Ian Louis Harris

Watching Marraz Biltoo And Jan Sooknah Play Football And More, Mauritius, 19 July 1979

An overview of my 1979 trip to Mauritius, courtesy of the wonderfully hospitable Biltoo family, can be found by clicking here or below:

Mauritius, July & August 1979, Overview, Summary and Picture Links

Here is an extract from my third letter, which is in effect my diary entry for 19 July 1979:

Okay folks it’s tonight in fact and we are not going anywhere else so here is the news from today. This morning we wrote some letters and went out. We met one of our new found friends who works in the bakery and he showed us around that. Then we returned home, had lunch, and the Marraz took us to see the sugar plant – a most interesting sight, sweet!!?
Then we came home to meet Jan Sooknah. Marraz and Jan play football for a club team and we four, along with Bhavesh (Marraz’s eldest son) went there. Marraz is a superb player. He used to play for a first division team and without him his team would never have drawn two-all. Jan is okay but too fat!!!

Then we went home for supper, which was a superb curry. The food is all marvellous here. Then Anil and I went for a walk down to Lynford Smith’s, but he was out so we came home again.
A bit of bad news. We saw a beautiful bird out of the window and Marraz immediately went and got his own beautiful pair of binoculars: good job I hadn’t given him those binos earlier. What I plan to do is to bring home the binos and buy something here. In a way it is good, as Marraz has no car at the moment as it is being repaired, so plans have been changed and we will stay with lots of other relatives during the five weeks, so I can buy several small gifts.
Anyway, see you soon, lots of love, Ian

I think this might have also been the day that I bought some hand-crafted silver earrings for Grandma Anne. I wanted to get her an especially nice present, as she had always been very generous to me and in fact might (on reflection) have part-funded my flight to Mauritius.

It was an in-joke in the Harris family that Grandma Anne never really liked the presents she was given and that she had a trunk into which she threw most such presents after receiving them with grace, the present never to be seen again.

But she did like big, dangley earrings and I took soundings with Marraz and Anandani. The latter was the school mistress at the local primary school. She suggested that I go to the parents of one of her charges. They were silversmiths and would have a range of hand-crafted silver earrings of every possible description.

Anandani sent Bhavesh with me and Anil on this errand. Bhavesh blurted a message in creole to the parents, which Anil loosely translated as a statement that I was, to all intents and purposes, a member of the family and a threat that all hell would break loose if they tried to charge me a tourist price rather than a sensible price.

I chose a particularly dangley pair of highly-crafted silver earrings. They quoted a price. It sounded fair to me, but I asked them, through sign language and some very rudimentary Creole if that was the last price. They assured me through sign language and expertly-deployed Creole that it was absolutely the local, last price, below which they simply could not go. Anandani seemed very satisfied that she had done her bit when i showed her the wares and told her the price I had paid.

Grandma Anne said that the earrings were lovely when i gave them to her, but I still half-expected never to see them again. Except that is not what happened. In fact, Grandma Anne was rarely seen wearing any other earrings for the rest of her life – albeit only a couple of years. Either she genuinely liked them, or she was genuinely proud of the story – i.e. that her grandson had gone off to this far away place and chosen earrings for her, or both. In any case, the gift was a great success.

Alexandra Falls And Chamarel Coloured Earth, Mauritius, 18 July 1979

An overview of my 1979 trip to Mauritius, courtesy of the wonderfully hospitable Biltoo family, can be found by clicking here or below:

Mauritius, July & August 1979, Overview, Summary and Picture Links

Here is an extract from my third letter, which is in effect my diary entry for 18 July 1979:

Dear Mum and Dad,
Hi! How are things? We are having the time of our lives here!! Just thought I’d tell you about yesterday. First thing was the trip to the caverne (just down the road) with Anandani’s brother (Marraz’s brother-in-law). Then Anil and I were given a papaya by him which he climbed up the tree to get. Then Anil and I went into the village, bought some provisions (i.e. nuts and bananas) and returned home. Spent the hour or so before lunch noshing and resting, as we knew we were going to be busy this afternoon, because Narrain was taking us to the other side of the island.

After lunch Anil, myself, Min and Baby (daughters of Narrain) set off for the other side of the island.

