The late, great Alan Gorman, aka The Great Yorkshire Pudding, with thanks to Susan Gorman for the photo
Thursday 24 May 1984: Did some work today – played tennis in afternoon – worked at Bobbies in eve – came back after.
Friday 25 May 1984: Did some work today (not very much) – cold etc – worked over at Bobbies in eve.
Saturday 26 May 1984: Went shopping in afternoon (-McDonalds ) – played tennis in afternoon – went Bobbies to work in evening – stayed.
This was part of a short period between the end of my Law Finals exams and the start of my Economics Finals exams.
I do remember playing rather a lot of tennis at that time.
The tennis (when the opponent was not named in the diary) would have been Alan Gorman, aka The Great Yorkshire Pudding.
Pudding and I played a great deal that year, including several five match thrillers, which might well have taken in excess of three hours to complete.
I have a vague recollection that one of our five set thrillers did take place in that interval between my finals exams and I have a feeling it would have been the 24 May match, which preceded me having a cold the next day – a minor illness probably exacerbated by an excess of tennis.
Pudding and I were quite evenly matched at tennis, although we were very different in playing styles and physique. Pudding was tall and skinny, with “long levers” (as we say these days) and a fair bit of strength. I was much shorter, skinny, compact and comparatively feeble – but I was quick around the court and quite cunning in my style. Our matches were nearly always close.
We didn’t look much like this in 1984, but Ivan Lendl did.
The tennis courts were not much used, so we could usually play whenever we wanted for however long we wanted.
Unfortunately for me, several members of the Economics Department were amongst the very small band of other regulars on those courts, not least Professor Les Fishman, Mrs Fishman and Peter Lawrence. I don’t think they were impressed by the duration and intensity of our matches that close to my finals.
So many books. so little time put aside for reading them…
OK, I didn’t have quite so many books back then, nor did I need to go through all of them for my finals. Strangely, I have kept most of the books I did read for those exams, as I have always struggled to part company with books, even dull textbook-type books.
This shelf – promoted to the least-touched, hard-to-reach top shelf now, has a lot of the material I went through for my finals.
I had three law papers to do: Civil Liberties, Criminology and Consumer Protection. I remember feeling that the Civil Liberties and Consumer Law material was still reasonably fresh in my mind and just needed a bit of cramming, whereas the Criminology, which I had been taught the year before, was far more evasive.
Because I had decided to defer Criminology until finals, I hadn’t done much on it during my P2 year, so much of the reading I was doing was “vision” more than “revision”. For Criminology, which is a fairly broad-based, sociological subject, perhaps that was just as well. I decided to focus my “vision” on books by the academics who taught the course: Pat Carlen and Mike Collinson, with just a smidge of reading around the topic. This seemed to work.
Don Thompson’s style of teaching Civil Liberties and Michael Whincup’s style of teaching Consumer Protection seemed, to me, to be more oriented towards preparng for exams, so my tutorial notes and just a bit of reading around felt more appropriate.
But let’s be honest about this – even in the 20 days or so running up to and into those exams, I was hardly devoting myself exclusively to the task. Diaries don’t lie.
1 to 6 May 1984 – Tennis The Only Distraction By The Looks Of It
Tuesday 1 May 1984 – Worked a little – played tennis [must have been Alan “The Great Yorkshire Pudding” Gorman, as unnamed] – worked over at Bobbie’s in eve.
Wednesday 2 May 1984 – Shopped today – did some work during day – did some more at B’s in eve.
Thursday 3 May 1984 – Did a little work – played tennis with Viv [Vivian Robinson – strangely I have little recollection of playing tennis with her but it seems I did so more than once]– went to J-Soc in eve -> Bobbie’s to do some work later.
Friday 4 May 1984 – did some work – not much – did some work there [Bobbie’s] in eve.
Saturday 5 May 1984 – Did no work during the day – shopped plus played tennis with Pudding in afternoon. Went Bobbie’s in eve.
