Category: Friends and Family Events

The Free Bonus LP, A Reel-To-Reel Tape Gifted To Me By Paul Deacon, 26 September 1981

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.

I realised the mistake a couple of years ago, when Paul and I were corresponding about some other silliness of ours from an even earlier era:

Execution Scenes, Coin Tossers And Miscellaneous Silliness Recorded With Paul Deacon, 12 April 1977

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.

Fate.

The John White reel rescues have uncovered a treasure trove of stuff…

A Reel Good Evening With John White, 21 January 2020

…including, even more recently, a mystery third spool which turns out to be John & Pippa’s parents’ wedding.

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.

Twenty Days Of Summer Holiday Work During Which Grandma Anne Died, 10 to 29 August 1981

After the frenzied weekend during which I showed my Keele friends, Sim & Tim, my weird world…

When Worlds Collided And A Crazy Social Whirl Resulted: My Keele Friends Sim & Tim’s Weekend To The Alleyn’s & BBYO Version of London, 7 to 9 August 1981

…a rather sedate week of work with very few socials thrown in: lunch with Caroline (Freeman, now Curtis) on the Tuesday and dinner at Anil (Biltoo)’s place on Saturday evening.

“Lazyish day” on the Saturday would have mostly comprised watching the third day of the Old Trafford Ashes test on the TV, much as “relaxing evenings” on the two preceding days would have included hunkering down in front of the old B&W TV in the tiny spare room to watch the highlights.

My faint memory only recalls that Saturday as “Ian Botham going berserk, scoring runs for fun, all-but winning the match for England, as usual”, because, to the youthful me, that was an unremarkable norm in the summer of 1981. The Ridiculous Ashes podcast provides more detail on that match and that day, in particular the contrasting sloth of Chris Tavaré that day. Scorecard ? – the match panned out like this.

Then, on the Sunday, what turned out to be our last visit to Feld’s Restaurant for lunch with Grandma Anne. If you want to know more about Feld’s, I “reviewed” Feld’s “Restaurant” in an earlier Ogblog piece:

A Few Days In London Between Keele & Manchester, 14 to 19 December 1980

I probably discussed the cricket with Mr Feld that day, as was our wont by that time. Feld might even have been listening to the match on his transistor radio behind the counter, as Day Four of this match was played on the Sunday – an experimental thing for some of the tests that year, I believe.

There is no doubt in my mind that Grandma Anne will have implored Mr Feld to shake the borscht jar, eaten her last plate of borscht that day and that she would have berated Mr Feld with the phrase, “your borscht tastes like vorter today” had the borscht not been up to snuff…which, frankly, it almost certainly wasn’t.

As the diary scribbles attest, Grandma Anne was taken into hospital in the early hours of the following Tuesday morning. Apart from a dinner at Anil’s on the Thursday and dinner with Michael and Pam on Saturday (who were no doubt primarily in the area visiting Grandma), my life was all work and visiting Grandma for a few days.

Forty years on, I have written a reflective piece about Grandma Anne’s last visit to hospital for ThreadMash:

All Mixed Up: Age Is Just A Number, ThreadZoomMash Piece, Performed 30 September 2021

Here’s what I wrote in the diary for the following few days:

Sunday 23 August 1981 – Went to hospital – bad news – returned – back to hospital – G. Anne died.

Monday 24 August 1981 – Went round sorting out admin side. Met Uncle Michael – returned home.

Tuesday 25 August 1981 – Lavoyah (funeral) & shivah (mourning) today – tiring and gruelling.

Wednesday 26 August 1981 – Back to work – too much of – did little in evening.

Thursday 27 August 1981 – Met Jilly [Black] for lunch. Spoke to several people in evening.

Friday 28 August 1981 – Nothing special for b’day – work as usual – slap up meal in evening.

Saturday 29 August 1981 – Lazy day – went to Grandma Jenny for lunch – shopped a little – lazy evening.

At that time Grandma Jenny still lived in Sandhurst Court on the Acre Lane in Brixton. I’m pretty sure that shopping spree was “down Brixton Market” to gather some bottles and jars of condiments to take back to Keele with me in a few weeks’ time, in order to try and perk up the otherwise rather bland weekend diet.

When Worlds Collided And A Crazy Social Whirl Resulted: My Keele Friends Sim & Tim’s Weekend To The Alleyn’s & BBYO Version of London, 7 to 9 August 1981

Photo: PAUL FARMER / The Crown and Greyhound Dulwich Village (aka The Dog)

My diary, from forty years ago as I write, tells me that this was one crazy weekend, during which I zig-zagged my visiting Keele friends, Sim & Tim (Simon Ascough & Tim Woolley), hither and yon across London for a couple of days.

I had been spending a fair amount of time with those two towards the end of that academic year, much of it in the Student’s Union snooker room:

Essaying With Exams, Girls & Snooker Towards The End Of My Foundation Year At Keele, 31 May to 8 June 1981

Sim was from Doncaster and Tim was from Moseley, South Birmingham. I have an inkling that they had never been to London before…or at least “not visited a Londoner” before.

Reading my diary and assessing the activities I inflicted upon them, they might have formed a lifelong skewed opinion on what London life is like. I’m not sure I had a weekend quite like it before or since.

Friday 7 August 1981 – A Mini Pub Crawl Following In My Alleyn’s School Footsteps

Fox On the Hill Jwslubbock, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0g

7 August – Work OK – Sim & Tim arrived -> ate -> Fox -> Dog -> met Mark from Keele -> his place ’till late

Mum will have given us all a hearty family meal on the Friday evening ahead of the mini pub crawl. I cannot remember whether we did all of our dashing around London by car or by public transport. I think it must have been the former; if so it must have been Tim who had a car with him.

That first evening, I wanted to show Sim & Tim the places I used to drink with my friends before I went to Keele. The Fox On the Hill (aka The Fox) on Denmark Hill and The Crown & Greyhound (aka The Dog) in Dulwich Village. I thought we might bump in to a few old friends from Alleyn’s in at least one of those places, but that didn’t happen.

Indeed, my most vibrant memory from that whole visit was my embarrassment in The Fox when, for the first time ever, the barman questioned whether I was old enough to buy drinks in the pub.

I remember feeling like saying…

…but I’ve been buying drinks in this pub for years…since I was fifteen… and no-one has ever questioned it before…

…but I feared that such an admission might prevent me from being served or get me barred, so I simply asserted myself as a University student down after my first year at Uni and had my word accepted.

No ID cards for pub-going youngsters in those days. Why The Fox had started asking questions all of a sudden back then I have no idea – perhaps they had experienced some youngster trouble since my previous visit.

As for “Mark from Keele” whom we met in The Dog, I’m not sure which Mark this might have been. I don’t think it was Mark Bartholomew – perhaps it was a mate of either Sim or Tim’s who lived in or near Dulwich and was named Mark.

Diary says we didn’t return to my parents house until late – in fact I am trying to work out what the sleeping arrangements might have been. There was a studio couch in the small (fourth) bedroom which was ample for one sleeping visitor but would not have been comfortable for a couple, let alone two individual sleepers. Perhaps one of them slept on the floor in a sleeping bag.

Saturday 8 August 1981

The Saturday really was a crazy day of haring around town. Allow me to translate that diary note – I needed a bright light, a magnifier and a cold towel around my head to work it all out:

8 August – Earlyish start -> Knightsbridge -> Notting Hill -> Soho – met Mark Lewis -> Ivor’s -> eats -> Hendon -> Ivor’s -> home (knackered).

Frankly, I’m knackered just reading about that day.

I’m hoping that this article will help me to track down either Sim or Tim or both of them – perhaps their memories of this day will help me to unpick it.

I suspect that we went to Knightsbridge because one (or both) of them had a crazy craving to see that place, with its Harrods & Harvey Nicks reputation.

Possibly the same applied to Notting Hill and Soho. Possibly I encouraged the Notting Hill idea, as it was, even by then, a place with a hold on my heart, not least for the second hand record stores, which I had been visiting for a few years by then.

What we got up to in Soho I have no idea. Given that, whatever it was, we did it with my old BBYO friend and now media law supremo Mark Lewis, I suggest that readers keep their baseless allegations to themselves.

I’m not even sure whether Mark joined us on our subsequent BBYO-alums crawl to visit Ivor [Heller, in Morden, where I had enjoyed warm hospitality for many years]…

Ivor Heller’s Fifteenth Birthday Party, 20 to 21 May 1978

…then Hendon, where I imagine we visited Melina Goldberg, as I don’t recall staying in touch with anyone else from that BBYO group…

…then back to Ivor’s – why the diary doesn’t say – perhaps Ivor had organised a bit of a gathering of old friends from Streatham BBYO – it wouldn’t have been the first time nor the last.

Sunday 9 August 1981 – Lunch & Then Wendy’s Place Before Sim & Tim Left London

Took it easy in morning -> lunch -> Wendy’s -> Sim & Tim left, I returned home & slept a lot!

What a bunch of wimps. We’d hardly done anything the day before.

Anyway…

…I’m sure mum would have wanted the visitors to have another hearty, home-cooked meal before heading off – otherwise what might they think of us?

Eat, eat…

Then on to Wendy (Robbins)’s place, in Bromley, for a final visit of the weekend.

Not sure whether any of the other Streatham BBYO people were there. Andrea possibly, Ivor possibly…

…in any case, Bromley is probably not the ideal location out of all the places we visited that weekend from which to head back to Birmingham and Doncaster on a Sunday afternoon – but those logistical details matter a lot less to 18/19 year olds than they do to me, forty years on, re-treading the tangled maze of visits that was our London odyssey that weekend.

Goodness only knows what Sim & Tim made of it at the time, nor what they might make of it now, if they see this piece and are reminded of the weekend. I’d be delighted if others, e.g. Sim and/or Tim, got in touch with their memories to help me enhance this Ogblog piece. If they do, I’ll publish a postscript.

Please help fill in the blanks.

More Work, Rest, Play, Including Some Record Buying & Rescuing Grandma Anne From The Nightingale, 22 July to 2 August 1981

The Nightingale – photo by Ewan Munro from London, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0

Lunch seemed to be the most important part of my working life back then. At least, it was the most recorded item in the diary about my working days.

Wednesday 22 July 1981 – work not too bad – met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch…

…Friday 25 July 1981 – Met Karen [Davies] for lunch…

etc.

Andrea Dean came over on that Saturday.

-> pub etc. Stayed night.

I’ll guess that we met up with several of the Streatham BBYO crowd in that pub. Possibly The Horse & Groom, possibly The Greyhound or possibly The Pied Bull.

I went to see Grandma Anne on that Sunday (26th July) while she was still in Nightingale temporarily on a respite care/check it out basis.

Wednesday 29th July 1981 was Royal Wedding Day – that’s the Charles & Di wedding. I love my diary entry on the matter:

Royal Wedding day – off work. Lazy day not watching wedding.

I wasn’t looking

On Saturday 1 August…

Went to RTE [Record & Tape Exchange] with Paul [Deacon] in day – successful trip…

I have no pictures of such visits to the exchange shops with Paul from those days, but the following picture is a “reconstruction” from Paul’s memory lane visit with me in 2017

Paul studying singles with his game face on, while I peruse the albums – just like in the old days

I think the following chunk from my RTE listings is the batch I bought that day:

Some stuff that I wouldn’t boast about now and/or that hasn’t dated well in that lot, but two of my all time favourite albums in that batch: Germfree Adolescents by X-Ray Spex…

…and Kimono My House by Sparks.

The diary entry for 2 August contains some mystery and does not adequately report the most memorable story of the day:

Mark Stevens dropped in. Got Grandma out of home – reinstated in flat. Paul [Deacon] popped over in eve.

I don’t remember why Mark Stevens dropped in on a Sunday morning. Perhaps Mark remembers.

There was a story to getting Grandma Anne out of Nightingale, though.

TED 'KID' LEWIS - Nightingale House Nightingale Lane Balham London SW12 8NB

I remember this very clearly. We turned up to collect Grandma but she was nowhere to be found. She’d been staying at Nightingale for a few weeks, so we knew where she tended to hang out and where her room was…no joy.

Dad got quite worried and stressy.

We started asking people at random, until one person casually said, “I think she’s gone down the pub with Sid”.

This did not sound like Grandma Anne.

I doubt if she had ever, in her nearly 90 years by then, been in a pub before.

I scurried to The Nightingale, where indeed Grandma Anne was sitting with her new gentleman friend, quite oblivious to the fact that her respite stay was over and that she had an appointment to return to her flat with us.

Equally, she seemed nonchalant about simply saying goodbye to her new gentleman friend and zimmering slowly back to Nightingale with me.

“Pub, shmub”

A couple of weeks later, Grandma Anne was taken ill. She died three weeks after her impromptu pub outing. That event, which might have been her first pub visit, was also her last hurrah.

Testing Times: Working, Seeing Alleyn’s & BBYO Friends, Then The Headingley Cricket, 5 to 21 July 1981

A Few Weeks Earlier: John Sutton / Trent Bridge Test Match, 1981: Alderman to Gower

Once my placement in the Far East (Braintree) had been curtailed, I was able to resume my more habitual holiday job routine, which seemed to have more to do with seeing friends for lunch and evening get togethers than head down graft in the audit and accounts factory that was Newman Harris.

A Social Whirl, 5 to 19 July 1981

A few mentions of busy days and hard work, but mostly a catalogue of non-work events:

  • Sunday 5 July – “visited grandma [Anne]”
  • Tuesday 7 July – “popped in to see Andrew [Andy Levinson] in evening”
  • Wednesday 8 July – “met Helen [Lewis] for lunch. Met Anil [Biltoo] and Jim [Bateman] for drinks in evening”
  • Thursday 9 July – “met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch”
  • Friday 10 July – “Wendies [sic – Wendy Robbins’s] ->Grannies [Wendy’s granny] for dinner -> Wendies [sic] for night”
  • Sunday 12 July – “met Jilly [Black] in town early evening
  • Tuesday 14 July – “-> Hillel [House] -> Streatham [BBYO}’s installations -> Lauren [Sterling] & Jenny [Council] coffee”
  • Wednesday 15 July – “met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch”
  • Saturday 18 July – “Mays [George and Winifred] came in evening”
  • Sunday 19 July – “visited Grandma [Anne] in afternoon”

A few local/Alleyn’s School friends at the start of this period. Andy Levinson lived in our street, so “popped in” really did mean walking two minutes up the road. Anil Biltoo & Jim Bateman for drinks was probably at UCL (where Jim did his summer jobs) and/or The Sun, as described in earlier articles.

Helen Lewis, a couple of years earlier

I’m pretty sure that lunch with Helen Lewis was the occasion that she presented me with Schubert The Sheep. He was named Schubert because there was some classical music playing in the restaurant where we took lunch. Neither Helen nor I could identify the piece but we both agreed that it was not Schubert.

Schubert still lives with me forty years on…in the depicted cupboard

Schubert’s 15 minutes of fame came a few years later, when he appeared on University Challenge as the Keele Mascot. A story for another time.

Visiting Wendy would have been in part as a fun catch up but also probably to help her plan the impending Streatham BBYO installations. I think she must have been outgoing President at that time. With apologies, I cannot recall who succeeded Wendy, but someone might well be able to help jog my memory.

Wendy, a couple of years earlier, at Nightingale

Lauren Sterling and Jenny Council will have attended that Streatham event in their capacities as Regional Grandees. I would have been there in my capacity as a local elder and former National Grandee, now so far past it, I can’t have offered much insight to the local club.

The Grandma Anne visits on Sundays at that time would have been to Nightingale. She had taken the death of Uncle Manny very badly and I think, from memory, that her cleaner/informal carer went away for a few weeks, so she arranged a temporary stay at Nightingale for respite and also as a bit of a tester for possible future need. The latter didn’t materialise as Grandma Anne died later that summer, but I do have an amusing tale from the end of her respite stay at Nightingale – watch this space for the next “forty years on” piece.

And So To Headingley, 20 & 21 July 1981

Hundreds of thousands of people claim to have been at Headingley for the dramatic turnaround and conclusion to the 1981 Ashes test match there, even though only a few thousand people actually witnessed the events.

I am not one of the people making false claims about my attendance…nor am I one of the people who actually attended Headingley on that Monday or Tuesday.

In fact my diary reads as follows:

Monday 20 July 1981 – Work OK did nothing in evening

Tuesday 21 July 1981 – OK Day. Lazy evening.

But I do remember following the cricket at work very clearly, especially on the Tuesday.

I was working in the large, high-ceilinged, “open plan”, Dickensian-look office at the front of 19 Cavendish Square. In that office, there was always a senior whose role it was to supervise/keep order amongst the junior clerks therein.

By the summer of 1981, Newman Harris had replaced Roy Patel (who I think had been promoted to a more interesting role) and hired instead a bespectacled, middle-aged chap, I think he was named John, who spoke with deep-voiced, nasal tones. I don’t think he much liked the idea of summer students – I remember him taking great pains to let us know that he was, “a graduate from the University of Life” and (although not a qualified accountant) he was “qualified by experience”. His management and mentoring style reminded me of Blakey from On The Buses:

Several people in our office were cricket lovers, but in truth there was little interest in the match for most of the Monday. I think word reached us that Botham was scoring runs for fun towards the end of the Monday, but it wasn’t until the Tuesday, after people had seen the highlights on Monday evening, that the interest levels really kicked off.

There were 10 or 12 of us in the office that day – perhaps half of us were interested in the cricket. John was one of the cricket lovers but was also there to maintain order.

Terry, the errand boy, did not reside in our office and I think he kept a small transistor radio in the cubby-hole where he did reside. Terry kept us appraised of the score a couple of times during the morning.

In those days, there was a telephone number you could call to hear the cricket score. It was a sort-of premium rate line. “Dial The Score On 154”.

As the match started to build to a climax, one or two clerks, unable to control their impulses, dialled the score. As a summer lackey, I was too timid to do that but grateful to the others for the news.

John berated the diallers. He explained that there was expense involved in making those calls and that we should all be concentrating on our work. John said that he would dial the score at suitably-spaced intervals and keep us all informed. I think he had 15 or 20 minute intervals in mind.

But as the match came to its climax, John was “Dialling The Score” compulsively, giving us close to ball-by-ball commentary in terms of the score as it progressed. We cheered when John announced that England had won the match. Then he told us all to put our heads down and concentrate on our work for the rest of the day. Goodness knows what John’s dialling did to the Newman Harris phone bill.

My lazy evening will have included watching the test match highlights…probably in black and white on the spare room TV, as neither of my parents cared a fig for cricket.

In case you are wondering, the denouement of that match looked like this.

This is what it looks like as a scorecard and Cricinfo match resources (lots of super pictures).

Below is the Guardian’s take on the matter the next day – a very rare “front page news” day for cricket.

Brearley Bounces CriticsBrearley Bounces Critics 22 Jul 1981, Wed The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

A Very Special Week, The Last Week Of My First Year At Keele, But There Was A Catch… 21 to 28 June 1981

My impressionistic memory of that last week of term is a blissful one. The weather was brilliant. I had a nice spot outside my room where I could sit reading and/or listening to music.

If I fancied a quiet spot for reading, I ambled down to the centre of campus and sat on the grassy knoll in front of the library, reading books for leisure.

The Keele Library grassy knoll was appropriate for me that season, I now realise, having studied modern history as an FY sessional with Trevor Jones, in which the Bay of Pigs and a better-known grassy knoll loomed large.

The book I especially remember reading that week was Catch-22. I still have the well-thumbed copy I read back then – it is depicted above, on the shelf where it now lives. I think I read a few play texts as well.

The word “lazy” appears in my diary a lot for that week. “Restful” and “relaxing” also appear.

I have described playing snooker with my friends Sim & Tim in an earlier piece…

Essaying With Exams, Girls & Snooker Towards The End Of My Foundation Year At Keele, 31 May to 8 June 1981

…we did a fair bit of snooker playing in the evenings of that final week.