*(I think I’m calling all of this but corrections welcomed):*
*Left to Right: Baby, Shahil, Min, Anil, Nanda*

Strangely, my memory of the papaya incident was that the gentleman did his stunt on the day we arrived in Mauritius, but it seems it was Day Three of our trip.

We first went to Grand Bassin, a place where the long pilgrimages go in Mauritius (Hindu ones). Then we went to Alexandra Falls and then to see the coloured earth (a plateau with earth of all different colours interspersed). I’ll be bringing back colour sample. There is some wonderful photography to be done in these places so we will return for a photographic session.

Chamarel Seven Coloured Earth – presumably taken at that later photographic session

Then we also saw an incredible Mauritian sunset.

Then after supper we went out with our new-found Mauritian friends, down to a drinking house. Rum is very cheap here (£1.30 a bottle) as are bananas (10p for six). All home produce is very cheap. Anyway I’ll finish this letter either tonight or tomorrow.

Second Letter From Mauritius, 17 July 1979

A very brief background to this travel adventure is covered in the overview posting linked here, which contains links to photos and cine.

I wrote letters to mum and dad which doubled as my diary/travelogue. Here is a scan and then transcription of the second of them, which relates to 17 July 1979.

Dear folks,
As you may have realised from the drift at the end of letter one, I had the inspiration to save writing time. You want to know what I’m doing all the time and I want to keep a diary. Thus I am sending you my diary as I go along which is why I wanted to keep the letters for me when I come back. Please send me news from home about once a week or fortnight or I will feel forgotten.

This morning we first went to Lynford Smith’s house (the priest from England) who drove us to Rose Hill to Garçon’s house…

In July 2019, writing up these pieces around the 40th anniversary of my visit, I managed to trace Lynford Smith to St Barnabas Church, an Anglican community in Vancouver – click here.

If anything changes at St Barnabas, here is a link to a scrape of that page taken in July 2019.

… from where we went to Port Louis for the day .
There we had a workers lunch in the market, a full lunch for a big 10p (a little less). We then visited Jan Sooknah a cousin of Bill’s. who immediately insisted we go to his house for tea and was very pleased to see us. He is a lawyer. All lawyers here are very rich. He lives in the district which is the Mauritian equivalent of Beverly Hills or Hampstead Garden Suburb!!!

They want us to stay there for a while: we may do later. Then we came home for supper where we had octopus; the food is superb!!

We went for a walk after supper and befriended the sons of the owner of the café (very convenient) and some of their friends. Marraz Biltoo is very popular around here and knowing him means instant acceptance and friendship.

Sugar cane grows like grass in Mauritius, you just tear it off the trees. It has the fascinating property that the fibres (if you carry on chewing rather than spit them out) clean your teeth and are good for the gums.

Good gums with all that sugar cane, Anil?

We are having the time of our lives here, the weather is good And improving. It is so different from England you wouldn’t believe it.

I won’t write a whole letter every day; soon the news will become less no doubt, so I will dig sections of letters, but I will be writing each day, you could say.
Anyway all the best, have fun, lots of love Ian

First Letter From Mauritius, 16 July 1979

A very brief background to this travel adventure is covered in the overview posting linked here, which contains links to photos and cine.

I wrote letters to mum and dad which doubled as my diary/travelogue. Here is a scan followed by a transcript of the first of them, which relates to 16 July 1979.

For those who struggle to read my beautiful manuscript, here is a dictated transcription:

Dear Ma and pa,
Well here I am, in Mauritius. It’s 7:15 AM and the sun will soon be making its presence felt. We are right at the tail end of the wintry weather (that means cold nights), but wrapped up in a blanket I was quite warm enough, so the assurance that I won’t need the blanket for much longer is quite irrelevant. Mindyou, I’d have slept like a log through anything after getting about half an hours sleep on the plane.