Sunday 6 May 1984 – Got up quite early. Did some work today – went over to B’s to do some more work.
Not too bad I suppose. I’m not sure how Bobbie recalls this period – if she recalls it at all. I think she had far better concentration and ability to revise/cram than I had. She might have perceived my restlessness as a distraction, but perhaps we were genuinely good for each other in terms of allocated long evenings to revise together. As a routine, it certainly helped me.
7 to 13 May 1984 – Throw In Some Union Stuff & Even Snooker On TV As Well As Tennis
Monday 7 May 1984 – Did some work – went to Constitutional Committee in eve -> Bobbie’s after – watched snooker and worked.
Tuesday 8 May 1984 – Did some work – played tennis with Pudding in afternoon – worked at Bobbie’s in eve.
Wednesday 9 May 1984 – Went shopping in afternoon – went over to B’s to work in eve.
Thursday 10 May 1984 ,- Did some work – played tennis with Viv in early eve – went over to Bobbie’s in evening.
Friday 11 May 1984 – Did some work today – worked more over at Bobbie’s in eve.
Saturday 12 May 1984 – Went shopping with Bobbie in the afternoon. Worked there in evening.
Sunday 13 May 1984 – got up early to work – worked over Bobbie’s in eve – re [her] first exam…
I don’t suppose many finalists persevered with Constitutional Committee 10 days or so before their finals. Snooker as a further distraction doesn’t really sound like me, however dull the particular chunk of revision I was doing that evening might have been.
I wasn’t much into snooker, but Alan The Great Yorkshire Pudding” Gorman was and I suspect Bobbie must have been too. If snooker was Bobbie’s distraction, I was surely a willing participant in such distraction. Easily distracted from revision, me.
A little bit of Googling tells me that Monday 7 May was the nail-biting climax of the World Snooker Championship Final between Steve Davis and Jimmy White. Here’s a vid for those who like snooker.
14 to 20 May 1984
Monday 14 May 1984 – Did work today – Bobbie’s first exam – Ashley [Fletcher] came round – UGM eve – did a little work after.
Tuesday, 15 May 1984 – Did some work today – tennis with Pud [Alan “The Great Yorkshire Pudding” Gorman]. Worked a little more over at Bobbie’s after.
Wednesday, 16 May 1984 – Went shopping today – worked at B’s in eve.
Thursday, 17 May 1984 – Worked quite hard on elections today – J-Soc also. Worked especially hard at B’s in eve.
Friday, 18 May 1984 – Day before exams – shopped in afternoon – worked hard in eve.
Saturday 19 May 1984 – CIVIL LIBERTIES [paper] in afternoon – did a little work in evening as well – earlyish night.
Sunday, 20 May 1984 – Worked some during day – and worked hard in evening.
A couple of references to working hard in the run up to my first paper, which does suggest that my work on those other days and evenings had not been quite as focussed.
I really did manage to cultivate the ability to focus and work ridiculously hard for several decades after this period…
…but very evidently not while I was preparing for my Keele finals.
21 to 23 May 1984 – Two Law Papers – Lows, Highs, The Psychedelic Furs & Tottenham Hotspurs
Monday, 21 May 1984 CRIMINOLOGY [paper] in morning – low in afternoon – went UC [Union Committee] – very down in eve also.
Tuesday, 22 May 1984 – Rose early. Worked hard on consumer protection – then CONSUMER PROTECTION [paper] afternoon – went Hanley for meal and Psychedelic Furs concert in the evening most pleasant.
Wednesday, 23 May 1984 – Went shopping, Pudding [tennis presumably] etc. in the afternoon – went over Bobbie’s in the evening. Did some work – watched football etc.
I think the low on the Monday after the Criminology paper was two-fold. I know I felt that I hadn’t had a good exam (it can’t have been too bad) but Bobbie came out of her last Law paper (I think European Law or International Law) convinced that she had badly screwed up. Of course she hadn’t, but I do remember that being one of the very few times I saw Bobbie in a blue funk about anything. (If only Bobbie’s distant memory were better, she could no doubt retell many examples of my blue funks).
