On Learning That Former Schoolmate Wayne Manhood Had Died, c30 June 1981… Correction: 1986

With thanks to Martin Cook, from whom I have “borrowed” the above photograph, depicting Wayne Manhood with soccer ball and trophy, front-centre. Link available only to Alleyn’s Facebook alumni – hence the crossed-out appearance of this link..

Prescript

This posting has generated a lot of discussion on the Alleyn’s 1970s Alumni Facebook Group, not least people pointing out that Wayne died 1985 or 1986 – consensus coalescing around 1986. As I have said on the group:

It’s extraordinary how memory plays tricks. I so clearly remember a maudlin conversation with Jimmy Bateman about the fragility of life on that very first occasion that he and I went to that UCL Bar and then The Sun, summer 1981, but I now realise THAT conversation must have been triggered by the sudden death of my uncle a few weeks earlier…

…I’ll update/correct the blog piece once I have gathered more thoughts – not least my own. Some of the comments are very moving and so many interesting thoughts. Thanks again.

Below is that updated piece, with the original, jumbled piece below that, just for the record.

21 February 2020 – A Better Informed Reminiscence Of How I learnt the News Of Wayne Manhood’s Demise

The collective brains of the Alleyn’s School alums suggest strongly that the tragic event happened in the spring or summer of 1986. At that time, less than a year after I had come down from Keele, I was spending almost all of my time with Keele friends and work colleagues. In fact my first reference for meeting up with anyone from school in 1986 was late June, when I met up with Andrew (Andy) Levinson in Streatham:

Work, Andy Levinson & Watching Football, Possibly The Horse & Groom In Streatham, 28 & 29 June 1986

I’m guessing but the combined forces of Andrew and Fiona Levinson would probably have learnt such news through the grapevine.

However, my diary does note, just a couple of weeks later, a meeting up with Graham Watson and a chance encounter that same day with Jon Graham:

A Couple Of Busy Days Seeing Several Old Friends & Hannah And Her Sisters, 16 & 17 July 1986

What I now know for sure though is that, despite my suggestion that I clearly remembered the event of learning the news about Wayne, the truth of the matter is that I do NOT recall the actual learning of the news. What lives on, though, is the effect the news had on me. The first one of our generation to go. The senselessness of it. Those emotions unquestionably stuck.

As Steve Butterworth so eloquently put it in the e-mail he sent me – I’m sure he won’t mind me reproducing these words:

…It was not fair but Wayne was the unlucky one that night. 

I still visualise the flowers that we’re strapped to the offending lamppost that he crashed into, when travelling on the South Circular!

I expect you’re right about June, as the sun shone brightly at his funeral, but the year was 1986.

None of the above detail (or at least my memory of it!) changes the sentiments in your piece. Thank you for that.

Below is the original, flawed, jumbled-memory piece below unchanged, just for the record.

My 13 February 2020 “Original”, Jumbled Memory Posting

I’m not entirely sure why this tragic event has popped into my head lately. Possibly because I have recently learnt of the demise, or near demise, of several contemporaries (from walks of life other than school).

Wayne Manhood was the first of my contemporaries I learnt had died.

People of our parents’ generation often talk about “remembering what they were doing when they learnt that John F Kennedy had died”. My generation has a similar thing with “the day Princess Diana died”. My guess is that many people from my Alleyn’s School cohort can remember what they were doing when they learnt that Wayne Manhood had died.

I learnt that Wayne Manhood had died from James “Jimmy” Bateman in a bar in UCL, where Jimmy was doing a holiday job in a bubble chamber research laboratory.

I’m pretty sure it was the first time we thus met up that summer, 30 June 1981, because I think the tragic event had occurred before I got back from University. But I will stand corrected if I have got the actual dates confused.

Neither Jimmy nor I knew Wayne Manhood all that well…but everyone in our year knew Wayne. Almost everyone in the school knew Wayne Manhood, not least because he represented the school in so many sports. And also because he was an outgoing and thoroughly nice fellow. Wayne and I had been in the same class in the first year:

My First Class At Alleyn’s School, 1S, And Some Nicknames, guessing 8 January 1974

In truth, I don’t remember whether or not we were in the same class again after that. Was he in 4AT/5AT? Someone out there will know.

In the later years, I only really remember talking to him at cricket matches, on those rare occasions that he wasn’t on the field of play for more or less the whole match. He could bat, could Wayne, much as he could play football and field hockey to very high schoolboy levels.

I remember Wayne encouraging me to play cricket rather than score and umpire so much, refuting my suggestions that I was no good, wisely saying that I could enjoy playing that game (and other games) at a reasonable level.

Yes, it was Jimmy Bateman who broke the news to me that Wayne had died. I’m not sure how he had heard the news, nor even how much detail he was able to share with me. I still don’t know much about what happened. A night out with some old boys from the school. A motorcycle. A fiendish bend in the road in Forest Hill. Am I remembering this correctly? Others might correct me or add detail. The detail matters little.

I remember Jimmy Bateman and I sinking quite a few beers that night. We’d no doubt have done that anyway. I suspect we started in the UCL bar and progressed on to The Sun in Lamb’s Conduit Street, a favourite real ale pub with a fine selection of ales back then (no more, in February 2020), which I continued to frequent for many years.

I remember the song David Watts as an earworm for the news of Wayne’s death. I had acquired a second-hand copy of All Mod Cons by The Jam a few weeks earlier and had been listening to it a lot in the preceding weeks. It was not the tone of envy nor the gay subtext of the David Watts song that resonanted about Wayne, of course, but the notion of a boy most likely from school, a young fellow who was good at everything he attempted:

…he is the captain of the team…

… I dream I could fight like David Watts…

Lead the school team to victory,

and take my exams and pass the lot…

Of course, we are a lucky generation. My father, who was 20 when the second world war started, lost many friends who were in the flower of their youth. Our grandparents’ generation similarly lost so many of their young in one or other of the world wars.

But in some ways, the very fact that losing a compadre at such a tender age was so rare in our generation made Wayne’s death all the more tragic, unexpected and shocking. Life isn’t fair and life is fragile. I hadn’t yet reached the age of 19 in June 1981, but I learnt a little more about those aspects of life when I learnt about Wayne Manhood’s death.

It will soon be 40 years since my cohort left Alleyn’s School. It makes no sense that Wayne saw hardly any of that time.

I have no idea why this subject popped into my head a week or so ago and refused to budge without me writing it up. But write it up I now have. I very much welcome other people’s memories of Wayne Manhood and his passing.