8 November 1978 – Mum and Dad left first thing for Israel. School OK – cooked myself a delishous [sic] dinner.
Crumbs – my folks didn’t hang around – I had only turned 16 six weeks before they disappeared off on holiday and left me entirely on my tod.
9 November 1978 – School OK, played fives. Went next door for dinner. Linda came round later.
What a good sort Linda has always been. The diary shows many visits from Linda during those few weeks of parental absence. I’m sure Linda’s caring instincts were already in full force and she wanted to make sure I was OK on my own in that house.
10 November 1978 – School boring. Went to Auntie Pam’s for Indian dinner
11 November 1978 – Developed and printed in morning with Linda in morning. Got ready for party. Threw fantastic party…
…though I said so myself. The self-confidence, the certainty of opinion. Writing now (March 2017) I’d describe it as a positively Trumpian diary entry.
12 November 1978 It went on until approximately 6:15 in the morning…
…that’s a very specific, approximate timing from Ian Junior…
…went in evening to Stanmore installation (boring) and dance (great).
More certainty of opinion! I can only apologise to the Stanmore club members. In mitigation, I had discovered tonsil hockey earlier that year and was probably keen to try out my skills at the post installation party, hence my boredom during the official ceremony and my delight at the dance. Judging by the diary hieroglyphics and my memory this was a successful evening (indeed a very successful weekend) by my main criterion of success during that era.
13 November 1978 – Got home in the early hours to find an apple pie bed.
I have tried hard to extract confessions for this one; I have got precisely nowhere.
I was inspired to write up this piece (in March 2017) when I saw David and Ivor Heller’s Facebook postings about their parent’s 60th wedding anniversary.
It would be hard to exaggerate how much hospitality, kindness and generosity of spirit we members of Streatham BBYO (our youth club) received from David and Ivor’s lovely parents.
So, the following party memory is but one of many memories that sprang to mind when I saw the wonderful pictures from their diamond celebrations. Perhaps this party sprang first to mind because I have recently been swapping bants with old friends from Alleyn’s School about teenage parties. Indeed there will be a few more Ogblog postings about the subject of parties.
Ivor’s fifteenth birthday party was especially memorable though.
My diary pages are only of limited use:
Diary 14 to 20 May 1978Diary 21 to 27 May 1978
I need to post two pages because the party unquestionably lasted more than one day.
For those unable to translate my scrawl, allow me to translate:
Saturday 20 May 1978:
went to Ivor’s party, great. stayed overnight…
Sunday 21 May 1978:
…and stayed the day too. Played snooker in afternoon. Great day.
That’s all he wrote, folks. But that isn’t all he remembers. Oh, no.
I remember that there were lots of people there. Many of “the usual suspects” from our club. Also far flung (North London, East London, some even West London, can you imagine?) friends and family of the Hellers. Like many of the house parties of my youth, “cosy” is a more appropriate term than, for example, “would have been well within commercial venue fire limits”. A great many of us stayed over, so the party remained cosy well into Sunday.
But there were not too many people for the cask of beer so generously provided. I think it was a firkin, I am absolutely certain it was Young’s, it seemed to be a never-ending supply of beer.
I’d also more or less learnt my lesson about alcohol quantity as well as quality by May 1978, thank goodness.
I remember getting inadvertently/accidentally doused in a rather pungent scent that Ivor had been given for his birthday. Thoroughly doused, to my irritation. I remember thinking that the resultant fog of scent would reduce or even extinguish my allure. Yet, contre Pepé Le Pew, it seemed to do me no harm at all that night.
So, what an evening, oh what a night and the fun continued throughout the rest of the weekend. I recall that several of the club crowd (and others) stuck around during Sunday; many of us went into Morden for the snooker in a rather seedy hall.
I love my comment from the Monday “all right at school today”, implying that surviving school the next day was an achievement in itself. Probably a very accurate reflection.
Others who enjoyed the Heller’s hospitality, in particular this superb party, might recall more. I’d love to hear some more memories, either through comments on this posting or by other means.
Try to remember, the way we were. Ivor, Sandra, Mark & Andrea.
I had wondered, when looking at the photo batch, whether I had got some negatives mixed up, as it looked to me as though some pictures of my dad in Brighton had got mixed up with a day trip to Greenwich.
But the diary reminds me that we went to Greenwich twice, going to Brighton on the day in-between.
That summer was the first time in my childhood that we had no family holiday.
Dad must have been very short of money at that time – the business had been doing badly for a few years by then. Dad probably couldn’t justify the expense of getting someone else to run the photographic shop for any amount of time during those commercially better end of summer weeks, even if he could have afforded the holiday itself…which he probably couldn’t.
So he/we simply took a long bank holiday weekend – I suspect he just kept the shop closed until the Thursday.
I have done this as a photo piece using the picture captions to tell the tale; I think the pictures themselves tell most of the story.
Dad in the Trafalgar Tavern, 29 August 1977
The diary suggests that we very much enjoyed our lunch at the Trafalgar Tavern.
Me in the Trafalgar Tavern, 29 August 1977
Probably we enjoyed the lunch so much so that we didn’t get to see all the things we’d intended to see in Greenwich that day.
Cutty Sark, 29 August 1977
Old Royal Naval College – 29 August 1977 – seemingly taken from a boat – how many times did I see that glorious panorama from the deck of a boat in later years?
29 August 1977 was a beautiful sunny day by the looks of it
29 August 1977 – Old Royal Naval College in the sunshine
On 30 August, we went to Brighton. Only three photos from there that day – all of my dad being blown or blowing in the wind:
Dad being blown around in Brighton, 30 August 1977
Dad blowing in the wind, Brighton, 30 August 1977 – I like this picture a lot.
We clearly decided to return to Greenwich to finish our sightseeing on 31 August. We took lunch in the Cutty Sark this time, which I don’t think we liked as much as the Trafalgar Tavern back then, if I am reading between the lines of my diary correctly.
The weather looks miserable in the 31 August pictures, as does my mum:
Dad and Mum, the latter looking wet and cold, in Greenwich, 31 August 1977
Dad and Mum, the latter looking wet and cold, in Greenwich, 31 August 1977
I was reminded of this 1977 impromptu summer holidays outing at a recent (November 2017) gathering of the old school clan – click here or the link below:
Not only did both Andrew and Fiona Levinson come up in the conversation that evening, but I realised, when the 1977 Billingsgate visit popped into my head, that the venue, The Rajasthan Restaurant, is just across the road from the old Billingsgate Fish Market. Weirdorama.
Here is the relevant page of my diary. Not much going on at that stage of the summer…
This was the first year I didn’t go away with my parents during the summer school holidays since I was a toddler. I don’t think dad had the money for a holiday that year – business was not good.
That 1p will have contributed handsomely towards my bus fares and stuff.
On the Friday, the diary notes that I:
went out with Andrew, Fiona and Valerie (pen friend from France). No 23 in evening.
No 23 was my grandmother (of kalooki fame)’s flat. There was a three line whip for the family to gather and no kalooki on a Friday night. Don’t be ridiculous. On the sabbath? No, no, no. Kalooki was a Sunday thing.
What Andrew, Fiona, Valerie and I did on that Friday is lost in the bowels of my mind, so unless one of the others reads this and knows (please chime in if you do) the nature of the Friday activity will be lost for ever in the mists of time.
The Saturday diary entry is more explicit:
went to Billingsgate first thing with Andrew, Fiona and Valerie.
I do recall making a very early start of it and venturing out to Billingsgate with my camera in hand.
Old Billingsgate, dapper head gear
Left to right: two fishmongers, Andrew, Fiona, Valerie
Andrew pondering the price of fish as we leave Billingsgate
Who would have thought back then that I would end up writing a book on commerce, The Price Of Fish, using a multitude of fishy examples, some of which were spawned all the way back then at Billingsgate – click here or below:
But I digress…
…let us return to the 20 August outing. We clearly did a little more sightseeing before we went home – click the link below for the whole photo roll, which is available for all to see on Flickr – click here or below:
As a footnote, I’d like to make it clear that our behaviour with Fiona’s pen friend from France was exemplary, showing her the sights, sounds and smells of Old London Town and generally being hospitable.
This turned out to be our last family summer holiday together. The following year dad was brassic (skint) so we just did some day trips and stuff, e.g. Greenwich:
Then the year after that, I did BBYO camps while mum and dad went off and did their own thing early autumn.
I turned 14 on this La Manga holiday and I do remember feeling, even at that tender age, that I had sort of outgrown those family holidays. I sensed that mum and dad wanted some prime time together and I was no longer intrigued by going off and doing stuff with random youngsters who just happen to be on holiday with you.
We stayed in the Hotel Entremares – not the sort of place I might stay in now, but it is still there and looks OK. Mixed reviews now.
The hotel (and to some extent the resort) was brand new then and I suspect my dad picked up a late booking at low cost for a place that hadn’t yet gained a reputation.
Clearly we were treated like visiting celebrities:
There is a movie for this holiday which, believe it or not, actually did yield some “famous for 15 minutes material” many years later, when Visa rewarded me handsomely enough and used some clips in one of their adverts and vines. Here is the whole movie:
Here’s the Visa ad, which shows dad slapping on the tanning oil:
This blond girl features in the movie too. I wonder whether I had latched on to the blond girl or whether she had latched on to me. Rohan Candappa probably wants me to track her down and write a story about her.
In those days La Manga was positioning itself for tennis in particular…
It seems I spent a fair bit of time with Andy Levinson in the few days between my Bar Mitzvah and going on holiday. Here’s the transcript of the headline picture’s diary scribble
Monday, 11 August 1975 – Andy all day. TV Star Trek, My Honourable Mrs, Yuri Geller and psycho film.
Actually the “psycho film” was Pressure Point with Bobby Darin & Sidney Poitier:
Tuesday, 12 August 1975 – Andy morning. TV Tarzan. Uncle Dick in the evening.
Guess who’s coming to dinner? Uncle Dick! He wasn’t my uncle, but was, I think, next door neighbour Rose Beech’s brother. Very nice chap who had been a POW during the war and needed careful feeding as a result. I’m guessing the the Beeches went away straight after my Bar Mitzvah and mum promised to feed Dick at least once in the days before we also went away.
It was that sort of neighbourliness in that area in those days.
Wednesday, 13 August 1975 – uneventful day. All OK.
Thursday, 14 August 1975 – went to West End to get tickets.
Friday 15 August 1975 – fired Jeanette. Went to Grandma Anne’s.
What on earth can “fired Jeanette” mean? I can only surmise that she was our cleaner for a short while, as I have no recollection of her. Mrs Nugent “Nu-Nu” was our cleaner for many years – most of childhood, followed by Mrs Main who also stuck with mum (and vice versa) for donkey’s years. I’ll guess that Jeanette was one that didn’t work out between the two I remember.
Just to be clear, it will not have been me who did the firing. It will have been mum. I just dutifully recorded the HR proceedings in my diary.
Saturday 16 August 1975 – uneventful. Preparation. TV [Sgt.] Bilko and Crown Court.
I don’t mention watching Days One to Three of the Headingley test, but I know I watched some of it. On the Saturday, Bilko was on the TV before the start of play; Crown Court after stumps. What else would I have done on an uneventful day?
The reason I am sure I saw some of it is that I recall my sense of horror when I learnt, on holiday, what had occurred while I was away from the match after those first three days. England looked very well placed at that stage.
Actually, I wrote up the centre piece of the party – the limbo dancing – some five years ago (he says, writing now in December 2025) – click here or below:
But there was more to this party than just the limbo dancing. Oh yes.
There was a meal, for a start. A meal that is bound to have been baked salmon, although I really don’t remember the meal. But in a non-kosher venue with some observant people present, fish would have been the order of the day for sure. Then you could also have some creamy deserts and stuff like that.
Then speeches. The camera only caught the important ones – me as the star of the show and Andy Levinson as my warm up or warm down act, I cannot remember which way round we spoke.
I certainly win the award for the more skew-iffy tie.
There was also regular dancing for regular people, as well as limbo dancing.
Cousin Angela and John KesslerNext door neighbours Rose & Bill BeechMum with Norman Levinson – Dr Edwina Green looks disapproving, perhaps because mum’s new hip was only three months old at the time
Mum had put enormous effort into rehab after her hip replacement in May, motivated by a desire to dance at my Bar Mitzvah party, which she sure did. My perspective on this has shifted in the past year, having been through the hip replacement and hard yards for rapid rehab myself in 2025.
Mum, Denise Lytton and Rose Beech, as Marjorie and Fiona Levinson look on. Don’t overdo it, mum and whatever you do, don’t fall over……and don’t try to emulate cousin Colin Jacobs.
Of course, these events are family affairs and most of the family was there:
Grandma Jenny & Me above, Me & Grandma Anne belowPam & Michael front, Auntie Francis standing, flanked I think by Lieba and Sam Aarons…Mum liked this picture.
You can see all of the photos from both days of the Bar Mitzvah weekend through this Flickr link, here or below:
This event came to me as a memory flash while in e-conversation with Rohan Candappa in December 2020 on the topic of that “limbo period” between Christmas and New Year. Rohan pointed out:
Limbo is a strangely schizophrenic word. It’s either a time when nothing is going on, or the most extreme dance you can imagine.
Suddenly it all came flooding back to me. The dinner & dance the day after my Barmitzvah. The Peacock Club in Streatham. The limbo dancer my parents arranged as entertainment for said evening. My limbo dancing “career”, not just remembered but I knew for sure that I have photographs.
