The following airmail was drawn by Anil and served as a birthday greeting to dad. I’m guessing we sent it c10 days ahead of the birthday.
Category: Friends and Family Events
Seventh Letter From Mauritius, 31 July 1979
I wrote letters to mum and dad which doubled as my diary/travelogue. Here is a scan of the seventh of them.
Sixth Letter From Mauritius, 28 July 1979
I wrote letters to mum and dad which doubled as my diary/travelogue. Here is a scan of the sixth of them.
Fifth Letter From Mauritius, 23 July 1979
I wrote letters to mum and dad which doubled as my diary/travelogue. Here is a scan of the fifth of them.
Fourth Letter From Mauritius, 21 July 1979
I wrote letters to mum and dad which doubled as my diary/travelogue. Here is a scan of the fourth of them.
Third Letter From Mauritius, 19 July 1979
I wrote letters to mum and dad which doubled as my diary/travelogue. Here is a scan of the third of them.
Second Letter From Mauritius, 17 July 1979
I wrote letters to mum and dad which doubled as my diary/travelogue. Here is a scan and then transcription of the second of them, which relates to 17 July 1979.
Dear folks,
As you may have realised from the drift at the end of letter one, I had the inspiration to save writing time. You want to know what I’m doing all the time and I want to keep a diary. Thus I am sending you my diary as I go along which is why I wanted to keep the letters for me when I come back. Please send me news from home about once a week or fortnight or I will feel forgotten.
This morning we first went to Lynford Smith’s house (the priest from England) who drove us to Rose Hill to Garçon’s house…
In July 2019, writing up these pieces around the 40th anniversary of my visit, I managed to trace Lynford Smith to St Barnabas Church, an Anglican community in Vancouver – click here.
If anything changes at St Barnabas, here is a link to a scrape of that page taken in July 2019.
… from where we went to Port Louis for the day .
There we had a workers lunch in the market, a full lunch for a big 10p (a little less). We then visited Jan Sooknah a cousin of Bill’s. who immediately insisted we go to his house for tea and was very pleased to see us. He is a lawyer. All lawyers here are very rich. He lives in the district which is the Mauritian equivalent of Beverly Hills or Hampstead Garden Suburb!!!
They want us to stay there for a while: we may do later. Then we came home for supper where we had octopus; the food is superb!!
We went for a walk after supper and befriended the sons of the owner of the café (very convenient) and some of their friends. Marraz Biltoo is very popular around here and knowing him means instant acceptance and friendship.
Sugar cane grows like grass in Mauritius, you just tear it off the trees. It has the fascinating property that the fibres (if you carry on chewing rather than spit them out) clean your teeth and are good for the gums.
We are having the time of our lives here, the weather is good And improving. It is so different from England you wouldn’t believe it.
I won’t write a whole letter every day; soon the news will become less no doubt, so I will dig sections of letters, but I will be writing each day, you could say.Anyway all the best, have fun, lots of love Ian
First Letter From Mauritius, 16 July 1979
I wrote letters to mum and dad which doubled as my diary/travelogue. Here is a scan followed by a transcript of the first of them, which relates to 16 July 1979.
For those who struggle to read my beautiful manuscript, here is a dictated transcription:
Dear Ma and pa,
Well here I am, in Mauritius. It’s 7:15 AM and the sun will soon be making its presence felt. We are right at the tail end of the wintry weather (that means cold nights), but wrapped up in a blanket I was quite warm enough, so the assurance that I won’t need the blanket for much longer is quite irrelevant. Mindyou, I’d have slept like a log through anything after getting about half an hours sleep on the plane.
The flight was most enjoyable. At Heathrow we met a Biltoo, Arriss, who travelled with us and being in aviation he knows the ropes. Bahrain, our first stop (at 1:45 GMT 3:45 Bahrain time) was smelly, with workers sleeping around on the airport floors etc.Seychelles wouldn’t let us off, as it was raining when we stopped there, but the weather in Mauritius was lovely.
