Month: June 1983

Keele Festival Week, With Infeasible Levels Of Cricket, Movie Watching & Social Activities, Late June 1983

Image produced in collaboration with Dall-E

It’s hard to believe quite how much went on in that one frantic week at the end of the Keele 1982/83 academic year. Let me divide the story/stories into their several component parts.

First Part Of The Week – Cricket On & Off

Cricket has played an important part in my life, on and off, throughout my life. But it played only a tiny part in my life at Keele. Still, I did participate in three festival week “Players Of The Left v Gentlemen Of The Right” cricket matches over the years, 1983 being the second of the three. These have each been written up on Ogblog and also as a single piece about my cricket nom de plume, Ged Ladd, on the King Cricket website:

Players (of the left) v Gentlemen (of the right) – match report + wagon wheel

Aficionados of “noms de plume” might enjoy the idea that my 1980s Keele Concourse non de plume, H Ackgrass, is writing a cricket biography of my subsequent nom de plume, Ged Ladd.

My participation in the 1983 match started with a net session on the Monday before the match. How I performed in the nets is lost in the mists of time, but my “thanks for coming” level of involvement in the fixture was probably the result of that net performance. The late, great Toby Bourgein, bless him, was loyal to the extent that he selected me again, given that I played as a last minute substitute in 1982…

“Got Roped In To Playing Cricket All Afternoon”, Gentlemen v Players Cricket Match, Keele Festival Week, 24 June 1982

…but not so loyal as to risk his plans for a Players victory in 1983. Toby’s plans succeeded that year. If you want to read all about it, click here or the block below:

My Second “Thanks For Coming” (TFC) Keele Festival Week Cricket Match, 21 June 1983

Yet there was more to that week for me than cricket, as the diary attests…

…despite the fact that the 1983 Cricket World Cup was coming to its exciting (and probably cricket history transforming) conclusion. I wrote up Wednesday 22 June 1983 a few years ago, the concluding phrase, “tired and pissed off after” still resonating with my older (but perhaps not much wiser) psyche:

The Day England Were Knocked Out Of the Cricket World Cup By India, While I Made A Three-Hundred Mile Round Trip Visit, Probably Against My Will, 22 June 1983

Second Part Of The Week – Movies

There are references to seeing several movies that week, which certainly warrants a mention. Not least because the least famous of them sticks in my mind peculiarly.

Thursday 23 June 1983 …went to see Young Frankenstein and Wild Women Of Wongo.

I probably don’t need to say much about Young Frankenstein, other than the fact that this 1974 film was already deemed a comedy classic by 1983 and I do remember all of us who went that evening finding it uproariously funny. I still remember it fondly.

This 1958 film was a memorable part of the “classics double-bill” experience because it fell into that category of low budget films that amused young people like us because they were “so bad, they were almost good”. By gosh, this film was bad… but we laughed.

Thursday 24 June 1983 …went [The] Secret of NIMH…

Probably chosen by Liza and her art school gang, although I have always been a sucker for animated films and I remember this one being very well animated, although not really my first choice of subject matter. I should try and see it again some time.

Third Part Of the Week – Wendy Robbins Visits & The Keele Festival Week Socialising Is In Full Sway

Wendy Robbins c1979

In fact Wendy Robbins had arrived ahead of us all going to see The Secret Of NIMH so undoubtedly was with the group that went to that movie and then came back to L54.

Wendy was an old friend of mine from Streatham BBYO (youth club) and even earlier. When you are 20, people whom you have hung out with throughout your teens are “old friends”.

As was his wont, my flatmate, Alan Gorman, had fled Keele as soon as his study commitments had concluded, allowing me to invite Wendy and provide her with a room in our flat. I think Hamzah had already gone too. Indeed, Chris Spencer might also have disappeared ahead of festival week that year, so perhaps I and my friends had the entire run of the place.

Whoever else might have been there, the flat for sure became “festival week/end of year central” in my Keele world for that weekend.

Saturday 25 June – Went shopping in morn – Ashley [Fletcher] came over in afternoon – we all went to Candles – P? came over after

Sunday 26 June – Lazy day – late rise. Played cards etc. Ashley ? went to union in eve – I went meet Liza – pissed off ???

I’m not 100% sure what the pissed-offness was about. I know that Liza had taken a job to help pay off her share of rent for Shelton and I know this put strain on her participation in the end of Keele year social activities.

I also recall that Liza didn’t take too kindly to Wendy, for reasons I could and still can only surmise.

The diary for the next week says that Wendy left on the Monday – I took her to Hanley so I guess she came up by coach.

Forty years on, Wendy and I are still in touch, although i haven’t seen her for a while.

Me, Jilly, Simon [Jacobs], Andrea & Wendy in 2017. Janie took the picture so once again she isn’t in it!

The Cricket World Changed That Day And I Totally Missed It, Keele, 25 June 1983

The cricket world cup final of 1983 changed the world of cricket pretty much overnight. Spoiler alert: India beat the mighty West Indies, at which point the entire population of India, which previously had not really seen the point of one day cricket, suddenly got it and adopted the shorter form of the game, for ever.

Meanwhile I was at Keele enjoying Festival Week and the entire event went unmentioned in my diary and probably largely unnoticed by me, other than reading about it in the newspapers afterwards.

That Saturday diary entry reads:

Went shopping in morn – Ashley came over in afternoon – we all went to Candles – Pat came over after.

“All” will have included Liza O’Connor (then my girlfriend) and Wendy Robbins who was visiting for a few days, as well as Ashley Fletcher.

Candles was a restaurant – in Hanley if I remember correctly.

I owe Pat a massive apology but I cannot recall who he (or she) might have been. Pat has other similar mentions in the diary around that time but those mentions aren’t helping my memory. Perhaps someone else (or Pat personally) might find this piece and chime in.

I do recall a bit of an atmosphere during that Wendy visit; I’m not sure that Liza appreciated Wendy’s presence and I’m pretty sure that I didn’t appreciate Liza’s lack of appreciation.

Wendy was (and still is) a big personality and I suspect that Liza felt somewhat upstaged. We were all very young then.

Me And Wendy Robbins On Westminster Bridge

I have no pictures with Liza and the above picture, from about four years earlier, probably taken by a visiting American and sent to me, is the only one I have of me and Wendy around that time.

But I digress. Point is, it was festival week, I had visitors, so apparently I took no interest in the cricket world cup final. Tut, tut.

Here is a link to the scorecard and other cricinfo resources for the match.

While below is a YouTube of highlights:

The Day England Were Knocked Out Of the Cricket World Cup By India, While I Made A Three-Hundred Mile Round Trip Visit, Probably Against My Will, 22 June 1983

Kapil Dev, India’s cricket captain, didn’t help my mood that day.

I missed seeing any part of England being knocked out of the first cricket world cup in 1975, for good (albeit unsuccessful) sporting reasons:

A Truly Thrice Awful Day In My School/Sporting Life, 18 June 1975

I also missed seeing any of the 1979 final, in which England lost out to the West indies in the second cricket world cup; no doubt because no-one else at Alleyn’s school was sufficiently willing to score a first team cricket match rather than watch the final:

The Day England Lost The Cricket World Cup Final To The West Indies, While I Scored A Different Match, 23 June 1979

But I have a seemingly weak reason for missing the entirety of the 1983 semi-final, in which India made short-shrift of England, while on their way to that historic trophy-lifting victory in the third cricket world cup.

Yes, I played cricket the day before; an epic “thanks for coming” appearance for The Players in the Keele Festival Week traditional Gentlemen v Players beer match:

My “Thanks For Coming” (TFC) Keele Festival Week Match, 21 June 1983

So what could possibly have prevented me from hanging up those boots and spending at least some of the day watching the cricket on TV? It was, after all, festival week, a time of year that I especially loved at Keele, after all the term work and exams were over, when I could enjoy all that Keele had to offer without even the slightest pang of guilt.

The relevant passage reads (and yes I did need a magnifying glass and some deep thought to translate it):

Rose early – went – hitched- to London to see Sean and Marlenne [sic] – got train home – tired and pissed off after.

Sean and Marlene (I’m pretty sure I have spelt the name wrong in the diary) were the brother and sister-in-law respectively of my then girlfriend, Liza.

This was the one and only time I hitched all the way from Keele to London and it was an experience that, clearly, I was so keen not to repeat that I insisted on us getting the train home rather than trying to hitch home.

