Category: School Life

My First Diarised Christmas Week, Including A Visit To Southend, A Cold, A Traditional Walk, And A New Doctor, 22 to 28 December 1974

Colourful and barely legible, please allow me to try and transliterate and explain my diary entries.

Sunday, 22 December 1974 – Went down to Southend. Got nasty cold. TV Planet of the Apes and No Honestly v good

Grandpa Lew & Grandma Jenny with Jenny’s sisters Sybil and Alice, Southend, 1950s.

Mum, Dad, Swains and Steels, Woodfield Avenue 1993

We would have been visiting Jack and Sybil in Southend back then, and or the Swain family. No pictures from the 1970s sadly, but Sybil can be seen in the 1950s picture and several Swains are there in the 1990s one. This 1974 visit would have preceded Garry Steel’s arrival on the family scene.

I don’t think I can blame Southend for the nasty cold – I think the cold must have already been there.

Monday, 23 December 1974 still got bad cold. In all day. TV Yogi Bear feature film, Dad’s Army, Mastermind 19-year-old lost and Horizon on trick photography or V good

The wonder of the web 50 years later enables me to discover that the Yogi Bear movie was named “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear!” and the 19-year-old Mastermind wunderkind who nearly won was named Susan Reynolds – click here for the Mastermind story. My mum got very excited about that sort of thing back then. I got more excited about the Horizon film about trick photography, but I cannot find anything about that on the web. I seem to recall dad digging out some of his old books to show me more about that sort of thing; I still have those, somewhere in the attic!

Tuesday, 24 December 1974 still unwell. Cough. Home all day. TV Top Cat, Look Who’s Talking, Gulliver’s Travels, Christmas Likely Lads, and Peter Cook & Dudley Moore v good

I must have been googly-eyed after watching that much TV on one day. No wonder I didn’t feel well.

Wednesday, 25 December 1974 – Fair. Got presents. Traditional walk seventh year. TV Way Out West, Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines and Futtock’s Corner [sic].

I think I meant “Futtock’s End” for that last entry. I remember dad finding that little film hilariously funny, as did I. I’m not sure it would work so well on me now that I am older…nor am I sure that I’ll take the time and trouble to find out.

Thursday, 26 December 1974 – Dined at Schmidt’s. TV A Man Called Flint, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Went to Barnetts’ for supper, v good, trifles specially.

I describe at length dining at Schmidt’s…and indeed the traditional walk to which I refer in my Christmas Day 1974 diary entry, in my very first entry in that diary – click here or below. The traditional seasonal walk with my dad must have started when I was six. I do remember it feeling like a very important custom/ritual throughout my childhood.

I Diarist, My First Diary Page, 1 to 5 January 1974

Barnetts’ in this instance would be the Cyril & Marion Barnett family next door. (Not Jonathan Barnett from school and his family in this instance.) Marion Barnett’s trifle was clearly not a trifling matter.

Friday 27 December 1974 – Sunny. [Fair crossed out] Andrew played and dined here. Doctor Who and Spiders v good.

I’m not sure who advised me to add a comment about the weather to my diary. This might have emerged from a conversation around me not knowing what to write about (hence my seven-month sabbatical during 1974). I didn’t manage to keep up the weather report consistently or for long. I scratched out that world from Boxing Day, so we’ll never ever know what the weather was like in London on that day…oh no, here we go, the internet can dredge up excruciating detail of this kind – click here. As for 27th December, why or when I changed my diary entry on the weather from “fair” to “sunny” is a weird one. This whole “write about the weather in your diary” business feels more like mum’s influence than dad’s.

“Andrew” will have been Andy Levinson, who will have schlepped all the way from No 42 to join us that day!

Saturday 28 December 1974 – Fair. Played alone. Went shopping. TV Generation Game v good and new Doctor Who v good

For those readers who have any televisual connection with that period, the reference to a new Doctor Who should spark the memory buds – here is a short video that showcases and contextualises the arrival of Tom Baker:

After Alleyn’s Advent Term: Comic Capers, Jolly Japes, Marathon Mania, Tempos & Timpos, 15 to 21 December 1974

Although sparse and almost illegible, the notes in my diary from that week bring back a flood of memories.

Here is the page for that week in its glorious technicolour sparseness and illegibility:

I was going through a “coloured tempo pen” phase at that time. I think the Saturday entry was written in invisible ink, which I then remedied with the “antidote” stuff that makes invisible ink visible. That is not conventional diarist method, I now realise, but that idea must have made sense to me at the time…probably because I had bought invisible ink from the joke shop that week.

Let me start deciphering diary entries:

Sunday, 15 December 1974 – Hanukkah party at classes. Dined at Feld’s. [Visited] Jacksons to teach backgammon. TV Planet of the Apes v good

Monday, 16 December 1974 – Played at Andrew’s all day. TV Likely Lads, Waltons and Carry On Christmas very good indeed.

Aficionados of Motown music will be disappointed to learn that I did not visit nor teach backgammon to The Jackson Five.

Just to be clear, I did not teach any of these people backgammon. Not Jackie, not Tito, not Jermaine, not Marlon and not Michael.

The Jacksons, in this instance, were Doreen Benjamin’s parents. Doreen’s mum, Jessie Jackson…yes, I know…was a very close friend of Grandma Jenny and Doreen was a very close friend of mum’s.

For the avoidance of doubt, I neither visited nor taught backgammon to the Reverend Jesse Jackson either

Tuesday, 17 December 1974 – Andrew and I went to “Bossils”? and Hamleys. Classes v good. Mum and dad went to [Angela and John’s] wedding. Fooled all with joke shop hot sweets.

With Hanukkah well before Christmas that year, I suspect that I had already received some seasonal gift money, as had Andy Levinson no doubt, so we were both in a position to treat ourselves on a big day out during the school holidays.

We probably knew where to go (e.g. Hamleys) because of a tradition we were lucky enough to be conjoined in when we were a bit smaller. Mrs Garrett, grandmother of our friend from the street, Bernard Garrett (no, not the Bernard Garrett depicted in the film The Banker), took us up to Hamleys with Bernard a couple of times in the early 1970s as a Christmas treat.

I’m not sure where the joke shop was – I recall visiting Davenports near The British Museum with Andy, but that must have been a different trip I think. I think the source of our joke shop sweets, stinkeroos and invisible ink was a joke shop at the Carnaby end of Soho.

“Fooled all with joke shop sweets” makes me think of the comics we used to read when we were little. I was allowed one a week; my comic of choice was Whizzer and Chips.

I’m sure the conceit that two comics had merged into one made me think I was getting as BOGOF by choosing Whizzer and Chips. Someone else in the street (possibly Andy Levinson) or maybe at Primary School (Alan Cooke?) was more the Beano type, so I would sometimes swap and get to see more than one comic in a week.

I think I had outgrown such comics by the age of 12, but I had clearly not completely outgrown the language I learnt from them. Yaroo!

Wednesday, 18 December 1974 – Dentist in the morning first thing. Essential filling. Andrew in afternoon. “Enhanced”? stinkeroo from the joke shop worked. Went to Fairfield Hall with Paul Deacon – very nice time there.

Mum and dad’s evening at Angela and John’s wedding feast had not been a total success, as I recall. Dad had rather overindulged and mum felt he had embarrassed her. This combination of mum berating and dad hungover was quite clear to me that next morning. Meanwhile I was suffering from my own collywobbles ahead of that trip to the dentist for an “essential filling”.

I have had very few fillings in my lifetime – this might have been my first one or possibly the second.

Our dentist was Harry Wachtel, a gentleman of n Austrian origin, who had been a refugee from the Nazis. He spoke with a thick Germanic accent and did not suffer fools gladly.

I didn’t think that Mr Wachtel had CCTV cameras in his surgery. Yet, a couple of years later, John Schlesinger recreated, in Marathon Man, the scene of that filling, with such exceptional accuracy…I’m now thinking that Harry Wachtel must have filmed that filling event and sent the rushes to John Schlesinger. There is no other possible explanation for the following movie scene:

I cannot remember what Paul Deacon and I went to see at The Fairfield Hall on 18 December 1974. Do you remember, Paul? In any case, many thanks to you, Paul, (or should I say, thanks to your folks) for treating me along with you. My diary suggests that we had a great time.

Thursday, 19 December 1974 – morning Andrews. Lunch at Andrews. Afternoon at home with Andrew -> Classes – TV Mastermind and Xmas Oneupmanship v good.

Friday, 20 December 1974 – Alan [Cooke] here all day – very nice indeed. TV Goodies and the Beanstalk very good. G Anne’s v good got lots of presents.

Saturday, 21 December 1974 – Made a start on model Auntie Pam gave me. TV “something clover v good”?

I’m going to guess that Cookie and I spent a fair part of that day playing the bespoke game we invented with my Hot Wheels car track and a rather motley collection of Timpo Wild West buildings, which we would half-heartedly construct at the end of the Hot Wheels run and then demolish with the Hot Wheels cars.

Maybe you had to be there…or maybe you had to be 10-12 to appreciate this activity, but Alan and I would spend hours at this activity. Hey, Alan – look at those e-bay links – it wouldn’t cost THAT much to recreate the scene. I’m sure Janie would understand and I’m sure we could make space here for yet more clutter.

Sadly, my terrible handwriting, together with the effluxion of time makes the TV element of my log illegible. Happily, BBC Genome comes to the rescue, enabling me to confirm that I rated Doctor In Clover “v good”.

End Term At Alleyn’s, A Big Moka & An Aufruf, 8 to 14 December 1974

Angela & John Kessler, this photo just nine months after their wedding

The diary page for this week is as colourful as it is (almost) unintelligible:

It is my profound belief that, although artificial intelligence can read the charred remains of 2000-year-old Herculaneum scrolls, the technology would still struggle to make sense of my diabolical writing and spelling from 1974

Allow me to try to interpret the above scrawl for you:

Sunday, 8 December 1974 – First light in play [Hanukah play at chedar, presumably]. Dined at Schmidt’s. The Great War, Sykes, David Copperfield and A Change Of Ground.

Monday, 9 December 1974 – Last full day of term. Uneventful. TV Waltons, Call My Bluff, and Horizon v good indeed.

Tuesday 10 December 1974 – Christmas dinner v good. Classes rehearsal. Mission Impossible and Rhoda v good.

Wednesday, 11 December 1974 – Rather uneventful. Left school 2 o’clock, Carol rehearsal. Disappearing World – Ongka’s Big Moka Rather amusing?????

I don’t much review television programmes (probably just as well given the amount of TV I was watching back then), but a few years ago I wrote up my memories of Ongka’s Big Moka, because it had such a profound effect on me, sparking my interest in South-East Asia/Oceania.

Ongka’s Big Moka, Television Documentary, 11 December 1974

Thursday, 12 December 1974 – Left school 2:20 carol service. Classes good. TV Mastermind good.

Friday, 13 December 1974 – Broke up today. Not a very good report…

…hardly surprising given the amount of TV I was watching in the evenings when I should have been doing my homework. Honestly…

TV Dad’s Army, Ken Dodd and MASH v good.

Saturday, 14 December 1974 – Went to ooof roof [John & Angela’s aufruf]. Meal was excellent. TV Run Wild Run Free film, Stanley Baxter, and Candid Camera very good indeed

I didn’t at the time spot the juxtaposition of watching the Melanesian tribal ceremony, Ongka’s Big Moka, and, a few days later, attending the Jewish tribal ceremony that was Angela and John’s aufruf. For those who don’t like to click, the aufruf is a tradition of calling up the groom in synagogue on the Saturday before the wedding.

I am glad that I gave that aufruf meal an “excellent” review 50 years ago, as that should please Angela and John ahead of their impending golden wedding anniversary. I do remember enjoying the aufruf event very much, conversing with the grown ups and feeling a little more grown up myself for the experience. I distinctly remember finding the film Run Wild Run Free rather childish and mawkish, perhaps in comparison.

What might seem a lot less grown up…and might please Angela and John a bit less, is my abiding memory that I insisted, in the build up to the day, on pronouncing the word “aufruf”…

woof-woof

…to the extent that I recall mum telling me, wagging finger style, that I was not to make that silly joke at the event.

I’m the curator of my own jokes now, mum

I, A Critic: Why Use 800 Words When 8 Words Might Do?, Alleyn’s School Bear Pit, The Lesson by Eugène Ionesco & The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard, 7 December 1974

Images scraped with loving care from Alleyn’s Scriblerus

I went with my parents on the Saturday evening to see the last night of that year’s Bear Pit production; a double-header no less – The Lesson & The Real Inspector Hound.

Let us gloss over the monumental water polo victory in the morning…11-7 that reads, just in case you are finding my handwriting a little hard to read.

Let us not linger over the fact that the 12-year-old me thought it important to say that I thought the Generation Game was good…

…whereas 12-year-old me failed completely to mention that Barry White – “The Walrus Of Love” – “The Pachyderm Of Passion” – was riding high at the top of the charts at that time with this classic sound:

No. Let us please focus on Bear Pit production for December 1974. My job back then as a juvenile critic was to be clear, incisive and decisive in my opinions. I think I achieved that:

Bear Pit. The Lesson – boring. Inspector Hound – good.

The late, great, Trevor Tindale spent at lest 100 times as many words saying…if I have understood the thrust of his argument correctly…more or less exactly the same thing in Scriblerus some months later.

If you prefer to read Scriblerus pages from pdfs, here is a scrape of those two pages as a pdf.

But you might not want all that detail:

The Lesson – boring.

The Real Inspector Hound -good.

The Return Of The 12-Year-Old Alleyn’s Diarist, Late November To Early December 1974

Tony King, Form Master Of 2AK

Some readers might recall an intense period of 11-year-old diary writing, which ran out of steam towards the end of April 1974…

Russell, Herbie, Cougar, Fives, Tennis, Latin & Then Months Of Silence: The Last Few Days Of Holiday & The First Few Days Back At Alleyn’s, Late April 1974

…after which my diary fell silent for seven months. During those seven months, I…

..went a bit madrigal with my dad:

You Don’t Have To Be Madrigal To Learn About Music Here, But It Helps: Madrigals Of Love And War From The Radio, 4 June 1974, Plus The Top Five From That Week To Worm Their Ways Back Into Your Ears

… finished my first year at Alleyn’s, including a memorable IS field trip with John Clark…

Alleyn’s School First Year (1S) Field Trip With John Clarke, 22 to 24 June 1974

…messed about during the summer, watching and playing cricket – the latter both in the back drive and on Tooting Bec Common

Stumps In the Back Drive, Thank You, Cyril Barnett, circa 1 July 1974
Back When I Didn’t Know My Asif From My Sarfraz, Cricket On Tooting Bec Common, Summer 1974

…and went to Sicily with my parents, turning 12 while I was there… [Ogblog yet to be writ on this topic. Alleyn’s pals didn’t want to know all about it in autumn 1974, I doubt if anyone is desperate to know about it in autumn 2024]. The photos can be viewed through this link or below.

Corso Umberto At Fenicula End IMG00041

Then I went back to school, joining 2AK. By the end of November, I was ready to be a diarist again – indeed I kept a diary pretty much unbroken for the next 14 years, after which I switched to event logs to accompany my appointment diaries.

I think I might have taken some guidance from my parents or friends on what to write about, in the immediate aftermath of my return to diary writing. I talk a lot about what I saw on TV and for a while prefaced each daily report with a one word summary of the weather. The latter habit soon passed. The watching much TV habit passed once I finished school, so my knowledge of soap operas and comedy shows is extremely patchy for the 1980s and almost non-existent by the 1990s, when for many years I had no TV at all!

My handwriting was truly terrible back in my school days, made worse by the use of coloured Tempo felt tip pens (or occasionally pencil or goodness-knows-what-sort-of-writing-implement) for the diary.

I am reliably informed by educationalist friends that my bad handwriting and terrible spelling would no longer justify a clip around the ear and recriminations about my laziness by school-teachers. Apparently it is a condition known as dysgraphia, which would open up all manner of possibilities for my special needs, including the provision of IT equipment in class and at home to assist me, plus, presumably, pity rather than opprobrium.

Anyway, let me try to transliterate the first few days of my return to being a diarist:

Saturday, 30 November 1974 – Performed whodunnit play. Afternoon uneventful. Dick Emery and Upstairs Downstairs good.

Sunday, 1 December 1974 – Classes started a Hanukah play. Afternoon Grandma Anne’s. Planet of the Apes on TV v good.

Monday 2 December 1974 – Inter-form soccer v good. Extra + Rothbart. TV Likely Lads, Waltons and Call My Bluff v good.

Tuesday, 3 December 1974 – French, maths and Latin tests. Classes v good. TV Paper Moon and Mighty Continent.

I cannot remember anything about the whodunnit play, but I think Michael Lempriere was our English teacher that year (other 2AK folk might confirm or deny) – if so, then drama-oriented English class activities were very much his thing.

Weirdly, although I report that the inter-form soccer on the Monday was “v good”, the rear of the diary also records, dutifully, that our opponents were 2AS and that we lost 2-6. Was I really that good a loser back then?

I have no idea what “Extra + Rothbart” means, other than a sneaking suspicion that Bernard Rothbart must have refereed that game and presumably gave us some extra practice and/or coaching after the match, that pleased me. I remember Mr Rothbart a chess and hockey master, not soccer. And of course I will never forget about his sad demise just five year’s later:

Sunday School: Bernard Rothbart’s Funeral, 9 December 1979

Wednesday, 4 December 1974 – [see the specific posting about that auspicious day linked here and below]

A Marathon Day Of Court Sport; Fives At Alleyn’s School And Fridge Ball At Woodfield Avenue, 4 December 1974

Thursday, 5 December 1974 – 40 out of 50 for Latin test – good. No other positions. Learnt Hanukkah baruchas [prayers] with Mr Morris. Mastermind and Monty Python v good.

Friday, 6 December 1974 – Rather uneventful. PE good. Ken Dodd quite good.

The PE was more likely to have been with Mr Sherlock or Mr Berry than with my form master, Tony King. But they were all of the sporty teachers, for sure.

Sherlock, Berry & King

Stumps In the Back Drive, Thank You, Cyril Barnett, circa 1 July 1974

A sighting of the above, in Salford in March 2019 – click here or below for more about that trip…

…recovered a memory from my childhood.

Playing cricket in the back drive behind our houses in Woodfield Avenue.

There was nowhere suitable to erect my stumps. Propped against the garage door was unsatisfactory.

There was one vaguely suitable pot-holey area but that meant bowling up hill with little run up and the holes were not well placed for the even distribution of stumps.

That same yard some 50 years later, with thanks to Ayres Treefellers for the picture

Until, one day, the kindly gentleman next door in 3a, Cyril Barnett, proudly produced for me a piece of plywood with three holes in it specifically designed for the insertion of the stumps.

This device – which was a rudimentary version of the above Salford loo stump device and which bears some resemblance, in design terms, to the beer-carrying device King Cricket has named The Device…

England v Pakistan at Old Trafford – match report

…worked brilliantly for yard cricket, enabling the stumps to be placed wherever made sense – which was different placement depending on whether it was simply bowling practice or a game of yard cricket with a mate.

The best thing about this form of stump device was the ability to make the entire thing fall over if you really did hit the stumps flush and with reasonable force. This I rarely managed myself with my floaty donkey-drops – it was more a thing that my opponents might do to me with a bit of medium pace, full and straight.

Sadly no photos survive of Cyril Barnett’s device but I have found a picture of Cyril, probably taken two or three years after he manufactured my stump-thingie.

Cyril teaching me pancake making while my dad was teaching me a bit about photography.

What a kindly neighbour he was. He would have appreciated the two night visit to Manchester in March 2019 that triggered this memory, in part because Cyril was from Manchester himself. Also because I went there to see Rags The Musical and the rag trade was precisely the thing he was in…when he wasn’t doing carpentry or pancake making with and for me.

Alleyn’s School First Year (1S) Field Trip With John Clarke, 22 to 24 June 1974

OrangeStarling1997, CC BY-SA 4.0

Sitting at Lord’s in August 2018, watching what is now a relatively rare Indian batting collapse in a test match, I was reminded of the first Indian cricket tour of England that entered my consciousness, in 1974, which also included an historical collapse at Lord’s.

But in 1974 I was not at Lord’s, I was on the South Downs, at the end of my first year at Alleyn’s, on a 1S field trip led by the Head of the Science Department, John S Clarke.

“Who were 1S?”, I hear you cry.  The following diary extract/piece explains:

My First Class At Alleyn’s School, 1S, And Some Nicknames, guessing 8 January 1974

Several people on that list might have better, or at least different, memories of that field trip. I’d love to learn those recollections.

I remember the trip, on the whole, as an unpleasant experience for me. I don’t think I needed much to put me off camping more or less for life – that field trip did most of the job.

I recall I got stung by a wasp early in the trip and had a nasty reaction to the bite, not only in terms of the wound swelling & the resultant pain/discomfort, but also no little fear. John Clarke was a precautionary fellow who insisted that we keep a close eye on the toxic wound and who, as an educationalist, left me in no doubt and spared me no detail about how serious it could be if the toxins got out of control in my body – which in the end they didn’t.

I also (perhaps as a side effect of the sting – possibly exposure to some rare South Downs pollen I have never encountered since) suffered the symptoms of quite severe hay fever for the only time in my life, which lingered throughout the trip.

I do recall that the actual walking on the South Downs bit, which was the field trip’s main purpose, was nevertheless most enjoyable. The trip probably did as much to forge a lifetime’s love of hill walking as it did to put me off camping.

My other abiding memory of that trip was the test match radio commentary, provided, second hand, by Richard Hollingshead, who had a portable transistor radio held firmly to one ear, on the Monday of the trip, while we walked the Downs.

Those of us who straggled towards the back of the walking party probably looked a little like the following Bergman film extract – click here – with Richard the character at the rear, listening and then calling out the astonishing events from Lord’s.

India metaphorically collapsed and died in a heap that day. 42 all out in 17 overs – the joyous listening session can’t have lasted all that long. Richard Hollingshead was seemingly ecstatic each time another wicket fell and was full of the stats (presumably being fed to him by the BBC cricket commentary team) of the records that were tumbling and might tumble along with the tumbling of wickets.

I have found a little video that shows that ignoble Indian batting performance/ glorious England bowling performance. Geoff Arnold and Chris Old became my heroes; not just for one day.

Here is the match scorecard for the cricket curious.

But when I got home that evening, there was no point telling my parents about the wonders I had enjoyed, vicariously, on that broadcast from Lord’s. They had no interest in cricket.

I did need to explain the swelling on my body and the precautionary observations and applications still needed (just in case), plus the hay-feverish sniffles. I probably had blisters and muddy clothes to explain too.

I remember my mum saying that the whole episode made her think of the song “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” by Allan Sherman; I think she had a point:

Other recollections or corrections about that trip will be most gratefully received.

You Don’t Have To Be Madrigal To Learn About Music Here, But It Helps: Madrigals Of Love And War From The Radio, 4 June 1974, Plus The Top Five From That Week To Worm Their Ways Back Into Your Ears

Sony TC377 Reel-To-Reel

Music At Alleyn’s In Spring/Summer 1974

Although my 1974 diary fell silent for a few months in April 1974, I recall some aspects of my musical education from that period rather well. Alleyn’s School played a major part in that, but not the only part.

I started learning the violin in that first year at Alleyn’s, Mostly I learnt that the violin was not the instrument for me, to my mother’s chagrin, as that type of bowed instrument (including, I later discovered, the hand saw) was purportedly in my blood:

Turn It Up To Max & Spit: The Baltic Origins Of My Mother’s (Marcus) Family Revealed

Pop Kennard, our Alleyn’s music teacher, did not do a great deal for my singing voice that year either. I recall him getting us to listen to and then try to sing Schubert’s Das Wandern in an English translation “To wander is the miller’s joy…”, which did not sound like the following in our unbroken and untrained voices:

“Take me to your lieder” – that’s what I would have said had I been familiar with the word “lieder”

My contribution to such singing in those days would have provided enthusiastic volume but would have lacked desirable sound, I am pretty sure.

I have subsequently been taking singing lessons by Zoom with “Miss Honey” since early in the pandemic and have improved beyond measure – my early efforts at improvement blogged about here:

Hitting The High Notes With Lydia White, 5 May 2020

Spring/Summer 1974 – Music At Home

I noted in my diaries early in 1974 that my dad invested in a high quality hi-fi at that time. He plumped for that ahead of a colour television set, which we did without for another couple of years while he saved up for one of those as well.

A fair chunk of dad’s enthusiasm for a hi-fi will have been to do with my musical education and the sense my parents will have had that my most impressive musical skill would be listening to music rather than performing it.

I’ll write separately about the small but neat collection of classical gramophone recordings my parents acquired for me and helped me to acquire. Mostly middle-brow stuff, getting me familiar with the conventional classical canon.

But one evening, dad spotted a concert being broadcast on BBC Radio and decided to get busy properly rigging up the hi-fi so that the concert might be recorded to a (then) high quality on the reel-to-reel for future listening.

Connect this beauty to the tuner and the speakers and the Sony TC377 depicted above. Simples.

Monteverdi’s eighth book of madrigals – The Madrigals Of Love And War – performed by the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra under John Elliot Gardiner.

It transpires that this vague memory of mine must relate to the evening of 4 June 1974. Here’s a link to the BBC genome record for this broadcast.

The concert concerned took place on 6 October 1973. It was well received, by this Telegraph account at least:

Madrigals of Love & War 6 October 1973Madrigals of Love & War 6 October 1973 08 Oct 1973, Mon The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Why dad was so keen to record this particular broadcast I don’t really know. I think he liked the sound of Renaissance music but found it hard to relate to sacred music from that period. High quality secular music of that period was not to be heard on the radio every day.

Dad made this recording on a 5 3/4 inch spool which I still have in a dungeon somewhere and have digitised along with all of the other spools from the Harris collection.

If you want to hear what those madrigals sound like, the following recording by the Consort of Musicke is a very decent quality version – frankly more to my taste now than the Eliot Gardiner style.

Anyway, fact is that this stuff became my ear worms at the end of my first year at Alleyn’s.

What Were Supposed To Be My Ear Worms In Early June 1974? The Top Five In the Charts, That’s What.

To close this piece, here are the top 5 UK chart hits from that week in 1974.

5: There’s A Ghost In My House by R Dean Taylor became an ear worm of mine many years later, when I got into Motown and Northern Soul, but I doubt if it even entered my consciousness in 1974:

4: The Streak by Ray Stevens went on to be number one for a while and was certainly the subject of our schoolboy chatter back then. “There seems to have been some disturbance here” was a catch phrase that did the rounds then, along with the Monty Python ones. I wonder what Pop Kennard would have had to say about the music therein:

3: Hey Rock ‘n’ Roll by Showaddywaddy was most certainly an ear worm back then. This number had entirely escaped my consciousness until I reheard it just now. Now it is stuck in my ear again. It was a seriously retro number even in 1974, although not as retro as Monteverdi madrigals, obviously:

2: This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us by Sparks. In truth, I don’t remember this track from that 1974 period. A few years later I had a copy of this track on a compilation album and then sought out a copy of Kimono My House (the album from whence it came) which was and remains an all-time favourite of mine. Kimono My House was very much my earworm in March 1981, when the story described in the following ThreadMash performance piece was live:

The Love Letter, ThreadMash Performance Piece & Review, 4 March 2021

In short, I think this Sparks track is wonderful:

1: Sugar Baby Love by The Rubettes. Another ridiculously retro sound topped the charts that week.

How did that get to number one in the charts in 1974? Yet – listen closely. Do I detect a variant of the folia progression in there? Is Sugar Baby Love, in a sense, a setting for six voices based on a tradition pioneered in 17th century madrigals? Might Paul de Vinci of the Rubettes possibly have been related to Leonardo?

Monteverdi and Pop Kennard might be turning in their respective graves.

Russell, Herbie, Cougar, Fives, Tennis, Latin & Then Months Of Silence: The Last Few Days Of Holiday & The First Few Days Back At Alleyn’s, Late April 1974

Back then, if I wrote “Herbie” I meant this anthropomorphic vehicle…

I ran out of steam for diary entry writing towards the end of April 1974. Well, I had been doing it for nearly four months by then. I suppose I had earned a sabbatical, or perhaps I was afflicted with juvenilia-writer’s-block.

When I returned to diary-writing at the end of November 1974, I think my efforts were pretty much continuous for a further 15 years. I regret the absence of entries between May and November 1974, but there’s not much I can do about that now.

Ian Sandbrook (who was my 1S form master and is now my e-mail-pen-pal) suggests that I could ask a chat-bot to make up some entries. But that strikes me as a rather low grade task for such a pinnacle of technology. If vast amounts of processing power is going to produce confabulatory text, it should do so on matters of greater import than my 11/12 year old’s diary entries.

I might try trawling my memory and the memories of other Alleyn’s alums for tales of derring-do in the summer term of 1973/74 and the autumn term of 1974/75. I certainly have a few summer holidays memories to share from that year.

Anyway, let’s make the most of what we have left, a few rather sketchy days bringing up the end of the Easter break and the start of the summer term:

Sunday, 21 April 1974 – Classes morn. Afternoon G[randma] Anne.

Monday, 22 April 1974 – Russell [Holland] – Herbie and Run Cougar Run. A good day.

Tuesday 23 April 1974 – New [term] at school, G Jenny afternoon, Classes.

Wednesday, 24 April 1974 – Sports – fives and tennis – uneventful – all ok.

Thursday, 25 April 1974 – Latin ok.

Russell Holland was a friend from my primary school, Rosemead.

There’s Russell at our Rosemead passing out parade, left of picture. Alan Cooke (both Rosemead and Alleyn’s) is the other boy in this picture

Ten years later, the words “herbie and run cougar run” might have been describing a smoke-filled room in the Keele Student’s Union performing comedy for louche, mature students from the Open University:

My First Ringroad Performance and Related Memories, Keele, 18 August 1984

…but I digress.

In 1974, it meant going to the pictures with Russell to see the films Herbie Rides Again and Run Cougar Run.

Here’s the Herbie trailer:

It’s quite a childish idea, an anthropomorphic car with a mind of its own, but then the Herbie movies were Disney films. My anthropomorphic car, Dumbo, writes sensibly about all manner of things when the fancy takes him, sometimes on my blog and sometimes on King Cricket, such as the following piece about his run in with the police…

Lord’s net practice – journey report

…but again I digress.

It seems I played a bit of tennis as well as cricket that summer term at Alleyn’s and it seems we started learning Latin, I think with Doggie Johnson, the junior school head.

Perhaps I am confusing my Hebrew classes with my Latin classes, but I think the lessons might have gone a bit like this:

OK, in truth my memory fades, but I still find that Life of Brian sketch one of Python’s very best. If other alums from my year wish to chime in with memories from that third term at Alleyn’s, real, false or just funny, now would be a good time.

If you need a musical memory jogger, the following was Number One and a sound you just couldn’t avoid at that time:

Two Weeks Of Easter Holidays In My First Year At Alleyn’s, Mid April 1974

Escaping from the Colditz prisoner of war camp…but only for fun

Tennis continued to loom large in my Easter holidays story, although it is clear from my diary entries that others were losing interest, making the visits to the tennis club rarer:

OK, OK, I’ll translate it. Just hold on a tick.

Sunday, 7 April 1974 – Yomtov [Pesach, aka Passover], so no [Hebrew] classes. Not a good day.

Monday, 8 April 1974 – Bought paints. Painted soldiers. Another bad day!!!!

Tuesday, 9 April 1974 – The Black Arrow [1973] cartoon in morn. Afternoon tennis coaching. No classes, so later tennis.

Wednesday, 10 April 1974 – A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court cartoon. Tennis very good Gary and Mark were there only -people are losing interest.

Thursday, 11 April 1974 – very uneventful.

Friday, 12 April 1974 – Good Friday – Dad home. Good fun. Dad had fun too! Shopped for suits.

Saturday, 13 April 1974 – took a rest. Uneventful day.

I managed to find the Connecticut Yankee film on YouTube, but not The Black Arrow one from the 1970s:

I’m trying to work out who Gary and Mark (the last lads standing with me playing tennis) might have been. I’ll guess that Gary was Gary Sugarman who lived in our road. Gary did have a brother whose name escapes me – possibly Mark. I don’t remember a Mark in our street or entourage from thereabouts.

Stuart Harris (my partner in crime from the glory of the tennis tournament the week before) might remember.

I Didn’t Just Learn Tennis In The School Easter Holidays Of 1974, I Smashed It

I love my note for Good Friday that I had fun and that dad had fun too. There is something rather charming about that, though I say so myself.

Let’s move on to the next week:

Sunday, 14 April 1974 – No classes. G[randma] Anne afternoon. Pesach over – bread delicious.

Monday, 16 April 1974 – Easter Monday. Morning dull. Afternoon British Museum. Elgin Marbles – sound guided.

“Hey you – frieze!”

Tuesday, 16 April 1974 – tennis morning. Afternoon uneventful.

Wednesday 17th April 1974 – nothing much at all. World At War good.

Thursday, 18 April 1974 – G[randma] Jenny afternoon. Nothing else.

Friday, 19 April 1974 – tennis morn. Afternoon barber. Timeslip, I Dream of Jeannie, good.

Saturday 20 April 1974 – Alan [Cooke] for day, Sinbad, played Colditz, Andrew [Levinson] too, v good day.

My guess is that the Sinbad we saw must have been this one – click here.

https://youtu.be/B6F3VpHXfic

I certainly didn’t own the Colditz game, so that must have entered our house with Alan or Andrew. Either of you care to own up to owning it? Escape From Colditz was its full name – click here to read all about it. I vaguely remember the game.

“V good day” is a rave review. Thanks, fellas!

Postscript: Cookie Confesses

A message from Alan Cooke which I think unequivocally solves the “source of Escape From Colditz” query:

The Cooke household certainly owned ‘Escape from Colditz’. It was an unusual board game as it required one player to be the German Security Officer who essentially had to thwart all the others.

The rules were a bit vague in some areas allowing vibrant ‘discussion’ in family play ?

Alan Cooke, 22 April 2024