…a rather sedate week of work with very few socials thrown in: lunch with Caroline (Freeman, now Curtis) on the Tuesday and dinner at Anil (Biltoo)’s place on Saturday evening.
“Lazyish day” on the Saturday would have mostly comprised watching the third day of the Old Trafford Ashes test on the TV, much as “relaxing evenings” on the two preceding days would have included hunkering down in front of the old B&W TV in the tiny spare room to watch the highlights.
My faint memory only recalls that Saturday as “Ian Botham going berserk, scoring runs for fun, all-but winning the match for England, as usual”, because, to the youthful me, that was an unremarkable norm in the summer of 1981. The Ridiculous Ashes podcast provides more detail on that match and that day, in particular the contrasting sloth of Chris Tavaré that day. Scorecard ? – the match panned out like this.
I probably discussed the cricket with Mr Feld that day, as was our wont by that time. Feld might even have been listening to the match on his transistor radio behind the counter, as Day Four of this match was played on the Sunday – an experimental thing for some of the tests that year, I believe.
There is no doubt in my mind that Grandma Anne will have implored Mr Feld to shake the borscht jar, eaten her last plate of borscht that day and that she would have berated Mr Feld with the phrase, “your borscht tastes like vorter today” had the borscht not been up to snuff…which, frankly, it almost certainly wasn’t.
As the diary scribbles attest, Grandma Anne was taken into hospital in the early hours of the following Tuesday morning. Apart from a dinner at Anil’s on the Thursday and dinner with Michael and Pam on Saturday (who were no doubt primarily in the area visiting Grandma), my life was all work and visiting Grandma for a few days.
Here’s what I wrote in the diary for the following few days:
Sunday 23 August 1981 – Went to hospital – bad news – returned – back to hospital – G. Anne died.
Monday 24 August 1981 – Went round sorting out admin side. Met Uncle Michael – returned home.
Tuesday 25 August 1981 – Lavoyah (funeral) & shivah (mourning) today – tiring and gruelling.
Wednesday 26 August 1981 – Back to work – too much of – did little in evening.
Thursday 27 August 1981 – Met Jilly [Black] for lunch. Spoke to several people in evening.
Friday 28 August 1981 – Nothing special for b’day – work as usual – slap up meal in evening.
Saturday 29 August 1981 – Lazy day – went to Grandma Jenny for lunch – shopped a little – lazy evening.
At that time Grandma Jenny still lived in Sandhurst Court on the Acre Lane in Brixton. I’m pretty sure that shopping spree was “down Brixton Market” to gather some bottles and jars of condiments to take back to Keele with me in a few weeks’ time, in order to try and perk up the otherwise rather bland weekend diet.
My diary, from forty years ago as I write, tells me that this was one crazy weekend, during which I zig-zagged my visiting Keele friends, Sim & Tim (Simon Ascough & Tim Woolley), hither and yon across London for a couple of days.
Sim was from Doncaster and Tim was from Moseley, South Birmingham. I have an inkling that they had never been to London before…or at least “not visited a Londoner” before.
Reading my diary and assessing the activities I inflicted upon them, they might have formed a lifelong skewed opinion on what London life is like. I’m not sure I had a weekend quite like it before or since.
Friday 7 August 1981 – A Mini Pub Crawl Following In My Alleyn’s School Footsteps
7 August – Work OK – Sim & Tim arrived -> ate -> Fox -> Dog -> met Mark from Keele -> his place ’till late
Mum will have given us all a hearty family meal on the Friday evening ahead of the mini pub crawl. I cannot remember whether we did all of our dashing around London by car or by public transport. I think it must have been the former; if so it must have been Tim who had a car with him.
That first evening, I wanted to show Sim & Tim the places I used to drink with my friends before I went to Keele. The Fox On the Hill (aka The Fox) on Denmark Hill and The Crown & Greyhound (aka The Dog) in Dulwich Village. I thought we might bump in to a few old friends from Alleyn’s in at least one of those places, but that didn’t happen.
Indeed, my most vibrant memory from that whole visit was my embarrassment in The Fox when, for the first time ever, the barman questioned whether I was old enough to buy drinks in the pub.
I remember feeling like saying…
…but I’ve been buying drinks in this pub for years…since I was fifteen… and no-one has ever questioned it before…
…but I feared that such an admission might prevent me from being served or get me barred, so I simply asserted myself as a University student down after my first year at Uni and had my word accepted.
No ID cards for pub-going youngsters in those days. Why The Fox had started asking questions all of a sudden back then I have no idea – perhaps they had experienced some youngster trouble since my previous visit.
As for “Mark from Keele” whom we met in The Dog, I’m not sure which Mark this might have been. I don’t think it was Mark Bartholomew – perhaps it was a mate of either Sim or Tim’s who lived in or near Dulwich and was named Mark.
Diary says we didn’t return to my parents house until late – in fact I am trying to work out what the sleeping arrangements might have been. There was a studio couch in the small (fourth) bedroom which was ample for one sleeping visitor but would not have been comfortable for a couple, let alone two individual sleepers. Perhaps one of them slept on the floor in a sleeping bag.
Saturday 8 August 1981
The Saturday really was a crazy day of haring around town. Allow me to translate that diary note – I needed a bright light, a magnifier and a cold towel around my head to work it all out:
8 August – Earlyish start -> Knightsbridge -> Notting Hill -> Soho – met Mark Lewis -> Ivor’s -> eats -> Hendon -> Ivor’s -> home (knackered).
Frankly, I’m knackered just reading about that day.
I’m hoping that this article will help me to track down either Sim or Tim or both of them – perhaps their memories of this day will help me to unpick it.
I suspect that we went to Knightsbridge because one (or both) of them had a crazy craving to see that place, with its Harrods & Harvey Nicks reputation.
Possibly the same applied to Notting Hill and Soho. Possibly I encouraged the Notting Hill idea, as it was, even by then, a place with a hold on my heart, not least for the second hand record stores, which I had been visiting for a few years by then.
What we got up to in Soho I have no idea. Given that, whatever it was, we did it with my old BBYO friend and now media law supremo Mark Lewis, I suggest that readers keep their baseless allegations to themselves.
…then Hendon, where I imagine we visited Melina Goldberg, as I don’t recall staying in touch with anyone else from that BBYO group…
…then back to Ivor’s – why the diary doesn’t say – perhaps Ivor had organised a bit of a gathering of old friends from Streatham BBYO – it wouldn’t have been the first time nor the last.
Sunday 9 August 1981 – Lunch & Then Wendy’s Place Before Sim & Tim Left London
Took it easy in morning -> lunch -> Wendy’s -> Sim & Tim left, I returned home & slept a lot!
What a bunch of wimps. We’d hardly done anything the day before.
Anyway…
…I’m sure mum would have wanted the visitors to have another hearty, home-cooked meal before heading off – otherwise what might they think of us?
Eat, eat…
Then on to Wendy (Robbins)’s place, in Bromley, for a final visit of the weekend.
Not sure whether any of the other Streatham BBYO people were there. Andrea possibly, Ivor possibly…
…in any case, Bromley is probably not the ideal location out of all the places we visited that weekend from which to head back to Birmingham and Doncaster on a Sunday afternoon – but those logistical details matter a lot less to 18/19 year olds than they do to me, forty years on, re-treading the tangled maze of visits that was our London odyssey that weekend.
Goodness only knows what Sim & Tim made of it at the time, nor what they might make of it now, if they see this piece and are reminded of the weekend. I’d be delighted if others, e.g. Sim and/or Tim, got in touch with their memories to help me enhance this Ogblog piece. If they do, I’ll publish a postscript.
Lunch seemed to be the most important part of my working life back then. At least, it was the most recorded item in the diary about my working days.
Wednesday 22 July 1981 – work not too bad – met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch…
…Friday 25 July 1981 – Met Karen [Davies] for lunch…
etc.
Andrea Dean came over on that Saturday.
-> pub etc. Stayed night.
I’ll guess that we met up with several of the Streatham BBYO crowd in that pub. Possibly The Horse & Groom, possibly The Greyhound or possibly The Pied Bull.
I went to see Grandma Anne on that Sunday (26th July) while she was still in Nightingale temporarily on a respite care/check it out basis.
Paul studying singles with his game face on, while I peruse the albums – just like in the old days
I think the following chunk from my RTE listings is the batch I bought that day:
Some stuff that I wouldn’t boast about now and/or that hasn’t dated well in that lot, but two of my all time favourite albums in that batch: Germfree Adolescents by X-Ray Spex…
…and Kimono My House by Sparks.
The diary entry for 2 August contains some mystery and does not adequately report the most memorable story of the day:
Mark Stevens dropped in. Got Grandma out of home – reinstated in flat. Paul [Deacon] popped over in eve.
I don’t remember why Mark Stevens dropped in on a Sunday morning. Perhaps Mark remembers.
There was a story to getting Grandma Anne out of Nightingale, though.
I remember this very clearly. We turned up to collect Grandma but she was nowhere to be found. She’d been staying at Nightingale for a few weeks, so we knew where she tended to hang out and where her room was…no joy.
Dad got quite worried and stressy.
We started asking people at random, until one person casually said, “I think she’s gone down the pub with Sid”.
This did not sound like Grandma Anne.
I doubt if she had ever, in her nearly 90 years by then, been in a pub before.
I scurried to The Nightingale, where indeed Grandma Anne was sitting with her new gentleman friend, quite oblivious to the fact that her respite stay was over and that she had an appointment to return to her flat with us.
Equally, she seemed nonchalant about simply saying goodbye to her new gentleman friend and zimmering slowly back to Nightingale with me.
“Pub, shmub”
A couple of weeks later, Grandma Anne was taken ill. She died three weeks after her impromptu pub outing. That event, which might have been her first pub visit, was also her last hurrah.
I grew up riding the 137 bus for various reasons. We lived in Woodfield Avenue, Streatham, near the Sternhold Avenue 137 stop.
As a young child, it was mostly to go to primary school (Rosemead, then on Atkins Road) or to visit my Grandma Jenny who lived in Acre Lane, a short walk from a 137 stop.
A bit later, when I was at Keele University but doing holiday jobs in Cavendish Square, the 137 became my route of choice. It was one bus all the way from Sternhold Avenue. I could sit up top, read lots of stuff while being transported and smoke a few cigarettes while so doing…at least in those early years before I saw sense and stopped smoking.
In the summer of 1981, I had an additional secret pleasure in the 137 bus journey home, on those rare occasions (only once or twice a week) when I went straight home from work at a civilised hour.
When the bus approached Sloane Square I would stop reading and take a good long look at the New Romantics who had made it their habit to congregate early evening in Sloane Square, in what I might describe as a pose-fest.
For those unfamiliar with the genre…and for those who would like their memories refreshed…by the summer of 1981 the following sound and video rather encapsulates (at least to me) the sound track of that summer and the (to the likes of me) unattainable style/swagger of the New Romantic fashion:
When Keele Met Sloane
On one occasion, a sunny early evening, I suspended my reading and eagerly awaited sight of Sloane Square and what I expected to be a large collection of New Romantics to observe.
Yes, there they were…
…but wait…
…I know those two! The unmistakable visages of fellow Keele students, Owen Gavin and Paul Rennie.
Paul Rennie and Owen Gavin were definitely among the trendy students at Keele; Owen for example had recently taken over as editor of Concourse, the student newspaper for which I was writing juvenilia along the following lines:
…but I had no idea that Paul and Owen had Sloane Square credentials in trendiness.
The 137 bus goes very slowly around Sloane Square in the evening, so I did consider waving and hollering out of the window at the pair of them.
But New Romantics wouldn’t want to be associated with a boy on a bus, would they? It would be different if I was driving around the square in a flashy sports car dressed like Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet.
So I just watched in awe, as the statuesque figures of Owen and Paul mingled effortlessly and seamlessly with the New Romantic throng.
To be fair on those two, on reflection, they might well have been curious tourists observing the genre, rather than formal participants.
Actually, I don’t suppose such fashion has formal participants. Almost everyone there was probably just wandering along to have a look, see what there was to be seen and enjoy the moment of being seen.
I had and still have no idea.
Owen Gavin, Louise Marshall (Gray), Paul Rennie & Chris Parkins, early 1980s, with thanks to Chris Parkins for the picture.
So what became of those two? Did they remain cultural icons?
I was never even faintly fashionable. Here’s a picture of me around that time, curating my cassette collection in my bedroom in Streatham, a few hundred yards away from the 137 bus stop:
Fashion? I don’t need that pressure on…
Postscript: Paul Rennie Has Subsequently Been In Touch
I notified Paul of his 15 minutes of fame on Ogblog and have engaged in some very enjoyable correspondence with him since. On the specific matter of Sloane Square happenings, he writes:
I had a job, during the summer of 1981 at Sotheby’s Belgravia at the top of Sloane St. I think I was probably just hanging out, I don’t recall anything as organised as meeting up. It was all very hap-hazard as I remember.
Hence the truth of the matter at the time was far less interesting than my juvenile wonderings…but in a way that fact simply makes this piece differently interesting!
Once my placement in the Far East (Braintree) had been curtailed, I was able to resume my more habitual holiday job routine, which seemed to have more to do with seeing friends for lunch and evening get togethers than head down graft in the audit and accounts factory that was Newman Harris.
A Social Whirl, 5 to 19 July 1981
A few mentions of busy days and hard work, but mostly a catalogue of non-work events:
Sunday 5 July – “visited grandma [Anne]”
Tuesday 7 July – “popped in to see Andrew [Andy Levinson] in evening”
Wednesday 8 July – “met Helen [Lewis] for lunch. Met Anil [Biltoo] and Jim [Bateman] for drinks in evening”
Thursday 9 July – “met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch”
Friday 10 July – “Wendies [sic – Wendy Robbins’s] ->Grannies [Wendy’s granny] for dinner -> Wendies [sic] for night”
Sunday 12 July – “met Jilly [Black] in town early evening
Wednesday 15 July – “met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch”
Saturday 18 July – “Mays [George and Winifred] came in evening”
Sunday 19 July – “visited Grandma [Anne] in afternoon”
A few local/Alleyn’s School friends at the start of this period. Andy Levinson lived in our street, so “popped in” really did mean walking two minutes up the road. Anil Biltoo & Jim Bateman for drinks was probably at UCL (where Jim did his summer jobs) and/or The Sun, as described in earlier articles.
Helen Lewis, a couple of years earlier
I’m pretty sure that lunch with Helen Lewis was the occasion that she presented me with Schubert The Sheep. He was named Schubert because there was some classical music playing in the restaurant where we took lunch. Neither Helen nor I could identify the piece but we both agreed that it was not Schubert.
Schubert still lives with me forty years on…in the depicted cupboard
Schubert’s 15 minutes of fame came a few years later, when he appeared on University Challenge as the Keele Mascot. A story for another time.
Visiting Wendy would have been in part as a fun catch up but also probably to help her plan the impending Streatham BBYO installations. I think she must have been outgoing President at that time. With apologies, I cannot recall who succeeded Wendy, but someone might well be able to help jog my memory.
Wendy, a couple of years earlier, at Nightingale
Lauren Sterling and Jenny Council will have attended that Streatham event in their capacities as Regional Grandees. I would have been there in my capacity as a local elder and former National Grandee, now so far past it, I can’t have offered much insight to the local club.
The Grandma Anne visits on Sundays at that time would have been to Nightingale. She had taken the death of Uncle Manny very badly and I think, from memory, that her cleaner/informal carer went away for a few weeks, so she arranged a temporary stay at Nightingale for respite and also as a bit of a tester for possible future need. The latter didn’t materialise as Grandma Anne died later that summer, but I do have an amusing tale from the end of her respite stay at Nightingale – watch this space for the next “forty years on” piece.
And So To Headingley, 20 & 21 July 1981
Hundreds of thousands of people claim to have been at Headingley for the dramatic turnaround and conclusion to the 1981 Ashes test match there, even though only a few thousand people actually witnessed the events.
I am not one of the people making false claims about my attendance…nor am I one of the people who actually attended Headingley on that Monday or Tuesday.
In fact my diary reads as follows:
Monday 20 July 1981 – Work OK did nothing in evening
Tuesday 21 July 1981 – OK Day. Lazy evening.
But I do remember following the cricket at work very clearly, especially on the Tuesday.
I was working in the large, high-ceilinged, “open plan”, Dickensian-look office at the front of 19 Cavendish Square. In that office, there was always a senior whose role it was to supervise/keep order amongst the junior clerks therein.
By the summer of 1981, Newman Harris had replaced Roy Patel (who I think had been promoted to a more interesting role) and hired instead a bespectacled, middle-aged chap, I think he was named John, who spoke with deep-voiced, nasal tones. I don’t think he much liked the idea of summer students – I remember him taking great pains to let us know that he was, “a graduate from the University of Life” and (although not a qualified accountant) he was “qualified by experience”. His management and mentoring style reminded me of Blakey from On The Buses:
Several people in our office were cricket lovers, but in truth there was little interest in the match for most of the Monday. I think word reached us that Botham was scoring runs for fun towards the end of the Monday, but it wasn’t until the Tuesday, after people had seen the highlights on Monday evening, that the interest levels really kicked off.
There were 10 or 12 of us in the office that day – perhaps half of us were interested in the cricket. John was one of the cricket lovers but was also there to maintain order.
Terry, the errand boy, did not reside in our office and I think he kept a small transistor radio in the cubby-hole where he did reside. Terry kept us appraised of the score a couple of times during the morning.
In those days, there was a telephone number you could call to hear the cricket score. It was a sort-of premium rate line. “Dial The Score On 154”.
As the match started to build to a climax, one or two clerks, unable to control their impulses, dialled the score. As a summer lackey, I was too timid to do that but grateful to the others for the news.
John berated the diallers. He explained that there was expense involved in making those calls and that we should all be concentrating on our work. John said that he would dial the score at suitably-spaced intervals and keep us all informed. I think he had 15 or 20 minute intervals in mind.
But as the match came to its climax, John was “Dialling The Score” compulsively, giving us close to ball-by-ball commentary in terms of the score as it progressed. We cheered when John announced that England had won the match. Then he told us all to put our heads down and concentrate on our work for the rest of the day. Goodness knows what John’s dialling did to the Newman Harris phone bill.
My lazy evening will have included watching the test match highlights…probably in black and white on the spare room TV, as neither of my parents cared a fig for cricket.
In case you are wondering, the denouement of that match looked like this.
Being sent out on audit to a furniture factory in Braintree just brought home the lifestyle contrast.
Travel broadens the mind…even a daily commute from Streatham to Braintree
Strangely, I remember rather liking the commute, as I had acquired a taste for reading on the move during my National BBYO period (1979-1980) and was reading voraciously by the summer of 1981.
I say in the diary that I was summoned back to the office from Braintree before the end of the working day on the Friday. My mum had complained to “the authorities” (via my Uncle Michael no doubt) that my lengthy commute was too onerous a duty for her little one. Her motivation for this unwanted intervention was the delay my long commute caused to the family meal. Dad’s drive from the shop to the house only took 10-15 minutes.
I was really irritated when I discovered that mum had intervened, but the die was cast and I was back in the office for the rest of the summer, with only London-based clients in my auditing-orbit. That did enable me to socialise with my friends a bit more, I suppose, which I most certainly did that summer.
On the Saturday I spent much of the day watching Wimbledon finals day. In those days, the whole tournament was a week earlier than it is today and the men’s finals day was on the Saturday.
That Borg/McEnroe final was an absolute classic and I remember it well. I also remember watching the subsequent doubles matches too. In those days, my mum was keen to watch and probably watched much of it with me.
Below is David Irvine’s take on it all from The Guardian on the following Monday.
I also mention taping charts and Paul (Deacon – also a friend from Alleyn’s) visiting in the evening. There’ll be some more playlists to follow in the fulness of time, but for now I shall sign off this piece, exactly forty years on.
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.
…the next few days read quieter and calmer – apart from a few signs of aftershock from the abusive note incident.
Sunday 31 May 1981 – Late rise – did little all day (essay) – Union in evening – reasonably early night.
Monday 1 June 1981 – Union Committee in morning – finished essay in afternoon – UGM in evening – Mark [Bartholomew]’s afterwards.
Tuesday 2 June 1981 – Late rise – handed in essay – went to see The Last Waltz – awful – latish night.
I don’t honestly remember attending Union Committee on the Monday morning. I do remember that word reached the SU about the abusive note that had been placed under my door on the Friday evening and that they took the incident very seriously. In some ways more seriously than I took it.
I think some people, with all good intentions, were considering an emergency motion at the UGM that evening or some sort of statement. I think I dissuaded them.
I’m pretty sure Simon Jacobs (plus others, no doubt) were at The Last Waltz (a highly-regarded film that simply did not work for me, nor did it seem to work for most of my entourage that evening, if I remember correctly) with me and would have been part of the unmentioned activities (probably beer and smokes somewhere) that led to the latish night.
A Veritable Procession Of Visitors
I’m sorry to say that I have no real recollection of the “so-called revision day” on Wednesday 3 June, which reads to me more like a visitors day than a revision day:
Wednesday 3 June 1981 – Revised today – OK – Mary [Keevil], Rani, Miz [Miriam Morgan], Hilary [Kingsley] etc. popped in -> Sneyd -> coffee with Hilary
Where this sudden burst of popularity with females had come from, I have no idea. Perhaps Sandra had been talking me up. More likely, these were well-intentioned check-ins from concerned friends in the matter of the abusive note, which seemed to be affecting some others more than it was affecting me.
Forty years on, I find it hard to imagine getting much, if any, revision done with that number of visitors.
My handwriting analysis suggests that I wrote this part of my diary up some days after the event. But still, the word “etc.” after a string of four visitors suggests that there were several others.
I’m pretty sure that part of Hilary’s purpose (a visit AND post-pub coffee) was to persuade me to agree to sit on the JSoc (Jewish Society) committee, something I had previously stated my extreme reluctance to do. I’m not sure whether Hilary was yet going out with Lloyd Green (a friend of mine from my Streatham childhood and coincidentally a Keele student a year or so ahead of me) but they did go out with each other at Keele and subsequently married each other.
Thursday 4 June 1981 – Exams today?? – Roy’s binge in evening – quite entertaining.
Friday 5 June 1981 – Politics exam today – Union in evening -> Sands [Sandra]!
Saturday 6 June 1981 – late rise – restive afternoon – went to Union with Sim [Simon Ascough] – supper – Union again – dullish evening
Roy was Simon Jacobs’s boyfriend pretty much throughout that year. Roy will have completed his finals around that time, so my guess is that the binge was related to that. Simon did not keep in touch with Roy after Roy left Keele. Nor did I keep in touch with Sandra after she left Keele, nor did I see much of her the following year, when she was doing finals.
I think I probably meant “restful” when I said “restive” afternoon, although there is something restive about my tone for the next few days. I needed to go to London to resolve some matters ahead of my late June return for the summer and/but was no doubt itching for the more exciting-sounding events that would form the end-of-term/end-of-academic-year summer activities.
A whole weekend between exams must have seemed like an imposition.
Darker. The UKSU snooker room was darker if I recall correctly.
Sunday 7 June 1981 – Late rise – did little – snooker – bar in eve – dull day.
Monday 8 June 1981 – Read in morn – exam in afternoon, Union in evening – v late night.
I mention snooker a few times in my diary towards the end of that summer term. I recall playing the game a few times with Sim and Tim – I’ll write that up a bit more when I get to the second half of June – but perhaps these early efforts were with Simon Jacobs.
Forty years on, Simon and I discussed this matter when he visited us (late May 2021), agreeing that our ability to play snooker was slightly improved by a drink or two, then rather more dramatically diminished by each subsequent drink. If only we had been able to retain information from formal scientific experiments in class as well as we have retained the empirical evidence from those informal “clinical trials”.
Anyway, by the Monday, that was it, academically-speaking. Last essays done, last exam done. I had no formal purpose at Keele for the next few days, so I popped back down to London on the Tuesday.
There is a Morecombe and Wise sketch, with André Previn, in which Eric Morecombe, on being berated for making a complete mess of playing the piano, exclaims:
I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.
Hold that thought for a moment, dear reader, as this piece is really a chunk of my coming-of-age story, not really a piece about corny 1970s comedy television.
The summer term of 1981, the end of my first year at Keele, held many important landmarks for me:
The relevant words for the seminal night in question, for those who might not be accustomed to reading rarefied calligraphy, are:
Union in evening -> H Block party – Sandra came back – stayed
Not much to go on there, without memories. My memories of this period have been magnified and clarified lately. First of all by being reminded about the Patrick Moore interview, then, a couple of weeks later, by attending a pilot of Rohan Candappa’s new performance piece on 31 October 2017:
What Listening To 10,000 Love Songs Has taught Me About Love. It’s an exploration of love, and music, and how the two intertwine. it’s also about how our lives have a soundtrack.”
Anyway, Sandra was, I think, in the third year of a four year course. Social Work and Social Anthropology? Something like that. I am pretty sure we got chatting in earnest in the Union, ahead of the H Block party. I reckon the idea of her coming back to my place had been signalled if not completely decided before we went to the party.
Without going into detail, I’d suggest that my previous experiences in the passion department might have been analogous to Eric Morecombe’s piano playing. Sandra was a warm-hearted girl who gently helped me to sequence and to play the metaphorical notes better.
But before Sandra and I got to play a duet, we had to navigate an unwanted note of a very different kind.
When we got back to my study/bedroom, we found a note that had been slid under the door, containing the following message:
YID’S OUT
That sort of thing was very uncommon at Keele. It (by which I mean direct racist abuse) only happened to me that once in the five years I spent at Keele…
…it would have had to have happened that night of all nights, wouldn’t it…
…I remember my heart sinking and I half expected the poor girl to run away. But instead she smiled and said, “whoever did this is such an idiot, he cannot even spell a two-syllable phrase.”
A grocer’s apostrophe.
We laughed and made light of it, while agreeing that it was an awful as well as a pitiful note. We dallied with the idea that the note was more of an insult to the language than it was to my tribe.
Soon we decided that we might not have understood what the author was trying to say – that is after all one of the problems with bad spelling and grammar. Perhaps the author wanted a singular yid to take something out. Possibly the note was deliberately intended as a note of encouragement for us to revert to our original purpose, which we did.
I might still have the note somewhere. I kept it for ages as a sort-of badge of honour and also as a demonstrable artefact to wave, if people were suggesting that we didn’t have overt racism on our Keele campus at all.
Anyway, the whole experience that night can’t have been that awkward or traumatic for Sandra because, according to my diary, she returned for more, on several occasions, before the end of term. Not least, later that day/the very next evening, after the Jazz Night. The ticket for Jazz Night was preserved because I wrote “Patrick Moore Interview” on the reverse to insert into the interview cassette case:
In my unaided memory, that liaison with Sandra had been a one-off, but it is clear from the diaries that it was a seminal dalliance that played out several times over a few weeks.
That does make sense, really, when I think about it. As my baroq-ulele teacher, Ian Pittaway, would surely point out, you can’t acquire much technique with only one lesson…
…and I’d like to think of myself now as…
…to borrow Woody Allen’s Broadway agent character, Danny Rose’s phrase, when describing his water glass virtuoso:
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