It was a special week in more ways than one; the Summer Ball was graced by The Specials…

Paul Williams/Richard Andserson/Mike Laye, CC BY-SA 4.0

…and if you’re wondering now if they were any good…take my word for it, they were a special act for most students of our era. Forty years on, Dave Lee’s forthcoming book The Keele Gigs! will no doubt answer our questions about that gig and a great many others.

The diary says I was up all night for the ball (seems realistic) and that I went to bed very early the next night in the hope of a long night’s sleep ahead of my parent’s first visit to Keele and the journey back to London with them on the Sunday.

I really had fallen in love with Keele and was delighted with the prospect of three more years there. In fact, as it turned out, I stayed four more years.

At the time, during those carefree, idyllic, summer days at Keele, I remember the 18-year-old me thinking that I could happily live at Keele for ever.

But there is/was a catch.

Let’s call it “Catch-18” in this case. In fact, Joseph Heller originally titled his seminal work precisely that, before other works with numbers in the titles pushed him and the publishers towards a different choice of number for his catch.

My 18-year-old’s catch is this: if you are wise enough at the age of 18 to realise that a perennial summer break surrounded by books, youngsters, sunshine, beer and gigs would be a wonderful way to live your entire life…

…you are also wise enough to realise that no such life is realistically possible.

Oh shoot!

On the Monday I started my holiday job and by the Tuesday I had been sent to Braintree to audit a furniture factory.

Brenda Howard / Braintree Town Hall Centre, Fairfield Road, Braintree / CC BY-SA 2.0

“Vedi Braintree e poi muori”, as Goethe would not have said, had he ever been to Braintree. But he might have said “Vedi Keele Library e poi muori” while sitting on that grassy knoll.

Jonathan Hutchins / Keele University Library

Visits & Magical Memories As Clear As Mud: Towards the End Of Summer Term At Keele, 9 to 20 June 1981

Was it Mud at the Lindsay Summer Ball that year?

I have a very strong, impressionistic memory of enjoying myself thoroughly during the last few weeks of the summer term of my Foundation Year at Keele.

Unfortunately…perhaps because I was having such a good time…my memories of specific details are less than special and my diary entries pithy to say the least.

I’ll do my best, but could seriously use some help from the hive mind of those who were also there at the time.

A Short Trip To London, Then Caroline Came Up To Keele With Me, 9 to 12 June 1981

Tuesday 9 June 1981 – Up quite late – had lunch came home. Supper – early night.

Wednesday 10 June 1981 – Haircut in morning – met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch – Cyril Monty. Job – early night.

Not many mentions of haircuts in my diaries from that era – a rare event which, I suspect, came as a result of some serious emotional pressure from mum, combined with the reality that I would need shorter hair for my summer job and was not allowing time between coming down from Keele on the last Sunday of June and a presumed work start date of the Monday!

Meeting Caroline for lunch was quite a regular thing in those days. I think she was at Harrods then, so it would have been one of those quite up-market but affordable eateries in Knightsbridge, of which there were plenty at that time.

Caroline: “let’s lunch” – with thanks to Jilly Black for this photo.

Cyril Monty was an orthopaedic surgeon who, along with his family, were friends of my family. I had suffered an industrial injury while working during the Easter holidays that year:

Industrial Injury In Cavendish Square, c26 March 1981

Cyril Monty told me that I was likely to be prone to back problems throughout my life, but if I did plenty of exercise and avoided injury I might get away with it. I invested in a second hand exercise plan book (along with many other books) on the following Friday…

…and did exercises from that book for the next few years. But I am getting ahead of myself.

“Job” will simply mean that I popped around from Cyril Monty’s Harley Street consulting room to 19 Cavendish Square to confirm my summer job starting arrangements.

Thursday 11 June 1981 – Dentist [Harry Wachtel] in morning – shopping – cataloguing tapes etc. Early night.

Friday 12 June 1981 – Up for lunch – taping etc. – met Caroline. Came up to Keele – lazy evening.

On reflection, the taping sessions I described for my unscheduled visit to London in May…

We Interrupt This Keele FY Summer Term: Matters Of Life & Death, Plus A Couple More Mix Tapes, 8 To 19 May 1981

…were probably undertaken (or at least were completed) on this June visit.

Caroline’s Visit, Segueing Into Richard’s Visit, 12 to 16 June 1981

Saturday 13 June 1981 – Hanley for lunch – Gladstone Museum – Mis’s party in evening.

MartynDavies, CC BY-SA 3.0

I was rather hoping that Caroline would remember some details about this visit and Mis’s party. Simon Jacobs (as usual) drew a blank. Caroline’s response to my request for further information:

I’m with Simon, if you think my memory is going to be better than your diary!. I do remember the weekend as described, particularly a boozy party, but unable to add anything to enhance the description!

I describe the next (Sunday) morning as an early start, although what one did with an early start at Keele on a Sunday is a mystery to me. “Early” might be a relative term, of course and I suspect that we went to the campus store to get some food in, as Simon apparently made lunch and I made dinner that Sunday.