By the next day I felt much better, not least because I sensed that I had written a decent Consumer Law paper and the added relief that the Law exams were over. Just Economics to go!
The fact that I had completely neglected Economics since completing my dissertation did not prevent me from celebrating the end of the Law finals with Bobbie in Hanley. I think it would have been the Chinese restaurant and then to Victoria Hall for an excellent Psychedelic Furs concert.
If you want to know what The Psychedelic Furs sounded like in May 1984, the BBC recorded and broadcast their concert at Hammersmith Odeon a week after the Victoria Hall concert. Here is that one hour recording:
If you prefer to see what they looked like back then, there is a slightly blurry YouTube from Madrid that year, part of the same tour, which is a very similar if not identical set to the one we would have seen:
The football we watched on Wednesday 23 May 1984 will have been the UEFA Cup Final between Tottenham Hotspur and Anderlecht. Football wasn’t really my thing, but it was Bobbie’s thing. Forever Everton in Bobbie’s case. Also, although I didn’t support Tottenham Hotspur (or indeed any football team), I had spent more time at White Hart Lane than any other ground, taken there as a kid many times by Stanley Benjamin and then later the holiday job work crowd, who also tended to favour that team/ground. You can read all about that UEFA Cup classic and look at clips of it on the Tottenham Hotspur site – click here – I’m not the only person who writes stuff up 40 years on, you know.
This current piece shows H Ackgrass’s third column, which was published in May 1984. Somewhat irritatingly, I have the carbon copy of this one, which was more or less reproduced in full, but not the second, pruned one. I set out my grievance in excruciating detail at the start of this third column. Quentin chose to publish the grievance in full.
Here it is, firstly in its published form, from Page 11 of Concourse May 1984, then in its unexpurgated (not that it was much expurgated) carbon copy form.
If by any chance some readers want to know what Steve Cleary had to say in complaint about my second column, here is a copy of the letter as published in the same edition of Concourse:
Amongst my Keele papers I also have the original of Steve Cleary’s letter to Concourse. I cannot fathom how that came into my possession. Either Steve placed a copy in the “Ha” pigeon hole for Hackgrass to pick up or possibly genial Uncle Quentin gave it to me as a souvenir once I outed myself as Hackgrass in the summer of 1985. Steve might know…and Steve might, by now, have forgiven me.
…I received a surprising amount of correspondence about it. One very kind piece of correspondence from Philip Lucas, responding to my bemoaning the fact that I had a copy of the old constitution my labours were replacing but not the magnum opus I helped to produce, said:
…would you like my original copies of the 1984 Constitution and Standing Orders…? I am happy to post them to you.
Another, from Malcolm Cornelius, stated that he recalled working with me on proof-reading that revised constitution document. I remembered that too, when reminded. Heck, now that the document itself has arrived, we have documentary evidence that Malcolm’s assertion was true.
No wonder Malcolm and I were exploring ways of imbibing coffee and whiskey jointly too!
Many readers are no doubt itching to read bits of the 1984 Constitution and Standing Orders, not least because it is a proto-example of gender-neutral drafting.
I am in retrospect proud of myself for taking on such a dull yet useful task. I believe firmly that Malcolm Cornelius and I should qualify for Honorary Life Membership of The Dull Men’s Club by dint of having done this. I might even write to the doyens of that club requesting same. The only nagging question about that, of course, is whether Malcolm and I should insist on the club changing its name to “The Dull Persons’ Club” or “The Dull People’s Club” before we would accept the honour.
Parenthetically, and with characteristic proof-reading pedantry, I now far prefer the word “people” to the word “persons”, the former feeling more like flowing English to me, the latter feeling more like a sub-editor’s short-cut to a gender neutral word.
Back then we could have taken our lead from Depeche Mode, of all people, who were in the Top Ten around that time with the following hymn to diversity:
