Tag: Alan Gorman

Isolation, “Socially-Distant” Visits, Steroids, Peculiar Reading Matter & Strange Happenings: A Week In The Keele Health Centre With Glandular Fever, Mid February 1983

Annalisa (right) & Others, Keele Campus Store, c1985, with thanks to Mark Ellicott

I hadn’t had flu. I didn’t get better after being sent home from the Health Centre with some tablets. I got worse.

Saturday 12 February 1983 – Variable health – Liza [O’Connor] shopped for me – Annalisa [de Mercur] visited. Early night.

Reading that passage, plus some of the subsequent ones during my illness, I am reminded that I had several kind people in my circle, in addition to the attentiveness of my girlfriend Liza, who I particularly remember as having been considerate during my extended indisposition.

Sunday 13 February 1983 – Felt bit better this morn/afternoon. Evening came over all ill. Early night.

Monday 14 February 1983 – Schlepped straight back to [Health Centre] HC – pretty ill. Liza visited in evening.

I don’t think that was in line with the plans Liza and I had laid for Valentines Night. I was mightily hacked off as well as ill.

I have collaborated with Dall-E to create this virtual-artist’s impression of me looking ill and hacked off in the Keele Health Centre.

Dr Scott now suspected that I had infectious mononucleosis, also known as glandular fever. His suspicion was soon confirmed with a blood test.

Glandular fever was sort-of the 1980s equivalent of Covid 19 – it was not as well understood then as it is now. The medics were very fearful of epidemics amongst student populations, for some unknown reason. It was also known colloquially as French-kissing disease, although I’m sure there were other ways of getting it and no doubt French people knew of it colloquially as the English-something-or-other.

One side effect of that illness is to make the patient feel low, to the point of feeling depressed. I have to say that my only ever experience of feeling what I might describe as “depressed” was when I had glandular fever.

Tuesday 15 February 1983 – Still pretty ill today – bored and depressed – won’t let have visitors.

Didn’t they know who I am?

I was not a good candidate for isolation. Nor was I a good candidate for some of the clinical interventions required, such as blood tests and injections. Dr Scott – Scotty – was sympathetic yet firm. But there was one matron/nurse I particularly remember as being dragon-like, whose method was more of the cruel-kindness variety.

“If you don’t stop making a fuss, I’ll go and get my long rusty needle and use that on you instead”.

Who’d imagine such inhumane words in such a benevolent setting?
Picture “borrowed” with thanks from the Keele University website

Note to students of psychology: that sort of shock therapy doesn’t work on trypanophobic people – at least it didn’t work on me.

Scotty at that time had a “kill or cure” therapy for glandular fever – a short sharp (high dose at first but rapidly decreasing) course of steroids. His theory was that it helped most people to get better quickly enough that their studies needn’t be deferred, whereas without his treatment many students ended up deferring their exams – in effect taking a year out of their studies, which I certainly didn’t want to do. For some people, the cure made their symptoms worse, but “kill” is too strong a term, as the drugs were only given under health centre supervision and would be stopped/reversed if serious adverse effects came into play.

The steroids worked on me without any serious side-effects, although they did have a strange effect on my being, which I’ll return to explain a bit later.

Wednesday 16 February 1983 – Moved into a room with James – got visitors today – Liza and Michelle [Epstein] – feel somewhat better.

Thursday 17 February 1983 – Several visitors today inc. Liza – feeling much better today – fair bit bored still.

James was a rather strange fellow. He was not merely depressed about having glandular fever and being isolated in the health centre with me. He absolutely hated Keele. He had a girlfriend who also absolutely hated Keele. Together, they had found a way of making their University life tolerable – basically by going away from Keele together every weekend – primarily to visit historic churches, if I remember correctly.

e.g. St Peter’s Church, Wormleighton, Warwickshire

“Got visitors” was a rather strange, socially-distanced thing while I was in this isolation wing with James. The visitors were not allowed into the health centre to visit us – they could stand at a window outside our room and we could talk to them through that window. I vaguely remember that there was an element of elevation to our room, with an inadequate mound upon which our visitors might stand. Thus it was harder for me to chat with vertically-challenged visitors, such as Annalisa, than it was to speak with the more vertically-assured, such as my lanky (in several senses of the term) flatmate, Alan Gorman.

James’s only visitor was his young-lady-friend, who would join him for a mutual moan about once a day. Their shared beef was that they would be unable to escape the Keele campus together at the weekend and visit churches again until James was better.

My visitors were more numerous (several daily) and a more diverse bunch.

Friday 18 February 1983 – Still bedridden – feel much better – getting a fair bit agitated. Liza and others visited today.

