A couple of weeks ago (May 2017) I wrote an Ogblog piece about my first forays into Ringroad Revue – click here. Quick as a flash, John Easom at “Keele Alumni Central” put Frank Dillon in touch with me, triggering e-mail exchanges, arrangements to meet up and of course a flood of more memories.
Frank wrote/asked:
I was particularly intrigued to learn that you are in possession of The Cornflake Box – or The Holy Grail as Olu Odunsi and I have dubbed it these past 30 years(!) or so.
Any chance you could scan me the contents?
The actual box (which I suppose I inherited from Frank in the summer of 1984) disintegrated during 1985 while it was living in my flat (K block Horwood). I think it was probably replaced by another similar box.
My collection of scripts is now in a file – a mixture of original hand-written scripts and photocopies – a fragment of the Holy Grail with some facsimile elements.
I don’t think that I even took the actual box with me…not that it was THE actual box any more, unless we accept that this particular Holy Grail of a Cornflake Box regenerated every few years – a bit like Dr Who…just more funny, less animated and with fewer enemies.
I suspect it will be autumn (2017) before I get space to take on the Ringroad File/Cornflake Box/Holy Grail Fragment for comprehensive scanning and sharing – otherwise I’ll be interrupting my current/future life by spending a disproportionate amount of time wallowing in the past…and that won’t do.
But I do have, already digitised, a recording of the Finalists Revue from 1985, which I have uploaded in two chunks (due to WordPress file size restrictions).
I cannot remember the name of everyone who appeared in the 1985 Finalists Revue – apologies to those whose names I only half remember or forget.
Frank was gone by then. Olu Odunsi was still around and was a delight to work with on the boards, including this show. John Bowen, who was on the research//academic staff, also joined with us for Ringroad that 1984/85 academic year and was similarly good news to have in the team.
Indeed the whole cast was fun and friendly. Dave Griffiths (who also wrote very good material) and three fabulous lasses, Jo, Jackie and (I think) Karen. Possibly there were others, but I think that’s it. Please help me to fill in the gaps if you are able, dear reader.
I have not re-listened to the recording in full myself yet, but I think the second half might be a tad better than the first half. The recording is poor as we had a microphone shortage, so some bits are less audible than others and some sketches sound a bit shouty.
I was pretty hopeless as a performer, really, but I think it was seen as a bit of a coup to have a union sabbatical on the Ringroad cast taking the pee out of union politics. I wrote little back then – my comedy writing was to blossom later, in the 1990s, at NewsRevue.
Enjoy the recording(s) below and please do comment.
Ringroad Finalists Revue 27 June1985 Part One of Two
Ringroad Finalists Revue 27 June1985 Part Two of Two
The wok and rice cooker depicted are 21st century, but the booklets are 1983
My self-education in the matter of producing decent-quality Chinese food in my own (or should I say Barnes L54) kitchen took great strides forward as 1983 progressed.
I bought the Sharwoods leaflets depicted above at some point that year. I cannot remember which shop “took on” Sharwoods displays with these booklets sold cheap but the Sharwoods ingredients depicted within them sold dear. Was it Sainsbury’s in Newcastle-Under-Lyme? Or was it Kermase, the sort-of wholefood store, sort-of rice-and-spice deli? Or was it some other shop with delusions of grandeur that popped up and then disappeared, because grandeur and Newcastle-Under-Lyme don’t really go together?
Anyway, I treasured those little booklets and the techniques/ideas I gleaned from them. I still delve into them occasionally. But I soon tired of the high prices and small bottles of the Sharwoods range – for me the occasional trip to Chinatown in London to gather large bottles of the requisite sauces and packets of dried noodles at sensible student prices. Fresh won-ton wrappers too, once I’d worked out what to put inside them, as described last time…
The other staple substitute which I used in most of my recipes – certainly the stir-fry ones, was beansprouts. These were available in large packets at a very low price in Sainsbury’s. If you knew what you were doing (i.e. just blanch them or toss them into a stir fry right at the end of cooking) they were tasty, nutritious, went a long way and seemed quintessentially Chinese to us at the time, because Chinese restaurants used them.
I shall write up some of my “Keele Barnes L54” recipes in the fullness of time. This week there’s plenty else to write about.
Here’s the diary for the week:
My pattern well set, I love the radical candour of my Tuesday diary entry:
Tried to do loads today – failed.
Forty years on, despite me being older and allegedly wiser now, I can assure readers that I still often have days like that.
I have previously written up the wonderful evening of music that was the Kitchenware Package, which included Hurrah! The Daintees and to top it all Prefab Sprout. I wrote that concert up several years ago, for reasons explained in the following piece, so some readers following “Forty Years On” might have missed the write up – linked here and below:
One element of the Thursday diary entry is baffling me:
Thursday 1 December 1983: Busy day – union stuff etc. Cooked a meal for Viv [Robinson] – went to {Scarves?…Barnes??} with Kate – to Bobbie’s after.
The meal might well have been one of those Chinese meals at that time. It is also quite possible that my flatmate, Alan Gorman, would have participated in that meal. Alan, Bobbie Scully and (to a lesser extent) Viv were guinea-pigs for my Chinese cooking. More on that anon.
But where did we go with Kate and which Kate was this? My first thought was that the word is Barnes, but it makes no sense to go to Barnes after eating in Barnes, unless I meant to write a more specific address within Barnes and missed out a detail. Was there even a place called Scarves or similar for that word to be. Let’s zoom in on that entry:
Perhaps the hive mind of Keele alums can do better with that appalling scribble than my own addled mind is managing.
But a further mystery – which Kate is this? I don’t recall getting to know Kate Fricker as early as that in the 83/84 year, but maybe I did. She might have been friendly with Viv already by then and Viv might have been grooming her for greater things in the Union by early December. Kate might have been Catherine Emerson (now Cathy Butcher), of course whom we called Kate at that time. Cathy will remember I’m sure…not. I can only ask.
Friday 2 December – …Bobbie’s – saw film in Square – stayed there.
I’m trying to recall what “Square” was. I remember a place known as the Hexagon in Lindsay? Did it shed a couple sides and become “Square” in 1983? Or was Square some other place. The fact that I say “stayed there” and Bobbie was very much a Lindsay person (K Block unless I am much mistaken) makes The Square a Lindsay place. I don’t recall seeing films there but the diary says so. Again others might recall these places and events better than me.
Saturday 3 December – …shopped etc – went Asian do in early eve -> union with Bobbie – stayed there for some time.
“Asian do” was probably Chinese Cultural Society although it might have combined forces with some other cultural groups for a pan-Asian do. I recall that Bobbie had a good friend, May Lamb if I remember her name correctly, who went out with Tony Wong, who was a doyen of the Chinese Cultural Society. May’s family ran a Chinese Restaurant in, I think, Hartlepool.
I wonder what those two would have thought of my Chinese cooking? I don’t think I ever had the courage to try it out on them.
Dave Masten Rosen chimed in on Facebook, riffing with me about “Lee Ho Fooks” and Werewolves Of London. In fact I had mentioned Lee Ho Fook No 2 only a few months earlier:
…but without the associated reference to that amazing song, which is presumably about the then main Lee Ho Fook in Gerard Street.
It then occurred to me that “beef chow mein” was one of my regular dishes to cook in the Keele days, although I often substituted chicken. Of course, the recipe is in that little Sharwoods booklet. Here’s the relevant page, as a closing image. You should be able to read the recipe if you look closely enough.
Most of my diary notes from that period suggest that I had my head down working at that time. My impressionistic memory tells me that I was quite urgently seeking to switch from halls in Lindsay to a flat in Barnes at that time, although the diary is silent on that matter until a bit later in the month, when I pulled off that switch.
Still, the diary highlights some interesting events at Keele and an eventful trip to London at that time. Forty years on, it’s time for me to share the highlights.
Friday 5 February 1982 – …stayed in most of evening apart from dreadful film, “The Main Event“.
Yup, that’s not my kind of movie. Never mind.
Saturday 6 February 1982 – Went to Newcastle quite late. Did very little work really. Went to Michelle [Epstein]’s party in evening. Sharon & Louise came back after.
Richard van Baaren &/or Benedict Coldstream might well also have been at that party, as I recall Sharon & Louise being part of that crowd. No mention of Anju on this occasion – perhaps she had something else on. We missed Mari Wilson & The Imaginations for that party, so for sure there were other things to do on campus that night. At that stage, I think Michelle was going out with a character named Joel. I don’t think Michelle got together with Neil [Infield] whom she married – I kept in touch with both of them for many years – until much later in our time at Keele.
Sunday 7 February 1982 – Did some work during day. Went to see Carrie & Scanners in afternoon/evening + did some more work
I have one very clear memory from that psycho-thriller movie double bill at Film Soc. I went to see those movies with a young woman whose name completely escapes me. She was a close friend of Katie’s (aka Cathy) – she of my dad’s embarrassing moment a few month’s earlier. Those two were very close pals of each other and I remained a casual pal with both of them for much of my time at Keele
Update: Katie (Cathy) has put me back in touch with Linda (Jones), who was that young woman at Film Soc 40+ years ago.
In fact, we might not even have gone to those movies “as a date” but possibly both ambled along there solo and simply chosen to sit next to each other, as Film Soc folk often did.
*** Spoiler alert for the movie Carrie ***
At the end of Carrie, the following “jump scare” scene occurs:
…at which point, my young woman friend screamed, jumped and pretty much landed in my lap. Fortunately for me she was quite a skinny, light girl, so she did me no immediate damage. Nor did she injure herself with her jump, other than a little injured pride perhaps as she couldn’t stop apologising for her scare-movie-timidity for the rest of the event.
Ever since then, I haven’t been able to think of the movie Carrie, nor even jump scares in movies generally, without thinking about that young woman and her reaction to that wonderful scene. I was reminded of it the other day (as I write in February 2022), almost exactly 40 years on, when a young woman in front of me and Janie at The Royal Court jumped almost out of her skin at the pre-interval coup de theatre in The Glow:
In February 1982, I didn’t think Scanners was in the same league as Carrie.
Monday 8 February 1982 – …went to [Barnes] G3 for dinner…
It was the G3 crowd (which I think included Rana Sen and Kath), who helped me to find my Barnes flat. I have a feeling that the cunning plan that led to my flat room-for-halls room swap a few week’s later might well have been seeded at that very dinner. More on that swap next time.
Tuesday 9 February 1982 – …went to see Gloria in evening – OK-ish.
Again, not my kind of movie I feel.
Wednesday 10 February 1982 – very busy day – tutorials moved etc. J-Soc committee & Internal Affairs – very busy day all in all. Presidential forum – Simon [Jacobs] & Jon [Gorvett] came back for coffee.
I only vaguely remember being on Internal Affairs committee. Spike Humphrey (who was VP Internal that year) had been a leading light on Concourse the previous year, so I suspect that I was “open to Spiky persuasion” when asked. Forty years on, a simple googling of the fellow, still with his Keele nickname, finds him still doing committees. In the fulness of time that link won’t work, but here is a scrape of it in February 2022.
The controversy-ridden presidential election for 82/83 will have been the following day, but I make no mention of the election in my diary, perhaps because I wasn’t really involved with such things at that time. Yes, Truda Smith, who had, until recently, been going our with Jon Gorvett, was one of the candidates. But I didn’t actually support Truda for that election; I was supporting the official Labour candidate, a lovely lass named Jan Phillips, whose candidacy was ill-fated, perhaps because of Truda’s or perhaps because the power-brokers-that-were (e.g. Toby Bourgein) felt that Jan was unelectable. Meanwhile the Tory contingent, mostly under the Machiavellian guidance of a chap named Chris Boden, were looking to disrupt the election process that year. I’ll explain the resulting hoo-ha next time. Seems that I simply voted on the Thursday (not a noteworthy event) and got ready for my rare London trip.
Thursday 11 February 1982 – Lazyish day – did some work. Went to buffet supper in evening – did some work after.
Friday 12 February 1982 – Left for London early afternoon – Grandma Jenny had come for dinner – injured herself – spent evening in Kings casualty
If I recall correctly, the family crisis had already started to unfurl when I arrived at my parents’ house and we all went straight off to Camberwell. Now THAT’s my idea of a Friday night out in London!
Saturday 13 February 1982 – Got up quite early. Did some taping – spoke to people. Mum & dad went out – had relaxing evening in.
Sunday 14 February 1982 – Got up late. Went to Polyanna’s for lunch. Made tapes and spoke to people for rest of the day – quite enjoyable.
I should return at some point to the tapes I was making back then, some of which catalogue the soundtrack of our lives in the early 1980s.
Not sure who dined at Polyanna’s – probably just me and my parents, as I don’t mention anyone else. Polyanna’s was a rare example back then of a proper European-style bistro restaurant on Battersea Rise. It seemed well-decent back then compared with most suburban fare. Now The Humble Grape.
Monday 15 February 1982 – Met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch – > came back to Keele. Went to lousy UGM in evening -> Simon’s for coffee.
The lousiness of the UGM was no doubt linked to the presidential election hoo-ha, about which more next time.
Tuesday 16 February 1982 – Busy day as usual. Worked in evening – got quite a lot done. Didn’t go out at all.
Wednesday 17 February 1982 – Useful day. Spent afternoon in the library. Went to see Andrea [Collins, now Woodhouse] in early evening -> John Cooper Clarke -> Simon & Jon came back – up till quite late.
I am relieved to see several mentions of Simon Jacobs in the diary around this time, as Janie and I are seeing him for lunch tomorrow – Simon doesn’t much like these forty years on pieces unless he gets a few mentions!
I remember the John Cooper Clarke concert very fondly and am really glad I attended it.
Dave Lee’s book The Keele Gigs! has more on the topic of this concert. Dave kindly not only reminded me but sent me a copy of support act, Mightier than Kong, singing their only minor hit, a rather good cover version of Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me.
As for John Cooper Clarke himself, Evidently Chickentown went down extremely well, as did most of his set. Here is an audio of a live performance from around that time (late 1981). Trigger warning: contains…indeed more or less comprises…bad language.
I also recall a Ringroad sketch entitled John Cooper Clarke which was a parody of a JCC poem, each verse of which ended with the line “John Cooper Clarke”, each preceded by an increasingly bizarre simile which rhymed with Clarke. Was it one of yours, Frank Dillon? I might have a copy of it in my “Ringroad cornflake box copies file” at the flat – if so I’ll scan it and upload it in the next week or so.
I have managed to rescue an old reel-to-reel tape, nearly 40 years after it was made and given to me by Paul Deacon.
I went through a process of digitising all my old reel-to-reels around 2008, but this small spool, which Paul named The Free Bonus LP, was accidentally missed out of that process.
Being me, though, I hadn’t scrapped the box of tapes, nor had I scrapped the trusty Sony TC377 tape recorder, I had merely decommissioned the machine and put all the stuff into storage in the City.
Then, a few weeks ago, my good friend John White asked me if I still had a reel-to-reel, as he and his sister Pippa had found some old reels while clearing his late parents’ house. In good pal mode, I went to the storage basement, rescued the machine and schlepped the weighty object back to my flat.
While in the storage room, I thought I’d have a quick look for the missing Paul Deacon spool which, for kind reasons of its own, had found its way to the top of the first box of spools I opened.
Having completed the White stuff, I ventured this morning to The Free Bonus LP and what a treat it was to hear it again after all these years.
Side One comprises Paul talking me through some dreadful versions of well-known songs, out-takes, bloopers and the like. Some of it I still found very funny. The highlight…or are we talking lowlights here?…the lowlight, then, is towards the end of Side One. A gentleman named Paul Marks who was working with Paul at that time on the hospital radio station Radio Kings. Paul Marks’s blooper about a Renaissance dance troupe’s costumes is comedy gold, as is Paul Deacon’s seething interview with Paul Marks about it for a single listener, me, on The Free Bonus LP.
