Month: March 1984

A Fortnight Of Conducting My Keele Studies In London, Then Assisting Stop The City From Keele, Late March 1984

Forty years ago (he says, writing in March 2024), while I was at Keele, my relationship with the City of London was rather different from the way it is now:

Singing…Or In This Case Speaking… For My Supper, Gresham Society AGM & Dinner, Guildhall, 11 March 2024

Returning to March 1984 – following the election fever of the previous week…

I, Sabbatical: Keele Students’ Union Education & Welfare Election Week, Mid March 1984

…the next couple of weeks were relatively sedate.

Sunday, 18 March 1984 – Got up quite early – did very little today – visited people etc. Evening – went union and left late!

Monday, 19 March 1984 – Busyish day – shopped etc. Went union etc. Wrote essay – went to visit Bobbie for a while.

Tuesday, 20 March 1984 – Rose quite early – several visitors (Malcolm [Cornelius], Simon [probably Legg at that time], Bobbie [Scully, to be sure] etc) – sluggish day – shopped, washed, then cooked a big meal in evening. Very pleasant.

Wednesday, 21st of March 1984- Rose quite late – came home in afternoon – lazy eve and spoke to friends etc.

“Came home” meant returned to my parents’ house in Streatham. In order to try and catch up with my preparation for finals, I decided to retreat to London for a few days for private study. How well did that work?

Thursday, 22 March 1984 – Did a little work today – shopped etc. Stayed in evening – did a little work.

Friday, 23 March 1984 – Lazyish day – did a little work etc. Fairly lazy evening in.

Saturday, 24 March 1984 – Easyish day – did some work – Paul came over in afternoon – did some work evening.

Hmm, not bad. What about the next few days?

Sunday, 25 March 1984 – Did little work – rowed with mother – went to Surbiton to see Grandma Jenny and Uncle Louis. Had a Chinese dinner. Met [guess… Jimmy Bateman] in the eve at R&C [Rose & Crown – Jimmy liked that place] – early night.

Monday, 26 March 1984 – Got up quite early – worked hard both day and evening. Little hive of industry.

Tuesday, 27 March 1984 – Busy day – rose early, met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch – went on to Newman Harris in afternoon , and went on to Andrea [Dean]’s for dinner etc – late night.

Wednesday, 28 March 1984– left Teddington quite early – had lunch – left London – rotten journey (no LT) to Keele, went Thorns and union to sort out tomorrow

“Rowed with mother” would undoubtedly have been about the sabbatical. We hadn’t been on the best of terms since “Liza-gate” the previous year…

The Sneyd, The Jedi, The Parents & The Return To London At The End Of My P2 Year At Keele, 1982/1983

… and now mum had become convinced that I was hell-bent on becoming a perpetual student who would never, in her terms, start earning a proper living. Worse yet, I was going to turn into a “union man”, like her brother Harry, whom she considered to be a person who would always choose armchair-agitating over actually working. (I paraphrase).

“Went to Newman Harris” would have been a simple and satisfactory expedient to explain what I was doing and keep my job offer there open for an additional 12 months, which they were more than happy to do.

Not only a City of London connection across forty years, but also a National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington connection. Andrea lived in Bushy House at that time, as her dad, Paul, was Director of the NPL. Forty years later, I was hoity-toitying with the NPL crowd in Horizon 22:

Proving Einstein’s Theory Of Time Dilation & Stuff With The National Physical Laboratory At Horizon 22 In London, 15 March 2024

Returning to late March 1984:

29 March 1984

Thursday, 29 March 1984 – Got up at 7 am – went to Silverdale for Stop The City lines – played Risk and Scrabble, and got pissed on home brew! Got home pretty late.

Church Street, Silverdale by David Weston, CC BY-SA 2.0

I remember this day very clearly. “Silverdale” meant Simon [Legg] and Theo’s place. I was drafted in to help them act as logistics co-ordinators and a helpline for those students who went to London to join in the Stop the City protest – this being, I believe the second of them.

Here is a link to a wonderful gallery of photographs from the 29 March 1984 Stop the City, on Z360.com – well worth a browse.

I was asked to help because I was studying civil liberties law and there was a train of thought that the police might over-exert their authority and be open to challenge during the protest.

In practice, especially in those days without mobile phones, the reality was that the protesters were “on their own” down in London, with insufficient access to phones to enable any co-ordination or requests for on-the-fly legal advice.

I don’t think Simon & Theo’s phone rang once during the whole day. Hence, despite the crack of dawn start, all we did was play Risk and Scrabble while ploughing through a fair chunk of Simon’s most recent batch of home brewed beer.

The home brew bucket and paraphernalia looked a bit like this.

Simon’s theory was that his home brew did not give you a hangover, however much of it you drank, because it entirely lacked the hangover-inducing additives that come with the deal in mass produced beer. In my case, only up to a point, Mr Legg. But then we did drink rather a lot of home brew that day.

Despite my more-or-less-non-existent involvement, it is quite possible that I remain guilty of a capital crime in the City of London for even offering to assist such a protest from afar. Cruel, unusual and bizarre medieval laws have a dreadful tendency to crawl out of the woodwork in the square mile. Whether or not the Lord Mayor could or would grant me clemency in such circumstances I have no idea, but, as I am Freeman of the City, I am entitled to be hanged with a silken rope rather than a cheap and scratchy one, which is a very reassuring thought.

Returning to the end of March 1984 – the rest of that week was tame:

Friday, 30 March 1984 – Got up quite early – went union – and library. Bobbie arrived – cooked meal for B, Malc. and Ruth – early night.

Saturday, 31 March 1984 – Lazy day – Rose late – shopped. Lazed around – had nice meal in eve after quick visit to union.

Not exactly finals overdrive then. I don’t think I ever made it to overdrive, to be honest, as the next few weeks of diaries will attest.

Hitsville USA: The Story Of Motown, An Appointment To Listen At Keele January to March 1984

I had been taking an interest in Motown, Stax & Northern Soul music for a few years by the time the iconic BBC Radio series, Hitsville USA: The Story Of Motown, presented by Stuart Grundy, started in January 1984.

The diary is silent on’t, but the cassette recorder was not

I recorded the show every week, all but one on my trusty Grundig RR720, see image below and on this link, from Reverb, where you can try to buy such items.

The story of how this audio-beauty came into my possession is worthy of a piece in its own right. But in short, Ashley wanted to buy an Amstrad “all in one” thingie and offered me his Grundig RR720 for a ludicrously low price in order to raise the last few quid he needed to secure his purchase. I negotiated the price up for him as I couldn’t in all conscience buy the item for the price he quoted. I think the offer price was £12 and the strike price £20.

I continued to use and get pleasure from the RR720 for some 25 years, until its increasing hiss-noise and obsolete look condemned it around 2007 or 2008.

Anyway…

…my habit, most weeks, was to go into Newcastle shopping after listening to and taping this programme on a Saturday. I think it very unlikely that I got much if any work done before the lunchtime broadcast. I probably ate lunch (or some might argue brunch) while listening.

I note that Episode 5 was when Jilly was visiting at the end of an action-packed week:

An Action-Packed Week At Keele In Mid-February 1984

I recall “making” Jilly listen to that episode, arranging our tour of Keele around the Motown programme time. Jilly became quite engaged with the subject after 30 minutes in the masterful hands of Stuart Grundy’s documentary and clips. I’m pretty sure that is where the idea of “The Lesson Tapes” that I made for Jilly started, as she confessed knowing next to nothing about that sort of music, classical music student that she was.

I recorded Week 10 at my parents house while decompressing and getting a little bit of work done there late March:

A Fortnight Of Conducting My Keele Studies In London, Then Assisting Stop The City From Keele, Late March 1984

I remember discussing the series with Paul Deacon when I saw him that evening. Were you already working for the BBC Music Library at that time, Paul, or did that come later?

One or two of the cassettes that I made back then didn’t make it through the decades. I did scrape them all onto reel-to-reel at the time and those spools might still work…although they will be decaying (or already decayed) in storage. But none of that sort of thing matters any more, because a few clicks in the direction of the Internet Archive finds the very thing – all episodes neatly digitised and set out, Items 4 to 14 inclusive, through this link or the picture link below:

There are far worse things that you could do than listen to them all “in a podcast stylee”, as I think it is as good an audio documentary about Motown has yet to be made.

For me it brings back memories of when I should have been finishing my assignments and revising, but was still fiddling around with music and socialising and grub instead. A process I continued for many weeks after this series ended:

How Not To Revise For Your Finals At Keele, Part One: The Start Of The Easter Holidays, Early April 1984

I, Sabbatical: Keele Students’ Union Education & Welfare Election Week, Mid March 1984

“Welcome To The Top Table”. Picture 1985, with thanks to Mark Ellicott

I claim in my diary not to remember much about this week…John White reports similarly from his diary when he ran successfully for the sabbatical Union Secretary role a couple of weeks earlier…

Strolling Bones, John White’s Election & My “Photo Sesh” At Keele, Late February & Early March 1984

..yet there are several aspects of that election week that I remember very clearly, forty years later.

The Story So Far…

Just to summarise the story so far – I was quietly trying to ensure that the Union Committee for 84/85 would be a lot more effective and less chaotic than the 83/84 team, which was beset with ructions and (often self-inflicted) problems.

My dream team for 84/85 included my girlfriend, Bobbie Scully, as Education and Welfare sabbatical. Bobbie had other plans and turned out to be better at the Machiavellian stuff than me, ganging up with other friends to turn the tables on me.

I saw Bobbie at the Gresham Society dinner earlier this week (writing in March 2024) and warned her that I would be writing up the story of her stitching me up for this role.

Quite right, except the truth of it was that you tried to stitch me up and the easiest way out of it was for me to stitch you up instead

That’s clear.

A late Renaissance petard. There’s me, setting it off, about to be hoist by it, while Malcolm Cornelius and Bobbie Scully watch from a safe distance

Malcolm Cornelius and Annalisa de Mercur helped me produce my manifestos…

Education and Welfare 1984/85 Campaign Manifesto, University of Keele Students’ Union, March 1984

…while the Germans (aka Rubella)…

What Did A Dark Room, A Digital Manifesto, German Measles & Andrea’s Party Have In Common At Keele In Early March 1984?

…held me back from campaigning until the last few days of the race.

Other Random Memories Prior To Canvassing

  • I recall that there were 11 nominations for the role of Education & Welfare that year and all of us remained in the race and appeared on the ballot paper. That was believed to be a record back then and might still be a record.
  • I hoped to get endorsement from the Liberals and Labour…although I was a member of neither…on the basis that the position is apolitical, no-one amongst the 11 candidates was a member of either party and that my political leanings were (are) unattached liberal-left. The Liberals went for it without fuss…my flat, Barnes L54 was sort-of “Liberals Central” with Pete Wild living there and Melissa Oliveck hanging out there with Pete much of the time.
  • It was much harder to persuade Labour to endorse me. I had been a member of Labour Club until a year or two previous but had not identified enough with the local MP nor the party line to feel comfortable with formal alignment. One of the candidates decided to try to carpetbag Labour endorsement by joining Labour Club. Truda Smith, by then head of Labour Club, thought that was good enough. Frank Dillon, presumably thinking differently, took it upon himself as Secretary of Labour club to come round and see me in Barnes L54, give me a good grilling and decide who to propose for Labour endorsement. It was the first time I had a long chat with Frank, but for sure it was not the last.

Frank did not say, “Ian Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship…”

…but I did get the Labour endorsement and it was the beginning of a friendship with Frank that has endured.

The Legwork Campaign Began

Sunday 11 March 1984 – Started canvassing this afternoon- hard work. Went to KRA with Vivian in evening after.

Monday 12 March 1984 – Canvassed hard today – went to UGM in evening – left early – went over to Bobbie’s – came back.

Tuesday 13 March 1984 – Hard canvassing all day today – refecs, rooms, etc. V tiring – popped in to see B after for a while.

Wednesday 14 March 1984 – Canvassed hard all day – went Union in eve with Bobbie – came back.

I recall getting advice from Dr Scott on whether my rubella presented a risk to anyone – he gave me a rule to follow ahead of going door to door, which I think would have enabled me to start on the Saturday but I waited until the Sunday “to be sure”. That didn’t prevent one “spoiler” rumour that I was spreading rubella and might cause birth defects were I to infect a pregnant woman while canvassing, rendering me utterly unsuited to a welfare post. I remember being furious about that one.