We arrived at 11:15 GMT, 2:15 Mauritius time and were met by Marraz (whose home I am in now) Garçon (with chauffeur to take all our bags) and Narrain (whose wife is one of Bill’s sisters). Of course they brought their families with them, (except Narrain as there was no room to 6 kids). First of all we drove to Garçon’s house.
The first thing that struck me on the journey was the extreme poverty. People living in rusty shacks etc. The second thing was the wonderful smell of the island, this mainly caused by sugar cane.
Garçon’s house at Rose Hill is like a mansion. We may stay there for a while. We quickly moved on to Narrain’s house – that was when we met Tiffin (Bill’s sister) and the six children. Then we went to Marraz’s house. Marraz has pull here, so the words Marraz Biltoo got us straight through customs etc. at the airport.
That evening we were visited by the Anglican priest from Catford [Lynford Smith] who I recognise and who recognises me. He says you can’t possibly see Mauritius unless you live with Mauritian people for some time, like I’m doing.Anyway I’ll be in touch soon, lots of love Ian.
PS Please keep my letters as I’m too busy to write everything down for you and keep a diary
I refer to Anil’s dad as “Bill” in these letters, but I remember him as Dat (or Dutt) and I am pretty sure everyone in Mauritius called him Dat. Perhaps Bill was his nickname or simplified name in England.
Drewy’s Party and Subsequent Matzo Ramble, 14 and 15 April 1979
I have been reminded of this weekend by several coincidences in the past few days/weeks.
Firstly, I used the following photograph to illustrate one of my party pieces from 1979 (no photos from the event itself) only for it to dawn on me and other commentators what the origins of the following photo must be.
Also, as part of my Ogblogging, I uploaded one of my old NewsRevue songs, Privatise, which is sung to the tune of Bright Eyes. It’s a real good one, though I say so myself – click here.
I played Bright Eyes while working on the Privatise/NewsRevue piece and it brought on a solid wave of memory from that April 1979 weekend. You couldn’t get away from Bright Eyes that spring; it was the Easter Number One, it was everywhere. I’ll insert a link at the end of this piece as a reward for those who…scroll all the way down there…I mean read this fine piece of mine in its entirety.
Drewy’s Party 14 April 1979
I don’t remember ever decorating at Anil’s house, but that’s what the diary says I did, before going on to Drewy’s place in Harrow-On-The -Hill for the party.
There was a group of visiting BBYOniks from the USA (New Jersey I believe) in town – earlier diary references cover earlier sessions with them. That is probably why I took my camera. Indeed, the photos of Drewy’s party are the only party photos I took throughout those years (unless you consider the conventions to have been several-days-long parties, which is not a ridiculous contention).
The stack of pictures from the party itself, all 31 of them, can be viewed here. A few good examples follow.
A few familiar faces (and some unfamiliar ones) in the above picture. All familiar faces in the picture below.
Simon Jacobs showed off his cigarette party trick for the camera:
I’ll need to do some work in Photoshop to enable people to see Simon’s smoke well – but I’m sure you all get the idea.
Drewy could do a perplexed expression for the camera in those days, so he did that.
It was a big house, the Drewy house. Many of us stayed. Frankly, that number of people often found ways of squeezing into smaller houses – this Ivor Heller Party piece from the previous spring (1978) refers.
Aftermath and Ramble, 15 April 1979
So how have I managed to find solid evidence that my unidentified fragments of negative, including the above “trews-free in the park” picture come from the same weekend?
Not so easy.
The main suspect in “the mysterious case of the trews-free gentleman” (see the first photo of this piece, above) now lives in the USA himself. When approached, he immediately started pleading the fifth amendment, which I think has something to do with bearing arms – I really should have made more attention when I did that comparative law module…whatever, I knew I’d need to handle this character very carefully indeed.
Still, once the gentleman had been offered immunity (which is apparently what you do with guilty folk in America to get them to sing), he sang like a canary.
