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

diary-december-1974-smaller

What a sporty day Wednesday 4 December 1974 must have been for me. Just in case you cannot read what the day’s entry says:

11th in chemistry.

Fives lost 15-3 to Wrightson & Weber, beat Mason & Candappa 15-7 and beat Pavasi & I Goodwin 15-3, 15-0.

Fridge ball 533.

Some of this perhaps needs explaining. “11th in chemistry” is and perhaps will remain a bit of a mystery. 11th in the year would be quite good; whereas 11th in the class more predictably mediocre in that subject. It’s not well explained in the diary; much like my answers in the chemistry test, no doubt.

No, it is the fives and the fridge ball that caught my eye for further exposition.

Four Sets Of Fives 

I have already written up a bit about fives – in a piece about a so-called uneventful day the following June – click here. But if you cannot be bothered to click, you should simply be aware that, at Alleyn’s, we played Rugby Fives and you should also be aware that Alan Cooke became my regular doubles partner, so I’m sure those doubles matches were teamed with him.

Looks as though Cookie and I warmed up as the afternoon went on; perhaps this was a breakthrough afternoon for our nascent doubles pairing. Earlier references to fives in my diary seem to be singles games.

Apologies to David Pavesi – firstly for the surprising mis-spelling of his name, as we knew each other well from primary school as well as at Alleyn’s. But also apologies to him and Ian “Milk” Goodwin for the drubbing. Why we played a second set against those two after a convincing first set I really cannot imagine. Perhaps they requested another chance. Perhaps we four wanted to play some more and everyone else had disappeared.

Fridge Ball

I suppose I do need to explain the magnificent and extraordinary sport of fridge ball, just in case the reader is unfamiliar with the game.

I realise at the time of writing (2016) that fridge ball has rather a lot in common with my current passion, the ancient game of real tennis – click here for one of my pieces and links on that game. 

In short, fridge ball is to table tennis what real tennis is to modern (lawn) tennis, but instead of a medieval courtyard, which is the theatre of play for real tennis, the theatre of play for fridge ball is a modern kitchen. Fridge ball is played with a ping-pong bat and a ping-pong ball.

Sadly, there are no photographs of the 3 Woodfield Avenue, London, SW16 fridge ball court as it looked in 1974, but there is a photograph of the court from 2012, when the house was being refurbished in preparation for letting – see below.

a347adaceb2a2e211f1e854e1054c2e38fe278f3_645_430

In front of the visible wall (to the left of the picture) stood a large 1960’s-style fridge-freezer; the surface against which the ball has to be hit. The floor surface back then was linoleum of a rather insipid hue. In the photograph you can actually see a layer of blue glue awaiting some fancy modern flooring substance, the suitability of which for fridge ball was not even tested.

The game, simply, is to hit the ball against the fridge door as many times as possible, ideally getting some interesting bouncy business off the floor and/or the jauntily angled pantry door (shown open in the photo but naturally closed for play) and/or the panel doors below the sink,and/or divider doors (just out of shot at the bottom of the photo, which at the time had helpfully unobtrusive recess slots rather than potentially rally-ruining handles).

If the ball is accidentally hit to the left of the fridge (to the kitchen entrance), the ball is out and the rally is over. If the ball is hit to the the right of the fridge (an entrance that leads to a little laundry area and side door to the house), the ball is out and the rally is over. If the ball is hit above the fridge, gawd help you because the ball will probably get stuck behind the fridge and is the devil’s own job to retrieve. Needless to say the rally is over but also, almost certainly, your enjoyment for the evening, as mum and dad take matters into their own hands to terminate the game at that juncture.

If you hit the ball hard enough for it to get some action off the back surface or the cooker, the ball is still in play but that is a dangerous tactic given the strange bounces you might get back there. Aficionados of real tennis might enjoy the idea of hitting the grill/grille – a winning shot in realers but merely part of the ongoing fun/difficulty in fridgers.

Where you can see drawers at the back of the court/right hand side of the photograph, in my day there was a recess under a surface there and a stool kept in that space.  If the ball went into that recess it was out and the rally was over, making the back of the court even more treacherous than it would be today.

A second bounce does not necessarily terminate the point, although most second bounce situations tend to lead to the ball not bouncing at all and ending up dead, which thus ends the rally.

It really is a magnificent game, full of skill and playable as an addictive solo game, not entirely unlike the pinball addiction that subsequently grabbed me for some time. Indeed given the size of our family kitchen, it worked best as a solo game.

But here’s the thing.

Fridge ball 533.

Just think about that for a moment. A 533 stroke rally. That is a remarkable score.

I think there was also a playing condition that allowed for externalities (such as mum wanting to do the washing up or dad wanting a cup of tea), such that the player could catch the ball in the non-bat hand (not scoring a stroke for the catch, btw) and then continue the rally once the interruption was over. Frankly, I can’t imagine having had the run of the kitchen for long enough to score 533 without such a playing condition. Not on a midweek evening after playing four sets of fives at school.

What a marathon sporting day.

Does anyone reading this piece remember playing fridge ball with me or similar games in their own (or other people’s) homes? I’d love to hear all about it if you did.

Back When I Didn’t Know My Asif From My Sarfraz, Cricket On Tooting Bec Common, Summer 1974

Although I started keeping a diary at the beginning of 1974, after just four months of that daily routine I then took a sabbatical for nearly seven months. I must have been exhausted from all that scribbling.

So May to November 1974 is a bit of an unrecorded blur, which is a shame.

But my memory tells me that much of that blur revolved around cricket. Further, my chance encounter with a charming chap named Michael at Lord’s on the second day of the Pakistan Test in May 2018…

Three Days On The Trot At Lord’s For England v Pakistan, 24 to 26 May 2018

…triggered a flurry of memories.

Michael, like me, had grown up around Tooting Bec Common. Lord’s might be our field of dreams now, but back then, the only cricket pitch we were likely in any way to experience live once school was out for the summer, could be found on that common:

Open-air exercise class, Tooting Bec Common - geograph.org.uk - 1316311
Tooting Bec Common – our field of dreams back then

1974 was the second summer of my proper cricket awareness – avidly following the major games on the TV and/or radio, wanting to catch a bit of the Sunday League match on telly if I could…

…but probably was the first summer that I and my entourage summoned the courage and sufficient equipment to venture onto the common to play.

If some of the bigger, older teenagers wanted the pitch, at that age it meant game over for us little-uns. I recall us challenging this pecking order once and returning home with bruises for our trouble. So our lot was sometimes reduced to trying to play on a relatively flat, well-shaved but ordinary patch of grass on the playground side of the common.

Tooting Bec Common (1) - geograph.org.uk - 285916
Just beyond the right hand side of this photo. I fancy a bowl on that.

I don’t suppose the pitch (or lack thereof) made much difference to our games back then, when we were 11 on 12. We weren’t yet physically equipped to use the full length of a pitch properly, nor were we playing with a proper cricket ball. I seem to recall using a rubber ball – heavier than a lawn tennis ball but nowhere near the weight and hardness of a cricket ball…mercifully.

I have a very clear memory of trying to emulate the players who had captured our imagination that summer; the players of England and Pakistan in 1974. The commentators had made much of Sarfraz Nawaz and the prodigious swing he was able to achieve with his bowling. We wanted to do that. Here’s a clip of one of his finest hours, the following year, against the West Indies:

My strongest memory, though, does not involve using any technique that the cricket coaches might deem helpful in making the ball swing…or for that matter in bowling with any form of accuracy or purpose.

No.

My strongest memory involves doing a little sideways jig at the start of the run up and then lolloping towards the crease to bowl. False memory had combined this unusual approach with Sarfraz Nawaz. His was a most memorable name; by the early 1980s expert marketeers were naming pop groups in similar rhyming style because such couplets are so memorable.

But I digress.

My research for this piece reveals that it was another Pakistan bowler whose run up had us “class of 1974” kids jigging hither and yon before bowling: Asif Masood. Here’s a clip of him bowling that year (at 2’56” and possibly other places) – dig the jig:

I would like to analyse Asif Masood’s run up a bit more. Wikipedia describes it thus:

a backward step before a loping approach to the wicket which John Arlott likened to “Groucho Marx chasing a pretty waitress”.

Whereas his Cricinfo entry describes it differently:

a bizarre start to his run-up in which he turned sideways to the wickets and leaned backwards before starting his approach.

You can judge for yourselves, dear readers, by watching the above clip. I am reminded of a Lancashire expression, which Asif Masood himself would no doubt understand now, as he married and settled in Bury after his cricket career:

‘Ere’s mi yed, mi arse is cummin.

The premature arrival of my upper torso and limbs does nothing but harm to my performance at ball sports – I’m pretty sure that the same applied to my friends on the common – but that didn’t stop us from becoming convinced that the secret of success was to emulate that run up. I’m here to tell you that we were mistaken.

Of course we didn’t want to BE these Pakistan stars; we wanted to BE the England stars. Geoff Arnold, for example, with his furtive look of teeth-gritted concentration as he ran up – we emulated that too. I cannot find a clip of Geoff Arnold bowling, but he is still hanging around at Surrey, would you believe, so you can find recent interviews and all sorts by clicking here.

Chris Old was my England bowling hero at that time. Not least because he was part of the Yorkshire team that I met five years earlier

A Short Holiday In Brighton, During Which I Met Geoffrey Boycott & The Yorkshire Cricket Team, 3 September 1969

Chris Old’s days of glory against Pakistan came four years later – this was the only fairly relevant clip of him bowling I could find – don’t blink or you’ll miss it:

https://youtu.be/j9KgmiGBWA8

Quite lollopy too, Chris Old’s run up. Not as lollopy as Asif’s, obviously, but enough lollop to enable the 11 year old impersonator to switch from being Asif to Old by the simple expedient of eliminating the sideways jig.

So who were the heroes of that summer of 1974? I’m not talking about the actual test match and ODI heroes – you can look them up through the above links for pity’s sake – no, I mean the Tooting Bec Common heroes. The 11/12 year olds who were performing far more exciting feats of glory. No “three test matches – all drawn” for us.

I’m struggling to remember, so will simply brain dump what little remains in my brain in the hope that it triggers some memories in others. Apologies to those forgotten or misrepresented through inclusion.

Andrew (now Andy) Levinson lived in our street and was a perennial companion in those games. Stuart Harris (no relation; one of the “Naff Harris’s” from the posh end of the road) would sometimes join us, for sure, although my diary has more to say about Stuart in the context of tennis than cricket:

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

I recall getting into a scrape with David Pavesi, Andy and others, when some bigger boys thought we were on their patch, but I think that might have been Clapham Common nearer to the Pavesi house, as I recall Mrs Pavesi nursing our bruises and egos after the incident. I don’t recall David venturing to join us at Tooting Bec but he might have done.

Alan Cooke would often come around to my place and I suspect that some of those games involved him.

Other Alleyn’s folk, such as Paul Deacon and Jonathan Barnett, were certainly cricket lovers with whom I watched and talked cricket, but I don’t recall playing cricket with them in the holidays. I also remember talking cricket a lot with Richard Hollingshead that summer term (another story for another day), but I don’t recall playing with him.

Lloyd Green might have joined us occasionally, as might Stuart and Jeremy Starkin, Richard and Graham Laikin…although I remember those lads for football on the common, not cricket.

I don’t ever remember playing cricket with girls, not since Mandy Goldberg got hit accidentally by Richard Dennis in the primary school playground the previous year, which led to cricket being banned at Rosemead for the rest of the school year.  Click here to see the scene of the crime – that former Rosemead site now n. Family Club Balham.

What better way to get a kid like me enthused about a sport than to give it a sense of danger and prohibition. Thank you, Miss Plumridge.

To summarise, in the summer of 1974 we wanted to play cricket and we wanted to look the part. Roll the clock forward several decades and I think the following photo proves that I did indeed acquire a fair chunk of that “look the part” skill, without acquiring much, if anything, else that could be described as skill.

With thanks to Charles Bartlett for this deceptive picture of me circa 2004

But a love for a game like cricket is also a gift. I might not have been born with talent, nor could I acquire very much skill through graft or imitation, but the love of the game is certainly also a gift. And part of that love for cricket was formed as a kid, playing those silly games, emulating our heroes, on Tooting Bec Common.

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

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

Stuart Harris & Me In My (Or Should I Say My Parents’) Garden, 1976

I wrote a “Fifty Years Ago” piece last week about my first tennis lesson:

Fifty Years Of Tennis, Starting At Woodfield Grove Tennis Club, 30 March 1974

I remembered that Andy and Fiona Levinson were involved and several other kids of our age from the street and local area. The following week’s diary is revealing in several additional ways.

I’ll transcribe the diary entries in full at the end of this article, because I want to focus on a couple of key facts that leap out of the page at me.

The first obvious point is that tennis gets a mention in every entry, except the Sunday one which was dominated by (Hebrew) classes and family s*it.

But the item that screamed off this page at me, inducing mixed emotions of joy and embarrassment, is the entry for 3 April:

Wednesday 3 April 1974. Morn uneventful. Afternoon tennis: Gary [Sugarman] Stewart [sic – actually Stuart Harris] and John [almost certainly Davies], M singles & doubles tournament – SH & I won!

The reason for my embarrassment is that I maintained, for best part of half a century, that I had never won anything at hand/racket sports.

True, there was the match that I had misremembered to be the crowning moment of my youthful play, a winning quarter-final against Johnny Eltham at Fives in 1975…

An Uneventful Day Playing Fives, 9 June 1975

…an event rather ingeniously commemorated by Rohan Candappa – if you click the above link you can read about it.

Then an interval of best part of half a century, until, in 2022, real tennis success in The Lowenthal Trophy at Queen’s …

Finally…Unprecedented Success At Tennis, The Queen’s Club, 11 May & 27 May 2022

…when I again asserted, it seems wrongly, that I had never previously achieved tournament success.

Yet, it seems that my very first tournament, at Woodfield Grove Tennis Club, was, in fact, a winning one.

Just imagine the scale of that tournament and what it must have meant to all concerned. At least four participants (four are named in my diary piece). Further, the tournament was won by a couple of genuinely local boys.

Stuart Harris, my partner in crime for that tournament victory, is not a relative of mine. Our street, Woodfield Avenue, was blessed with a Harris family at each end.

Ours, the smaller Harris family, just me and my parents, at the north end of Woodfield Avenue. Stuart’s family, with multiple children, at the south end of the same road. Stuart’s dad was named Nathan, known as Naff. Stuart’s family were referred to as “The Naff Harrises” to distinguish them from our family, which might thus have been described as “The Tasteful Harrises”, but were probably known as “The Peter Harrises”…or possibly an adjective I would prefer not to learn about after all this time.

Parenthetically [did you see what I did there], calling my family “The Peter Harrises” would subsequently do no good at all, when another unrelated Peter Harris moved in next door to my parents’ house. A nightmare for the postal and delivery services ensued.

The headline photo shows me and Stuart larking around in The Tasteful Harris garden a couple of years later. Sadly, we have no pictures of me and Stuart in action, pulling off our stunning tournament victory that day in 1974, but I did commission DALL-E to reimagine the scene using AI technology and I think it has done quite well:

That tournament success seems to have preoccupied me so much that I simply scrubbed out the following two days. Presumably the celebrations went on deep into the night and then into the next night…

…or perhaps I was starting to lose interest in diary writing for a while, as evidenced by my seven month “sabbatical” between late April and late November that year.

Anyway, I shall use this diary discovery to try and reconnect with Stuart after all these years (I think I have found him) and we’ll see if any amusing memories and/or law suits ensue from him.

Postscript: Stuart Harris And I Are Indeed Now Back In Touch With One Another

Stuart, amongst many other things unrelated to this piece, points out that there was a Stewart in our street: Stewart Starkin, who quite probably was part of our tennis-take-up group that Easter. Indeed, re-reading my diary entry I strongly suspect that the name Stewart does indeed refer to the other Stewart and SH refers to Stuart Harris. That means that there must have been at least five of us in that tournament, which puts the victory on an even more impressive footing, don’t you think?

Here, For The Record, Is That Entire Diary Week Transcribed.

Sunday 31 March 1974 – Classes in morn. G Anne, Ida trouble [that means a family row]. VERY BAD DAY.

Monday 1 April 1974 – Tennis v good in morn. Afternoon OK. Andrew [Levinson] for badminton.

Tuesday 2 April 1974 – Tennis instruction v good. Classes good. Donuts for class notes. [Some form of sweetmeat bribery to do our studies, if I recall correctly]

Wednesday 3 April 1974. Morn uneventful. Afternoon tennis: Gary [Sugarman] Stewart [sic – actually Stuart Harris] and John [almost certainly Davies], M singles & doubles tournament – SH & I won!

Thursday X

Friday X

Saturday 6 April 1974 – Tennis morn. Afternoon uneventful. Seder v good – sung Ma Nishtana – v enjoyable evening.

Oh boy, was I hooked on the tennis early.

Here is another 1976 take on the dynamic duo that won that Woodfield Grove trophy in 1974 – the pictures below taken the same day as the headline picture:

Fifty Years Of Tennis, Starting At Woodfield Grove Tennis Club, 30 March 1974

At Boston Manor Tennis Club in 2016

On 30 March 1974 I played tennis “properly” for the first time. How do I know?

Diary says so. Allow me to transliterate the relevant cypher:

Saturday 30 March 1974 – joined tennis club. Learnt forhand [sic] and backhand. Shoped [sic] in p.m.

Apologies for the dreadful spelling of “forehand” and “shopped” in there – no wonder I had just come 27th in class that term, the second term of my secondary schooling.

The tennis club I joined was Woodfield Grove Tennis Club – still there.

This image by Benjamin Chan, “borrowed” from this site – click here

In 1974, the three courts you can see in the background – now described as “cushioned acrylic” which sounds well posh, were clay and were strictly adults only. We children had not been allowed in at all until most of us had reached the age of eleven – Fiona Levinson I think sneaked in with us before she had reached that age. Children were only allowed to play on the single court visible in the foreground. Now macadam, in those days it was a rather uneven concrete that might have had, at one time, a macadam component to it. Beginners and children only, I expect in those days, but good enough for us.

I seem to recall that the brains behind the operation was a rather formidable lady named Mrs Mussey, who I think lived in our street, Woodfield Avenue, just around the corner from Woodfield Grove.

I have a feeling that, unless you showed real talent and/or had parents who were willing and able to stump up some significant membership fees, the deal for children was a few starter lessons and then “be off with you”.

But that was Ok, my career in tennis was launched. Who wanted rather snooty clay courts that you weren’t allowed to use, when for a few pence you could play on municipal grass on Tooting Bec Common in the summer holidays. At school there were courts available too, although fives and cricket were more my thing than tennis at school.

As my diaries from the 1970s and 1980s attest – and countless more Ogblog pieces will reveal as I roll them out – tennis played a significant role in my childhood and my student days. Here are a couple of examples from the student years.

Anyone…And In Spring 1983 At Keele That Was Pretty Much Anyone…For Tennis?
Plenty of Tennis Between My Law Finals And My Economics Finals, Keele, 24 to 26 May 1984

Even more significantly, Janie and I played tennis (albeit sloppy, post-party tennis) the day we met at Kim & Micky’s party, in August 1992, and have played regularly in the decades since:

An Evening With Janie & Kim & Micky & Tennis, 4 September 1992

Janie and I started out in Lammas Park, but since around the turn of the century, Janie and I have played at Boston Manor Tennis Club, which has three courts in Boston Manor Park. Less formal than Woodfield Grove but just the ticket for us.

Janie and I rarely play lawn (modern) tennis anywhere else, except when we are on holiday, but I have played the odd game in more rarified surroundings…

Lawn Tennis At Queen’s, In Which I Inadvertently Deployed Gamesmanship Masterfully, Yet Still Lost, 24 June 1999

At Boston Manor, we have had the occasional really splendid works outing…

Z/Yen Tennis Evening At Boston Manor, 1 July 2010

…and it is only a slight exaggeration to describe one of my exploits as an international fixture:

International Tennis At Boston Manor Park: Victor, Heinrich, Jacques & Me, 11 March 2011

Get Real

I have also formed a deep enthusiasm for real tennis since 2016, which I mostly play at Lord’s but, like most realists, I am an addict who will play that game whenever the opportunity arises. here’s an example or two, including some video evidence as well as photographs:

How I Lost My Virginity Three Times In Less Than A Week, Yet Didn’t Lose A Match, 10, 14 & 15 October 2019
The MCC Tennis Weekend 2024: The Secret Diary Of Ian Harris Aged 61 and 5/12ths, 26 to 28 January 2024

But, for me, the tennis hobby all started on 30 March 1974, when I learnt forehand and backhand at Woodfield Grove Tennis Club – thanks Woodfield Grove.

The Last Three Weeks Of My First Lent Term At Alleyn’s School, During Which, I Got Drunk, Saw The Mikado Starring Trevor Tindale, Flunked Class & Yet Got A Good Report, March 1974

“The record shows, I took the blows…”

I have put the main highlights into the headline, but it was a full tilt time for me, the last three weeks of March 1974. Not only the above things but I also did “senior work with Morris” (whatever that might be), a load more drama with Ian Sandbrook, played cricket & fives & tennis & chess & Subbuteo…and got super-excited (as the young folk now say) about the hi-fi my dad procured that month.

But I am getting ahead of myself, let’s trawl those diary pages and try to make sense of them.

Sunday, 10 March 1974 – Classes party. Bar mitzvah – Mark Briegal, very good indeed. Got drunk.

Monday, 11 March 1974 – Drama good, stamp swapping. Cricket good.

Tuesday, 12 March 1974 – Saturday periods one to four. Art good. Navy display in pool v good. Senior work with Morris.

Wednesday, 13 March 1974 – Chemistry, good. Fives v good – more tuition from elderly man. World At War, good. Benny Hill.

Thursday 14 March 1974 – Not bad day. Classes good. All is okay.

Friday, 15 March 1974 – Drama, good. Hi-fi amplifier, tuner and speakers.

Saturday, 16 March 1974 -Exeat. Listened to hi-fi. Subbuteo after. Mum in a peeve.

Mark Briegal is my second cousin once removed (one of many such cousins). I am quite sure that Mark will feel honoured that my first diary reference to getting drunk (and quite possibly the very first time I felt drunk) was on the occasion of his bar mitzvah party. I vaguely remember cousins from the Jacobs branch of that family encouraging me to partake. Also rather a lot of dancing emanating from the Jacobs side. The following example from my own bar mitzvah party nearly 18 months later.

Let’s move on.

Not too sure where stamp swapping came from; I was never really into stamps. I do recall a neighbour giving me quite a sizeable box of miscellaneous stamps from the length and breadth of the dominions, some of which, for all I know, might have real value now. I still have them somewhere and should probably let someone who knows what they are doing have a look at them one day. In short, the sun never sets on my stamp collection, nor does it ever see the light of day. I might have swapped away the best of them, of course.

I cannot fathom what a navy display in the pool might have been, nor what “senior work with Morris” might have comprised…or even who Morris might have been in this context – Colin perhaps?

I have already written about the 41-year old elderly man, John Pretlove, who helped me with my fives…

A Fortnight During Which A Character Named Motel, Ted Heath & An “Elderly” 41-Year-Old Alleyn’s Alum Featured In My Diary, Late February To Early March 1974

The Arrival Of The Hi-Fi

This was a big deal for me. I loved that hi-fi. Dad loved that hi-fi. I think he spent quite a lot of money on it, perhaps unaware that there were desperately difficult financial times just around the corner for him. Dad prioritised the hi-fi over the purchase of a colour TV – the latter purchase being beyond his means for a year or so after the purchase of the hi-fi.

You can still buy the modern equivalent of our wonderful 1970s Yamaha amplifier if you are prepared to invest the big bucks

I’m all of a quiver having found an image of that wonderful beastie.

Not sure what I was doing with Subbuteo and/or the hi-fi that put mum in a peeve – presumably playing for too long and/or playing music too loud while playing for too long. Mum would need to get over that – such conduct, although not recommended to younger readers who might stumble across this piece, became quite common in our household.

The Next Week Including The Mikado With Trevor Tindale

Sunday, 17 March 1974-Classes good. Feld’s lunch. Home after Kalooki 3p.

Monday, 18 March 1974 – Drama play Sherlock Holmes. Cricket good. Waltons good.

Tuesday, 19 March 1974 – Art good. Classes good. Likely Lads good.

Wednesday, 20 March 1974 – Fives v good indeed. Mikado – Tindale, extremely good as Ko-Ko.

Thursday, 21 March 1974 – Classes good. Uncle Cyril for chess – nice one Cyril.

Friday, 22 March 1974 – Acted play. Drama v good. Stereo player v good.

Saturday, 23 March 1974 – 27th in class. In afternoon, listened to record player.

This lifted from the Alleyn’s performing arts book – hoping that Mike Jones might dig out the full programme

The Alleyn’s Performing Arts book suggests that the school’s Gilbert & Sullivan was revived around 1973, primarily by Iwan Davies and Trevor Tindale, with the blessing of the Music Master Frank “Pop” Kennard. The Mikado would have been the second production.

My memory is clear that the first G&S I ever saw was the Pirates of Penzance, but whether that was the Alleyn’s production (either in my first term or perhaps before I started but once it was known I was to join the school), or possibly a professional production with my parents, I cannot recall. I can clearly visualise Iwan Davies and Trevor Tindale in their Mikado roles. I remember my folks being very impressed with it and loving it myself.

I went on a bit of a G&S binge in the aftermath of this show, borrowing any G&S I could find in the Lambeth Public Library and scraping it onto reel-to-reel tape at a rather shocking 1.875 IPS speed, which rather defeats the object of having a classy amplifier and a decent quality reel-to-reel recorder, but there you go.

I’d love to hear and see more memories of this event and am hoping that Mike Jones can lay his hands on some additional bumf and perhaps share his own memories.

27th In Class

How did I come 27th in a class that only had 26 people in it? OK, maybe there were 29 people in the class. Perhaps counting things was part of my problem at that stage.

But actually I now would like to challenge the basis of that assessment. I know that 50 years have passed and that most people might have more important things to do than re-hash old scores…

…but I am not most people, am I?

I would like to know how this somewhat embarrassing position was assessed. There is no reference to exams in my diaries. Continuous assessment had surely not been invented back then. So how were the class positions determined? Mr Sandbrook might or might not choose to respond to this question.

Was this some sort of rating/ranking system based on the teachers’ assessment of our performance in each subject using that rather subjective method of allocating the letters A to E with pluses and minuses attached?

Did Sir (Mr Sandbrook) apply numerical scores to those modal assessment classifiers? If so, was he aware that the application of conventional quantitative statistical methods to qualitative modal data is flawed for oh so many reasons. Machine learning algorithms, which can help with this type of classification and prediction problem, were mostly yet to be postulated, let alone of practical use, in 1974.

Cartoon by https://deepai.org/machine-learning-model/cute-creature-generator

I’m over it now, I really am. It’s just…I mean…27th…Ok, Ok, I’ll move on.

Moving On, The End Of Term

Sunday, 24 March 1974 – Classes, Freed. Home listen to record record player. Not a very good day.

Monday, 25 March 197 4 – PE, good. Games, cricket good, caught Jarmany out. Chess lost.

Tuesday, 26 March 1974 – Art good. Classes good. Likely Lads v good.

Wednesday, 27 March 1974 – chemistry, good. Fives v good – Cookie won as usual !!!

Thursday, 28 March 1974 – broke up from school. G Jenny’s, missed classes, report q. good, art A- excellent.

Friday, 29 March 1974 – Uneventful, Andrew not available, wargame, Subbuteo, five-a-side cup snag.

Saturday 30 March 1974 – joined tennis club. Learnt forehand and backhand. Shopped in p.m.

I’m struggling to work out why I was so motivated to write down that I caught Nick Jarmany out at cricket. I don’t remember sporting rivalry (or indeed any rivalry) with Nick. Perhaps he had been doing very well in that particular game – the moment seeming noteworthy in that context. It’s a badge of honour, getting a sporting mention in my diaries, Nick. A badge of honour.

Interestingly, in the Wednesday entry, Alan Cooke finally gets the mention he deserves with respect to fives. My memory of it was that invariably won, although the diary documents a couple of (I suspect rare) Harris victories before this end of term confession.

Alleyn’s branded gloves hadn’t been invented back then

How did I get quite a good report for coming 27/29 in class? Sadly, mum threw away all of my old school reports without asking me if I wanted to keep them…”yes please, mum”, I’d have said…so the details are now lost in the mists of time.

I might politely ask Mr Sandbrook to try to replicate his summary in that end of term two school report, but I thought I’d ask Chat GPT to have a go first:

Despite ranking 27th in the class, Ian has shown commendable dedication and enthusiasm towards his studies and extra-curricular activities. While his academic performance may not currently reflect his efforts, his attitude towards learning is admirable. He has actively participated in various school activities, displaying a keen interest in broadening his horizons beyond the classroom. With continued perseverance and focus, Ian has the potential to improve his academic standing and excel in his studies. Keep up the good work and maintain your positive attitude towards learning.

Oooh, I rather like that. I feel inspired to buck up my ideas and work a bit harder next term. That report might even stave off my mum’s peevishness.

School’s Out

I love the reference to Andrew [Levinson] not being available and a Subbuteo five-a-side cup snag. Presumably the latter caused by the former, as there is no sign of anyone else to play with that day.

Contrast with “joining tennis club” the next day, which I am pretty certain also involved Andrew and Fiona Levinson, plus some other kids from our street. I have written a whole entry to commemorate the 50th anniversary of me starting tennis, as that feels rather important given the amount (and varieties) of tennis I have been playing avidly since that day.

Fifty Years Of Tennis, Starting At Woodfield Grove Tennis Club, 30 March 1974