Ouch!
I found a lot of my sabbatical year hard work. Occasionally I found the work emotionally challenging too.
Still, I doubt if I’ll find a more unequivocally miserabilist entry in any of my diaries, across the many years I kept such notes, than 30 August 1984:
Thursday, 30 August 1984 – horrendously busy day – including suicide, Frank [Dillon]’s burglary and loads of misery. Went to McDonald’s and pub in eve confused and wretched.
Suicide was an issue that constantly worried Keele staff and students alike. At one time Keele had a reputation for having a high suicide rate amongst students, despite also having a reputation for having very high satisfaction ratings. Existential Marmite?
Seriously, I recall being very upset when I learnt that Theo had committed suicide in the spring of that year, while I was completing my finals. I knew she was troubled; she and I had discussed the sorts of things she might get involved with in the Education & Welfare Office during my sabbatical year.
Whether I really would have been able to help her or not, we’ll never know. Things got too much for her that spring and she chose to end her life. Those close to Theo (in particular Ashley Fletcher and Simon Legg) chose not to tell me about her death until after my finals in the June, because they thought the news might upset me (it certainly did) and thus disturb what little equilibrium I had for finals cramming.
I don’t recall the details of the suicide I refer to in this diary entry. I don’t think it was anyone I really knew and I suspect it had happened away from the campus – possibly someone who had failed their resits or in some other way knew they were in trouble at Keele, but not someone who had presented themselves to me.
I also don’t remember any of the details of Frank Dillon’s burglary, except that he found it disturbing, as anyone who has experienced being the victim of burglary would attest.
Friday, 31 August 1984 – busyish day with resits and Frank’s business. Bobbie arrived in evening, moved, and then went to Hong Kong Garden for meal.
Saturday, 1 September 1984 – Went shopping late morning and dossed around, finished moving and cooked Bobbie a meal in the evening.
I say “moved” and “finished moving” in glib phrases, but this was a change of some moment for me. I had shared flats in Barnes for two-and-a-half years, very happily for the two years in Barnes L54 as discussed in several earlier pieces and as reprised in a letter to Concourse that June.
I moved into my own flat, in Horwood K Block. It was a small “resident tutor’s flat” which was basically two study bedrooms and the end of a corridor repurposed as a two-room flat with a living room (one of the study bedrooms), a small bedroom & a small bathroom (the other study bedroom) and a galley kitchen (the repurposed end of the corridor).
It was small, but it worked and it was all mine. Actually, I say “all mine” but it proved remarkably popular as a doss house for people who for one reason or another, couldn’t get to their own places for the night – e.g. John White, who moved off campus for that year but quite often wanted to stay on. John became very well acquainted with the floor of my so-called living room.
Despite the many visitors, I acquired a taste for having “a couple of rooms of my own” on the back of this experience and have never quite shaken off the desire, at times, to retire to my own little place.
The Friday diary entry confirms my suspicion that Hong Kong Garden was my Chinese restaurant of choice at that time. Anyone else remember it?
Did I ever thank Bobbie properly for helping me with my move? I know it was only from one side of the main campus to the other, but I do recall that the extra muscle really helped. Bobbie might not be the tallest person around, but, certainly in those days, she was pretty strong and could lug boxes as well or better than most folk.
Still, misery and the drudgery of moving turned to laughter the next day, on the back of my unfortunate but memorable cock-up with tickets for the theatre in Hanley: