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 gearLeft to right: two fishmongers, Andrew, Fiona, ValerieAndrew 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.
Honest Jake Speare & Rasher Bacon – in Basher Rasher
Had you asked me, before I trawled through my diaries, how long Graham Majin and I had spent on making the animated film, Basher Rasher, I’d have said that we spent most of the days of most of the weeks of that summer on the project.
…after which, Graham Majin hoves into view, right at the end of that month.
I have corresponded with Graham on this topic, briefly, in October 2026, ahead of writing up this episode. Graham feigned little concern about being associated publicly with our animated films and recordings some 50 years later:
Blog away to your heart’s content 😊…
…said Graham, foiling my plans ahead of attempted blackmail.
Graham did, along the way in our correspondence, misidentify our efforts as “Super 8”. They absolutely were not. Standard 8 was the medium.
Graham also recalled that, some years ago, I sent him one of our films in the hope that he could, through his BBC connections, make a better attempt at preserving it than I had made. The film disintegrated in his hands during that attempt.
Possibly Graham suspects that the incriminating evidence is therefore all lost – but that is not the case. My rudimentary preservation/digitisation attempts remain and modern techniques should enable a bit of “digital remastering”.
Anyway…
…here are the diary extracts for the following fortnight:
Saturday 31 July 1976 – went to shop with Graham [Majin]. He came to tea. TV Seaside Show (yuk)
This is my first diary mention of Graham Majin. As for that TV show…
“An outside broadcast from the BBC1 Big Top which this week visits Weymouth starring Jimmy Tarbuck and featuring The Bachelors, Sacha Distel with The Grumbleweeds, Keith Harris, Kenny Lynch…“
…no wonder I wrote “yuk”.
Sunday 1 August 1976 – went to Il Carretto. Graham came in afternoon & evening, discussed cartoon. TV Play: American
In those days, I used the term “cartoon” to describe an animated film. This was the first diary mention of the project that became “Basher Rasher“.
The only American item I can find that evening was a late night film, A Place In the Sun based on the novel American Tragedy.
Andy Levinson & Graham Majin in our Woodfield Avenue garden, summer 1976
Monday 2 August 1976 – Graham came. Cartoon coming along. TV Get Some In, It’s A Square World [Michael Bentine]
Tuesday 3 August 1976 – Dentist morning. Graham, cartoon, coming along well.
Wednesday 4 August 1976 – G[randma] Jenny afternoon. TV Benny Hill, Are You Being Served, Dr Finlay
Thursday 5 August 1976 – Graham all day. Started shooting. TV What’s My Line
Friday 6 August 1976 – Graham. Good day’s shooting. Sounded films for dad.
Graham and I must have completed the soundtrack recording before we started shooting – probably on the Tuesday afternoon or perhaps unmentioned activity on the Wednesday morning.
The soundtrack is well preserved, as I digitised my reel-to-reel archive some 20 years ago. As a taster for the film, those who want to get their lug-holes around the soundtrack can do so here:
Basher Rasher soundtrack
“Sounded films for dad” means that I put stripes onto some of the old family cine films and possibly added some rudimentary soundtracks too. I especially remember doing that on the film of their 1960 holiday, Spain, Catalonia, Costa Brava, which dad had neglected to stripe and soundtrack.
Part of my purpose in doing those tasks with the family cine was to learn how to do it for the epic animated movie in progress, Basher Rasher.
Saturday 7 August 1976 – Graham in afternoon & evening, good filming.
Sunday 8 August 1976 – Il Carretto. Polaroid photo. TV Frank Sinatra film [The Joker Is Wild].
Monday 9 August 1976 – cricket on common in afternoon. New camera. TV Steptoe & Son, Get Some In, Inside Medicine, The Gun.
“New camera” will have been a still camera for me to sue on our forthcoming holiday in La Manga.. “New” will have meant “new to me”. I am pretty sure this one was a second-hand Zenith B – basic, but with a half-decent lens and it was a single lens reflex (SLR). I had been nagging dad for some while that I thought I’d do better with an SLR camera.
Tuesday 10 August 1976 – cartooning all day. Doing well.
Wednesday 11 August 1976 – went to school. Stationery with Eric [Randall]. TV Are You Being Served.
Not sure what “stationery with Eric” entailed. Presumably the use of child labour to help him undertake Alleyn’s School quartermaster duties during the summer. I suspect that Graham Majin was also involved in that activity but in any case that would have left little or no time for animated film making.
Friday 13 August 1976 – went to Graham. War game. TV Invisible Man
These diary entries suggest to me that we finished filming on the morning of Friday 13 August and “celebrated” by going to Graham’s house and playing a war game – a passion of Graham’s at that time.
I love the “cleared room” reference. Mum probably threatened to throw me out unless I tidied up my bedroom-cum-movie-studio before dinner!
Graham and I must have finished filming Basher Rasher, as the studio was dismantled and the Quartz 5 movie camera re-allocated to the impending Harris family holiday. I have photographic evidence that the camera was with us on that holiday:
Mum, Me & the precious Quartz 5, a couple of weeks later.
The film(s) containing Basher Rasher will have been sent off by post to Kodak for processing while we were on holiday.
It was considered completely normal to have to wait a few weeks between shooting any photos or video and seeing the results, back then.
In the same way, I shall keep avid Ogblog readers (and Graham) in suspenders for a while before publishing the film, which was preserved in a vaguely viewable form (via VHS) and subsequently digitised.
Here’s another frame from the movie as a teaser
Before readers and prospective viewers get too excited at the thought of seeing this five minute masterpiece, please bear in mind how quickly this project was rushed through from conception to “wrap”. Graham and I quickly decided that Basher Rasher was merely a pilot for the animated movie we’d really wanted to make: Speare Trek. The story of that movie unfolded in 1977.
For the completists: further evidence that we had completed the film a week before the Harris family set off for Spain is in the absence of “cartoon” or Graham” mentions that following week:
Sunday 15 August 1976 – Il Carretto. Nice afternoon. TV Great Las Vegas Robbery film. [Ocean’s 11]
Monday 16 August 1976 – Lazy day. TV Man About The House, This is Waugh.
Tuesday 17 August 1976 – went shopping & library. G. Jenny. TV Bill Cotton[?] Frost [?].
Wednesday 18 August 1976 – Two teeth out [orthodontic extraction]. Went to Argos. TV Jeux sans frontières, Are You Being Served
Thursday 19 August 1976 – went to Argos, pet. Lazy day. TV Boney, Bionic Woman, Medical prog.
Friday 20 August 1976 – went to Telford Court [Grandma Anne’s Harris family gathering]. TV Invisible Man.
I loved those Christmas lectures as a kid and I especially remember enjoying Heinz Wolff’s series that Christmas.
The only other noteworthy points from my diaries for that period are references to writing and finishing “paper” with Lloyd Green. This was probably my first independent writing (and in this case also publishing) initiative. I’ll write more about that in a couple of episodes time, when the initiative took off in mid January 1976. I should really liaise with Lloyd prior to writing it up, to see if he has any specific memories or even relics to throw into the memory pot.
For the completists among my readership (probably just me and 1970s TV addicts) here is the diary extract for that 17 day period before school started up again.
Sunday, 28 December 1975 – dined at Felds. Grandma Anne in the afternoon. Played Kalooki. Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Monday, 29 December 1975 – all OK. TV lecture. Played Mastermind Royale with Uncle George [May, across the road].
Tuesday, 30 December 1975 – shopping. Played with Andy [Levinson] in afternoon after lecture. Played bridge with Uncle Cyril {Barnet, next door].
Wednesday, 31 December 1975 – got new shoes. TV lecture, Three Men in a Boat, Trapeze, Happy Birthday Columbia. Saw In New Year!
Thursday, 1 January 1976 – Dined at La Pistola. TV, Carry On Again Doctor, The Picnic, Supermind.
Friday 2 January 1976 – played with Andy in morning – Mastermind Royale *evening. TV The Good Life.
Saturday 3 January 1976 – Finished first paper. TV Mask of Sheba, Best Of Upstairs Downstairs.
Sunday, 4 January 1976 – classes good. TV MASH, Romeo and Juliet.
Monday, 5 January 1976 – Andy morn, snooker afternoon. TV, Ask the Family, Z Cars, Disappearing World.
Tuesday, 6 January 1976 – had haircut. TV, Are You Being Served?, Ellery Queen, Fawlty Towers.
Wednesday, 7 January 1976 – Meeting morn. Lloyd Green afternoon. [Presumably both to do with the paper] TV And Mother Makes Five, Morecambe and Wise, Tomkinson’s Schooldays.
Thursday, 8 January 1976 – went to Brixton. TV When The Boat Comes In.
Friday, 9 January 1976 – Went to Alan’s [Cooke] – great. TV England Games? Walt Disney, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, The Good Life.