More conclusively, now that I have gone back to the original negatives and looked at the whole fragment, I have also found the following picture on the same strip:
Also on the same strip, a couple of nice pictures of Linda, so she must have been there too. Perhaps she has some memories of this weekend to add:
Given the negative numbers and the fragmentary nature of the negatives, I am vaguely recalling that this roll of film was not finding its way happily into and through my camera. Indeed, from the depths of my memory, I think the camera jammed on the ramble, hence the shortage of pictures on that stack.
My diary is clear that we went on from Drewy’s place to a ramble:
Case proven.
As I write (14 April 2017) it is the 38th anniversary of the Drewy Party and Matzo Ramble weekend. An auspicious anniversary, as it happens, because this is Easter weekend and also the middle days (Chol Hamoed as they are known) of Passover, an unusual coincidence of festivals, just as it was in 1979.
In the run up to this Easter, there has been a storm in a teacup in the UK about Easter Egg Hunts being renamed as Cadbury Egg Hunts – click here. Whether this was done for marketing purposes or was, as some have suggested, “political correctness gone mad” to remove the specific reference to “Easter” I neither know nor care…
…but in the spirit of the modern era, perhaps we should rename the Matzo Ramble as a Rakusen’s Ramble. Or, in honour of our recently departed visitors from New Jersey, a Manischewitz Meander…
…now I’m rambling. Have a look at the Bright Eyes vid below. Those with memories that go back that far, might just get a little memory flash of that 1979 spring. If so, I’d love to learn about your memories too.
An Evening At The George Canning, 8 April 1979
I enjoyed several evenings of beer and music with mates from Alleyn’s at the George Canning pub, Effra Road, Brixton.
I was reminded of it (April 2017) while writing up the party and rambling events of the following (Easter) weekend of April 1979 – click here – by spotting the following diary entry from the previous weekend, 8 April:
Went to George Canning in eve
No information in that diary entry on who my companions were that evening. I remember going to the George Canning with Jim Bateman more than once and also I’m pretty sure Mark Stevens. Perhaps also Paul Deacon and/or Graham Majin on at least one occasion; others joined us too, I think, on one visit or another. This aspect of my memory needs help.
But I do remember those evenings at the George Canning reasonably well.
In 1979, the pub looked more like the 1905 picture from this urban history site than the 2003 picture – click here – even though colour photography had just about emerged by 1979 (albeit not often in my camera).
As I recall it, the music on all my visits was British Rhythm & Blues – click here – much like the first albums by bands like the Rolling Stones, Manfred Mann, The Moody Blues, the Animals etc. Whether that R&B was the style of the place always or whether that was merely what you got on the nights we could afford, I don’t know.
But we could afford these evenings on a bit of saved pocket money. The beer was just a few pence more than normal, but if you eked out two pints over the evening you could still get a whole evening of beer and music for a quid.
The George Canning type of pub wasn’t a salubrious environment back then. I’m talking about 1979 Brixton, not the hipster “south-Shoreditch-like” inner London neighbourhood of today.
Indeed I don’t suppose my mum would have approved of us going there had she realised what a dive this pub was at that time; but Effra Road was also the location of the Brixton Shule (synagogue), so (in her mind) what could possibly go wrong just a hundred yards or so up the road from there?
From our point of view, it always felt safe and welcoming enough. The nights we went to the place, it was mostly populated by people who were there for a few beers and some music. Perhaps a few old regulars bemoaning the noise, but on the whole there was a sense of shared music-following purpose.
The place is now far more venue than drinking house; Hootananny Brixton – click here to see the site.
“Over 21s only” it says at the top of the web site…that might have proved to be a bit of a problem for us 16/17 year-olds.
Not bad reviews on Yelp for the current venue – click here.
Not so sure about it as a hostel if TripAdvisor reviews are to be believed – click here.
But looking back to 1979, other old friend’s memories of those outings to the George Canning would be most welcome.
Update: when I shared this piece on the Alleyn’s 1970s Facebook Group, both Mark Stevens and Neil Voce owned up to having been part of that scene.
Mark Stevens wrote:
I used to go and see a blues band there – the Southsiders…I think they were the band that pushed me towards blues more than anything else…
Neil Voce wrote:
Definitely used to go to see them at the George Canning as it was and the two brewers in Clapham