Month: January 1985

Keele (Including A Free January 1985 SU Disco Playlist), Knightsbridge, Kings College Hospital & Multiple Wine Prizes, Mid January 1985

I believe this scribbled note is the playlist from the Real Ale Bar Opening Disco

In the last episode, I described the re-opening of the Ballroom Bar as a Real Ale bar, with John White and I DJ-ing the disco in a less than sober fashion.

Why Oh FY? – My Most Highly Praised Piece Of Statistical Work Ever, Plus Other Keele Happenings Such As Opening The Real Ale Bar, Early In The Spring Term, 1985

I am now pretty sure that the hand-scrawled disco playlist I discovered amongst my papers some years ago, see headline picture, must be the playlist from that gig. It looks like a playlist conceived by committee – it certainly doesn’t remind me of the type of playlist that John and I would (often quite hastily) construct earlier in the evening to give the disco the vibe and shape we wanted. Our personal choice tended to focus more on Motown, Northern Soul and general sixties dance music.

I vaguely remember the discussion with several members of the committee. Pady Jalali insisting that we play the Band Aid song at some point – John and I reluctantly agreeing to open with that song as a clarion call to let people know that the show was starting, as it would empty the dance floor anywhere else in the set. I’m pretty sure Kate Fricker chose the Madonna song and it had to be Pete Wild and/or Hayward Burt who insisted on some ZZ Top.

John and I unquestionably insisted on Police Officer by Smiley Culture, which was high on our list of personal favourites at that time:

Actually, you can hear the entire playlist, which I curated into a 40th anniversary playlist on my YouTube Music account – click here for that playlist – don’t be put off if the link is struck through – anyone can click and listen – you’ll get adverts if you don’t have a YouTube Music account, that’s all. I’ll be surprised f you haven’t had a little bit of a private dance (or in my case at the time of writing, hobble) by the time you hear Neutron Dance by the Pointer Sisters, if not before.

Let’s move on.

A Quick Trip To London, Including A Chance Encounter With Neil & Trish Hyman In Knightsbridge And A Planned Encounter With My Mum In Kings College Hospital

Not Keele: Knightsbridge, London, SW1 by Christine Matthews, CC BY-SA 2.0

Here’s my diary extract from that weekend.

AI systems are now smart enough to read the charred remains of the Herculaneum scrolls…but still have no chance with my handwriting. I’ll have to do this transliteration myself:

Friday, 18 January 1985 – Very busy in office with busts etc. Went to London quite early. Stayed in etc etc

Saturday, 19 January 1985 – Rose lunchtime – drank and had haircut. Went to Chicago Rib [Shack, in Knightsbridge] in evening – Met Neil Hyman and Trish [Hyman] etc – weird. Stopped over.

Sunday, 20 January 1985 – Went home in the morning – lunch at Levinsons [friends in our street]. Went to see mum – then back to Keele. Went to see Petra [Wilson] briefly.

I’ll explain, in a later article, a bit more about my role as Education & Welfare officer helping students who had been busted. No idea why I saw so many on that Friday – I don’t think it was anything to do with our disco a couple of nights before.

I assume I stayed at Bobbie’s place in East Finchley. “Rose lunchtime, drank, had haircut” does not sound like me any more (he says, while writing between 6:00 & 7:00 am), but it does sound like the 22 year old me.

It will have seemed and still seems a strange coincidence to encounter Neil Hyman & his sister Trish, friends from my BBYO days, in the Chicago Rib Shack in Knightsbridge. Firstly, because Neil and Trish were from the Lytham St Annes group, which is some way removed from Knightsbridge . Differently posh, I suppose.

Secondly, the Chicago Rib Shack is not the first place you might think of to encounter, by chance, friends from a Jewish Youth Organisation. Perhaps we were all trying out some seminal vegan options in the place.

In some ways more coincidentally, on the back of a subsequent conversation, I discovered that Bobbie’s mum was Greta Spector’s sister. Her sons, Martin Spector and the late, great Jeffrey Spector were mainstays of BBYO in St Annes and indeed nationally. Neil and I served together on Jeffrey’s National Executive for a while in 1979.

Jeff Spector, Spring 1979

On the Sunday I went over to Streatham for lunch with my dad at Norman & Marjorie Levinson’s house. Presumably they were taking pity on dad and feeding him while my mum was in hospital. Very kind people they were – to me as a child and great friends to my parents for the rest of their lives.