Saturday 10 January 1976, played with Andy. TV Caprice, Upstairs Downstairs.
Sunday, 11 January 1976 – classes good. Dined at Felds. Kalooki 7p. TV MASH.
Monday, 12 January 1976 – shopping in the morning. Andy afternoon. TV Ask The Family, Z Cars, The Waltons.
Allow me to transcribe this diary entry as best I can. The verb pertaining to my father’s insurance claim I think reads, “blagged” but I might be mistaken:
Saw Prudential Cup. England Won. Old 51 not out. Dad blagged from insurance got two films: Jerry & the Goldfish, and Dr Jekyll & Mr Mouse
“Prudential Cup” that day was actually the very first match in the tournament that later became known as the cricket world cup, so I am rather glad to realise that i really have been following that tournament since the very beginning.
A strange match to say the least. Look at the scorecard:
England’s score looks normal by modern standards, but 334/4 was a monster score in a one day match back then. My excitement about Chris Old’s performance was due to the fact that he was one of my favourite players, because he was from the Yorkshire team that I met when I was seven…
…therefore Chris Old was, to all intents and purposes, my friend. My friend scored 51 runs in 30 balls which was, in those days, a very unusual and exciting run rate.
In response, India crawled to 132/3, with Sunny Gavaskar responding to England’s huge total with what I can only imagine was an act of passive resistance: 36 runs in 174 balls.
I doubt if I saw the whole match through.
More likely, I was captivated by the Tom & Jerry cartoons dad brought home from the shop for me.
Dad’s shop.
His shop window had suffered some serious water damage, with much stock completely written off, but those two Tom & Jerry cartoons (Standard 8) had damaged boxes but the film inside was salvagible.
Dad, being dad, asked the insurance man if it would be alright to hand the unsellable but still useable items to his son. the insurance man probably nearly fainted (or could hardly control his laughter) at being asked such a question and kindly acquiesced to dad’s modest request.
Dad told me that he had persuaded the insurance man to let me have the films and I was most impressed by dad’s negotiating skills.
I loved those films and watched them over and over.
I strongly suspect that dad got home before Sunny Gavaskar’s crease protest was over and that I abandoned the cricket match for the cartoons. The diary is silent on that aspect.
Here is the Jerry & the Goldfish, thanks to The Daily Motion:
And here is Dr Jekyll & Mr Mouse, also from The Daily Motion:
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.
It is one of my earliest memories. All I remember is having so much fun, climbing in, out, around, and through sculptures.
Playing hide and seek by dint of the artworks.
In my memory it was a Henry Moore exhibition, but on discovering a little pile of long-forgotten photographs (fiendishly mixed up with some of my parents’ late 1980s prints), followed by a little on-line research, I learn that it was a much wider exhibition, organised by the Greater London Council (GLC), that Battersea Park affair in 1966.
My guess is that we, the Harris family, ventured to the exhibition the following weekend, the late May Bank Holiday, although it’s possible that it was later that summer, perhaps the August Bank Holiday.
The reason I suspect it was the earlier holiday is because the photos look to me as though dad wanted those pictures from that exhibition to use as examples for his photographic studio classes that spring and summer.
Dad’s shop and studio was in St John’s Hill, Battersea.
Such a photogenic exhibition up the other end of Battersea would have been too good an opportunity to miss in those days, when (as I understand it) the studio was still a key part of dad’s business.
Anyway, that was dad’s job. My job was having fun.
The “pictures for the studio” theory would also explain why I hadn’t seen the pictures before now. Dad probably rescued those prints from the shop when he closed down the shop in the mid 1980s and the packet got mixed up then with mum and dads holiday snaps from the late 1980s. The negatives, sadly, seem lost.
Still, it was quite extraordinary seeing these pictures when I discovered them in March 2021, nearly 55 years after the event.
I have such a strong memory of having a wonderful time that day in Battersea Park and the pictures bear that out.
I have a feeling that mum didn’t really approve of this “let the children play” style exhibition. I can imagine there was a view in a fairly large section of the public that such sculptural works are to be revered rather than toyed with by children.
Mum doesn’t look 100% sure. I look sure.
But I think such exhibitions are a superb idea.
Personally, I have always been drawn to sculpture. Perhaps my fondness for sculpture would have happened anyway. But something tells me that my love of sculpture was forged that day in Battersea Park, which I so clearly remember as being just the most amazing fun.