I also recall some low-level attempts to spoil my campaign by the Tories, who saw me as a Union insider and a leftie at that. I particularly remember Laura Helm and one of her Tory pals trying to delay me and/or honey-trap me by flirting with me and inviting me in when I went to Laura’s door. Didn’t work. I dread to think what might have happened had I taken the bait. I remember Laura telling me after the election that she sensed that I would win it from the way I handled that stunt.

Laura second from left, with “the Tory crowd” – thanks Mark Ellicott for the picture

I also remember Duncan Baldwin, with whom I studied both Economics and Law, telling me that he was going to vote for me despite the difference in our political views, because he sensed that I would be honest and diligent, which he felt was what the Union needed. I remember being moved by that statement and also thinking that I would be well-placed if there were plenty of others who thought like Duncan.

I also remember my Malay friends telling me that they were not going to vote because they wouldn’t be around the following year and that they felt that the matter should be determined by those who would be living with the consequences of that vote. An interesting morality, not one that I shared but I understood it. I thought that factor might run against me if there were too many of my friends who felt that way.

I hadn’t set foot in a refectory for years, but chose to eat in them while canvassing. One person in the refectory told me that they were going to vote for me because I removed my plates and bowls from the tray rather than scoffing from the tray. I didn’t read too much psephology into that event but never forgot the strange exchange.

I oriented my campaign to some extent to encourage overseas students to vote. I felt that they got a raw deal and that there were interests of theirs that I could advocate, both on the education and welfare side of things. Blessing Odatuwa and Bobbie’s friend Lara from Lindsay K Block lobbied the Cameroonian and Nigerian communities (respectively) for me. I knew Tony Wong and others from the Chinese student community well, following several years of joint activities – Bobbie was also well connected with that crowd.

Election Days And Aftermath

Thursday 15 March 1984 – Whole day in concourse – very tiring. Went to J-Soc and on to Union after with Bobbie – came back after.

Friday 16 March 1984 – Big day – Concourse all day (charades at end!!) – result – won – don’t remember much!! Bobbie came back.

Saturday 17 March 1984 – Rose quite late – went off to Lichfield etc – went to restaurant in Hanley -> Union after -> Bobiie’s.

“Don’t remember much” is not quite true.

I do remember Bobbie’s friend Lara, in the concourse, trying to badger some of her fellow Nigerian students into voting for me.  Bobbie berated Lara for being overly persuasive – she was virtually dragging reluctant people towards the ballot box – but Lara said, “a bit of political thuggery never did any harm”.  She was 18 or 19 years old.

I’m not sure what I mean by “charades”. I was being ultra careful to do everything by the spirit as well as the letter of the rules. At one point, because there was a shortage of people to staff the ballot boxes, I noticed that both Bobbie and Annalisa were the pair on the boxes. Given that they were both actively part of my team, that felt wrong. I remember raising an objection myself, suggesting to Vivian that she must replace one of them in a hurry, only for all the other candidates to tell Vivian not to bother and me not to worry…they trusted Bobbie and Annalisa to behave impartially on the ballot boxes. That’s what happens when you are trustworthy.

Annalisa – a card carrying member of the Union

But hanging around in the concourse was rather dull, especially towards the end of a two-day election, by which time most people had either voted or long-since decided not to bother to vote. So perhaps we actually played charades, as I do remember a good feeling among the candidates…

…at least, there was certainly a good feeling among the candidates before we played charades.

The count took ages, not least because there were eleven candidates and counting was done using the single transferrable vote system. Malcolm Cornelius could explain to you in excruciating detail how that works. Ask him…go on, ask him.

Actually, the voting was quite close among the ten other people in the election, who I think all landed somewhere between 40 and 100 first votes. I landed just over 200. Thus I think the eliminations did need to be done one by one., which is very time-consuming.

I recall being nervous and fretting that I might have needed more first votes than I got in order to win the election, thinking that I might have been a “marmite candidate” who mostly landed only first preferences. At one point I remember Bobbie taking me aside and telling me, long before the result was called, that I should relax because I’d won.

