Month: March 1983

Thanks to Susan Gorman for this photo of Alan Gorman

A week after my discharge from the Health Centre, my post-glandular-fever student life reads, in my diary, a little like my pre-glandular-fever student life, with just one or two clues hinting at the differences.

Project

Several mentions of “project”, which can only be the statistical/econometric assignment that we were set as part of our economics course that year. Peter Lawrence would have supervised it and I’m sure he remembers all the intricate detail.

Actually, I remember my chosen assignment quite well. I looked at national statistics, examining the correlation between factors such as GDP and per capita GDP and numbers of radios and television sets per capita. The main conceit of the assignment was to consider whether I was finding true correlation or spurious correlation, primarily using the Durbin-Watson statistic which, as it happened, was available on the University Mainframe computer.

The analytical part of this project was fairly straightforward as I recall it. The grunt work involved setting out the data in a highly-specific format to enable the computer to pronounce on its Durbin-Watson statistic. What are, today, “work of a moment” tasks took hours of painstaking (and sometimes trial and error) data preparation and data processing work.

I have asked Dall-E to help me envisage what that 1980s University mainframe computer might have looked like:

For those readers dying to know whether there is (or rather, was) true correlation between GDP and numbers of radios and TVs, the answer is, basically, yes; especially when using GDP per capita data and especially in the matter of radios. In the developing world, at that time, televisions were sparse enough that I suspected the numbers were more to do with government policy on whether to have a state broadcaster and the like. Also there did tend to be some interesting outliers in the data – for some reason there were an enormous number of radios sold in Gabon in the late 1970s and early 1980s, relative to the GDP per capita.

I think Peter liked my little study, because, while “answering the exam question” pretty well, it also raised far more questions than it answered.

Plesch, Monday 28 February 1983

I have written previously about the hospitality provided by Professor Peter Plesch and his lovely with Traudi, which I enjoyed when they occasionally played host to J-Soc (Jewish) students.

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

I have but one memory specific to this occasion, which I recall Annalisa de Mercur referring to many times subsequently, because she thought it so funny and typically Plesch.

One student asked if our hosts would mind if they smoked. (It was certainly not me by then, as I had quit smoking on the back of my glandular fever. I don’t think it was Annalisa either).

Oh yes, of course, please make yourself at home…

…said Traudi, ever the hostess, who then spent at least five minutes bustling around the room opening windows (this was February, at Keele!), moving away precious-looking porcelain ashtrays, replacing them with utilitarian-looking ones. In short, despite her instinctive desire to make the smoker(s) feel at home, Traudi’s actions made it quite apparent that smoking was not exactly what she wanted in her living room.

They were in truth charming and generous hosts, the Plesch couple. The above-linked November 1981 article says plenty more that doesn’t need repeating here.

“Bloody Party In The Union – Left Early” Friday 4 March 1983

Not like me to be snippy about a party, but I guess I was not myself still at that time.

Dr Scott had told me to stay away from alcohol for six months following my glandular fever. He subsequently reduced my sentence to three months, for good behaviour.

The mention of the “bloody party” comes after a note about a rushed day and an election appeals meeting, both of which might have set my teeth on edge ahead of that particular bloody party.

I have no idea whose party it was, nor why I found it bloody. I apologise to the host of the party if someone reading this happens to be such a person. I don’t think it was about you/.the party, it was me.

In truth, at that time, quite possibly I found all parties a bit of a drag. Seemingly everyone else having a good time and getting noisily paralytic, while I nursed some ridiculously expensive yet ghastly-tasting soft-drink, which had no doubt been dispensed through a soda gun like the one below…

…those carbonated soft drinks never tasted like “the real thing”, if you get my meaning, even if they were sold as such. In the SU Main Bar at that time, indeed, they all tasted like a bit of an amalgamation of each other, which is probably what they were.