Ladies, gentlemen and children, I give you, Side One:
Side One in all its glory
Side Two is a collection of five comedic/novelty recordings.
I especially like the first one, Bo Dudley, while recognising today how very un-PC is some the language used.
Hearing this tape again also reminded me how very funny The Heebie Jeebies were…indeed still are.
So here it is….Side Two:
Side Two
Paul and I used to spend hours putting compliation tapes together for each other – Paul I think more prolific in doing so than me. I have digital copies of all of those and this is, I think, the only recording that had, until today (7 February 2020) remained undigitised.
I realise that this one in particular must have taken ages to pull together. I probably never thanked you properly or enough for those efforts, Paul…
…again, until today. Many, many thanks for The Free Bonus LP, Paul.
…and how do you know to date the thing 26 September 1981?…
…I hear you cry. Because Paul, helpfully, stuck a label with the date on the spool. Thanks again, Paul.
I was reminded of this 1977 impromptu summer holidays outing at a recent (November 2017) gathering of the old school clan – click here or the link below:
Not only did both Andrew and Fiona Levinson come up in the conversation that evening, but I realised, when the 1977 Billingsgate visit popped into my head, that the venue, The Rajasthan Restaurant, is just across the road from the old Billingsgate Fish Market. Weirdorama.
Here is the relevant page of my diary. Not much going on at that stage of the summer…
This was the first year I didn’t go away with my parents during the summer school holidays since I was a toddler. I don’t think dad had the money for a holiday that year – business was not good.
That 1p will have contributed handsomely towards my bus fares and stuff.
On the Friday, the diary notes that I:
went out with Andrew, Fiona and Valerie (pen friend from France). No 23 in evening.
No 23 was my grandmother (of kalooki fame)’s flat. There was a three line whip for the family to gather and no kalooki on a Friday night. Don’t be ridiculous. On the sabbath? No, no, no. Kalooki was a Sunday thing.
What Andrew, Fiona, Valerie and I did on that Friday is lost in the bowels of my mind, so unless one of the others reads this and knows (please chime in if you do) the nature of the Friday activity will be lost for ever in the mists of time.
The Saturday diary entry is more explicit:
went to Billingsgate first thing with Andrew, Fiona and Valerie.
I do recall making a very early start of it and venturing out to Billingsgate with my camera in hand.
Old Billingsgate, dapper head gear
Left to right: two fishmongers, Andrew, Fiona, Valerie
Andrew pondering the price of fish as we leave Billingsgate
Who would have thought back then that I would end up writing a book on commerce, The Price Of Fish, using a multitude of fishy examples, some of which were spawned all the way back then at Billingsgate – click here or below:
But I digress…
…let us return to the 20 August outing. We clearly did a little more sightseeing before we went home – click the link below for the whole photo roll, which is available for all to see on Flickr – click here or below:
As a footnote, I’d like to make it clear that our behaviour with Fiona’s pen friend from France was exemplary, showing her the sights, sounds and smells of Old London Town and generally being hospitable.
On this day in 1977, Paul Deacon and I recorded ourselves larking around, including, for some unknown reason, several takes of a scene emulating an execution at the time of the French Revolution.
I’ve no idea whether anyone other than me and Paul will find this four minute clip funny, but I laughed out loud many times on hearing it again.
I think my favourite bit is on take 4, when you hear my pseudo-Robespierre voice, once again, ask
“do you ‘ave anything to say?”
and you can hear my mother holler from the next room…
“yeh – shut up!”
…at which point Paul collapses in gales of laughter.
Some of the bits in several of the takes where Paul gets tongue-tied around his lines are pretty funny too.
I also laughed out loud at my third announcement of “take 5” – to announce two “take 5s” might be described as unfortunate, to announce three sounds like carelessness. The juvenilia of a numbers man.
Suffice it to say that the unintended humour works better than the rather mawkish intended humour.