The flight was most enjoyable. At Heathrow we met a Biltoo, Arriss, who travelled with us and being in aviation he knows the ropes. Bahrain, our first stop (at 1:45 GMT 3:45 Bahrain time) was smelly, with workers sleeping around on the airport floors etc.
Seychelles wouldn’t let us off, as it was raining when we stopped there, but the weather in Mauritius was lovely.
We arrived at 11:15 GMT, 2:15 Mauritius time and were met by Marraz (whose home I am in now) Garçon (with chauffeur to take all our bags) and Narrain (whose wife is one of Bill’s sisters). Of course they brought their families with them, (except Narrain as there was no room to 6 kids). First of all we drove to Garçon’s house.
The first thing that struck me on the journey was the extreme poverty. People living in rusty shacks etc. The second thing was the wonderful smell of the island, this mainly caused by sugar cane.
Garçon’s house at Rose Hill is like a mansion. We may stay there for a while. We quickly moved on to Narrain’s house – that was when we met Tiffin (Bill’s sister) and the six children. Then we went to Marraz’s house. Marraz has pull here, so the words Marraz Biltoo got us straight through customs etc. at the airport.

That evening we were visited by the Anglican priest from Catford [Lynford Smith] who I recognise and who recognises me. He says you can’t possibly see Mauritius unless you live with Mauritian people for some time, like I’m doing.
Anyway I’ll be in touch soon, lots of love Ian.
PS Please keep my letters as I’m too busy to write everything down for you and keep a diary

I refer to Anil’s dad as “Bill” in these letters, but I remember him as Dat (or Dutt) and I am pretty sure everyone in Mauritius called him Dat. Perhaps Bill was his nickname or simplified name in England.

This photo, taken later in the holiday, shows the people named in that first letter and some more. Left to right: Anil, Marraz, Anandani (in front of Marraz), Dat (Bill), Narrain (sitting in front of Dat), *Garçon*, Janee, Tiffin.

The Day England Lost The Cricket World Cup Final To The West Indies, While I Scored A Different Match, 23 June 1979

I have written up my take on England’s ejection from the first (1975) cricket world cup, click here or below:

A Truly Thrice Awful Day In My School/Sporting Life, 18 June 1975

I did not witness that 1975 ejection, but I clearly had it on my mind that day.

But by 1979, it seems, not only was I (once again) too busy pottering around with actual cricket at Alleyn’s School to witness the match, I don’t even mention the cricket world cup in my diary.

had lazy day (scored) easy evening

So lazy was I, that day, I abandoned capital letters and most punctuation.

“Scored”, on that day, will mean, “scored a school team cricket match”, not the other (chasing girls) type of scoring.

Sociologists of the future will be delighted to learn that, at age 16, I was doing my fair share of the other type of scoring; the page before and the page after in the diary attest to that.

But that week had been an exam week at school.

I have a funny feeling that this particular episode of scoring lazily for the school team was a match at Battersea Grammar School (or I should say Furzedown, as that school had, by then, become) playing fields, which at that time was situated a lazy stroll away from our home in Woodfield Avenue. I say that only because I remember being asked at the last minute to score such a match around that time and the use of the term “lazy” infers that I went to little bother all day, possibly including even an absence of travel bother.

The way that world cup final match turned out is well described on Wikipedia here.

The way the Alleyn’s School match turned out is lost in the mists of time, unless some archivist somewhere kept the scorebooks. Anybody know if such archives are available for inspection? If so, let’s just hope my scoring handwriting was better than my diary handwriting.

The MCC has put up a rather charming half hour highlights package from that 1979 world cup final match – jolly decent of them – in two sections – here they both are:

https://youtu.be/f12h6gWxQzQ

https://youtu.be/iYVam7txqKU

The Day England Won A Cricket World Cup Semi Final On Home Soil, While I Went To School And A Youth Club Committee Meeting, 20 June 1979

No need to hold on to your hats for this diary entry, readers. 20 June 1979 is not one of the more exciting ones:

School OK. Exec meeting – all OK

But like the best Greek dramas, the exciting stuff is all happening just off stage.

This was the year during which I went out with Gillian for many months – several mentions of those activities on the preceding and subsequent pages.

The perceptive reader / interpreter might notice that I describe the youth club meeting the night before as “near revolution”. That can only be to do with the welfare day we were busy organising, with representatives from all around the Southern Region due to descend on our tiny little Streatham enclave on 1 July. I’ll take soundings and write up that whole near-drama soon (he writes in June 2019).

And those keen on drama might note that I sat my AO-level Drama that week. B was the result of that, if I recall correctly.

But the diary is entirely silent about the fact that the England cricket team, who for sure were very much on my mind still that summer, as indeed they were every summer, won a world cup semi-final thriller against New Zealand that day:

Here is a link to the scorecard and Cricinfo resources.

While this link takes you to some video of the match, which I might myself watch some day…but not today.

Drewy’s Party and Subsequent Matzo Ramble, 14 and 15 April 1979

I have been reminded of this weekend by several coincidences in the past few days/weeks.

Firstly, I used the following photograph to illustrate one of my party pieces from 1979 (no photos from the event itself) only for it to dawn on me and other commentators what the origins of the following photo must be.

Also, as part of my Ogblogging, I uploaded one of my old NewsRevue songs, Privatise, which is sung to the tune of Bright Eyes. It’s a real good one, though I say so myself – click here.

I played Bright Eyes while working on the Privatise/NewsRevue piece and it brought on a solid wave of memory from that April 1979 weekend. You couldn’t get away from Bright Eyes that spring; it was the Easter Number One, it was everywhere. I’ll insert a link at the end of this piece as a reward for those who…scroll all the way down there…I mean read this fine piece of mine in its entirety.

Drewy’s Party 14 April 1979

I don’t remember ever decorating at Anil’s house, but that’s what the diary says I did, before going on to Drewy’s place in Harrow-On-The -Hill for the party.

There was a group of visiting BBYOniks from the USA (New Jersey I believe) in town – earlier diary references cover earlier sessions with them. That is probably why I took my camera. Indeed, the photos of Drewy’s party are the only party photos I took throughout those years (unless you consider the conventions to have been several-days-long parties, which is not a ridiculous contention).

The stack of pictures from the party itself, all 31 of them, can be viewed here. A few good examples follow.

A few familiar faces (and some unfamiliar ones) in the above picture. All familiar faces in the picture below.

Simon Jacobs showed off his cigarette party trick for the camera:

I’ll need to do some work in Photoshop to enable people to see Simon’s smoke well – but I’m sure you all get the idea.

Drewy could do a perplexed expression for the camera in those days, so he did that.

It was a big house, the Drewy house. Many of us stayed. Frankly, that number of people often found ways of squeezing into smaller houses – this Ivor Heller Party piece from the previous spring (1978) refers.

Aftermath and Ramble, 15 April 1979

So how have I managed to find solid evidence that my unidentified fragments of negative, including the above “trews-free in the park” picture come from the same weekend?

Not so easy.

The main suspect in “the mysterious case of the trews-free gentleman” (see the first photo of this piece, above) now lives in the USA himself. When approached, he immediately started pleading the fifth amendment, which I think has something to do with bearing arms – I really should have made more attention when I did that comparative law module…whatever, I knew I’d need to handle this character very carefully indeed.

Still, once the gentleman had been offered immunity (which is apparently what you do with guilty folk in America to get them to sing), he sang like a canary.

More conclusively, now that I have gone back to the original negatives and looked at the whole fragment, I have also found the following picture on the same strip:

Clearing up the Drewy house carpet; see the Simon photo above – case proven

Also on the same strip, a couple of nice pictures of Linda, so she must have been there too. Perhaps she has some memories of this weekend to add:

Given the negative numbers and the fragmentary nature of the negatives, I am vaguely recalling that this roll of film was not finding its way happily into and through my camera. Indeed, from the depths of my memory, I think the camera jammed on the ramble, hence the shortage of pictures on that stack.

Nevertheless, there are a few pictures from the ramble – including a couple of rare pictures from that era with me in them – all of which can be examined by clicking here.

My diary is clear that we went on from Drewy’s place to a ramble:

Case proven.

As I write (14 April 2017) it is the 38th anniversary of the Drewy Party and Matzo Ramble weekend. An auspicious anniversary, as it happens, because this is Easter weekend and also the middle days (Chol Hamoed as they are known) of Passover, an unusual coincidence of festivals, just as it was in 1979.

In the run up to this Easter, there has been a storm in a teacup in the UK about Easter Egg Hunts being renamed as Cadbury Egg Hunts – click here. Whether this was done for marketing purposes or was, as some have suggested, “political correctness gone mad” to remove the specific reference to “Easter” I neither know nor care…

…but in the spirit of the modern era, perhaps we should rename the Matzo Ramble as a Rakusen’s Ramble. Or, in honour of our recently departed visitors from New Jersey, a Manischewitz Meander…

…now I’m rambling. Have a look at the Bright Eyes vid below. Those with memories that go back that far, might just get a little memory flash of that 1979 spring. If so, I’d love to learn about your memories too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGyQmH9NZcw

Confirmed Mauritius, The Overcrowded Barracoon, 10 April 1979

So this was the day that I confirmed that I would spend five weeks of the summer of 1979 in Mauritius.