When not in bars or at parties, I had standardised at home on Sainsbury’s Tropical Fruit Drink (still available 40 years later)…

…and giant cans of Coca Cola known as Supercans – now no longer made, I believe, so to see such a thing, you’ll need to click this “can museum” link.

I wondered out loud with Dr Scott on one occasion whether it was OK to be drinking all this sweet stuff. He said he thought I was close to dangerously underweight at the end of my glandular fever experience; thus he was keen for me to put on some weight. I persevered with Supercans of Coke throughout the rest of my Keele years, even after I had reverted to drinking alcohol.

How the Great Yorkshire Pudding Got His Name, Early March 1983

There is no mention of the events that led to Alan Gorman acquiring the nickname “The Great Yorkshire Pudding”. At the time, I probably found the matter that led to it too painful to write down. Even now, I’m finding it hard to compose my thoughts about it and reflect on the matter fairly and faithfully. It doesn’t help that Alan Gorman sadly died in 2015, so cannot add his own thoughts on this matter forty years after the event.

The bare facts are these. Chantelle announced that she wanted to move out of the flat, Barnes L54, and that we should seek a replacement fourth person. Alan and I had already agreed that we would continue to flat share the following year. Hamzah, who was about to do his finals and had planned to go home as soon as they were done made it clear that it was entirely up to me and Alan to choose Chantelle’s replacement.

Ashley Fletcher was spending a lot of time at the flat in those days. He was Union Treasurer but living off campus, so it was a convenient place to hang out. He was good friends with my girlfriend, Liza (indeed Liza and I had more or less met through Ashley and his gang) and seemed to get on very well with Alan too.

Ashley wanted to move in to the flat. I wanted Ashley to move into the flat. I put the idea one evening to Alan.

Alan basically said no. He was uncomfortable with the idea of having a gay flatmate. At one point he said that he wouldn’t be able to explain it to his friends back home. When I said that I thought that was not a good reason, he agreed that he had given a very poor reason, but still, without really being able to articulate why he felt uncomfortable, that he was resolute on the matter.

I remember feeling that I didn’t have the strength to argue and also at the same time realising that debating the matter for longer would in any case have been futile. I remember going to bed that night very upset and I also so clearly remember dreading telling Ashley the news.

Strangely, Ashley didn’t take the news as hard as I thought he would…nor as hard as I took it. In my naivety, perhaps, I had assumed that the idea would fly and hadn’t expected that outcome. Ashley had strongly suspected and at least half-expected that response.

When I told Ashley what Alan had said, Ashley just paused for thought momentarily and said:

The Great Yorkshire Pudding!

Those readers who don’t know anything about Alan Gorman might look at the picture I have used in this piece – Alan was even skinnier in 1983 than he was when that picture was taken a few year’s later. He was also from Brinscall, near Chorley, which is, unequivocally, in Lancashire, not Yorkshire.

The nickname, The Great Yorkshire Pudding, stuck, at least for the remainder of that academic year and the next one. Alan accepted with good grace that the expletive nickname had come from Ashley’s heart and that he sort-of deserved it. Alan would respond with a nickname of his own for me, “Bagel Boy”, which could get him into a spot of trouble today, not only with the authorities (had someone chosen to complain) but with Alan’s own wife and children!

The epilogue to this story is, I suppose, not so bad. I remained friends with Alan and Ashley. Chris Spencer moved into Barnes L54 with us instead and proved to be a very suitable flatmate, staying on in the flat for the rest of my time there and I think until he graduated.

When Ashley dropped out of Keele the following year, I wondered whether that would have happened had he moved into our flat. Ashley of course is still around to debate that point and/but Ashley might argue that leaving Keele at that juncture was the right thing for him to do in any case. He has certainly gone on to do many worthwhile things, not least his laudable and often charitable work as a therapist.

But at the time, the story of How The Great Yorkshire Pudding Got His Name affected me deeply. I wish the older and wiser version of me could discuss it now with the older and wiser Alan. Perhaps over a smoked salmon bagel or two…and a glass or two of fine Californian white wine.