I don’t remember all that much about that London-bound, hitch-hiking journey other than the several discomforts of it; both physical (when sitting in passenger seats of 1970s/1980s lorries and mental (when I got that creepy feeling that the driver was more interested in my winsome, blond companion, Liza, than in the communitarian/sharing economy principles of helping a young couple who were hitch-hiking).

Sean and Marlene were (possibly still are) a very nice, very welcoming couple who lived in Stanmore. Sean, like Liza, had been raised in Keele itself, so they were not natural London sub-urbanites but seemed to fit into that mould very readily.

I recall that Sean was a hairdresser and the other thing that sticks in my mind is that they lived next door to a chap who had been in The Vibrators.

The diary entry infers that this day did not please me greatly. I am sure this was not Sean and Marlene’s fault; nor should I really blame Liza who had probably suggested the idea ages before – i.e. long before I realised that this 300 round trip to visit family in Stanmore was scheduled for bang slap in the middle of Festival Week and the day of the cricket world cup semi final to boot.

So it wasn’t a good day for me in North London.

It wasn’t a good day for England in Manchester either.

You can watch the highlights of the cricket match below:

https://youtu.be/8P4Rq9mtxhc

Highlights (or should I say lowlights?) of the debates Liza and I might well have had about the quality of that day out and the possible repetition of such excursions are, mercifully, not available.

My Second “Thanks For Coming” (TFC) Keele Festival Week Cricket Match, 21 June 1983

The Players Team In A Previous Year – c1981 – Thanks Frank Dillon

I made a right pigs ear of writing up this match originally, combining memories of the 1982 and 1983 games. It took the good offices of Mark Ellicott to put matters right in the matter of the 1982 match.

“Got Roped In To Playing Cricket All Afternoon”, Gentlemen v Players Cricket Match, Keele Festival Week, 24 June 1982

On the back of my 1982 derring-do (one catch, following a series of mishaps), presumably I qualified as an incumbent (Mark Ellicott was absent all year 1982/83) and was therefore invited along to the Players net session, which my diary shows taking place on Monday 20th; the day before the match.

If our captain, the late Toby Bourgein (who sadly died in 2020) had hoped, on the back of my willingness and enthusiasm to contribute, that there was some innate cricketing ability to be teased out in the nets, he was probably sorely disappointed.

Hardly surprising, given my relative lack of ability and the fact that I probably hadn’t played for five years or so. Even house games at school had resorted to using me as a neutral umpire towards the end of my schooldays. I was keen on the game but out of practice & quite useless by 1982 (and 1983). Latterly I got a little bit better again.

But Toby was the loyal sort and anyway probably only had eleven volunteers from which to pick his team, so I was in again.

As in 1982, I didn’t expect much of a role and yet again got pretty much what I expected.

Again I fielded, almost certainly with my trusty skiff of ale for company, but I recall nothing of note this time around.

The 1983 Keele Festival match proved to be an historic win for the Players. I recall Toby holding back a couple of our better batsmen who were more or less able to finish the job when we were six or seven down. I recall one of the match-winning batsmen fell just before the target,  so I was sent in to achieve a glorious 0* without even facing a ball.

As I put it in my diary:

…famous left-wing victory.

Toby, being Toby, remembered my derring-do from 1982 and TFC record from 1982 & 1983, so asked me to open the batting in the 1984 fixture. But that is another story of another great win for the mighty Players.

O Captain! My Captain! – Gentlemen Of The Right v Players Of The Left – Keele Festival Week Cricket Match, 26 June 1984

I have no photos from the 1982, 1983 nor the 1984 match, but this one from a couple of years earlier, thanks to Frank Dillon, should give the reader a pretty good feel for the look of the mighty Players team.

With thanks to Frank Dillon, this picture of an earlier “Players” team, probably 1981

If anyone out there has more memories and/or photographs of our festival week beer matches, especially this game, I’d love to hear from you.

Towards The End Of 1982/83 At Keele, In Which I Do A Literally Dopey Thing Ahead Of A Law Exam, Then Lazily Start To Get Into The Keele Festival Week Spirit, June 1983

John Stuart Mill, Of His Own Free Will, On Half A Slice Of Hash Cake…

I did, with the benefit of hindsight, a really silly thing ahead of my Part One Finals Jurisprudence (Law) exam paper. It can only have been the election evening/night when we all sat around in Rectory Road Shelton watching the Tories romp back home and leave the Labour party in disarray.

While some drowned their sorrows in cheap beer (or perhaps something stronger) and puffed away at cigarettes, I had quit smoking and was not going to drink any booze (which was still often upsetting me a bit post glandular fever).

So Liza, Mike and Mandy decided, in order for me to be able to do something intoxicating with my sorrows, that they would bake a cake, infused with lashings of hashish sprinklings, thus mellowing my and everyone else’s mood.

Dall-E has tried to help me replicate the scene in an image.

It was done an act of kindness, but perhaps at least one of us should have known a rather important, basic, biological fact about the mind-affecting substance in question. When smoked, the effect wears off in a few hours at the most. When ingested, the effect lasts a good deal longer – 12 to 24 hours.

The Next Day – 10 June 1983

I basically ended up sitting my Jurisprudence paper feeling high as a kite. I don’t think I got a great mark…but nor did I flunk the exam. Philip Rose might have thought I was still icky from my glandular fever and taken pity on me. Or possibly my scribblings were enhanced by my relaxed state of mind, such that my paper really wasn’t at all bad.

A reasonable chunk of what I know about jurisprudence has subsequently been captured for posterity in the Gresham Lecture I gave in 2008 on Commercial Ethics. The video seems to have gone, but the transcript, sound file and pictures are all still on the Gresham site here. I wrote and delivered that lecture without the help of mind-affecting substances.

Returning to June 1983 at Keele – after doing two law papers (I think the other paper I cognitively-floated through was Torts) I went to see Victor/Victoria in the evening.

This film was highly acclaimed but I remember not liking it much. There were one or two good set pieces, such as the cockroach scene at the start of the film, but ultimately I found the conceit of it – a failing actress pretending to be a male female impersonator – a little irksome. I remember especially disliking the trailer for the film, which laboured the point about the Julie Andrews character being “a woman…pretending to be a man…pretending to be a woman” – just in case the audience was too thick to work out what was going on.

After The Exams – 13 to 19 June 1983

Monday 13 June – Last exam today -> Newcastle afternoon -> UGM in eve – stayed up late after

Tuesday 14 June – Lazed around all day. Stayed in eve drinking etc.

Wednesday 15 June – Lazy day again. Shopped – lazy evening

Thursday 16 June – Did little today – went to Shelton & NSP [North staffs Poly] – lazy evening. Cooked meal.

Friday 17 June – Lazyish day, Shopped – in evening went to see Diva – v good.

I do especially remember that movie Diva. I thought it was stunning. Not what I would now think of as my kind of movie, but the visuals and sounds were an explosion of sensory extremes that I rarely feel in the movies. Here’s the IMDb link. Below is the trailer:

Saturday 18 June – Did little today – Liza working most of the day and evening – stayed in cooked meal.

Sunday 19 June – Rose late – went Int [International] Fair – wet lunch at Sneyd – went Newcastle in eve – Liza v ill after

Lazy is the key word for the week after my exams. The following week was different again, as you’ll discover next time…

My First General Election, A Student’s Eye View 34 Years On, 9 June 1983

Oh dear! Image by BSMIsEditing, CC BY-SA 4.0

Writing 34 years later, on the morning of another general election (today is 8 June 2017), a bit of me wonders “what has changed”?

It was not, in fact, the anniversarial relationship between the 2017 election and my first, in 1983, that triggered me into writing this short piece.

It was Jon Gorvett.

Jon got in touch out of the blue a few days ago, having spotted an Ogblog piece about a protest we orchestrated/attended in 1982 – click here. Jon sent me some wonderful clippings from that event, which you can find if you persevere with the preceding link.

Yesterday, Jon sent me an e-mail with some more scans that made me smile even wider, relating to some student union election shenanigans in February 1983. I wrote a brief note of those a few years ago for the Keele Oral History Project – click here – but now, thanks to Jon and his scanning machine, I can relate the story far more accurately and colourfully for Ogblog. I’ll write that up soon – something for Ogblog enthusiasts and lovers of student politics to look forward to.

So Jon’s documents sent me to my 1983 diary and that got me thinking about the 1983 general election, our very first one as voters.

There are many similarities between 1983 and 2017; an aging, unpopular Labour leader, splits in the Labour party, a Tory woman Prime Minister looking to increase her majority and power…

…there are also many differences. I’m not so fearful of the far right parties this time, whereas we were genuinely (but mistakenly) worried that the National Front and/or British National Party might make ground in 1983. Perhaps the Tories have simply moved onto much of that turf now, albeit with less visceral policies. I’m not so sure that Theresa May will achieve a 1983 Maggie style result – certainly the polls are less clear (or less trusted) in 2017. For sure all the main parties have put up dreadful campaigns in 2017 – I didn’t feel that way in 1983 – the Tories at least seemed like an unstoppable election machine back then.

Before I looked at the relevant page in my 1983 diary, I would have sworn that I remembered following election night in Liza O’Connor’s Rectory Road Shelton digs with a mixture of my Keele friends and Liza’s North Staffs Poly art & design flatmates.

But it wasn’t quite like that and now I do remember.

Thing was, I was bang slap in the middle of my Part One law degree finals.

As I now recall it, I had voted by post in my parent’s constituency (Streatham) where we felt that there was a chance that Labour might win, whereas John Golding (for whom even then I would have struggled to hold my nose and vote) had a safe as houses seat in Newcastle-Under-Lyme. My Streatham plan didn’t work in 1983 – by the time Streatham switched from Tory to Labour in 1992, I was voting in Kensington North.

Now, through boundary changes, my constituency is Kensington, with a Brexity Tory MP in a strongly non-Brexit but utterly safe seat. I’m finding it hard to hold my nose and vote for anyone today, but of course I shall and it won’t be for Lady Brexit-Borwick.

My 9 June 1983 diary note is quite pithy:

Did some work in day. Jon, Simon & Vince came to Rectory Road for tea – we came back to Keele in eve. Panicy.

“Jon” is Jon Gorvett, “Simon” is Simon Jacobs, “Vince” is Vince Beasley.

So my abiding memory of sitting around for hours debating politics with those people was correct – but it was during the day, not election night.

The reason I was “panicy”/panicky was because I had a couple of part one finals papers the very next day. I suspect that the others had finished their finals exams by then. Jon might remember his circumstances. Simon always claims to remember nothing at all.

So I think we held our 1983 election post mortem…pre mortem. I remember debating what next and all that sort of post mortem stuff.

So in 1983 we really knew (or thought we really knew) the result before polls closed – we just wondered exactly how bad it was going to be.

Political life doesn’t feel so certain to me now. Is that my age/experience showing or does that tell us more about the political age we now live in?

Thanks for triggering the memories, Jon Gorvett.

Comments on Ogblog pieces are always welcome but especially so on this piece.

Ahead Of My First General Election: Rectory Road Shelton, A Day In Chester, The Missionary &, Of Course, Keele, Early June 1983

Chester, Image by Nessy-Pic, CC BY-SA 4.0

I continued shuffling backwards and forwards between Rectory Road Shelton & Keele until after my June exams, which included my Law part one finals and also (I think) a couple of Economics papers.

Forty years on, my more grown up…well, older at least… self does not think that going to Chester for the day with Liza and Mandy was such a good idea, when I should have been revising for my Keele exams.

I sense from the write up of that day and the next that the effort of the day trip to Chester made me feel a bit poorly. I was still not completely better from my glandular fever a few months earlier. Still, I report “worked hard” the next day, 2 June, ahead of attending the count and election appeals.

Let me be clear about this. 2 June was not the general election. Rather, it was an extremely important election in the University of Keele Students’ Union calendar, the exact nature of which is lost in the mists of time but it was beholden upon me to go for a drink with the others from election appeals committee afterwards. I think it was probably the last SU election of the year.

I have no idea what might have been annoying about the Saturday afternoon. I suspect I didn’t get much done. My intended revision simply refused to revise for itself and I, in turn, didn’t get much revision done for it. Revision was never the thing I did best.

I report going to the flicks to see The Missionary on the Sunday and then returning to Keele, so my guess is that this film was on at the cinema in Hanley. I remember liking it. Everyone who is (or was) anyone in English comedy drama is on that cast list – national treasures a plenty. That type of whimsical comedy film, it was.

I am writing up these diaries forty years on, but I wrote up the election itself six years ago, around the time of the 2017 general election. Here (and below) is a link to the piece I wrote then:

My First General Election, A Student’s Eye View 34 Years On, 9 June 1983