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.
…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.
“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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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!
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.
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.
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…
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.
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…
While trawling the diary for Concourse memories, I spotted a few entries that brought back memories of a visit by Caroline during our second term at Keele. When I say “our”, I mean me and Simon Jacobs.
Allow me to translate:
Friday 20 February: Not bad day – went to meet Caroline – went to see Too Many Chefs – Simon’s for coffee – not too late a night.
Saturday 21 February: Late start – went to Sneyd for lunch – lazy afternoon – went to “O” party in evening // late night snowballing and making…
Sunday 22 February: …pancakes. Late start. Simon’s for ploughman’s and booze. Romped in snow – lazy evening.
Caroline will have dossed out at mine on this visit – Simon was with a really nice chap named Roy at that time.
“Too Many Chefs” will have been this movie – actually named Who Is Killing All the Great Chefs Of Europe – at Film Club. Reading the synopsis, I remember this kitsch, eminently forgettable movie surprisingly clearly.
Sneyd for lunch, eh? How many times did I end up eating a meal there during my time at Keele. Often. It wasn’t at all bad, as I recall. Landlord Geoff O’Connor knew and liked his food…but not in a Too Many Chefs sort of way.
“O” party in the evening is not a reference to a 1950’s erotic novel. I think it was the block in Hawthorns where Miz and Heather lived…or perhaps the one in Barnes where Roy lived. Anyway, it will be the name of a block.
I really like the notion of late night snowballing and making…pancakes – spilling from Saturday night to Sunday morning. My guess is that I was trying to reflect the actual timings of those things. Such simple, youthful pleasures. Romped in snow was, I’m sure, similarly innocent fun.
I don’t mention Caroline’s departure, but she must have departed at some point – at least I’m pretty sure she isn’t still visiting Keele as I write. I hope I took her back to Stoke in much the same way as I went down to Stoke to meet her. I’ll guess that Caroline’s departure was between the romp in the snow and the lazy evening.
If anyone else (Caroline? Simon??) remembers this weekend, please do chime in with your memories.
Probably because I had become so friendly with Simon Jacobs & Caroline Freeman during my BBYO years, I spent a fair bit of time in Pinner during my last couple of BBYO years. Not as much time as Streatham, my home club, of course, but still a fair bit.
In fact, there seemed to be a general affinity between the two clubs, perhaps because our groups had been “new kids on the BBYO block” and then received our full BBYO charters around the same time, in the late 1970s.
Or perhaps it was simply because we had quite a few friendships emerge betwixt and between Pinner & Streatham.
Mixture of Pinnerites and visiting Americans, 1979
…I found myself in Pinner helping Simon, Caroline and others to hand over the Pinner batons at their club AGM, as my diary attests.
Sunday 4 January – returned home [from a visit to Portsmouth BBYO with Jenny Council via Barry Laden’s place] (via Feld’s). Rather tired. Easy day. Early night.
Monday 5 January – Lazyish day. Did v little.
Tuesday 6 January – Another lazyish day. Popped up to Hillel (lunched with Caroline) – early night
Wednesday 7 January – Packed etc. Went To Pinner – AGM -> Caroline’s etc. Stayed at Simon’s.
Thursday 8 January – Simon & I returned to Keele
That tradition of meeting Caroline for lunch (Tuesday) continued through my holiday jobs and my return to London in the mid to late 1980s. If, as I suspect, she was already working for Harrods back then, I would have tubed it from Euston to a location near to her place of work, as she was the one with the fixed lunch hour.
On the Wednesday evening, I suspect the deal was that I dined with Caroline and her family, then stayed with Simon and his. The number of times I must have dined at Caroline’s place in that period goes uncounted. I did at one time work out that I had eaten at Caroline’s house more often than I had eaten at my parents’ house over a period of several months during 1980. (I had probably eaten at Hillel House many times more than at either or even both of those homes!).
I’m trying to recall who at Pinner would have taken up the cudgels at that time. The era of Richard & Ros Marks, Paul Sass, Paul Dewinter, Simon Jacobs, Caroline Freeman, Paul Ley, Graham Greenglass, Alan Tucker and many others was done, I think. Jilly Black, Sue Jacobs and several others of the next BBYO generation were coming to the fore. Between Simon, Sue, Paul, Caroline, Jilly and others, perhaps we can get some names and serial numbers from the hive mind of memory banks.
