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

The meaning of this image for this story will become apparent if you read on!

Forty years after the event, I can still give myself the collywobbles by reading my diary entries for the weeks approaching my finals at Keele. Economics and Law, just in case you were wondering.

I never have been much use at revising for exams. These were important exams to say the least. I sense that I distinguished myself for these big ones by being proportionately dreadful at knuckling down to revision.

I was, at least, quite brutally honest in my diary as to what I was – and wasn’t – doing around that time.

This multi-part article on how not to revise for your finals might serve as an object lesson to students everywhere.

Let’s start with a transcription from my diary for the first 10 days of April 1984:

Sunday 1 April 1984 – Got up late! Did little all day – Viv [Robinson] came round in afternoon – had nice meal and early night.

Monday 2 April 1984 – Got up quite late – Ashley [Fletcher] came round. Went into town – shopped and went to Ashley’s – Bobbie [Scully] left – easyish evening – went Union with Mel [Melissa Oliveck] for last orders – early night.

Tuesday, 3 April 1984 – Tried to do some work today – not too successfully. Went to Union in the evening with Mel.

Wednesday, 4 April 1984 – Late start – intermittent work – went to union with Malcolm [Cormelius] in the evening.

Thursday, 5 April 1984 – Did some work today – intermittently -big demo against Police Bill [which became the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984]. Went to KRA in evening with Malcolm.

Friday, 6 April 1984 – worked quite hard today – shopped etc – went to Union in eve – had a bop!

Saturday, 7 April 1984 – busyish day. Worked quite hard on project today. Went to union in eve – disco etc.

Sunday, 8 April 1984 – Worked on project today after late start. Visited Q92 [my Malay friends] etc. Went to Union for last orders.

Monday, 9 April 1984 = Shopped and worked today. Went to KRA with Malc, Farm [Chris Spencer] and Mel – nice evening.

Tuesday, 10 April 1984 – Worked hard on project all day. Went to Careless Talk meeting in evening, then union, then K41 do.

Some points to note here. Firstly, there are some references to working hard, but they are unquestionably linked to finishing my project – i.e. my Economics dissertation on the Economics of the Pharmaceutical Industry. I am proud of that piece of work, which achieved a first class mark, but in truth it should have been finished before revision time came around in April 1984.

My flat, Barnes L54, had just two of us regular residents: me and Chris “Farmer” Spencer. Pete Wild’s girlfriend, Melissa Oliveck, was there, at least for that first chunk of the vacation, while Malcolm Cornelius was occupying Alan “Great Yorkshire Pudding” Gorman’s room.

One aspect, unmentioned in the diary but which I remember very clearly, was a short-lived tradition of making Irish coffee at the end of the evening on return from the Union. I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago (March 2024) when my wife, Janie, ordered an Irish coffee after our meal in Petworth (see headline image and below).

I recalled that we were trying to get work done for our finals, so were not spending much time in the bar. Instead, Malcolm and I tried many different ways to prepare the Irish coffee in the flat – all in the interests of science of course.

I remarked to the maître d’ in Petworth that Malcolm and I had concluded that the essential component to make the cream float nicely was the sugar content within the coffee. The maître d’ explained that, to get a full-on Irish coffee to look the way the coffee looks in our photos, you also need to bring each ingredient to the right temperature before combining and use cream with the right fat content.

Back to the drawing board, Malc.

The woeful tale of my attempts to revise for finals will continue soon, after a short interlude next time, to describe a visit that Ashley Fletcher and I made to a Keeley food collective group in Newcastle.