ME: But I might not have enough second preferences…

BOBBIE: Yes you do.

ME: What makes you so sure?

BOBBIE: Because I sat on those blinking ballot boxes for hours and most people did their voting in front of me.

Of course Bobbie as right – the transfers landed in similar proportions to the first votes and my margin kept increasing.

The tallying might have looked a bit like this, only with younger people and no Gerald Ford pipe

The only thing I really remember about the celebrations was being descended upon by the gang from my old Lindsay F Block: Richard van Baaren, Benedict Coldstream and Bob Schumacher, who carried me aloft around the main bar for a while, much to my fearful chagrin. Big units, those guys, they were never going to drop me.

To Summarise…

I got elected as sabbatical Education & Welfare Officer in March 1984. I tried to keep my promises when in office between June 1984 and June 1985.

H Ackgrass Column From Concourse March 1984

I told the story of H Ackgrass’s “birth” and initial column in the article linked here and below:

Keele Gossip Columnist H Ackgrass is born, Concourse, February 1984

The extract from Concourse that follows contains the second published column. Unfortunately, I either failed to keep or mislaid my carbon copy of the submission. That second column was cruelly edited, as my whinge in the third column (May 1984) attests.

Unless I find the carbon copy misplaced amongst other papers (vaguely possible but unlikely 40+ years hence) we shall never know the detail of the scurrilous scribbles that were edited out, nor shall we discover which good jokes were cruelly pinched and inserted into other people’s articles in that March 1984 edition of Concourse. Naughty Uncle Quentin (Quentin Reubens, then editor of Concourse).

Anyway, here is the column that did get published on Page Seven of the March 1984 Concourse.

What Did A Dark Room, A Digital Manifesto, German Measles & Andrea’s Party Have In Common At Keele In Early March 1984?

Me, unusually shorn, presumably for PR purposes

Answer: They all strangely find their way into one week of my diary.

Quite a week, that first full week of March 1984. Once the decision was made that I’d run for Education & Welfare, the campaign went into overdrive. What could possibly go wrong?

Sunday 4 March 1984

Rose quite early – worked a little – spent afternoon in dark room with Annalisa [de Mercur] etc. Popped over to Bobbie’s in eve.

Monday, 5 March 1984

Busy working on manifesto today – got quite a bit done – constitutional committee in the evening – went over to Bobbies after.

Tuesday, 6 March 1984

Not feeling very well today – worked on manifesto today – almost done – went over to Bobbie’s – really felt ghastly!

Wednesday, 7 March 1984

Worked on manifesto today – covered in German Measles. today. Took it fairly easy.

The reason the manifesto was such a time consuming matter was a decision, taken jointly with my campaign manager, Malcolm Cornelius, to produce both the manifesto and leaflet (known as a supplementary manifesto) using digital technology. I wrote this up several years ago in the following piece, click here or the image link below:

Education and Welfare 1984/85 Campaign Manifesto, University of Keele Students’ Union, March 1984

Word processing on a University mainframe in 1984 was a non-trivial matter, believe me. Malcolm, who was pretty geeky back then and possibly remains so, could probably explain in excruciating detail what we had to go through to get that job done. Ask him. Go on, ask him.

I merely remember a lot of trial and error and also remember not feeling at all well throughout the process, probably because I had Rubella, commonly known as German Measles.

Younger readers, please do not berate my parents for failing to have me vaccinated – our generation didn’t have a vaccination for Rubella. What was supposed to happen was that you had the disease as a child and then never got it again because the instance of having the disease effectively vaccinated you. Some of us were careless enough to avoid the disease until the fourth year at University – or even longer in some cases – then get it at an inconvenient time…which for me this unquestionably was.

It would have been so much worse had the Rubella presented before the photo shoot. Any spots you might detect on the images from the shoot are either dust or my regular spots and blotches, which were quite numerous when I was in my very early twenties. Please let us not discuss THAT tie.

Thursday, 8 March 1984

Still not very well – spots disappearing – busyish, but took it fairly easy. Finished manifesto etc. Bobbie came over later.

Friday, 9 March 1984

Feeling a bit better today – Bobbie went away – manifesto’s in and supp’s out.– Social Sec election & big appeal over VP internal.

Saturday 10 March still quite tired – has an easy day today – went to Andrea’s party in eve – on to union briefly.

Right, so not only did Bobbie abandon me to run that election…the one I had hoped she’d be running for…but she went away for the weekend ahead of my campaign proper starting. In retrospect I don’t blame her at all, but I do remember feeling a bit miffed at the time.

Although I was a candidate for the following week’s election, I was still Chair of Election Appeals for that week’s election. I sense that the Social Secretary election went smoothly…

Here’s me with Pady Jalali, who won that election. Image Summer 1985 with thanks to Mark Ellicott

…whereas the VP Internal election had some element of hoo-ha attached to it, probably long-since forgotten by all concerned. Hayward Burt won that election and it is just possible that he remembers the hoo-ha.

Me and Hayward in the summer of 1985 – thanks Mark Ellicott for the picture

Ironically, the challenge probably came from the Tories, as Hayward was, in those days, one of the “Liberals with infeasibly strange names”. Hayward now can be found through more Conservative channels. I wonder whether he remembers what the shenanigans were on this occasion. I’ll send this piece to him and ask him.

Update: Hayward Replies…

Thanks for the heads up and the photo (I used to be thin! who knew?)

The controversy rings no bells at all, the result was v close between me and the Labour Club chap and I remember being absolutely knacked with all the door knocking.

“Andrea’s party” on the Saturday will have been Andrea Collins’ (now Woodhouse’s) party. Strangely, a Facebook birthday reminder for Andrea popped up on my FB tab while I was in the process of producing this piece.

Malcolm might have been unusually geeky back then but in many ways we are all geeks now, forty years on.

I’ll send Andrea a “Happy Birthday” message by dint of a link to this piece – Happy Birthday Andrea!

Education and Welfare 1984/85 Campaign Manifesto, University of Keele Students’ Union, March 1984

I was a reluctant candidate for the union sabbatical post of Education and Welfare officer. I thought I had done a grand Machiavellian job of ensuring that the 1984/85 committee would be just fine. The last piece of the jigsaw, in my mind, was to persuade Bobbie Scully to run for Education and Welfare.

Unfortunately, Bobbie was quietly more Machiavellian than me (the fact that she was studying politics as well as law probably helped), so I found the tables turned and I somehow succumbed to peer pressure to run myself.

Here is the manifesto, now in pieces but thus scan-able in three parts.

Manifesto One of Three Compressed Manifesto Two of Three compressed Manifesto Three of Three Compressed

It is not easy to fool WordPress into more or less presenting the thing as it looked. I probably could make it look a bit better, but for now the above presentation will have to do.

Intriguingly, in similar context, I believe my manifesto was the first ever union manifesto to be word-processed. Hence the bold lettering etc. It was a devil of a job using the University mainframe’s text editor software. If my diary is to be believed, we spent serious chunks of four or five days to get this seemingly trivial job done; it was a non-trivial task back then.

My friend and campaign manager Malcolm Cornelius deserves all the credit for the idea and the hard yards to get the job done. I believe that Malcolm went on to a glorious career in IT consulting; perhaps his work on my manifesto was an important staging-post in his career.

Here’s the supplementary manifesto, which was similarly word-processed and formed part of that multi-day task. Another innovation was the use of DL size for these supplementaries. People tended to go for A5 two-sided and ration their allocation of one ream of A4 accordingly. I thought that DL, yielding 1,500 rather than 1,000 leaflets, was a good idea.

Supplementary Manifesto Both Sides

At some stage, I’ll pull some memories and diary notes together on the election campaign itself. Suffice it to say at this stage that the campaign succeeded and I was elected.

Strolling Bones, John White’s Election & My “Photo Sesh” At Keele, Late February & Early March 1984

John White nearly 40 years later

In truth, the first week of this two-week write up is not the most exciting week I spent at Keele. But for the record:

Here’s a translation of that week’s scrawl:

Sunday, 19 February 1984

Rose, quite late – ate – took Jilly to Stoke – returned – Malc [Malcolm Cornelius] came over in eve – went union

Monday, 20 February 1984

Busyish day – UGM etc. to prepare. UGM went quite badly at first – went back to B’s [Bobbie Scully’s] after.

Tuesday, 21 February 1984

Busyish day – did some work etc – went shopping. Cooked K 41 meal in eve. Popped over to B’s in eve.

Wednesday 22 February 1984

Not bad day – worked on Constitution etc – did some work also. B came over quite late – stayed.

Thursday, 23 February 1984

Not bad day – in union – distributed AP [Alternative Prospectus?] quite a bit – did little work. Came back. Went over B’s for awhile.

Friday, 24 February 1984

Busyish day – got lots of odd ends done (??). Went to see Strolling Bones in eve – B came back here.

Saturday, 25 February 1924

Easyish day – went shopping. Didn’t work – went over to Bobbie’s in eve – stayed

I’m struggling to remember who the K41 crowd were. I think possibly Andrea Collins (now Woodhouse) and her gang. Or possibly Viv Robinson’s mob.

Malcolm Cornelius recently commented, when matters of revising the constitution came up on a facebook posting:

I remember spending hours with you going thru line by line and rewriting it into plain(er) English. Pretty advanced for the time. I also still recalling moving procedural motions 38b2 and the like !

That comment of Malcolm’s might qualify as the geekiest comment ever on the Forever Keele Facebook Group 🙂

Regarding the Strolling Bones, or perhaps I should more accurately say Mick Swagger & the Strolling Bones, in truth I didn’t remember having seen them until I found that diary entry. But the description of them – in particular Mick Swagger’s gyrating, brought it back to me.

Image borrowed from Fairways Entertainments Tribute Act Site

An extraordinary thing about this act, I suppose, is that part of the conceit of that tribute act playing the student circuit back then was that the Rolling Stones had been going for nearly 22 years – i.e. since before I (and almost all of us) at Keele at that time had been born. Who would have guessed that, 40 years after that, The Rolling Stones would still be going?

Weird.

But not as memorable to me as The Bootleg Beatles had been in December 1980:

The Day The Bootleg Beatles Came To Keele’s Lindsay Ball & John Lennon Died, 8 December 1980

Sunday, 26 February 1984

Lazyish day – Malcolm came over – wrote essay early eve – went over Malcs -> Bobbie’s for eve.

Monday, 27 February 1984

Busyish day – rotten cold – busy round union etc. Constitutional Committee in eve etc – Bobbie stayed.

Tuesday 28 February 1984

Fairly busy day – did some work etc – popped over to Bobbie’s for a while in eve.

Wednesday, 29 February 1984

Busyish – shopping – working – etc. Popped over to B’s, briefly, in eve.

Thursday, 1 March 1984

Busyish day working etc. Did quite a lot of things. With J-Soc in eve – worked after – B came over late.

Friday, March 1984

Busyish day – election today – and EAP [election appeals] committee – went over to Bobbie’s for while after.

Saturday, 3 March 1984

Shopped etc today – easyish day – photo session in afternoon etc – went to Hanley for Chinese with B– went back there after.

At some point around that time – I think probably on that Sunday in late February, Bobbie and Malcolm turned the tables on me and persuaded me that I should run for Education & Welfare Officer. My plan had been for Bobbie to fulfil that role – she’d have been bloody good at it and was certainly popular enough to get elected – but she had no intention of sticking around at Keele for another year.

I remember at one point hedging, by saying that i would only do it if the right people got elected in that week’s elections. That meant John White as Secretary and Pete Wild as Treasurer.

“I won” says John – photo thanks to Mark Ellicott

“So did I” says Pete – photo also thanks to Mark Ellicott

That election on the Friday confirmed their election and I had run out of road with the Malcolms and Bobbies of this world.

I’m pretty sure it was Annalisa De Mercur who did the “photo sesh”. The Hanley Chinese with Bobbie will have been the same one we went to before Christmas with Malcolm and Ruth. No-one remembers the name but Malcolm recalls:

That Chinese was for the time pretty good, I remember red flock wallpaper and the first time I ever had fresh lychees was there.  No idea what its name was!

Next time I’ll share with you the results of the photo sesh and other ephemera from that era. I’ll also explain why my campaign was nearly nipped in the bud by an attack of the Germans. Watch this space.