Sunday 14 June 1981 – Early start – buying…lunch at Simons [D Block Barnes], lazy afternoon. Dinner here [F Block Lindsay] lazy evening.

Monday 15 June 1981 – Late start. Lunch – Caroline left in afternoon. Richard [Marks] came. UGM -> party – up till late, v drunk.

Richard remembered…but not for this visit

Neither Simon nor I remember this visit from Richard. I clearly remember his earlier visit during the first term;

Richard Marks Visits Me & Simon Jacobs At Keele, Not Least For Stoke v Manchester United, 19 & 22 October 1980

I wonder what he made of a Keele UGM and the “v late, v drunk” party. I suspect Richard only stayed around for a day or so (the diary is silent on this) as I suspect he was visiting us as part of a road trip which included friends in Manchester and/or Leeds.

Tuesday 16 June 1981 – Good for nothing today – did likewise. Lazy evening etc. Film bad.

Wednesday 17 June 1981 – Earlyish rise – cat etc. Went to disco etc. in eve – played snooker

Thursday 18 June 1981 – Up really early for J-Soc exec meeting. Went to Sneyd in evening.

I wonder how early “really early” was for that meeting. I didn’t have anything else to report until the evening, which might be a clue.

Sue Jacobs Visit & The Mystery Lindsay Ball, 19 & 20 June 1981

Simon Jacobs’s sister Sue – with thanks to Jilly Black for this photo

Friday 19 June 1981 – Lazy day. Bought Books. Susan came in evening. Film Salon Kitty, Lindsay Ball. Mark [probably Bartholomew] & [Liz?] came & stayed late

That book buying session did a great job of getting me started with summer holiday reading plus some basic texts for my impending P1 year.

Salon Kitty was an X-rated movie and Sue was only 16 at the time, but the experience does not seem to have done Sue any harm, nor does it seem to have stuck in her memory.

I have a feeling that this Lindsay Ball must have been the one at which Mud played, but neither Sue nor Simon reckon that they have ever seen Mud. Then again, Simon didn’t even remember that Sue visited us that year. Forty years on, Simon says:

Just because you claim that my younger sister paid us a visit, doesn’t necessarily mean that we attended the Lindsay Ball. Which brings us back to Mud. If they were the top attraction of the night, I might well have found a reason to do something else… x

Sue’s “forty years on” take on all this was as follows:

Fancy Simon not remembering me visiting….no surprise there! I did visit, although no idea of the details at all. Except that we saw a hypnotist show? Simon also did take me back to his room to put me to bed and then to go off again himself…I have no idea about his return…! Happy days!

The hypnotist would have been at the ball and I have a feeling that we did all go to the ball and/but that Simon (& thus Sue) dipped out ahead of the band. So I’m sticking with Mud, as it were, as my best guess for the band for that occasion.

That’s right, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right…

I certainly did see Mud there on one occasion and cannot find another Lindsay Ball mention in my diary that might have been Mud. Hopefully someone amongst the Keele alums out there can confirm or deny my theory.

On the occasion I did see Mud, I recall the Keele audience all-but ignoring the band until they played the only hit of theirs that tended to catch the imagination, at which point everyone danced and chanted wildly:

Muddy Postscript

Helen LeGrand has helped to confirm that Mud’s visit to Lindsay must have been that summer ball in 1981. She adds a very specific memory of her own: “Don’t think it was the original Mud line-up. Memorable for the encore when the lead singer [Les Gray – the only survivor of the original Mud line-up by then] came back on stage completely naked. I’m sure I’m not misremembering that. 😲“

I am pretty sure I didn’t hang around long enough to see the encore, which explains why that mental picture (more smutty than muddy) mercifully does not form part of my own memory.

Saturday 20 June 1981 – Simon & Susan for lunch – went to Newcastle shopping – lazy evening – late night.

Finishing Work, Easter Itself & Returning To Keele For The Summer Term Of My Foundation Year, 17 to 23 April 1981

Thanks again to the Keele website for unwittingly lending me this Lindsay picture.

The Easter holidays of 1981 was the one and only time I worked a Keele Easter vacation. It had not been a very effective way of replenishing the coffers, although it had helped a bit. In any case, I had enjoyed myself in the matter of seeing lots of old friends and spending most of my earnings.

I had even bumped in to one of my new friends, John White, while strolling through John Lewis’s (which backs on to Cavendish Square, where I had been gainfully employed).

Hello John, Got A New [insert name of John Lewis purchase here]?

I remember excitedly telling my parents about my chance encounter with John, only to be told by my mum that she bumps into friends of hers in the shops all the time. But her friends all lived in Streatham and shopped in Streatham. John was a friend from Keele who lived in Hertfordshire – that had genuinely been a chance encounter. Parents just didn’t get it in those days.

Anyway.

On Good Friday (17 April) I:

Went to shop with dad to clear up robbery damage…

Not yet a proper law student, I failed to distinguish the crime that had occurred, a break-in (which is a burglary) from a theft with menaces or violence (robbery); the latter crime was, mercifully, not what had happened.

Dad’s shop – a relatively tranquil place…normally.

What a mess, though. Broken glass everywhere. And blood stains to mop up.

Strangely (and unusually for such a crime), the case was solved by the police rapidly, indeed before I returned to Keele a few days later. The culprit, who I think was on short-term release from a psychiatric institution, had presented himself at Bolingbroke Hospital (a few hundred yards from Dad’s St John’s Hill, Battersea shop), with blood-drenched arms, clutching several items of stock from Dad’s shop window. Sherlock Plod managed to put two and two together. Impressive.

The diary also talks about tape swaps and taping, which I have written up at length in recent weeks. My friends Graham Greenglass and Paul Deacon both “went to town” producing tapes as part of a tape swap with me. Their tapes became much of the soundtrack of the Summer Term of My Foundation Year. Those of you who like wading through such mix tape playlists, I have upped the six of them from March/April 1981, three from each of the lads. I’ll just add one example of each as links here – you can find the others easily enough by clicking through these links. Here is the first of Graham’s:

Graham Greenglass Easter Holidays 1981 Mix Tapes – Tape One Of Three, 17 March 1981

…while here is the first of Paul’s:

A Mix Tape Fest With Paul Deacon, 11 April 1981

According to the diary, Paul came over and we swapped tapes on Easter Saturday (18 April). The diary also suggests that I spent a fair amount of time taping for the rest of the holiday weekend.

Paul’s tapes came in the form of reel-to-reel spools, so they needed “ripping” (i.e. re-taping) onto cassette for Keele purposes. I also can tell from my notes that I made some other tapes, from my own albums and stuff. I’ll need to do a bit more archaeology to see if I can find notes on what was on those. Watch this space. I can see from my listings that I did tape the following albums from my own collection, which were also part of the soundtrack of that summer for me:

  • Armed Forces by Elvis Costello & The Attractions;
  • New Boots & Panties by Ian Dury & The Blockheads;
  • There Goes Rhymin’ Simon by Paul Simon;
  • Donovan File.

Actually, “my soundtrack” was inflicted on many other people, especially once I moved room from the little side room that was Lindsay F1 to the far more salubrious Lindsay F4, which looked out on rolling Staffordshire countryside and outside which I could sit on a sunny day with the window wide open and my Phillips ghetto-blaster blaring. Everyone in E and F blocks who had south-facing rooms, plus G block across the way, was treated to my music choices.

One abiding memory I have of “getting a response ” from Paul Deacon’s wonderful 60s collection, was when I was blasting the above mix tape. I remember “ABCD” Hemsley marching across from G Block in a manner that only the OTC (Officer Training Corps) lot who occupied that block could muster.

I imagined that I was about to get a dressing down about the noise, but instead Dick informed me that he adored The Doors – Light My Fire is on that mix tape – so Dick wondered if I had any more of The Doors to play…which at that time, I didn’t.

It was a rare civil interlude with someone from that G Block crowd, to be honest. Jon Gorvett was unfortunate enough to find himself in that block for our first year. I can’t imagine why Jon didn’t engineer an escape from there. He could have had Lindsay F1 after I moved out of it. I don’t suppose that would have felt like a complete escape, though. Come to think of it, Jon could have satisfied “ABCD” Hemsley in The Doors department as Jon had a liking for (and at least one or two good records of) The Doors music at that time too. Spooky.

The diary notes document my return:

Wednesday 22 April – Returned to Keele (met Lewis [Sykes] on way). Went to Union – David’s [Perrins] for coffee till late.

Thursday 23 April – Fairly early start. Bust moving room etc. Many people back. Revised. Went out for quick drink.

I’m not sure whether my meeting with Lewis Sykes (then National President of BBYO) was a coincidence or not. I suspect not. I had spent time at Hillel House 10 days earlier – JPMP whatever that might have been (sounds important) – so perhaps we engineered it to travel on the same train – me to Stoke and him on to Manchester.

It doesn’t seem to me that I put much into my FY exam revision on 23 April, given that I spent the morning grabbing the more salubrious room, the afternoon having “many people back” and still found time for a quick drink in the Union ahead of exam day. FY students – oh really!

Perseverance With Work & Meeting Up With Friends, 28 March To 10 April 1981

The Perseverance, then named The Sun, Edwardx, CC BY-SA 4.0

My working life that Easter vacation seemed to revolve around lunching and spending evenings with friends. I have already remarked on that in the preceding piece, which culminated in a wonderful Elvis Costello concert which was a highlight of my 1981 concert-going:

Elvis Costello And The Attractions, Hammersmith Odeon, 27 March 1981

Prior to returning to work, lunches and occasional boozy evenings:

Saturday 28 March – went to David [Wendy’s brother] Robbins’s barmitzvah in morning and Ivor’s [Heller] in afternoon. Mays [neighbours George and Winifred] came in evening.

Sunday 29 March – Lazy day. Went to Barmitzvah party in evening.

Wendy Robbins sporting her Streatham BBYO tee-short in 1979

In truth I don’t remember too much about that weekend – others (e.g. Wendy) might have stronger memories of it. The hospitality will for sure have been warm.

Back to work on Monday:

Monday 30 March – Work OK, Lazyish evening.