The guillotine sound comes from an actual guillotine…
…no, really…
…a paper one, which looked more or less exactly like this picture, which I have borrowed from an ebay sale long since closed – I’m sure the anonymous photographer/seller won’t mind – fair use for educational purposes blah blah:
Madame la Guillotine
The sound of the drum roll was made on a genuine Southern African bongo drum, a gift from my mother’s dear school friend, “Auntie” Elsie Betts who lived (I believe still lives) in South Africa. For reasons unknown, I took a superb photograph of that majestic drum:
Monsieur Le Bongodrum
The sound of the aristocrat’s head landing was, if I recall correctly, achieved with a white cabbage being dropped into a wastepaper basket. My mother used to make her own coleslaw to my father’s specification – with a light vinaigrette sauce, no mayonnaise nonsense for my dad’s slaw – it was a sort-of cross between sauerkraut and coleslaw really.
But I digress.
Point is, there would always have been a white cabbage conveniently on hand whenever the need arose for a head removal sound effect. The cabbage will have looked like one of these:
Paul and I made quite a few silly recordings over the years, but I believe only the one tape survives. Most of our recordings were recorded on the trusty Sony TC377, which looked like this…
…the tape for which was expensive and in demand in the Harris household (mostly by me to be honest), so much of the silly stuff will have been wiped over with other silly stuff or, eventually, something someone wanted to keep.
I meticulously digitised all the reel to reel tapes that survived (a few batches of tape were deteriorating before digitisation, so those tapes couldn’t be saved) but, as far as I can tell, none of the survivors had larking about material on them. Sorry.
So how or why did the 12 April 1977 material survive?
The answer is straightforward and signalled in the following diary page.
The relevant passage is 2 January 1977 – Bank Holiday Monday:
Went to Comet cassette deck. Great.
On that day, our reel-to-reel family bowed to the inevitable and procured a cheap (this is the January sales, isn’t it?) “solid state” cassette deck. It was not a special one. I think it was one of the following or similar – I have borrowed the picture from an ebay sale long since closed – I’m sure the anonymous photographer/seller won’t mind – fair use for educational purposes blah blah:
While I think Paul and I probably recorded the coin tossers/execution scenes on the reel-to-reel (the clicks sound reel-to-reelish to me – Paul might know better), I at least made a copy or copies onto cassette following that 1977 reording session:
Below I have also embedded the 20 minutes or so of general larking around stuff that preceded the main takes. It’s not a particularly interesting listen; I think we must both have been in an especially silly mood that day. Paul might go through it and extract a few small snippets of value from it. I think there is a Cyril Vaughan impersonation on there somewhere and one or two other impersonations to boot.
The main “conceit” of the following preliminary piece is a spoof sports commentary on the world coin tossing competition. This appears to be a throw-back to an earlier, seminal event, in December 1974:
Anyway, here is twenty minutes of coin tossing, infantile giggling, some impersonations and some early attempts at the execution scenes. This recording is on the other side of the Execution Scenes cassette.
I have written all of this up in September 2018 at Paul Deacon’s request, as he is giving some sort of talk about careers to a women’s group in Canada, the country in which Paul and his family now reside.
Paul wondered if I had any relevant photos of us from that time, which I don’t really – sorry again. The only picture I can lay my hands on with both of us in it is the following, which Paul himself uploaded in our Alleyn’s alum group:
Paul on the right doing the bumping; me the recipient of the bumps. This might take some explaining to a genteel women’s group…
…but if they are instead a group of Canadian Women’s Ice Hockey players/supporters, the picture will look like childishly amateur violence, which it assuredly was.
While I denied all memory of this event when Paul first upped that picture, I have a vague recollection now of how those autumnal-looking bumps came about. I’ll Ogblog about that separately some other time.
This piece is about recordings of execution scenes and stuff. You haven’t yet listened to the four minute execution scenes clip? Here it is again for your convenience. Listen out for my mum as “best supporting actress” in take four.
My diary entry for 11 December 1974 includes the phrase:
Disappearing World. Ongka’s Big Moka. Rather amusing.
In October 2016, while pondering the idea of Ogblog but before I had started the project in earnest, I uncovered this diary entry and vaguely remembered the television programme to which it referred.
I Googled the programme name and read the Wikipedia entry, which, at that time, reported that the programme was first broadcast in 1976 – probably when it received its first US airing. A bit more Googling enabled me to confirm 11 December 1974 as the first airing date so I (in the form of Ged Ladd who is an occasional but keen Wikipedia editor) corrected the Wikipedia entry.
Anyway, since my October 2016 detective work, someone has, helpfully, uploaded the Ongka’s Big Moka film to YouTube:
It might have been this television documentary that sparked my lifelong interest in the tribes and cultures of Oceania.
I do also remember being inspired by the exhibits from the Pacific South Seas in the Horniman Museum, on an Alleyn’s School visit, probably around that time, but I do not recall which of those inspiring introductions, television or museum, came first.
Perhaps I’ll find a reference to the Alleyn’s visit somewhere in my diaries, but it might be pre-diaries or during one of my irritating diary-writing-intervals in those early years.
One of my old school pals might just help me to date that school visit, although I suspect there were plenty of such visits on field days “back then”, as the Horniman was such an easy place to visit from the school. So unless I did something memorable on that trip…
…I dread to think what memorable thing I might done, but my lifelong interest in that part of the world does include a fascination with koteka.
Still, I suspect that the date of my visit to the Horniman is either in my diaries or lost in the mists of time.
A friend mentioned Brixton Academy to me the other day (January 2022) which immediately triggered the memory/thought:
didn’t that used to be the cinema we knew as “The Flea Pit”?
Which triggered my one clear memory of going to that cinema – although I’m sure I was taken there several times as a child. I especially remember Grandma Jenny taking me to see the film Living Free there.
Cursory research on Living Free at IMDb uncovers the UK release date as January 1972, so I am writing this memory up almost exactly 50 years after the event.
I remember the experience especially clearly, as Grandma Jenny had loved the film Born Free. She was so excited that there was a sequel to Born Free and that I was now old enough to accompany her to the flickers.
Unfortunately, Grandma Jenny’s excitement turned to disappointment, as she felt that the film Living Free was only a shadow of the wonders that she had enjoyed in the film Born Free. Grandma Jenny felt bound to let me know that the original was much better.
Disappointed
Frankly, I don’t think I would have discerned much difference between the two films at that age. Lions are/were exciting charismatic megafauna to see on the screen. The humans waffling on about lions and each other was comparatively dull.
Even the theme music for Living Free was cheesy and disappointing for Grandma…
…who subsequently serenaded me with the theme from Born Free, in the hope I would thus discern the relative quality of the latter theme. Unfortunately, Grandma Jenny did not share her sister-in-law Marie’s wonderful BBC Singer singing voice.
But fifty years on, the thing I remember most about the experience was my dad wanting to have me checked over for fleas for the rest of the weekend, after I had visited The Flea Pit. And dad insisted on referring to the movie as “Living Flea”.
Postscript -Memory Corrected By A Four-Year-Old: The Flea Pit Was The Ritzy, Not The Astoria
Within an hour of me posting the above piece on the Streatham, Balham & Tooting (yes, as you’ll soon see, geography was not my strongest suit at school) Memories Group on Facebook, Paula chimed in with the following remark:
I went to see Living Free in Brixton too! I always thought it was the Ritzy… but I was only 4, so what do I know
As soon as I saw that comment, I knew that she was right, a fact confirmed within minutes by Paul:
I’m pretty sure the ‘flea pit’ was the ritzy, not the odeon( as stated in the article….)
In my own defence, I know that Grandma Jenny did take me to see movies at the Brixton Astoria as well as the Ritzy back then. I have a feeling that my first “date” with Grandma was to the Astoria, but that was to see an afternoon matinee of the Sound Of Music…
…something that Grandmas everywhere did with/for their grandchildren back then, before the days when such movies were shown on the TV every bank holiday and certainly before the days that you could stream those old movies whenever you like.
The Hills Are Alive…
I can report that Grandma Jenny’s serenading with the Sound Of Music theme sounded no better than her rendition of the Born Free theme.
But I digress.
Yes, my memory from age nine has been bested by someone who was less than half my age at the time.
This recording is the only clearly dated family recording I have. Little me proudly announces at the start of the recording that it is the 5th of November, 1967.
I am Ogblog-publishing the recording on its 50th birthday.
As it happens, both the original recording and its 50th anniversary fell/fall on a Sunday.
But those others are, I believe, all quite a bit earlier than this Hare and Guy Fawkes one. I believe this 5 November 1967 one is the last of the readings tapes, not least because I think my personal interest in the tape recorder transformed at that time from passive listener to active recorder on our trusty Grundig TK-35. Another story – I’ll cover that story a little more below and separately later.
Grundig TK35. Photograph by Michael Keller, from Rad-io.de.
Folman’s – scraped from : https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/534521049506003800/
Grandma Anne had, I think, fairly recently been widowed for a second time (my Step-Grandpa Nat I only recall vaguely from when I was very small), so it became our habit to take Grandma Anne to that strictly kosher restaurant in Soho for Sunday lunch.
I recall liking the chicken soup and the chopped liver but not much else there. I also recall my father’s favourite dish being “boiled capon” – a large chicken cooked in broth. I don’t believe that the kosher restaurant capon was a castrated bird – I’m not sure that kashrut would allow even the circumcision of a cock of the poultry variety. I think it was simply a big old boiler chicken that would make a tasty broth; the slow cooking of the aged creature would soften what would otherwise be rather tough meat.
My Vietnamese-style dish, chicken cooked in its own broth, is an exotic and delicious variation on that theme, which Janie and I love as comfort food. I remember distinctly not liking the Folman’s version much as a child, it was nothing like as tasty as my mum’s chicken.
But I wildly digress.
On the recording, you can hear my mum in the background, in another room, having an argument by the sound of it. I’m not sure whether she is arguing on the phone or with someone else who is in the house who is talking far more softly than my mum. I might do some audio-forensics on the sound file one day and see if I can listen in on that aggro from 50 years ago.
The argument can only have been family stuff…probably family business stuff.
I’ll guess that the Hare and Guy Fawkes story-telling at that time was as much about getting me out of the way while the family argument played out as it was about anything else.
But I’ll also guess that my beady-little eyes were, at that time, working out how to make recordings, because the rest of that side of that tape is strewn with recordings from the radio. One of those recordings I believe was made the same afternoon/early evening; I’ll Ogblog that a little later today.
As with our other story book recordings, I ring a bell at the turn of the page. I think the idea of that was to help me learn to read by following the story in the book while listening to the tape.
I also interject with some questions at times, which is rather cute, but I interject less in this one than I did in earlier recordings. I guess the question I really wanted answered by then was, “how do I operate this machine so I can make recordings for myself?”
Here’s the Hare And Guy Fawkes sound file and book cover again.
Both of my parents, dad in particular, made recordings of my favourite books being read to me. This was mostly, I suspect, because they knew that I couldn’t resist fiddling with the old Grundig and so would listen to the recordings rather than nag them to read the book again. Fiendish, cunning and I very much approve.
Grundig TK35, ram-packed with thermionic valves. Photograph by Michael Keller, from Rad-io.de.
One of those wonderful recordings is The Gingerbread Man, the very book that Joe over on King Cricket was complaining about having to read three times a day.
Always keen to help out, here is the recording of my dad reading The Gingerbread Man to a very little me:
I don’t have a picture of me around that time with that book, but I do have a picture with a similar book, long since forgotten and I don’t think ever recorded:
A Very Little Me With the Big Brown Bear Book
Simply adorable I was; goodness knows what went wrong.
I do still have my dilapidated copy of the Gingerbread Man. Not too many of my children’s books survived the cull, but (probably because of the recording) I couldn’t bear to part with that one.
Thanks for triggering the nostalgia, Joe. I’d been trying to pluck up the courage to listen again and start uploading these recordings to Ogblog. You gave me cause.
_2.jpg)
