The UGM That Never Was (Photo: KUSU-Ballroom-1962-John-Samuel)
Don’t ask me why 7 March 1983 was noteworthy in my diary as “UGM That Never Was…”. Presumably some of us sat around for some time hoping for a quorum but the quorum never came.
Lots of mentions of Liza visiting me and even me visiting her at The Sneyd, so any hangover form my post-glandular-fever grumpiness had presumably abated…
…lots of activity and lots of mentions of being busy…although I do recall getting uncharacteristic waves of fatigue for many weeks after my release from the Heath Centre.
Friday 11 March 1983 – Rose early – did quite a lot of things. Alan went home – election appeals – went to see film with Liza – back here after…
Alan’s early disappearance at the end of that term was not ominous or connected with our flatmate choice issues the week before…
…I think Alan had some serious partying to do back home that weekend and had finished all of his course work for the term that Friday. I recall that Alan returned to Keele several weeks later looking a whiter shade of pale green, having been out on the lash with his mates just before returning to Keele. I wondered whether a single binge-boozy-party had been sustained throughout all of those weeks and asked him that very question.
ALAN: Feels a bit like that today.
ME: You look a very funny colour, to be honest.
ALAN: You haven’t exactly looked rosy-cheeked yourself lately, mate.
ME: Fair point.
But I digress.
I’m irritated that I didn’t write down the name of the film that Liza and I saw that night – but I needn’t have worried. A private message to Tony Sullivan, Filmsocista extraordinaire from that era, secured the vital piece of information.
Escape From New York. Ah yes, I remember it. Action/Sci-Fi. Not to my taste. Set in the distant future…1997. Manhattan is by then a high security prison and the US President’s plane crashes on the island. Slogans: “Once You Go In You Don’t Come Out” and “Some Guys Don’t Believe In Rules”. [Forty years on, by all means insert here your own topical joke about a rule-averse US President potentially incarcerated in New York.] But I’m digressing again. Anyway, thanks Tony.
More memorably, the next day…
…Liza, Mandy and I went to Hanley, saw Rocky Horror…
This must have been the Theatre Royal Hanley production – the theatre had just reopened in a new guise and I think we saw a pilot or preview version of the production of Rocky Horror that ran there for years. There is a wonderful web page of memories from that production on this “Memories Of Theatre Royal Hanley” WordPress site. (If anything ever goes awry at that site, here is a scrape.) Also this newsreel footage from when the resulting touring production closed in 1988. Lots of Keele students must have seen this show in the 1980s:
I had seen the stage production of Rocky Horror in London in the late 1970s with my BBYO pals, so felt very much “ahead of the curve” in the company of Liza and Mandy that night – a rare feeling in the matter of the arts with Liza and her “art school crowd”.
To add to the horror, I did a class test on the Tuesday morning (15th March) which must have been the formal last day of term as I signed on 16th March. [For younger readers who haven’t been following this series avidly for years, “signing on” was something students all needed to do each holiday if we wanted in effect to have our grants extended to cover holidays. The thought of the bureaucracy required to have most higher education students signing on and off the dole three times a year is truly mind-boggling.]
Friday 18 March – Easyish day – did a little work – watched TV in eve with Hamzah and Yazid.
Hamzah Shawal was my Bruneian flatmate. Yazid was one of the Malay guys who lived in a Q-Block Barnes flat with three other Malay guys, not too far away from our Barnes L-Block flat. I have no idea what we watched, but it is interesting that it was such a rare thing for me to do that I noted the fact that we watched TV. We might well have watched The Tube early evening, as Bono was interviewed that day:
I’m pretty sure this would have been one of the rare occasions I cooked for the South-East Asian gang, rather than them cooking for me. They were quite strict on Muslim dietary laws, which rather restricted my meat-based diet.
However, I did have a couple of tricks up my sleeve which satisfied their religious structures. I always had a supply of Osem Chicken Soup Mix
This product is not only kosher but it is actually vegetarian, allowing me to make chicken soup & kneidlach (Matzo Ball Soup) for vegetarian and carnivore friends alike.
My other piece de resistance for the halal & veggie crowd was potato latkes:
If or when I can find my mother’s yellowed, hand-written pages of instructions for these delights I’ll publish the recipes. Hers were variations on the traditional Florence Greenberg & Evelyn Rose recipes.
Cheap, cheerful and heart-warming food.
Saturday 19 March 1983 – Liza came over in morning. Went to meet Julie -> Mike & Mandy’s -> dinner -> cam home quite early.
Sunday 20 March – Rose quite late – went down to lakes & back to Sneyd. Visited Ashley later.
I’m so glad that Ashley gets a mention that fortnight – albeit right at the end. Ashley has been known to complain if there aren’t enough pieces about him.