Tuesday 31 March – Work OK. Spoke to people in eve etc.

Wednesday 1 April – not bad day. Went to [The] Sun [latterly renamed The Perseverance] with Jimmy in evening.

I’m not sure whether Jimmy was also doing a holiday job that Easter, but I think he probably was. For sure he spent several summer holidays working for the UCL Bubble Chamber Group at the main UCL campus in Bloomsbury. Just in case there is anyone reading this who doesn’t have a comprehensive grasp of what a bubble chamber group might do, allow me to deconstruct by saying “high energy physics” and linking to this piece about the UCL Bubble Chamber Group.

What I do know for sure is that the scientists with whom Jimmy was working had no truck with bubbly beer – they were a real ale crowd and I would be invited to join Jimmy and the team for a drink or two in their UCL bar until the early closure there led us to trek for 15 minutes or so to The Sun, which sold a vast array of real ales at any one time.

“Stop wasting valuable drinking time – let’s go to The Sun!” would be the cry from one or two of the bearded researchers with a central casting look and tone if anyone dared to drink up too slowly at the UCL bar.

Thursday 2 April – Work not bad. Lunched with Andrea [Dean]. Easy evening.

You’re probably getting the gist of this now. The diary is depicted above. I’ll pick up the translation story again the following Wednesday:

Wednesday 8 April – Went out with Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch. Went on the booze with Jimmy in the evening.

Thursday 9 April – Met Jilly [Black] for lunch. Paul [Deacon] popped in, in evening with records etc.

Friday 10 April – Busy day at work. Relaxed in evening.

By the end of this fortnight was clearly focussed on producing mix tapes for Paul Deacon, while he was clearly hard at work doing the same for me. 11 April 1981 was a big mix taping day for both of us, as my archive will reveal in the next posting.

Elvis Costello And The Attractions, Hammersmith Odeon, 27 March 1981

I did a holiday job at Newman Harris that first Easter holidays of my Keele life.

My motivation for working was purely financial. I was enjoying/wanted to enjoy my time at Keele. The student grant only went so far. There was no bank of mum and dad (BOMAD) for me. Getting into debt was anathema.

I hadn’t worked for Newman Harris since 1978 – that first experience being a subject I shall most certainly Ogblog in time. (I had worked full time during the summer of 1980, for BBYO – which should be another rich seam of Ogblogging once I get my head into that topic.)

The Easter 1981 vacation was the first time I worked for Stanley Bloom; he wasn’t at the firm in 1978. Yes, that’s right pop-pickers:

I got a job with Stanley, he said I’d come in handy.

Anyway, here is my diary from the first couple of weeks of that experience.

Graham in this instance must be Graham Greenglass. We were going through a process of swapping music on cassette at that time. Coincidentally, Graham furnished me with a fair smattering of Elvis Costello material, including rare groove such as Hoover Factory.

Jimmy (Bateman) was a friend from Alleyn’s. I wonder what has become of him? We met up a lot when working the University holidays those first couple of years at least.

David Robbins is Wendy Robbins kid brother. No longer a kid of course.

Caroline Freeman and I lunched and dined a lot in the holidays back then.

In fact, if my older adult self might be so bold as to observe my young adult self, according to that diary page, there seems to have been a heck of a lot of lunching, dining and going out generally. As a result, I’m not sure that the bank balance replenishment exercise could possibly have gone as well as I had intended. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t work Easter holidays again after that first year. But heck, I was having a good time.

On Friday 27th, a meal at Borshtch N Tears (posher and pricier now, I’d guess) followed by Elvis Costello and the Attractions at the Hammersmith Odeon, with Anil Biltoo (my friend from school, with whom I went to Mauritius in 1979), Caroline Freeman and Simon Jacobs, who I met through BBYO but with whom (and indeed through whom) I went to Keele.

Simon always claims not to remember anything from those days, although he might make an exception for Elvis Costello. Example: which tracks did Elvis play that night, Simon…

…and before you say, “don’t be ridiculous, I don’t remember stuff like that”, actually we don’t need your help with that question; Mr Google came up with the answer for us – click here…

…or if that link fails, I have scraped the answer to here.

Much of the material in that gig came from Trust, which was the latest Elvis Costello album at the time…

…and before Simon claims that he cannot remember exactly what he thought of Trust at that time, here is a link to Simon’s whole page review of Trust in Concourse, the Keele SU newspaper.

How Simon got allocated a whole page for an album review is anyone’s guess, but let’s just note here that the Concourse editors were sacked before the next edition went to press. That edition had to be cobbled together at the last minute by me and Dave Lee, with predictably hilarious results, which I shall write up soon enough. Simon got a regular-sized column that time.

Anyway, we must have really enjoyed the gig because we went back for more Elvis that summer; at least I know I went back with Simon for a second go and I think Caroline also joined us in the summer.

Anil, I think, was less sure about the gig. I’m not sure he had recovered from our evening watching his big sister Bi perform in The Sound the previous year.

Here is a great vid of Clubland (from Trust) to give you a taster of the gig, although the Hammersmith Odeon didn’t look like the vid as far as I can recall…

…Simon will simply claim that he can’t remember: