start of that term:
A little unfortunate, as I never much liked Duran Duran, but I have for forty years retained a soft spot for that song. I digress.
Tuesday 5 October 1982 – Rose quite late. Hamzah arrived. Kept busy etc. Went to union in eve – the calm before the storm
Wednesday 6 October 1982 – Rose quite early. Alan arrived at flat – lunched etc – showed around – shopped etc etc. Chantelle arrived. Went to union freshers do in evening etc. Up late.
I have an absolute favourite memory of the morning of Alan’s arrival at the flat.
The Gorman family came from (I think still come from) Chorley in Lancashire, not much more than an hour’s drive to Keele. They arrived quite early.
On that October morning, Barnes didn’t much look like the publicity picture I have used as the headline, it looked more like this:
On such misty autumn mornings, the playing fields would be populated by a few hippy-ish students in search of psycho-active fungi.
I made Harold and Theresa a cuppa and sat them at our kitchen table, which overlooked those playing fields.
Oh look, Theresa, there are some biology students out on the fields collecting samples…
…said Harold, enthusiastically. I didn’t have the heart (nor did I have the guts) to tell Alan’s parents the truth of the matter.
I don’t think I shared this story with Alan on day one. Alan had a fierce and sharp sense of humour – perhaps not apparent in the whirl of arrival with parents, but evident very soon after that. I’m pretty sure I shared the story with Alan soon after that first day; we’d have had a good laugh about it. But did Alan ever tell his parents about those “mycology students”?
Very sadly, my use of the past tense throughout the above paragraph is not a grammatical error; I learnt while researching this piece that Alan Gorman died in 2015. But I have made contact with his widow Susan and, through her, his family might see this and future pieces about Alan. Thus I am hoping for some feedback to help refine my memories, but they will unfortunately not be directly from Alan.
Thursday 7 October 1982 – Rose quite early – still sorting out flat etc. I got somethings done, not too hectically. Went to union in evening – up till late.
It looks as though Alan and I started the “up till late” chatting habit very early in his University career.
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