Saturday 28 June – Worked hard today – went to Levinsons briefly – [squiggle] etc. Mainly work.
Sunday 29 June – Did exam in morning – went to G [Grandma] Jenny in afternoon – watched cup final early evening – went for drink with Andrew after – met Mary etc.
I was working hard at that time, doing my accountancy exams (presumably that Sunday morning thing was a self-administered mock) while working full time and helping to bring dad’s business (he had sold the shop in Feburary) to a graceful closure with the tax authorities.
This was still less than a year after I left Keele; my diaries suggest that I almost exclusively spent my spare time with old friends from Keele apart from my work crowd and some of my old BBYO crowd.
This reference to spending time with Andrew Levinson is the first reference to an old friend from the street or school in 1986 (unless I’ve missed saomething on the skim).
It might well have been Andrew who told me about the sad fate of Wayne Manhood, which I misremembered as something that happened about a year after I left school…but I have it on authority now that it happened about a year after I left University.
“Mary etc.” I think must be a lovely young woman I knew at Keele named Mary who kept popping up wherever I happened to be in that first year after I left Keele. I remember bumping into her when I was doing accountancy courses in Latimer Road and also that she ended up in Streatham for a while.
I dread to think where Andrew and I went for that drink and therefore where Mary etc. were also hanging out back then – our end of Streatham was not great for pubs and I doubt if we wandered far. Horse and Groom most likely – it’s had a makeover fairly recently (he writes in 2020) but was well grimey back then.
Not this type of grime…
…but no doubt you get the gist.