Norman up front, my dad to the right

Mum was in hospital having her second hip replaced in Kings College Hospital. She had the first one replaced there in February 1975 and then needed the second one done 10 years later. Don’t know what it is about the start of years with a five in them, but I need to have one of my hips replaced and shall do so in a couple of week’s time (as I write in January 2025).

Back To Keele, Where Wednesday’s Wine Win & Waffles Needs Explaining

What do you mean, you can’t read or understand that? Oh, all right then:

Monday 21 January 1985 – Union Committee in morning – very busy rest of day. Const [itutional Committee] in evening – drink after. Petra came over later.

Tuesday 22 January 1985 – Busy day today – meetings etc. Cheap drink in evening. Petra came over later.

Wednesday, 23 January 1985 -Lots to do and meetings etc. Won wine today. Stayed in in eve – went for Waffles at Ben’s [Benita Wishart] later.

Thursday, 24 January 1985 – Busy and productive day. Lots of meetings in early evening. Petra came over later.

“Cheap drink” presumably means one of those promotion evenings in the Union, when one of the suppliers would try to encourage students towards their brand with infeasibly cheap offerings. I remember being put off Pernod for life with one of those earlier in my time at Keele. Sadly, with my diary being unspecific about the brand involved on 22 January 1985, unless a reader chimes in with a detailed memory, we’ll never know which particular tipple was cheap that night.

Clearly I didn’t over-indulge as my diary for the next day reads very industrious and perky. And who wouldn’t be perky when they had “won wine”. A whole case of Henri Maire wine at that.

Photo by Marianne Casamance, CC BY-SA 4.0

Here’s the story of how I won it.

While I was with my parents for Christmas, my dad showed me some vouchers and forms he had collected for an Henri Maire wine prize competition. He had bought enough of the wine for two entries. You had to answer a few quite simple questions about Henri Maire wine and then provide a slogan. Top prize, a case of Henri Maire wine. Several other prizes were also on offer. Dad had no clue on the slogans and asked me to help.

My entry – i.e. the one in my name, which ended up winning the case of wine that was sent to me at Keele, was:

Whatever the fare, drink Henri Maire.

Simple and to the point, I thought it might pick up a consolation prize. Dad preferred my other, more baroque idea for a slogan:

Tous les “Hooray Henris” boivent Henri Maire

The arrival of the winning case of “more than half decent” wine caused quite a stir in the Students’ Union that morning. Not exactly an every day event at Keele, that.

I remember excitedly calling my dad to let him know then news. He excitedly told me that my other slogan had also won a prize.

Screw you, Henri Maire. (That wasn’t the slogan). That prize, forty years on.

Dad was absolutely insistent that I keep the corkscrew. I still have it, although, as you can see, it has seen better days. I did keep back a couple of bottles of the prize-winning wine for dad, which I took down on my next visit to my folks.

For some strange reason I became tremendously popular at Keele, for a short while, after that case of wine arrived.

I don’t really understand the diary reference that says that I stayed in that evening but then went over to Benita’s place for waffles. It can only mean, I think, that my intention had been to stay in and that I had sunk into an evening off mode, before Petra (who was very friendly with Benita at that time) persuaded me to join the waffle party…

…possibly with one of those bottles of wine in hand.

Lovely lass, Benita. I think I have tracked her down on the net so we’ll see if she has anything to add to the memory of waffles or even other matters in this series of articles forty years on.

Why Oh FY? – My Most Highly Praised Piece Of Statistical Work Ever, Plus Other Keele Happenings Such As Opening The Real Ale Bar, Early In The Spring Term, 1985

All about timing…more than could be said for the Keele Clock House clock back then

I had been approached by some FY (Foundation Year) students at the end of the autumn term who said that they would have preferred FY exams to be at the end of the term being examined rather than the first Friday of the new term. Those students suggested that they thought that the majority would agree with them.

I put the matter to Professor Watson Fuller, the head of the physics department and Chair of FY Committee, who agreed with me that I should do a survey of the students to ascertain their views on this. He would support a change if a clear majority wanted a change.

Annalisa de Mercur, who was Academic Secretary that year, worked with me on a simple survey. We considered using this as an opportunity to ask other questions, but decided in the end to focus on the single question, with a binary choice, plus room for comments.

Thinking very far ahead and very deeply indeed

Annalisa recalled that the first FY lecture of the spring term was a crowd puller with maximum attendance and thus a suitable time and space for us to maximise “voting turnout”. I am pretty sure it was Eddie Slade himself (also Physics, then Senior Tutor also) delivering the lecture and I am pretty sure he gave our survey a good plug. We had left a form on each seat in the packed FY lecture theatre.

In truth I cannot remember what the lecture was about. Perhaps it was cosmology or perhaps it was atomic physics. Something to do with one sort of big bang or another, I shouldn’t wonder…possibly both sorts.

Annalisa and I were focussed on guarding the doors and, between us, getting as many people as possible to vote. If I remember correctly, some 95% of the FY students turned up to that lecture and some 95% of attendees voted, making our turnout around 90% of all FY students.

I also recall that the interval between that lecture and the next FY Committee meeting was very short and that the deadline for papers was actually the Friday before the lecture. I agreed with Watson Fuller that I would write a short method paper to meet the committee papers deadline, and table the results of the survey itself on the day of the meeting.

The vote was, as I recall it, roughly 70% preferring to keep things as they were, with some 30% of FY students preferring to get the exams out of the way before the holidays.

Chi-squared distribution test for sampling proportions – surplus to requirements

Mercifully, I didn’t need to dig out my (at that time, probably quite rusty) notes on statistical significance tests, as a 70%/30% vote with the “sample” comprising some 90% of the entire population being sampled is, in technical statistical terms, “a slam dunk”. I also summarised for each side of the case the three or four most commonly stated (and main) points that came from the comments. Some people would prefer to be examined while the material was fresh in their minds and to get the exams out of the way – most wanted to use some of their holiday time to revise (or “vise”, I should imagine, if they were anything like me in the matter of FY lecture attendance).

At the meeting, Professor Fuller heaped this tiny piece of research with glowing praise, admiring our method – in particular the decision to keep the survey focussed and simple, the attention to detail in maximising the size of the sample and the clarity with which we expressed our findings.

So fulsome was he with his praise, I thought he might be taking the piss, but I was told by several academics afterwards that Watson Fuller would have been completely sincere when saying those things. He certainly repeated them at the Senate meeting when that point came up in the FY Committee report.

I have spent a fair chunk of my working life making a living out of operational research and statistics – some of it award-winning and much of it quite sophisticated stuff using machine learning…

Click here to read all about it – you know you want to.

…yet I cannot ever remember a piece of my statistical work being heaped with such lavish praise as Professor Fuller’s fulsome praise of that January 1985 FY Committee paper on exam timings.

It was only my appointments diary that reminded me about that research interlude; my personal diary was relatively bland over that period. For the sake of completist readers (or more likely just for my own benefit) here is a transcript of those days:

Monday, 7 January 1985 – Not very productive day – stayed in and had early night.

Tuesday, 8 January 1985 – Got quite a lot done today. Played trivial pursuit at Pady’s in evening.

Wednesday, 9 January 1985 – Not terribly productive day. Petra came over in the evening and stayed.

Thursday, 10 January 1985 – Didn’t get much done today – went out for meal (UC) for Pady’s birthday to Micky’s.

Friday 11 January 1985 – Got lots done in morning – Union Committee in afternoon (chaotic). Staff party in evening – few showed – very unpleasant day.

Saturday, 12 January 1985 – Really low today. Went shopping. Moped around all day. Petra came over late evening. [That must have been fun for Petra judging by my description of my mood!]

Sunday, 13 January 1985 – Stayed in bed virtually all day. Went over to Kate’s for dinner in evening.

Monday 14 January 1985 – Very busy in office today. First real day of term. Stayed in the evening.

Tuesday 15 January 1985 – Lots on today – rushed a bit. Stayed in in evening – Petra came over.

Wednesday, 16 January 1985 – Senate etc today – lots to do. Opened Real Ale bar – did disco with John [White] – got v drunk.

Thursday, 17 January 1985 – Lots on today – including FY committee. Busy evening – Petra came over later on – cooked meal etc.

After all we had been through in the matter of the bar managers in the first half of our year, opening the new real ale bar (i.e. converting the Ballroom Bar into a real ale specialising bar) felt like a positive new beginning.

Image of the Ballroom Bar “borrowed” from the Keele Oral History site.

During our grand opening and disco, no doubt John sank several pints of Pedigree. I might have focussed on the Banks’s Mild but probably partook of both.

Ironically, I can no longer drink beer at all – as I worked my way through my forties I became completely intolerant to it. Still, better to have been able to drink the real ale back in my Keele days, when I was best placed to appreciate it. As with the FY exams question, I believe I got my timings right!

Keele UKSU Summer Ball Menu of Events, guessing 1984 ball with my notes from January 1985

Disco playlist, presumed 16 January 1985

A strange artefact, this one. My initial, cursory look led me to guess that this must be from the 1985 summer ball. But I don’t think Pady booked Bad Manners and The Sweet. Also, I recall performing Ringroad in the Main Ballroom for the 1985 Summer Ball.

Pady might remember both of those balls and more besides, if that memory of hers lasts 30+ years. We’re seeing her in a couple of weeks’ time (this post authored March 2016), so I’ll be sure to ask her.

In any case, the notes on the back of the Summer Ball Events Menu have a January 1985 look about them, not least my (rather unusual) disco guest spot playlist.

Indeed the playlist looks like a collection designed by committee, which is why I am guessing that this was a list of request by members of the committee for the night we opened the Ballroom Bar as a real ale bar, after which John and I DJ’d. It was unlike the discos John and I curated by our choice alone, which tended to focus on Motown, Northern Soul and sixties sounds.

So I’m guessing the Summer Ball in question was 1984 and that I was recycling a piece of paper for notes early in 1985.

Here’s both sides of the artefact. You, dear reader, might wish to chime in with comments if you were there and it triggers a memory or three.

Keele Students’ Union Committee Goes Mad In Somerset & I Get Mortified With Embarrassment, 4 to 6 January 1985

Haywood Farm in Somerset Maurice Pullin, CC BY-SA 2.0…not to be confused with Hayward Burt’s family farm in Somerset, which was the location of our visit.

Whose idea was it to have a Keele Union Committee team-building countryside retreat in Somerset early January? I’d love to “blame” anyone and everyone on the committee but me. However, my appointments diary entry of 22 November reminds me that I was involved in the planning.

“Farm & Fricker (4.30 to 5.00 pm)”, I now realise, was a meeting with Kate (now Susan) Fricker and Chris “Farmer” Spencer, the later of whom had been one of my Barnes L54 flatmates and was now one of Hayward’s Barnes L54 flat mates.

Hayward Burt in Barnes L54, sitting in “my” favourite place

We discussed the logistics of getting the whole of Union Committee from Keele to Somerset. I think, from memory, the plan involved Chris visiting his family in Devon that weekend in the Union minibus, dropping us Union Committee folk at the Burt farm in Somerset and then collecting us again on the way back to Keele.

The happening was arranged for the first weekend of 1985.

Before I describe the singularly mortifyingly embarrassing episode from this adventure, I should say that, on the whole, I remember the event as being a success. We had, as a group, been through quite an ordeal with the Bar Management Saga, which had just reached its Tribunal conclusion just a few days ahead of this “Union Committee field trip”. The idea of team building and resetting for the remaining two terms of our three term tenure was a good idea that mostly worked.

Friday, 4 January 1985 – Left London early and came to Keele. All went off to Somerset in the afternoon – went to pub in evening.

Saturday, 5 January 1985 – Lazyish day in Taunton – walked in afternoon – went to pubs in evening etc.

Sunday, 6 January 1985 – Went out to farm for lunch, then came back to Keele early evening – had drink in Union.

My diary is very light on detail, so it is just as well some aspects have stuck indelibly in my memory. No idea where we did our pub drinking, but the picture below, dated 1985 by the author, is quite possibly one of the pubs we tried. In any case, The Greyhound Inn is great eye candy and a pleasant diversion ahead of the tale of my embarrassment.

1985 Staple Fitzpaine Greyhound Inn, near Taunton, Somerset by Hazel Greenfield, CC BY-SA 2.0

Whose idea was it to have an informal sort-of confessions game one evening as part of that Union Committee team-building exercise? I’d love to “blame” anyone and everyone on the committee but me. Unfortunately, it was my type of idea. I am pretty sure that I suggested it, or at least warmly welcomed the idea when someone else suggested it while we were planning the event.

One of the reasons I was keen to play such a game was my increasing unease at the fact that only a small sub-group on the committee (basically the other sabbaticals) knew that I had started going out with Petra Wilson the previous term.

Enter Petra Wilson, Stage Left…Plus A John Martyn Gig On The Keele SU Ballroom Stage, 8 to 15 November 1984

It wasn’t that I had deliberately kept the matter secret, it was simply one of those things that emerged by stealth and which I had only, until then, disclosed to those with whom I was spending more time; in the case of the committee I think just the sabbaticals. Annalisa also knew by then.

Anyway, point is, I thought the confessions game, one evening in the pub, would be an ideal opportunity to let the others know…

…which it would have been…

…but for the unfortunate seating arrangement, with Ali Dabbs directly to my right and therefore having his go at the confessions game just before mine.

Ali Dabbs confessed to having a crush on Petra. Ali probably didn’t speak for all that long – I think we were all aiming for “just a minute” or 90 second vignettes – but I was mortified with embarrassment and Ali’s speech seemed to be going on for ever.

I didn’t want to catch the eyes of any of the other sabbaticals, who all will have been acutely aware of what was unfolding – not least because I had told them of my plan to use this game as my opportunity to let the rest of the gang know that I was going out with Petra.

[Life must be so much easier these days, where all you need to do is change your social media relationship status and wait for people you know to spot it. On second thoughts, social media relationship status might raise more potential problems and questions than it answers. I digress.]

Worse yet, it dawned on me very quickly that I couldn’t possibly use the confession that I had planned to use. It would have been cruel, albeit truthful.

The whole episode just felt like a kick in the eye for both me and Ali Dabbs. Coincidentally, I was listening to the Bauhaus track of that name quite a lot at that time:

I’m not good at constructing an oral argument without carefully planning what I am going to say. That’s one of the reasons why I like to write rather than make speeches. I’m also not good at lying, nor am I good at bluffing.

In those few seconds that I had to decide what I was going to say, I decided…

…that I couldn’t think of anything at all. My mind was a complete blank, apart from the acute sensation of embarrassment.

In the end, I pathetically aped Ali’s speech and pretended that I had a crush on someone else. I think I picked on one of Petra’s friends, Margaret Gordon, for no better reason than I couldn’t really think of anyone to pick on and her name seemed to have a “least harm” aspect to it if…or I should really say when…the sorry matter needed to be unpicked…within a few weeks. I have a diary mention of Ali Dabbs coming round to my flat on 2 February, which was part of that unpicking.

“I have…I mean, I DON’T have an announcement to make”. Hayward, Trish, Me, Kate (Susan), Ali, Pete.

For some strange reason, I have been utterly averse to confession-type games ever since.

My embarrassing episode, while top of the pile, was not the only embarrassing thing I remember from that “field trip”. I remember Hayward’s dad, who, in my mind’s eye, I’m sure unfairly, resembled The Farmer from Shaun The Sheep movies, referring to Chris Spencer, our Barnes L54 flatmate, as…

…that old bloke you’ve hired to drive your van.

Chris did have a moustache, which possibly made him look a bit more grown up than the rest of us, but I don’t think he looked old. Hayward more or less managed to maintain his trademark deadpan delivery when saying:

That’s not an old bloke, dad, that’s Chris, my flatmate.

Small beer embarrassment compared with mine, but still.

The Keele Students’ Union Tribunal Ends And A New Year Begins, Late December 1984 To 3 January 1985

With thanks to Dave Lee for the “loan” of this frosty Horwood picture.

For those who haven’t been avidly following this saga, the Shrewsbury Industrial Tribunal relating to our Union Committee’s dismissal of the Students’ Union bar managers was supposed to conclude 19 December…

“Just Doing My Keele Students’ Union Sabbatical Job”: Two Gruelling Days At The Industrial Tribunal In Shrewsbury And Post Mortem, 18 to 20 December 1984

…but required two additional days, which were set as Friday 28th and Monday 31st December.

Keele was bitterly cold when I returned to the campus on 27 December and remained so until we left on 31 December. It also felt incredibly bleak too, with almost nobody around.

The diary barely tells the tale, but let me translate my scrawl:

Thursday 27 December – Got up quite early [at parents’ house] – came back to Keele. Kate came over for a while.

I recall that Kate (now Susan) Fricker and I were a little spooked by the bleakness and the fact that Ralph was wandering around the campus. I don’t think he intended to spook or intimidate us, I think more likely Ralph was struggling to come to terms with what was happening to him and was walking a lot, as people with heavy weights on their minds often do.

In my (I now think false) memory, Kate asked to stay at the flat and I slept on the floor, but the diary says “came over for a while”, so on reflection I think the idea of her staying was mooted, but Kate decided in the end to spare me the floor and returned to her own flat for the night.

Friday 28 December – went to Tribunal – seemed to go OK – lazy evening in.

Saturday 29 December – shopped and read in day. Went to Koh-I-Noor with John & co in eve.

I think we sensed that Friday, perhaps for the first time, that the Tribunal was going our way. It was mostly Kate under the cosh that day, plus summing up from both sides, if I remember correctly. I certainly got the impression that Kate was fending off the cross-examination questions well and that the members of the panel were getting more than a little frustrated with interrogation by cross-examination that wasn’t really getting anywhere.

Would you believe the Koh-I-Noor restaurant is still there, forty years later, in Newcastle-Under-Lyme – click here. “John & co” suggests that Kate didn’t opt to join us that evening but that some other members of the committee were with us. Pady and Andy I’d guess. Perhaps also Pete & Melissa. The Koh-I-Noor was a good choice when we had vegetarians with us, as, in those days, Indian restaurants tended to be the only type of meat-serving restaurant that really “got” vegetarianism.

Sunday 30 December – Lazy day in reading etc. Kate & I went to see Ghostbusters in eve. Latish night.

Ghostbusters was THE movie to see in December 1984. I remembered that I had seen it “around the time the movie came out”, but did not remember, until I saw this diary entry, that I had seen it with Kate on the night before the tribunal judgment.

Forty years on, I have “cog. dis.” as to whether that particular movie on that particular evening was especially appropriate or especially inappropriate in the circumstances.

Great movie. The theme song had charted at the end of that summer, so John & I had been playing it at regular discos (i.e. not our 60s/Motown/Northern Soul ones) for some months. It charted again over Christmas when the movie came out. You know you want to hear it…and maybe even shimmy around your living room to that infectious rhythm:

When we returned to Shrewsbury on the Monday morning, we were given the judgment quite quickly, in summary form, with the promise of a full judgment to follow in writing. Basically the tribunal had unanimously found in our favour.

The Evening Sentinel summarised that oral judgement the next (publishing) day:

Sentinel Tribunal Report from 31 December 1984Sentinel Tribunal Report from 31 December 1984 02 Jan 1985, Wed Evening Sentinel (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England) Newspapers.com

Of course we were all relieved, not least Tony Derricott, the Permanent Secretary, who must have felt especially exposed – as to a great extent did I – if the judgment had gone against us.

When we got back to the Students’ Union late morning/early afternoon, I remember Tony getting out cigars and offering them to us, which felt inappropriate to us student reps. We were relieved but not celebratory.

John and I had arranged to meet Annalisa de Mercur and Petra Wilson in London for New Years Eve, so we were also in a hurry to head down to London.

Rushed back to London with John to meet Annalisa and Petra…

…says the diary.

I remember far more than the diary tells. John might remember yet more or other details.

We had arranged to meet the girls at the Albert Memorial. No idea why there, other than it being a well-known landmark which all of us felt reasonably able to find easily and which we felt wouldn’t be a crowded place early evening on New Years Eve. It wasn’t.

John and I had a drink or two (or in John’s case possibly more than two) on the train down. Perhaps we can explain John’s, previously undisclosed, identification blooper as, at least partially, a result of the drink.

As John & I strode along Kensington Gore, John and I had a conversation along the following lines:

JOHN: (excitedly) I think that’s Annalisa in the distance, standing in front of the railings…

ME: (unconvinced)…I don’t think so…(even less convinced)…whatever it is, it’s not moving…

JOHN: (embarrassedly)…oh gawd, it’s not Annalisa. It’s a large pile of bin bags.

ME: Don’t worry, John, I won’t tell her.