The kind Biltoo family gave me an extraordinary opportunity, in 1979, to visit the beautiful island of Mauritius as a family guest, not as a regular tourist, for five weeks, along with Anil (my school friend at Alleyn’s) and his father Dat. It proved to be a life-changing, life-enhancing experience for me; an act of wonderful generosity and hospitality on the part of that family.

I have written up the visit extensively, starting here:

First Letter From Mauritius, 16 July 1979

There is a placeholder posting with links to photos and film – click here or below:

Mauritius, July & August 1979, Overview, Summary and Picture Links

As far as I can tell, this is the one and only one reference to my trip to Mauritius in my diary, prior to the visit:

Saw Anil today. Confirmed Mauritius…

I want to use this date to record my thoughts about VS Naipaul’s extensive essay/article about Mauritius, written in the early 1970s, The Overcrowded Barracoon.

Actually I cannot remember when I read The Overcrowded Barracoon at Dat Biltoo’s request. I am fairly sure that Dat more or less insisted that I read the article before making my decision as to whether or not to join the Biltoo family for five weeks in Mauritius.

It’s not a very complimentary piece. Perhaps Dat thought it would put me off. Or rather, that if it did put me off that it would be better that I didn’t join them. Or rather, that if the essay sparked my interest rather than put me off, that I would be a suitable companion for them. It did the latter; I was fascinated.

I think Dat lent me the book and I think that both my parents read the article too.

I remember thinking that the politics of that island sounded incredibly complicated and I remember not really understanding many of the points that VS Naipaul was making. For example, his comments about South Africa and Mauritius not being a place that would appeal to the anti-apartheid protester only made sense to me once I got to Mauritius.

In fact, the only point from the article that really stuck in my mind for 40 years was the notion that young, unmarried women of South Asian origin were chaperoned on Mauritius. Perhaps that point stuck because chasing girls formed a fairly major chunk of my brain space by the spring of 1979. I was 16 for goodness sake. Perhaps that point stuck because my father warned me quite sternly to be careful in my behaviour towards girls.

I do recall asking Dat some questions about the article before we went and that he answered my questions kindly, with brevity, mostly in the style of “you’ll see when we get there”. He was right.

I also recall one of my questions relating to the swastika symbol which I found perturbing but which Dat explained is a good Hindu symbol that had been misappropriated and used as an evil symbol by the Nazis.

On rereading The Overcrowded Barracoon 40 years later (August 2019) I realise what an insightful yet flawed essay that article was. The thoughts on Mauritian post-independence politics were fascinating, with the benefit of my direct experience and then hindsight in the following years.

But I think VS Naipaul’s derision about hopes for the tourism industry and the risk of overcrowding on the island have proved misguided. Naipaul was sniffy at the idea that Mauritius might increase its annual tourist footfall from 20,000 per annum to 300,000 per annum. Within 50 years of independence, Mauritius was happily accommodating over 1.3 Million tourists per annum. The population has also grown, from c800,000 to just over 1.3 Million. Almost exactly one tourist visit per Mauritian resident from 2016 onwards.

Whether or not the place is now overcrowded is a matter for conjecture, but it is certainly no longer a de facto slave colony, nor is it dependent upon munificence from dodgy neighbours and/or former colonial powers. Indeed Mauritius is now perceived as an economic success story and a major tourist destination.

But I had the opportunity to visit the nascent independent Island state (just over 10 years after independence) through and with a large, diverse Mauritian family. As my travelogues attest, that was a very special experience for a 16 tear old kid. I shall be forever grateful to the Biltoo family for giving me that experience.

An Evening At The George Canning, 8 April 1979

I enjoyed several evenings of beer and music with mates from Alleyn’s at the George Canning pub, Effra Road, Brixton.

I was reminded of it (April 2017) while writing up the party and rambling events of the following (Easter) weekend of April 1979 – click here – by spotting the following diary entry from the previous weekend, 8 April:

Went to George Canning in eve

No information in that diary entry on who my companions were that evening. I remember going to the George Canning with Jim Bateman more than once and also I’m pretty sure Mark Stevens. Perhaps also Paul Deacon and/or Graham Majin on at least one occasion; others joined us too, I think, on one visit or another. This aspect of my memory needs help.

But I do remember those evenings at the George Canning reasonably well.

In 1979, the pub looked more like the 1905 picture from this urban history site than the 2003 picture – click here – even though colour photography had just about emerged by 1979 (albeit not often in my camera).

As I recall it, the music on all my visits was British Rhythm & Blues – click here – much like the first albums by bands like the Rolling Stones, Manfred Mann, The Moody Blues, the Animals etc. Whether that R&B was the style of the place always or whether that was merely what you got on the nights we could afford, I don’t know.

But we could afford these evenings on a bit of saved pocket money. The beer was just a few pence more than normal, but if you eked out two pints over the evening you could still get a whole evening of beer and music for a quid.

The George Canning type of pub wasn’t a salubrious environment back then. I’m talking about 1979 Brixton, not the hipster “south-Shoreditch-like” inner London neighbourhood of today.

Indeed I don’t suppose my mum would have approved of us going there had she realised what a dive this pub was at that time; but Effra Road was also the location of the Brixton Shule (synagogue), so (in her mind) what could possibly go wrong just a hundred yards or so up the road from there?

From our point of view, it always felt safe and welcoming enough. The nights we went to the place, it was mostly populated by people who were there for a few beers and some music. Perhaps a few old regulars bemoaning the noise, but on the whole there was a sense of shared music-following purpose.

The place is now far more venue than drinking house; Hootananny Brixton – click here to see the site.

“Over 21s only” it says at the top of the web site…that might have proved to be a bit of a problem for us 16/17 year-olds.

Not bad reviews on Yelp for the current venue – click here.

Not so sure about it as a hostel if TripAdvisor reviews are to be believed – click here.

But looking back to 1979, other old friend’s memories of those outings to the George Canning would be most welcome.

Update: when I shared this piece on the Alleyn’s 1970s Facebook Group, both Mark Stevens and Neil Voce owned up to having been part of that scene.

Mark Stevens wrote:

I used to go and see a blues band there – the Southsiders…I think they were the band that pushed me towards blues more than anything else…

Neil Voce wrote:

Definitely used to go to see them at the George Canning as it was and the two brewers in Clapham

BBYO National Convention 29 December 1978 to 1 January 1979

As I write on 31 December 2018, I find it hard to believe that it is 40 years since I attended the BBYO National Convention 1978/1979, my second National Convention.

I took loads of black and white photographs at that 1978/1979 convention – four rolls of film by my reckoning. At some point, someone must have taken some photographs for me:

Incontrovertible evidence that I wore baggy flares in those days. This is the Streatham clan performing some sort of a skit. We all look like we could do with a good meal.

I’m not sure where this busker came from or which day this picture was taken, but the poor fellow (like many of us) looks as though he needed a good meal and some decent clothes. We must all hope that he went on to make something of his life:

On 31 December 1978, Jeffrey Spector, who is sadly no longer with us, was installed as the National president for 1979. Although I didn’t know it then, some months later I was co-opted onto Jeffrey’s National Executive to edit the magazine for the last few months of 1979. It was an honour and privilege for me to have worked with him (and others of course) in that capacity.

I’m not too sure what was happening at this juncture but I am pretty sure this was taken on Jeffrey’s installation day and would have been part of that day’s ceremony/procedure.

There’s loads that I’d like to write about this convention and other BBYO happenings, but I think I should consult with others before delving into details.

One abiding memory of this particular convention is the extremely cold and snowy weather over New Year that year. Some scallywags took full advantage:

*You can take the lad out of South London…*

My diary for the three days (29 to 31 December) simply reads:

29 December: CONVENTION
30 December: SHEER
31 December: MAGIC

Whereas my diary entry for 1 January 1979 reads:

1 January: Return from convention. Cold – both sorts.

I feel immensely fortunate that I had the opportunity to share my youth with the terrific bunch of people I met through BBYO.

The Flickr album link that follows (the picture below) takes you to all the black and white photos I took and/or that were taken on my camera during that convention. Trigger warning – there are more than 140 pictures:

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