The installation ceremony would have looked a bit like this regional one from 1979
I have almost no memory of my last BBYO convention.
Clearly I spent a lot of time at Hillel House between my return from Keele University (13 December) and the start of convention helping to plan/prepare the thing.
I think I might have made some separate notes at the time, but if I did they have been lost with the other memorabilia from that era that my mother threw out at one time, because she “didn’t think anyone would want to keep all of those old jottings and such rubbish.” I’m still not over it.
The diary says I stayed at Howard’s the night before convention. I’m trying to remember which Howard that must have been. I’m sure I thanked you and your parents at the time, Howard, but thanks again.
Update: Jack Gilbert chipped in to suggest that this was probably Howard Wiseman, as I knew him well from events passim. A skim through my old, ragged address book suggests that it almost certainly would have been Howard Wiseman. Thanks Jack.
I think I sort-of acted as returning officer for the elections that year, as I do recall feeling that I had experience of such matters when I got involved with election appeals and such at Keele a few years later.
I know that we elected Lewis Sykes as President.
I know I was awarded life membership at that convention. I probably cried upon receipt.
The diary says that I went to Portsmouth with Jenny (must be Jenny Council) after convention and stayed at Barry Laden’s place. In truth I don’t really remember that specific visit although I do remember visiting Portsmouth several times. I’m sure I thanked you and your parents at the time, Barry, but thanks again.
But beyond the thin gruel in my diary, most of it is just a blur.
So this time, I am shouting out the the BBAK (BBYO alte kackes) community for help. Please chime in with your memories, however slight. They might trigger some of mine – my memory is quite good at being triggered these days.
So once again, my plea. Help! Please chime in with memories of that convention. Once those are gathered, I might be able to write a better piece than this.
Feld’s borscht looked absolutely nothing like this
Sunday 14 December. Went to Feld’s ->…
Strangely, I had a memory flash about Feld’s restaurant the other day (December 2020), when Kay Scorah kindly sent over some soup recipes from her Essex Road Recipes collection, including one for beetroot soup (at the time of writing, not yet published on-line)…
…which reminded me of Grandma Anne and the palaver we went through whenever we went to Feld’s eaterie in Mortimer Street in the hope of getting her a decent plate of borscht. I quote myself:
My Grandma Anne was an addict, but even 50 years ago it was hard to find a reliable source of beetroot soup in a hostelry. “Mr Feld – your borscht tastes like vorter today”, she would holler at the top of her voice in that strange eponymous eatery on Mortimer Street, if the beetroot soup was not up to snuff on that occasion. “Shake the jar!!” Dad, Mum and I would yell in unison when Grandma ordered the borscht, imploring Mr Feld to action, in the hope of staving off the voluble accusation of “vorteriness”…
Let’s be honest about this – Feld’s was not a great place. The salt beef was fine and frankly that’s why we were there. The latke was a sort of lottery, where you might get a clump of pepperiness or an unexpectedly chunky bit of potato. The matzo balls were similarly random. I recall he added almond essence to those, but sometimes you’d get a seriously almondy shot and sometimes the almond essence would be undetectable. I was partial to his tomato soup, which for some reason had a consistent quality to it (it probably came out of a Heinz catering tin), with the unusual addition of a matzo ball for good measure. Don’t ask about the lockshen pudding.
…SR Pressies -> dinner & drinks with Caroline .
SR Pressies would be a meeting of BBYO chapter presidents from across the Southern Region. I clearly went to one such meeting in the South that weekend and something similar in the North the following weekend.
Hence Keele to Manchester via London. I was never THAT geographically challenged.
Caroline would be Caroline Freeman (now Curtis).
Monday 15 December 1980 – Went to Hillel all day. YC meeting. “Return to sanity”.
I have no idea what the insanity was and what the “return to sanity” meant. My guess is that this was all connected with pulling together a National Convention in an environment where the National Exec was much depleted and somewhat in disarray.
My 1980 diary falls silent at that point but have no fear – my 1981 diary started in December 1980.
Tuesday 16 December 1980 – Anil came round for day. Busyish evening.
Anil looking quite smug
17 December 1980. Went to Hillel. Grandma Jenny came around in the evening.
Grandma Jenny
18 December 1980. Easyish day at home. Easyish evening.
19 December 1980. Stayed at home again. Did little in evening.
Given the high activity level of most of my time during that first vacation of my University life, I suspect I spent much of that two day break making up cassettes and mix tapes to take up to Keele with me. I recall feeling very short of music compared with most and compared with my usual experience at home with records and reel-to-reels to play with. I’ll revisit the music aspect when I write up the festive season.
Reading my diary references to Caroline’s visit to Keele in late November 1980 gave me a memory flash of an event earlier that term.
Caroline Freeman (now Curtis) was a good friend, through BBYO, of mine and of Simon Jacobs . Caroline chose not to go to university, although from memory she had as many UCCA points from her A levels as Simon & I had put together from ours.
I had long been the beneficiary of Caroline’s mum’s cooking on the many occasions I found myself in North-West London doing BBYO stuff in the year or so before heading up to Keele.
“That poor boy needs a good meal” – c1979
Anyway, I think Caroline must have got it into her head that Simon and I might struggle to feed ourselves properly at the weekends. Keele provided refectory meals to freshers Monday to Friday but at the weekends we had to look after ourselves.
Frankly, I don’t think the self-catering element of student life was a challenging aspect for either me or Simon…
…nor was I in want of food; I was just burning calories at a furious rate back then…
…but early in our time at Keele, Simon and I both received, through the post, from Caroline, an emergency food parcel styled in the mode of a Red Cross jobbie as depicted above. I don’t recall exactly what was inside the parcels, but I suspect it was more like “boarding school kid tuck” than “genuine emergency rations”. Simon and I were both amused, I certainly remember that.
Hawk-eyed readers (especially those with cipher-cracking skills) might have spotted the 17 November entry: “Jay was supposed to come – “did he heck”. Goodness only knows what that visit from Jay Marks was supposed to be for and why it went awry, but it will have been part of a BBYO National Executive unravelling towards the end of our year which makes the last 74 days of the Trump presidency…
…well, on reflection, it was bizarre (but in the grander scheme of things trivial) stuff around resignations, unresignations, with some of us trying to keep the show on the road with sufficient dignity to hand over to a new committee over the new year holiday. So nothing at all like the last 74 days of the Trump presidency.
Anyway, Caroline’s first visit to Keele is quite well documented in the diary:
Friday 21 November 1980 – Not bad day. Met Caroline at Stoke. Went to Lindsay, Union & coffee lounge.
Saturday 22 November 1980 – Simon & Roy popped in early hours. Got up q late. Found Simon., lunch there…
So far so sensible. Simon had met Roy and started going out with him almost as soon as we arrived at Keele. I’m pretty sure Caroline stayed in my pokey room, which was tolerably fine back then and would be unthinkable now considering the size of those student beds and bedrooms. “Lunch there” I guess was in Simon’s block in Barnes (D if I remember correctly), where the facilities for weekend self-catering were marginally better than those in my Lindsay block (F I recall most certainly).
I have used sophisticated computer-aided techniques to decipher the next bit and am pretty sure it must say:
…romped in lakes. Simon left. Spiff dinner (over top) -> over to Roys.
The Lakes at Keele is a rather charming wild garden beyond the ornamental gardens of Keele Hall. Originally planned to be a network of seven substantial artificial lakes, money and/or motivation must have run out for the Sneyd family in the early 19th century as the more far-flung lakes are more like puddles and only two or three have any scale to them. Still, they are pleasant enough to walk around and I dread to think what romping entailed on that occasion. Whether “Simon left” in disgust or simply to go over to Roy’s place is lost in the mists of time. Almost certainly the latter.
No idea what the sentence “Spiff dinner (over top) -> over to Roys” actually means. I sense an in-joke long since forgotten.
Sunday 23 November 1980 – Lounged around all day. Roy, C & I met Simon, went out for dinner. V nice.
Monday 24 November 1980 – Not bad day. Caroline left at 3:00 pm. Relaxing evening.
It would have been helpful if I had noted where we went out for dinner. There were a couple of passable restaurants in Newcastle-Under-Lyme and I suspect it was one of those. The Sneyd Arms didn’t qualify as going out for dinner. Nor did the Union and nor did The Golf. So Newcastle it almost certainly must have been.
Caroline will surely remember every detail and help fill in all the blanks. After all, she was the one with more UCCA points than me and Simon put together.
Mind you, she was almost silent about my write up of her visit the following term, which for reasons of happenstance I wrote up before this one:
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