Now let me be crystal clear on this point. Annalisa doesn’t and never did resemble a pile of bin bags. John’s excited outburst was no doubt enthusiasm for the anticipated evening with the girls. We were at a ridiculous distance to try to identify anyone – or to distinguish between objects and people.

Also in John’s defence, his optical delusion might have been born of eagerly looking forward to telling Annalisa and Petra that we had won our case. In those pre-mobile-phone days, there was no sensible way to get messages out ahead of meeting up – hence the pre-arrangement to meet at the Albert Memorial.

In fact, John & I had arrived at the Albert Memorial well ahead of the girls, leaving us quite literally in the cold for a good few minutes.

In the February 1985 issue of Concourse, in H Ackgrass’s final/parting newspaper column, I…or rather, better to say, H Ackgrass…wrote:

It’s all coming back to me. John will no doubt claim that he was simply finding imaginative ways to try and keep warm.

Soon enough Annalisa and Petra joined and the mood soon lightened once they learnt that the tribunal judgment had gone our way.

I am 99% sure that we ate at Melati in Great Windmill Street that evening, which was one of my/our favourite places at that time, although the diary is silent on that detail.

Melati, long since gone, this photo from 2014 by Sharjil “borrowed” from Yelp

I’m pretty sure we then ventured in the cold to get as close to Trafalgar Square as we could – which in those days I think meant so darn close that we were actually in the square. For sure we could hear Big Ben striking loud and clear. For sure we celebrated the New Year with the crowds. I vaguely remember hugging and kissing rather a lot of strangers on that occasion. In those days, such conduct was not micro-aggressive or inappropriate – it was simply doing what everyone else was doing in those circumstances.

Petra had arranged for the two of us to stay in a flat in Kennington – her brother, Christian had friends there – they were away and were happy for us to stay. Christian had sensibly advised Petra that we would want to be walking distance from wherever we were going to stay if we were going to do the “midnight in Trafalgar Square” thing. Kennington fitted that bill.

I’m not sure it was the Brandon Estate, but for sure it was down that way. This photo by Reading Tom from Reading, UK, CC BY 2.0

It was actually quite a long walk in the cold after such a long day. I also recall clearly a long cold night at that flat as well. Either the heating in the flat didn’t work or we couldn’t work out how to make it work…we found imaginative ways to try and keep warm. We just about managed to avoid hypothermia.

Tuesday 1 January 1985 – went home mid morning. Lunch. Lazy day at home.

Wednesday 2 January 1985 – went to town – met Caroline lunch. Went NH [Newman Harris] then shopping then met Pete Roberts for dinner.

Thursday 3 January 1985 – rose late. Went Junction [Dad’s shop] in afternoon after taping etc. Lazy evening in taping etc.

I’ll talk some more about the taping in a separate piece about music.

I often met Caroline Freeman (now Curtis) for lunch in those days. I’m intrigued that I visited Newman Harris that day. I sense that I had told someone (Stanley Bloom, presumably, by then) that if the tribunal went against us, I would resign from the Students’ Union and be looking for work in January. I’m just guessing that this visit was to tell them that we had won and to arrange a start date in September.

The only other possibility is that I was already, by then, helping dad keep his shop’s books, in order to help keep his costs down (goodness knows, dad wasn’t doing much business by that time). This visit might have been to deliver or collect something pertained to dad’s accounts, which might explain me visiting the shop the next day.

Dinner with the Pete Roberts will have been fun and interesting. Pete was my predecessor’s predecessor’s predecessor Education & Welfare Officer (in other words 1981/1982). He had become a friend and mentor before he left Keele, and we met up/kept in touch for several years after we both left. I think he was living in Parsons Green by this time or perhaps he was still around Pimlico.

Pete will no doubt have helped me to reorient my thinking about my role post Tribunal. I remember bouncing ideas off him and really valuing his experience and wisdom in matters E&W. He was also reliably good company with an interesting and often amusing take on most subjects.

I thought he’d gone quiet on Facebook of late and was saddened to learn that he died in December 2023.

This is a really pleasing photo of Pete from 2011. I’m sure Rosie won’t mind me “borrowing” it from his Facebook page.

My time in London was short yet again, as I shortly returned to Keele ahead of a Union Committee team bonding long weekend in the Somerset countryside. What could possibly go wrong with that sort of idea?