Why the choice of limbo dancer for a Barmitzvah party? The answer to that question is truly lost in the mists of time. Some would suggest that it was a very “South London” choice. Others that it was an inappropriate choice steeped in cultural appropriation.
My guess is that someone dad knew through his photographic shop business was connected with the charming young lady in question.
Dorothy.
I know that she is/was named Dorothy because the pictures in my parent’s memory book / photo album have clearly been labelled “Dorothy”.
[Infantile readers may insert their own version of the joke revolving around the idea that “Ian was a friend of Dorothy when he was thirteen years old” here.]
Dorothy [Thinks]: What a funny little boy he is. Ian [Thinks]: I could be in here…whatever “being in” might be.
Dorothy showed us how it should be done.
Steve Lytton was one of several people who had a go. Unfortunately for him, his photo survived and has lived peacefully in my parent’s memory book for 45 years and counting:
Friends from the neighbourhood and school might recognise Andy Levinson in the background of the above and following picture. He’s hiding behind is mum. It seems he didn’t have a go at limbo dancing.
My technique showing real promise there. If only I had persevered with the practice, I could have been a contender.
Then Dorothy started to show off.
I mean, really, was that completely necessary?
Seriously, I do remember Dorothy being sweet with me and making the whole event feel special. She was clearly very talented at limbo dancing.
One day I’ll write up other aspects of my Barmitzvah. Sadly, for lovers of music and theology, there is a recording of me singing my rite of passage passage and I’ll feel Ogblog-honour bound to upload it, if only for the sake of completeness.
Anyway, the limbo dancing was great fun. Dad clearly felt that he had pulled off a blinder by booking Dorothy…
…while mum did far more dancing than was good for her, just three months after having a hip replacement:
Update/Footnote Post Publication
I managed to track down and get in touch with Steve Lytton after publishing this piece – it seemed only polite to let him know that his youthful limbo dancing efforts were now in the public domain.
It was really nice to catch up with Steve and e-chat after so many years.
One thing that Steve said solved at least part of the “why a limbo dancer at my Barmitzvah party” mystery:
…what a coincidence. We had a limbo dancer at MY Barmitzvah party…
…said Steve. The penny dropped. We had a limbo dancer at my celebration because I/we had so much enjoyed the limbo dancer at his, a year or so earlier. So the question now really should be, “why did Steve have a limbo dancer at his Barmitzvah party?” Or maybe it was simply the fashion for such parties at that time.
Truth to be told, dear readers, most people who, like me, were brought up in non-religious, or, at the most, quasi-religious households, thought of the Bar Mitzvah as an event which would result in lots of super presents and a big party in your honour…
…with a religious ceremony inconveniently taking place between the presents and the party.
Hence, I felt the need to separate out the Bar Mitzvah itself for an Ogblog page, because I did put in the effort to do the thing properly. My parents would have expected nothing less.
Had I succeeded in recusing myself eighteen months or so earlier, I don’t suppose the presents and the party would have been forthcoming, so…thank you, Rabbi Ginsbury.
I still have a handful of the presents, in particular the gramophone records and books (things I never throw away), a letter writing box/set from Jacqueline and Maurice Swain (still with me but rather fershimmeled to be truthful), a rather splendid onyx chess set in Aztec style (from Monty & Vivienne Phillips, I’m pretty sure)…plus money, of course – I still have some of that – not the actual cash or cheques tendered at that time of course, although several people insisted on their money being converted into premium bonds and I will still have those actual bonds as I have never sold a premium bond.
I digress. Anyway, it wasn’t just me who thought the eating, drinking and making merry was the bigger part of the process. The invitation below, which stretches to ten lines, uses four of them to cover the religious service, then six lines to describe the ensuing libations, feasting and terpsichorean celebrations.
To an even greater extent, the surviving photographs are heavily oriented towards the celebratory events the following day, although this can in part be explained by the prohibition of photography in shule and indeed anywhere on the sabbath.
Dad was no doubt breaking multiple rules when he snapped me in my state of readiness on the morning of my Bar Mitzvah before we set off for shule.
I’m pretty sure I still have that yarmulke and it looks suspiciously un-fershimmeled given its vintage, unlike my writing case. I have clearly spent more time writing than praying in the intervening 50 years. Who knew?
Another breach of protocol, although this breach will not have been made on that Saturday, but some days earlier, was a recording of the passages I was to read and sing for my Bar Mitzvah.
The Bar Mitzvah is, in a religious sense, a coming of age ceremony, around the age of 13, when the initiate reads the weekly passage from the Torah (in my case a dollop of Deuteronomy) and that week’s chunk of additional Old Testament material (in my case an iota of Isaiah), along with some ceremonial prayers. All sung in Hebrew using some of the oldest musical notation known to man.
Having done that, the initiate is a fully fledged “man”, in the sense that their presence in the synagogue now counts towards the minyan – i.e. the quorum of ten adult males required for certain prayers.
The idea of a minyan is not to be confused with cute but despicable creatures, minions, who appear in several of my favourite movies. (I never did grow out of loving animated films).
Anyway, with the trigger warning that this sound file is less than special aesthetically, here is the recording of me singing my passages and prayers:
Ten minutes of unimaginable sound.
Had you asked me ten minutes ago what those passages were and what they were about, I’d have shrugged, other than the “dollop of Deuteronomy & iota of Isaiah” line.
But thanks to Mr Google (other AI-enabled searches are available), I can be far more specific:
On August 9, 1975, which was a Saturday (Shabbat), the weekly Torah portion read was Parashat Shoftim.
This Torah portion is the 48th in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and is found in the book of Deuteronomy, specifically Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9.
The main themes of Parashat Shoftim include:
Guidelines for leadership and the appointment of judges, officers, priests, and a king.
Laws concerning the integrity of the judicial system.
Rules regarding prophets, cities of refuge for accidental killers, and false witnesses.
Specific laws for warfare and the procedure for an unsolved murder case.
Reading about that, fifty years later, I sense that “my” portion could come in handy given the conduct of many notable and notorious world leaders, and their hench-folk, in the modern era.
My Isaiah passage covers the late, prophetic stage of the “twixt the temples” exile:
Isaiah 51:12-52:12 is a powerful prophetic passage where God comforts His fearful people, reminding them He is their sole protector, not mere mortals (grass) or oppressors; He calls Jerusalem (Zion) to “Awake, awake!” to cast off shame and put on strength, promising redemption from exile (“sold for nothing”) and the beautiful arrival of good news of peace and salvation from the Lord, telling them to leave Babylon and be purified.
Peace, salvation and purification sound like good ideas, as long as they apply even-handedly to all concerned.
Only mum could have taken photos that were THAT skew-iffy, so my guess is that dad couldn’t be bothered when we got home but mum wanted some more pics from the day.
Worse yet, on the “dad couldn’t be bothered” front, is that the negatives from the events of both days have all been lost. Given that dad was in the photographic business, that is bizarre. The negatives from several holidays around that time are also lost. My guess is that he lost a whole batch together – probably those he had taken to the shop in order to obtain extra prints for sending around to friends and family.
…I have a few more references to Paul Deacon in my early 1975 diary, at least one of which for sure was a recording session.
The relevant passage reads:
19 February 1975: went to Paul Deacon’s house. Played all day. “One sir, humanoid or similar”.
I do remember making that recording. The phrase came from Star Trek and for some reason we latched on to it. I even remember the second section of the phrase: “low level of activity”.
We derived a little tune from these phrases and made silly recordings, long since lost. I can even remember the tune, but I feel loathe to attempt a retrospective recording.
Paul might remember it all himself or use various methods of bribery, intoxication or both to get me to give a rendition.
Postscript/Update: Overnight, after sending Paul this piece, not only did Paul submit a comment (below), he also sent me an audio file. Clearly this rendition is an octave or two lower than the pre-teen original, but needless to say, the tune is note perfect. The recording is, it is, in its own way, authentic:
Thank you, Paul. Of course, that 2018 rendition will have been recorded, with ease, using whatever simple recording gadgetary comes as an essential, basic component in Paul’s computer.
Back then, in February 1975, I think Paul was using a cassette deck for his recordings, but perhaps he was already using reel-to-reel – he was certainly well into the latter eventually.
But, by then, we the Harris family had no ordinary reel-to-reel – we had a brand new Sony TC377…
…which looked like the above image and had, amongst its many features, a wonderful feedback/echo chamber facility. With that facility, Paul and I recorded a sort-of psychedelic version of Some Enchanted Evening on one occasion. It might have been the occasion registered in the following diary entry:
Wednesday 9 April 1975. Paul Deacon came for day. Nice time.
The details are lost in the mists of time, but for sure I was enjoying those school holiday muck around with tape recorders days.
Such a shame the tapes seem to have been lost forever.
With thanks to Paul for his comment below, I’m guessing his book look like this image – which you can click through to a well-known on-line store
