This turned out to be our last family summer holiday together. The following year dad was brassic (skint) so we just did some day trips and stuff, e.g. Greenwich:
Then the year after that, I did BBYO camps while mum and dad went off and did their own thing early autumn.
I turned 14 on this La Manga holiday and I do remember feeling, even at that tender age, that I had sort of outgrown those family holidays. I sensed that mum and dad wanted some prime time together and I was no longer intrigued by going off and doing stuff with random youngsters who just happen to be on holiday with you.
We stayed in the Hotel Entremares – not the sort of place I might stay in now, but it is still there and looks OK. Mixed reviews now.
The hotel (and to some extent the resort) was brand new then and I suspect my dad picked up a late booking at low cost for a place that hadn’t yet gained a reputation.
Clearly we were treated like visiting celebrities:
There is a movie for this holiday which, believe it or not, actually did yield some “famous for 15 minutes material” many years later, when Visa rewarded me handsomely enough and used some clips in one of their adverts and vines. Here is the whole movie:
Here’s the Visa ad, which shows dad slapping on the tanning oil:
This blond girl features in the movie too. I wonder whether I had latched on to the blond girl or whether she had latched on to me. Rohan Candappa probably wants me to track her down and write a story about her.
In those days La Manga was positioning itself for tennis in particular…
Honest Jake Speare & Rasher Bacon – in Basher Rasher
Had you asked me, before I trawled through my diaries, how long Graham Majin and I had spent on making the animated film, Basher Rasher, I’d have said that we spent most of the days of most of the weeks of that summer on the project.
…after which, Graham Majin hoves into view, right at the end of that month.
I have corresponded with Graham on this topic, briefly, in October 2026, ahead of writing up this episode. Graham feigned little concern about being associated publicly with our animated films and recordings some 50 years later:
Blog away to your heart’s content 😊…
…said Graham, foiling my plans ahead of attempted blackmail.
Graham did, along the way in our correspondence, misidentify our efforts as “Super 8”. They absolutely were not. Standard 8 was the medium.
Graham also recalled that, some years ago, I sent him one of our films in the hope that he could, through his BBC connections, make a better attempt at preserving it than I had made. The film disintegrated in his hands during that attempt.
Possibly Graham suspects that the incriminating evidence is therefore all lost – but that is not the case. My rudimentary preservation/digitisation attempts remain and modern techniques should enable a bit of “digital remastering”.
Anyway…
…here are the diary extracts for the following fortnight:
Saturday 31 July 1976 – went to shop with Graham [Majin]. He came to tea. TV Seaside Show (yuk)
This is my first diary mention of Graham Majin. As for that TV show…
“An outside broadcast from the BBC1 Big Top which this week visits Weymouth starring Jimmy Tarbuck and featuring The Bachelors, Sacha Distel with The Grumbleweeds, Keith Harris, Kenny Lynch…“
…no wonder I wrote “yuk”.
Sunday 1 August 1976 – went to Il Carretto. Graham came in afternoon & evening, discussed cartoon. TV Play: American
In those days, I used the term “cartoon” to describe an animated film. This was the first diary mention of the project that became “Basher Rasher“.
The only American item I can find that evening was a late night film, A Place In the Sun based on the novel American Tragedy.
Andy Levinson & Graham Majin in our Woodfield Avenue garden, summer 1976
Monday 2 August 1976 – Graham came. Cartoon coming along. TV Get Some In, It’s A Square World [Michael Bentine]
Tuesday 3 August 1976 – Dentist morning. Graham, cartoon, coming along well.
Wednesday 4 August 1976 – G[randma] Jenny afternoon. TV Benny Hill, Are You Being Served, Dr Finlay
Thursday 5 August 1976 – Graham all day. Started shooting. TV What’s My Line
Friday 6 August 1976 – Graham. Good day’s shooting. Sounded films for dad.
Graham and I must have completed the soundtrack recording before we started shooting – probably on the Tuesday afternoon or perhaps unmentioned activity on the Wednesday morning.
The soundtrack is well preserved, as I digitised my reel-to-reel archive some 20 years ago. As a taster for the film, those who want to get their lug-holes around the soundtrack can do so here:
Basher Rasher soundtrack
“Sounded films for dad” means that I put stripes onto some of the old family cine films and possibly added some rudimentary soundtracks too. I especially remember doing that on the film of their 1960 holiday, Spain, Catalonia, Costa Brava, which dad had neglected to stripe and soundtrack.
Part of my purpose in doing those tasks with the family cine was to learn how to do it for the epic animated movie in progress, Basher Rasher.
Saturday 7 August 1976 – Graham in afternoon & evening, good filming.
Sunday 8 August 1976 – Il Carretto. Polaroid photo. TV Frank Sinatra film [The Joker Is Wild].
Monday 9 August 1976 – cricket on common in afternoon. New camera. TV Steptoe & Son, Get Some In, Inside Medicine, The Gun.
“New camera” will have been a still camera for me to sue on our forthcoming holiday in La Manga.. “New” will have meant “new to me”. I am pretty sure this one was a second-hand Zenith B – basic, but with a half-decent lens and it was a single lens reflex (SLR). I had been nagging dad for some while that I thought I’d do better with an SLR camera.
Tuesday 10 August 1976 – cartooning all day. Doing well.
Wednesday 11 August 1976 – went to school. Stationery with Eric [Randall]. TV Are You Being Served.
Not sure what “stationery with Eric” entailed. Presumably the use of child labour to help him undertake Alleyn’s School quartermaster duties during the summer. I suspect that Graham Majin was also involved in that activity but in any case that would have left little or no time for animated film making.
Friday 13 August 1976 – went to Graham. War game. TV Invisible Man
These diary entries suggest to me that we finished filming on the morning of Friday 13 August and “celebrated” by going to Graham’s house and playing a war game – a passion of Graham’s at that time.
I love the “cleared room” reference. Mum probably threatened to throw me out unless I tidied up my bedroom-cum-movie-studio before dinner!
Graham and I must have finished filming Basher Rasher, as the studio was dismantled and the Quartz 5 movie camera re-allocated to the impending Harris family holiday. I have photographic evidence that the camera was with us on that holiday:
Mum, Me & the precious Quartz 5, a couple of weeks later.
The film(s) containing Basher Rasher will have been sent off by post to Kodak for processing while we were on holiday.
It was considered completely normal to have to wait a few weeks between shooting any photos or video and seeing the results, back then.
In the same way, I shall keep avid Ogblog readers (and Graham) in suspenders for a while before publishing the film, which was preserved in a vaguely viewable form (via VHS) and subsequently digitised.
Here’s another frame from the movie as a teaser
Before readers and prospective viewers get too excited at the thought of seeing this five minute masterpiece, please bear in mind how quickly this project was rushed through from conception to “wrap”. Graham and I quickly decided that Basher Rasher was merely a pilot for the animated movie we’d really wanted to make: Speare Trek. The story of that movie unfolded in 1977.
For the completists: further evidence that we had completed the film a week before the Harris family set off for Spain is in the absence of “cartoon” or Graham” mentions that following week:
Sunday 15 August 1976 – Il Carretto. Nice afternoon. TV Great Las Vegas Robbery film. [Ocean’s 11]
Monday 16 August 1976 – Lazy day. TV Man About The House, This is Waugh.
Tuesday 17 August 1976 – went shopping & library. G. Jenny. TV Bill Cotton[?] Frost [?].
Wednesday 18 August 1976 – Two teeth out [orthodontic extraction]. Went to Argos. TV Jeux sans frontières, Are You Being Served
Thursday 19 August 1976 – went to Argos, pet. Lazy day. TV Boney, Bionic Woman, Medical prog.
Friday 20 August 1976 – went to Telford Court [Grandma Anne’s Harris family gathering]. TV Invisible Man.
Friday 23 July 1976 – went to Auntie Pam’s [Pam & Michael Harris]. Washed up. TV Invisible Man.
Saturday 24 July 1976 – Dinner party. Washed up. Olympics. Earnt [sic] 1 onion ring, 2 1/2p, & a peanut.
Something tells me that I started to twig, that weekend, that simply getting a bit of praise from my mum was inadequate reward for someone approaching the age of 14. Not that I ever managed to turn washing up into a fee paying avocation. I was soon to self-reward with some swigs of liqueur whenever I did the washing up, which didn’t help my finances any but did make me feel a bit better about it at the time.
Sunday 25 July 1976 – went to Mays [neighbours George and Winifred] for tea. V nice. TV Sabrina Affair [sic – I meant Sabrina Fair, although the film is simply titled Sabrina]
Monday 26 July 1976 – went to “Good as New” [helping in charity shop] all day. TV Get Some In
Tuesday 27 July 1976 – went to Hampton Court, then shop. Saw Dad & Mum in film.
I well remember Grandma Jenny taking me to Hampton Court when I was small and loving the maze and the grounds. This outing, as I don’t mention Grandma, was probably unaccompanied, although i suspect that I was with a friend from the street (probably Andy Levinson but possibly Stuart Harris) as I don’t think I was allowed that sort of outing completely alone at that stage.
Going on to the shop after Hampton Court will have made perfect sense, as the train from Hampton Court would for sure have stopped at Clapham Junction.
“Dad & Mum in film” will unquestionably have been “Motoring In France, 1958, Côte d’Azur”. It is a cracking good home movie – I would suggest the best my dad ever made. It is (was) made in Standard 8, but dad was an excellent cinematographer. The film also has a superb soundtrack with dad’s wicked sense of humour providing the narrative. I commend it to movie lovers everywhere.
So inspired was I when dad showed me this film at the shop and explained that there were several others in various states of sound track development and editing, I clearly was on a mission to sort out the family cine.
If I remember correctly, Dad also had an assortment of commercial films in stock that needed “sorting” – i.e. they had got mixed up in their boxes and/or needed improved labelling so that he might promote and sell them accurately.
Wednesday 28 July 1976 – went to shop. new cine projector: sound.
Thursday 29 July 1976 – went to shop. Cine films.
Friday 30 July 1976 – went to shop. Cine films etc.
I was in the movie business. And I had an idea of my own stewing, which started bubbling up to fruition the very next day.
Tuesday 13 July 1976 – library morn. TV Man About The House, Heart Attack documentary[?]
Wednesday 14 July 1976 – went to Auntie Winifred [May]. Went to sherry party, v. useful
I cannot imagine why I would have been invited to a sherry party, nor why it would have been useful. Perhaps I was still holding out hope for funding/printing options for my soon-to-be-defunct magazine project, Shalom. If any wise readers out there can enlighten me about the meaning of such a diary note by a 13-year-old, I’ll be grateful.
Thursday 15 July 1976 – Had Anil [Biltoo] & Andy [Levinson] (afternoon). TV Olympics, ancient [Chronicle – The First Olympics]
Friday 16 July 1976 – Andy morn. Cricket & snooker after. TV Invisible Man.
Saturday 17 July 1976 – Chased around for Shalom. TV Paramount Presents, Opening Olympics.
Cricket in that instance would have been a trip to Tooting Bec Common to play cricket. Snooker I think would have been at Stuart Harris’s house, as I am pretty sure that the Levinson family had table tennis and the Naff Harris family had snooker. So I suspect that Stuart would have been part of the Tooting Bec cricket “test” too on that Friday.
Sunday 18 July 1976 – classes good. Lazy afternoon. TV Diana Dors film [actually Pillow Talk with Doris Day not Diana Dors – schoolboy error! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!] , MASH.
Private Eye could have had a lookalike field day – see headline photo.
Monday 19 July 1976 – Olympics & tape. TV Star Trek, Get Some In.
Tuesday 20 July 1976 – Olympics, tape etc. TV The Good Life, great.
Wednesday 21 July 1976 – uneventful day. La Manga a cert. All okey dokey.
Thursday 22 July 1976 – uneventful day. Olympics & Test. TV Bionic Woman, Bob Hope.
La Manga was our holiday destination a bit later that summer. More on that on Ogblog anon.
Nano Banana 2.1 (AI) Depiction Of Surrey v Kent, Midweek, Oval, 1976. (My “small crowd, plenty of kids” description has been taken too literally – I love it!)
Saturday 10 July 1976 – went to A[nil] Biltoo for afternoon. TV Joan Crawford film [probably The Command, which was Joan Weldon, not Joan Crawford!].
Monday 12 July 1976 – went to Oval: members seats!! TV Star Trek, Get Some In.
This is Anil Biltoo’s first mention in my diary. In truth, I don’t remember our friendship forming until the following academic year, but clearly we had initiated our friendship towards the end of the 3rd year and saw each other more than once during the holidays that summer.
This photo of Anil from the summer of 1979, in Mauritius. The stick he is wielding is sugar cane.
Not a mystery, just one of those temporal slips that my memory tends to make.
The main memory slip mystery item from those first few days of the summer holidays is the visit to The Oval.
I most certainly remember the visit and I remember being shown around the pavilion, walking around no doubt open-mouthed at the pictures of great players and events from days of yore.
So stuck in my brain was the memory of being shown around, that it returned to me by way of a dream the night before my next visit to that pavilion – 21 September 2005.
Of course I had been to The Oval many times between those visits – not least nine days earlier, to see the magical 5th day of the 5th test of 2005. Other Ogblog pieces will/already do cover such other visits.
But the night before my visit to see Surrey v Middlesex, secure in the knowledge that my reciprocal member’s rights would enable me to use the pavilion, I dreamt of walking through that building. When I awoke, I wondered whether my dream had been an accurate representation of the place or just a dream-like replica. But when I got to the Oval and actually started walking around the pavilion, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, as I realised that my memory, in sleep, had accurately dredged almost every permanent detail of that building. It wasn’t a sense of deja vu – because I HAD been there before; more than 29 years before. If you had asked me 24 hours before that second visit to describe the inside of the building, I could not even faintly have done so.
The memory really is a weird thing.
Irritatingly, my memory has entirely suppressed…
…and my diary is no help with this…
…the answers to the following two questions:
WHY did I have members’ access on Monday 12 July 1976?
Who was I with for that visit?
My gut feeling is that it was a sort-of end of term Alleyn’s School field trip, organised a few days after the end of term to coincide with a match that was worth visiting. That sort of field trip has Colin Page’s fingerprints all over it.
Micky Stewart – after whom that pavilion is now named, is, of course, an Alleyn’s School alum. He might have been a helpful conduit for such a visit.
But in truth I don’t recall. I just remember the open-mouthed pavilion tour and watching what I thought to be some very good cricket. It cemented my view that I wanted to bowl like Intikhab Alum, if only I could work out for myself how to deploy leg (wrist) spin. Spoiler alert: I NEVER worked out how to deploy leg spin.
Harry Wale, Paul Sherlock & Alleyn’s Boys Playing Water Polo
This piece is dedicated to the memory of our school mate, Mick Carroll, who tragically died in a swimming accident, 26 September 2026.
It really was a long hot summer that year. I sense that the school encouraged us towards the swimming pool to keep us cool after the exams that year.
Some while ago, David Wellbrook wrote (& kindly let me publish) a rather wonderful guest piece about the “what could possibly go wrong?” aspects of that school policy:
Here’s the extracts from my diary for those last few weeks of term.
Tuesday 22 June 1976 – all OK results flowing. Went to help U. George [May].
Wednesday 23 June 1976 – More good results. All serene.
I love the expression “all serene” to describe my feelings about my results being half-decent that year.
Thursday 24 June 1976 – Drama good. TV Porridge & Monty P & 2nd Verdict.
Friday 25 June 1976 – all OK Horniman museum great fun. Interesting.
Ah – I wondered when I wrote up Onkas Big Moka from December 1974 when I visited the Horniman Museum with the school and got to see some of those Melanesian male adornments in the flesh, as it were.
Eighteen months later is the answer. Great fun and interesting it must have been indeed.
Saturday 26 June 1976 – school morn. Lazy afternoon. Lloyd [Green]evening.
Sunday 27 June 1976 – Classes sports day. 3rd in long jump. Dined at Il Carretto.
In my mind I had won the long jump, but I suppose coming 3rd was bronze, which was some sort of prize. I vaguely remember having a certificate for that result, which I kept for longer than the event/result deserved.
Monday 28 June 1976 – came 2nd in class, nice day. TV Star Trek, Get Some In.
Who came first in 3BJ, denying me the top spot? Come on, own up. I seem to have been content with coming second and quite right too.
Tuesday 29 June 1976 – computer, swimming. TV Man [About] The House (D), USA
Thursday 1 July 1976 – went swimming. TV Porridge, Shadow Line [?].
Three days in a row when the main school matter to report was swimming, although I also note a couple of days fiddling with the computer. That was punch cards, punch tape, dial-up modems and all that palaver:
When computing just started to loom into our lives
Friday 2 July 1976 – went to G[randma] Anne’s, big Ida/Anthony row. TV Invisible Man, [It’s A] Knockout.
Rows involving Auntie Ida and Cousin Anthony were a regular feature of Harris family life back then. This was clearly a big one, given my clear description of it as such.
“Wimbledon afternoon and evening” in those days would have meant glued to the TV watching the tennis. As a kid, I could only have dreamt of actually sitting there on Centre Court or Number One Court as I have now done many times in my fortunate life.
Borg beat Nastase in straights – having beaten everyone in straights that year:
In those days all the doubles finals took place on that day too, hence afternoon AND evening. We also would have watched much of:
Chris Evert & Martina Navratilova bt Billie Jean King & Betty Stöve – Chris Evert’s only career Wimbledon doubles title and Martina Navratilova’s very first
Brian Gottfried & Raúl Ramírez bt Ross Case & Geoff Masters – I particularly remember this one being a really exciting five-setter. By the end of it my mum couldn’t bear to watch. Funny the things we remember.
Tony Roche & Françoise Dürr bt Dick Stockton & Rosie Casals
Sunday 4 July 1976 – BAD Shalom. Hayward Gallery. Great. TV USA Bicentenary
Bad in capital letters. I think that was the death knell for my Shalom magazine project. But fear not, other media activity sprang forth that summer.
I have very fond memories of that trip to the Hayward Gallery to see the Arts Of Islam exhibition, which I found fascinating. I had just done a school history project on the early history of Islam, of course. My father was deep into art. My mother wondered why our nice Jewish family was taking so much interest in Islamic art and history. Because it is really interesting and informative, mum.
Here’s a review of that exhibition (and other aspects of that festival) from the Telegraph.
With so many mentions of swimming in this piece, some tongue in cheek, I considered holding off from publishing the piece for a while.
But then I remembered Mick’s wicked sense of humour, marinated no doubt in his Irish roots. I think Mick would have wanted me to publish this piece as planned, and I decided to publish it dedicated to Mick’s memory.
Earworm for early July 1976 – I’m pretty sure Mick would approve of this track too:
THE LONG HOT SUMMER OF ’76 – RECOLLECTIONS OF A 14-YEAR-OLD WITH SPECIAL APPEARANCE BY A LUNATIC FRENCHMAN
It was a stormy Thursday afternoon (are there any others?). Me, myself, and three others who shall remain nameless (Chris Grant, Ben Clayson and Kevin Blythe), were chortling over Paul Hayes’ Freudian slip from earlier. He had inadvertently called Miss Lynch “Mum” and we were marvelling at how well they had kept their relationship secret and for so long. All six of us were amazed at the audacity of the lad and thoughts were now turning to the identity of the father. Bob Skelly, Percy Kingman and Mrs. Barden were put forward for consideration but we were unable to agree. Each candidate received five votes and so we were at stalemate. After much deliberation, we opted for the time-honoured tie-breaker of rock, paper, scissors and as you might have expected, it landed on tails. (Doesn’t it always?) So, decision made, Dave Stretton it was then. Let’s face it, he must have inherited his cool from somewhere.
But I digest. To our gullible Frenchman: It was around this time that Chris used to import young French boys for his amusement and this particular lost soul went by the name of Gotier. He had, I believe, been imported once before, so having met us now on more than one occasion, really ought to have known better. However, we all found ourselves down at the swimming pool. It was a natural hangout for those of us who liked to swim and play water polo and seemed even more appropriate on what was quite possibly a very hot day. Gotier was sweating profusely. I think he knew what Chris had planned for later. He kept muttering strange French words under his breath. “Baguette” was a particular favourite of his I seem to recall. Anyhow, one of us happened upon the anarchic idea of enticing Gotier to jump into the swimming pool fully clothed, and on the strict understanding that he then had to travel home with us to Beckenham et les environs completement mouille.
“How much shall we offer him?” asked Clayson. “How much do we have on us?” asked Blythe. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” enquired Grant, forever and to this day our moral compass. He perhaps felt that if there was any dampness involved it should be of his making and no other. “Yes, it’s a cracking idea,” I chipped in. “And let’s make him cry Vive la France as he goes under.”
We gathered our resources and came up with the tidy sum of £4 and a few pence. We approached the hapless Gotier with our proposal and having explained to him that with exchange rates being as they were at the time, that £4 and a few pence was uncommonly generous, he agreed.
And so the stage was set. I was elected to distract Harry Whale and Alan Berry, who at that precise moment were taking it in turns to slipper a 12-year-old, whilst the others were assigned the arduous task of pacing out Gotier’s run up. And then the moment arrived. With a Gallic scream of “Un, deux, trois, allez…!” Gotier was off, legging it poolwards as if he had not a care in the world. He leapt, he might even have somersaulted I honestly can’t remember, and there was a mighty splash followed by the gurgled incantation of “Vive la France, Vive la France.” Let’s give the boy his due. He did not let us down. Good for him. Only honourable Frenchman I’ve ever met.
Gotier was duly rewarded with his £4 and a few pence which he kindly used to buy us Maynards wine gums and Coca Cola down by Herne Hill station.
To this day, that incident (which is 100% true by the way), is my most vivid recollection of the Summer of ’76. That and being arrested for shoplifting in Millets.
I’ve never been afraid of hard work but I’ve also never much enjoyed lugging things.
Saturday 5 June 1976 – all OK. Hard at work all day.
Sunday 6 June 1976 – Shalom good. JD [Jonathan Davies] kicked up fuss. Hard work later. TV D-Day, MASH.
I dread to think what Jonathan’s fuss was about. Perhaps I spiked something of his. (Article I mean, obvs.).
Monday 7 June 1976 – TV Star Trek, all ok hard work.
Tuesday 8 June 1976 – scored 1st 11 v 40’s club. Great match. Worked hard later.
Strangely, that 40’s Club match was mentioned in glowing terms when Colin Page, bless him, wrote up the cricket 1st XI’s season:
It seems there was not too much to laud that summer in cricket 1st XI terms.
Wednesday 9 June 1976 – More work. No CCF. Exams getting near.
Thursday 10 June 1976 – Worked hard on exams. TV Porridge, Monty Python.
Friday 11 June 1976 – music good. Worked hard on exams.
Saturday 12 June 1976 – all OK. Worked in afternoon. TV Black & White Minstrels.
Sunday 13 June 1976 – Gave out Edition 3 of Shalom, good. More hard work.
Monday 14 June 1976 – Chem & French Exams, OK. TV Q of S [Question Of Sport] Star Trek, work.
Tuesday 15 June 1976 – Two more exams, OK. More work TV Man [About] The house, AC [Alistair Cooke] USA, Destination U.S.A.
Wednesday 16 June 1976 – Hard exams = longest exam day.
Thursday 17 June 1976 – More exams. TV Porridge, Monty Python & 2nd Verdict
Friday 18 June 1976 – Three more exams. Difficult ones.
Saturday 19 June 1976 – No school. Founder’s Day all OK. Prepared for tomorrow’s draw.
Sunday 20 June 1976 – Grand Shalom draw = great. Andy evening.
Monday 21 June 1976 – Last exam hooray. TV Star Trek & New Western [probably The Landlord].
The Grand Shalom draw was a fundraising effort to keep the magazine going. As the magazine quite quickly fades from my diary as the summer gets under way, and other media activities take over, I suspect that “great” simply meant “covered the costs of Edition 3”.
After the exams, perhaps a different medium might be more fun?
Find out how the exams went, what else happened at school that silly season, and where my media interests went next, by staying tuned!
RE Hut Clearance Reimagined by Nana Banana 2 -Lite, On My Instruction
Sunday 16 May 1976 – Shalom [magazine/paper] went well, worked hard. TV Who Do You Do, McCloud, MASH, That’s Life.
Monday 17 May 1976 – Hard day. TV Star Trek. Project [Islam] good.
Tuesday 18 May 1976 – Great tennis, won 6-4, 6-4 with Driscoll. TV Tommy Cooper.
Wednesday 19 May 1976 – CCF good. No water polo. Looked at slides [non channel?]
Thursday 20 May 1976 – Clearing R.E. hut of paper. TV Porridge, Monty Python, Call My Bluff.
Friday 21 May 1976 – Parents evening – masters & misses all pleased. Played at Andy’s place.
Saturday 22 May 1976 – all OK. Library. Phillips [neighbours Monty & Vivien], Mays [neighbours George & Winifred] in evening.
Sunday 23 May 1976 – new printing source (no need for stencil). TV World About Us. Crazy film [Otley]
Gosh, yes. My fears that we would need to produce mimograph stencils for our magazine were allayed by someone offering us the use of a spirit duplicator and the rather simpler spirit-masters (carbon-paper-like sheets) which were easier to type up than mimographs.
Our magazine was saved…or rather had a stay of execution…I think the readership might have been getting a bit bored of it by Issue 3. Philistines.
Monday 24 May 1976 – still clearing papers [RE hut]. TV Star Trek, Spirit of 76.
Tuesday 25 May 1976 – X [Multiple] choice exam OK. great fives & tennis (6-5, 6-5). TV D USA [Guessing Alistair Cooke’s America].
As a real tennis player these days, the score being 6-5, 6-5 looks quite normal, as real tennis is mostly played in sets that are best of 11 and quite often result 6-5. But modern tennis doesn’t normally end that way. perhaps at school we played tie-breakers at 5-5 in those days. I remember tie breakers not happening at Wimbledon until 8-8 in those days. That would have felt like a long set for kids, I suppose.
Wednesday 26 May 1976 – CCF good. More R.E. hut – not so good X choice results.
Thursday 27 May 1976 – Working on R.E. hut most of the day. TV Porridge, Monty Python, Call My Bluff.
Friday 28 May 1976 – Field Day. Drill test OK. .22 range, .303 blanks, all in all great.
Saturday 29 May 1976 – library & project morn. got 3rd edition ready. TV Winner Takes All, New Faces.
Sunday 30 May 1976 – no classes all OK. TV Opera – quite funny [Gianni Schicchi]
Monday 31 May 1976 – Worked on project [Islam]. Dad home. Nice day.
It was spring and I can still almost smell the mixture of freshness from the school grounds that spring brings, tinged with the stale smell of paper piles that had been festering in that RE Hut for many years. Some piles were positively turning to compost in there.
I have no idea what the CCF wanted to repurpose the RE hut for, but it was surely a better purpose than an old papers dump.
I provided an earworm of Fernando by Abba in the last episode. But thinking about the RE Hut clearance reminded me of another hit from that autumn/early summer. Get your anti-earworm protectors on before clicking this one:
Stephen Jenkins was an Alleyn’s schoolmaster whose reputation preceded him. By the time my cohort entered his orbit, in the mid 1970s, he had a reputation for telling long-winded tales of psychic happenings, visits to far-flung places, UFOs, extra-sensory perception, ley lines…
…in short, he’d talk in lessons about pretty much anything other than the subject he was meant to be teaching.
“During the war…have I told you this anecdote before?…anyway…”
So why in the name of all that is good and pure was this fellow allocated to my third year class, 3BJ, to abstain from teaching us not just one but two key subjects; English and history?
Strangely and despite Stephen Jenkins contrary efforts, many of us managed to bounce back up to the A-stream after 3BJ. In my case, I ended up with Jenkins again, I think for history ‘O’Level (perhaps it was English – it really is impossible to recall what Jenkins was supposed to be teaching us) when I was in 4AT/5AT, so this anecdote about Sandy Rowswell might have happened a year or two later than I am guessing.
I should add, to avoid confusion, that the Alleyn’s Stephen Jenkins died some years ago and has nothing to do with the impressive LSE Professor of Social Policy who inadvertently shares his name.
Anyway, I clearly recall an incident in class when the Alleyn’s Stephen Jenkins was waxing lyrical about his latest trip to Tibet.
In truth, I always liked Mr Jenkins’s tales of far-flung travel the best. I found the psychic and UFO stories hard to believe, I found the idea of ley-lines intriguing but unconvincing, but I did enjoy the tales from his travels. They were believable, enviable even…and I felt I was learning something useful…even if it wasn’t particularly useful for the purposes of progressing to O-level English or history.
Anyway, during a long Stephen Jenkins anecdote about his recent visit to Tibet, Sandy Rowswell chimed in by saying words to the effect of,
“sir, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe that you have ever been to Tibet.”
There was a hush in the classroom. One glance at Stephen Jenkins’s face and the self-styled sobriquet “Mr Murder” now looked very apt. Sandy Rowswell was ejected from the class and told in no uncertain terms that his punishment would be swift and merciless afterwards.
It seemed such a daft challenge to me. Of all the things Mr Jenkins waffled on about, the travels element was the only manifestly plausible aspect.
I don’t think Sandy Rowswell really got the idea of overseas travel…nor the idea of tempering one’s remarks about a subject whether one “gets it” or not.
I recall Sandy Rowswell approaching me and saying,
I hear you are going to Mauritius with Biltoo this summer?
When I confirmed that fact, Sandy Rowswell replied,
You wouldn’t catch me going to a place like that, having to stay in mud huts.
I laughed and shrugged it off, but word of this exchange must have reached Anil Biltoo from other sources, because Anil sheepishly raised the matter with me, pointing out that his family did not live in mud huts. I recall telling Anil that I really didn’t mind what sort of accommodation we’d be having.
There is a rumour that Sandy Rowswell went into the diplomatic service after leaving Alleyn’s. OK, the source of that rumour is the preceding sentence of this article, but a rumour is a rumour.
Returning to the Tibet veracity incident, I have no real reason to assume it took place on 18 May 1976, but while skimming my diary for clues, I did enjoy the entry for that day.
Great tennis won 6-4 6-4 with Driscoll.
Does that mean I beat Paul Driscoll 6-4 6-4 at singles, or does it mean that, partnering with Paul Driscoll, we beat some unfortunate others 6-4, 6-4? There is only one person in the entire world who might possibly remember the event (because I sure as hell cannot) – so I’m shouting out to Paul who will no doubt confirm a similar blank on this one. He probably doesn’t even remember that there was no water polo the next day, despite water polo having been far more his thing than mine..
But I am now digressing more than a typical Stephen Jenkins lesson. Click the link below for a chance to buy Stephen Jenkins book – you know you want to.
Islam Feaver Observer 11 Apr 1976 The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