I’m not sure which of the “multiple visitors” days included Ashley Fletcher, but I do remember him bringing with him some reading matter for me – I suppose technically he smuggled it in to me by throwing the reading materials to me, where I caught them at the window. It was either Miriam or Heather who was, through Ashley, lending me the booklets in an attempt to help relieve my boredom. The booklets were basically lesbian porn story magazines.

I’m not sure I was ever qualified to offer lit-crit of that reading matter…nor lit-clit come to think of it. Forty years later, the memory is dim, but I did read a few of the stories which were, to my mind, very predictable tales with almost identical plot lines. An unlikely encounter would suddenly, “unexpectedly” result in a shared realisation followed by an almost identical outcome – **SPOILER ALERT** – a sex romp. Sometimes it was two females, sometimes two females and a man, sometimes several people with a focus on the females. I suspected that the same stories were probably gender-reassigned for other similar publications targeted at other groups, with some “characters” (characterisation was in truth almost entirely absent) simply having the name, gender and some small aspects of their dénouement activity changed.

The reading material was absolutely nothing like this wonderful novel

I do remember trying to discuss with my sole companion in isolation, the church-loving James, how peculiar and dull, rather than exciting, I found these story books. But James was simply horrified and disgusted by the presence of these booklets in our room.

Still, I was really touched by the thought and the effort that Ashley and the lenders of the material put in to try to cheer me up and help alleviate my boredom. I do remember Liza finding the whole episode hilarious.

Meanwhile, my use of the word “agitated” might well have been written to remind me of the peculiar effect the steroids had on me. I think that effect might have come to its peak the next day, by which time I think James had been released.

Saturday 19 February 1983 – Let me get up for first time today. Sat in lounge – very exciting. Liza visited.

Dragon Matron – yes she of the long rusty needle threat- came in to my room. I remember suddenly feeling a hot flush and thinking, “she’s not actually that bad looking”…

…the outcome was extremely swift, hands-free, involuntary and I am pretty sure indiscernible to anyone other than me. But it was a seriously weird feeling.

I have asked my friend, Dall-E, to help me to illustrate the scene:

Nothing to see here

In truth the care team in the Health Centre were very kind and really were trying their best to make our lot tolerable.

That Saturday evening, when they let me sit in the lounge, I remember that they had identified another student, a Spanish guy who was, I think, called Miguel (I knew him through Rana Sen and that lot), who knew me. So they arranged for us to watch TV and have a juice together in the lounge, before they served us dinner together restaurant style. It really did feel like a release from isolation by then, although in truth Miguel and I didn’t know each other all that well and mostly discussed how nice it was of the staff to be making that effort for us.

The Tv programme we watched together was Dynasty, which I had never seen before nor have I seen it since. I thought it was incredible – by which I mean that I could not really suspend my disbelief to engage with the programme. I think Miguel quite liked it.

Sunday 20 February 1983 – Let me out for a walk or two today. Very exciting.

Monday 21 February 1983 – Discharged from HC today – got busy laundry etc. Liza came over in evening…

In my impressionistic memory I was isolated in the Heath Centre for ages. Intolerable ages. It came as a bit of a surprise to work out, from my diaries, that a week was all it took to be “intolerable ages” when I was 20 years old.

The First Ten Days Of A Keele Term: Let’s Talk About Food Shopping, 10 to 19 January 1983

DALL-E 2 helped me imagine this sack of Maris Piper potatoes

There’s not a lot of interest to the general reader in my diary for the first 10 days of that term. Just in case you are curious, here is an image of the first week.

Studying, shopping and…not much else – let’s talk about food shopping.

In our flat, Barnes L54, we had a rota, based on three of us eating at the flat (Hamzah was outside that rota, mostly eating Halal food with the Malay crowd in Q-Block Barnes) and all four of us needing to do our bit cleaning.

I’m pretty sure that Chantelle was at least semi-detached from me and Alan Gorman by this stage – doing her bit but basically shopping for her share of the food duties with her share of the kitty.

Alan and I would make occasional trips to Newcastle-Under-Lyme together for the big food shops. No doubt 12 January 1983 was such a shop.

Sainsbury’s was the focus of such a shop. Periodically we needed to buy, not only the regular groceries, but also a sack of potatoes. Normally, in those days, Maris Pipers, which were cheap and available in large sacks at Sainsbury’s.

Actually my cooking very rarely used the potatoes. I would tend to make the rice and pasta/noodle based dishes that added some variety to our diet. But Chantelle was a “meat, potatoes and two veg” sort of lass, while Alan was such a lad. Chantelle did sometimes do a mean spag. bol. (who in those Keele flats did not?) so it wasn’t all potatoes with those two. Alan I recall, was partial to pies and sausages. There was an excellent sausage-specialist butcher on the High Street and we’d often venture there for top quality sausages at affordable student prices. I have previously discussed – click here or below -the fact that, for those two, the main meal, in the evening, was named tea.

Keele Action Group Springs Forth Campus-Wide, Constitutional Matters Mingle With A Crucial Culinary Debate In My Barnes L54 Flat, 8 to 11 October 1982

But there were other meals. Lunch (or as the other two might call it, dinner) would normally comprise something based on sliced bread. One of the staples we tended to have to go on that sliced bread was a form of liver-based pâté sold in tubes at Sainsbury’s at that time for relatively small change.

Forty years on, I don’t think Sainsbury’s sells that stuff any more but Asda sells something similar – see image below.

Image “borrowed” from Asda in consideration of promoting their product link-wise

White bread, own-brand margarine and that variety of pâté was never our dinner (tea) but was quite often our lunch (dinner) and/or our supper. Alan insisted on pronouncing that word pate (which might rhyme with gate or hate) – he had no truck with a pretentious pronunciation such as “pâté“. To be fair, I don’t think merchants like Sainsbury’s dared to put the accents on labels for such comestibles in those days, so the tube label probably read “pate”.

“Supper”, students of this Ogblog series might recall, is the ad hoc meal later in the evening (especially favoured by Alan) after a session down the boozer or possibly after a session of evening study.

Indeed, the sack of potatoes came into its own for supper, as quite often, the preferred “dish” was a chip pan full of chips.

Now look here, Dall-E 2, when I said “well used” I didn’t quite expect…but this will do.

Actually “our” chip pan (by which I really mean Alan’s) was filthy-looking on the outside but didn’t look “caked-on-gunge-like” inside, because we permanently kept it topped up with oil/fat, so it would never dry out. We mostly used rapeseed oil as the chip fat – that was the cheapest source of cooking oil in those days – which seems strange, forty years on.

Mince was very reasonable at Sainsbury’s back then, but my “dining on a budget” bankable meat protein was chicken livers, which you could get at that time for 29p per pound in Sainsbury’s, jammed into conveniently small frozen tubs, so I could have a few on standby in our tiny freezer drawer. These would serve two purposes:

  • a signature dish of chicken livers and rice – the livers casseroled with tomatoes and onions to make a rich gravy. My wife, Janie, even today, talks highly of that dish of mine, although it is some while since I have made it;
  • occasional production of a batch of chopped liver (gehakte leber) with egg and onions, using my mother’s recipe. Strangely, I might yet find a yellowed piece of paper with that recipe in her own hand, inside a recipe book somewhere. It is a course form of pâté (or do I mean pate?) which I used to make using a potato masher or, I seem to recall at one stage, a hand-controlled grinder device that my mother let me take to Keele with me as she by then had a better one. I recall that Alan very much liked this dish, although I’m not sure whether or not he preferred it to the flavour-enhanced tubes. Whether Alan’s youthful exposure to this quintessentially Jewish dish played a part in him marrying a Jewish lass many years later we can only wonder.
Jollymon001, CC BY-SA 4.0

I’ll write more about shopping in Newcastle and some more sophisticated dishes at some future stage, but for now, I think I’ve ground out enough material from this topic.

The Sun Sets On The Outside Edge Of 1982 At Keele, 11 to 22 December 1982

With thanks to Graham Sedgley for these photos: Sunset At Keele, Winter 2022

For reasons I probably don’t need to explain in detail, I stayed up at Keele for best part of a fortnight after term finished in December 1982. The diary mostly mentions seeing Liza (who lived at The Sneyd Arms, so of course was still around) and doing a bit of academic work.

For those who haven’t been avidly following this “forty years on” series and weren’t around in the heady days of the early 1980s, students were required to sign on the dole every holiday if they didn’t have a holiday job and needed the financial support. But I especially like my above Tuesday write up:

Rose late. Did little. Union in afternoon & evening -> Kev’s – got very out of it!

Kev in that instance will be Kev Davis, who was quite a character. Alcohol, cannabinoids and amphetamines might well have been involved, although by then I expect I demurred on partaking of the latter, having previously found the experience unpleasant.

More time with Liza and doing some work. Also another mention of shopping – this will have been food shopping only – I have never been through a “retail therapy” phase.

A most unusual diary entry on 19 December 1982:

…watched play on TV in evening…

Alan Gorman had kindly left his portable TV behind in the flat when he went home at the end of term, enabling me to watch some TV when occupying the flat for most of the Christmas break.

Some detective work with Mr Google reveals that the television version of Richard Harris’s wonderful play about cricket, Outside Edge, was first broadcast that night, 19 December 1982. Superb cast, as you’ll see if you click the preceding link. I do remember thoroughly enjoying that play, but I was too polite to name it in the diary!

Paul Eddington & Prunella Scales in Outside Edge – picture grabbed on a “fair use for identification purposes basis” from classictelly.com.

Monday 20 December 1982 …did some taping…

Yes, I can see in my cassette log that I got busy around that time. Hamzah had a “proper hi-fi” including a record player and cassette deck. He also had some records I fancied listening to some more, as did my lovely neighbour from the flat across the way, Veera Bachra and as did Kev Davis.

I’ll write some more over the seasonal break about those music tapes and also about the comedy tapes we (by which I mean primarily me, Liza and Alan) were listening to at that time.

But for now, let’s look at Graham Sedgley’s glorious Keele winter sunset picture once again.

End Of Term At Keele – Several Nights Out Including A “Not Good At All” UGM Plus A Memorable Thunderbirds Evening, 3 To 10 December 1982

As the end of my first P2 term loomed, I spent less time working (getting through my deadlines in decent time, it seems) and more time with Lisa and friends.

“Mike & Mandy” mentioned in the Friday 3 December entry were friends (and soon to be flatmates) of Lisa’s at North Staffs Poly. That evening in the Students’ Union might have been the first time I met them.

I have no recollection of the “not good at all” UGM on Monday 6 December. My guess is that Truda Smith and her reactionary forces were seeking to subvert our Keele Action Group purposes.

The fiends.

Mind you, the thought of any Constitutional Committee meeting followed by a UGM does not fill me with delight, in hindsight. I am reminded of the quote attributed to Oscar Wilde: “The trouble with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings”. Or, in my case, too many meetings.

In that very last week of term, it seems that Alan Gorman joined us for at least a couple of those sociable (kin contrast with the socialism) evenings. I remember Lisa and Alan getting on well; they shared a quirky sense of humour which possibly explains how both of them were able to tolerate me so much.

I recall some late evenings in the flat listening to some of my comedy sketch tapes and laughing like drains together. But I’m pretty sure that kicked off in the second term. I’ll write more about it then.

At the end of this first term, the event that sticks in my mind the most is the Wednesday 8 December entry which mentions the Thunderbirds night.

Fair use of Thunderbirds logo headline & above from Wikipedia for identification and illustration.

I think there must have been some sort of cinema release of a feature length Thunderbirds compilation or something around that time. I think they also repeated the original TV series (but that had been and continued happening periodically for decades).

Point is, there was certainly a bit of a cult following vibe amongst students for Thunderbirds at that time.

We (which means me, Lisa, Alan and I think Ashley Fletcher was with us that night -possibly others too) went to a screening somewhere on the campus. It might have been Film Soc. in the Chancellor’s Building, but I have a feeling that this screening was in the Union or possibly a Horwood Refectory job.

I recall a lot of “audience participation”, for example with students proffering unsolicited advice on romance in the direction of a hapless Tracy youth (I think Alan). Mind you, I think Keele students on the whole had got the hang of such things a bit better than the befuddled marionette.

It was all in good humour and (in our case certainly) a form of reverent mockery. We liked Thunderbirds. We also liked to laugh at Thunderbirds.

I haven’t changed all that much in this regard, forty years on. During lockdown, Janie and I watched a few old episodes through the Wayback Machine to cheer ourselves up. Still good.

If you just want a taster, this launch sequence is wonderful, although it has been much parodied since:

I was also reminded recently, by Pete Roberts of all people, of a wonderful parody of such films by Peter Cook & Dudley Moore: Superthunderstingcar.

On Friday 10 December the term formally came to an end, although I stayed up at Keele for a further 10+ days, which I shall report about in the next enthralling episode of “Forty Years On”.

Dating, Mandating & Catering To Scale At Keele, Mid To Late November 1982

Keele Students’ Union With Thanks To Paul Browning For The Photo

My November 1982 diary continues mostly to document a set pattern of student life that term. I was going out with Liza O’Connor, whom, it seems, I would see two or three times each week. At that time she was still living with her family at The Sneyd Arms, so I quite often describe walking her home late at night; which presumably staved off the wrath of Geoff O’Connor – no student (or offspring) wanted his wrath.

Photo by Glyn Baker: The Village & Sneyd Arms – a peaceful place (as long as landlord Geoff was not wrathful)

There are three noteworthy events in the diary for that mid to late November period:

  • getting Keele Action Group (KAG)’s long-planned mandate for an occupation through the UGM;
  • planning and holding a Jewish Society Friday Night meal;
  • a rather peculiar diary entry for the Saturday after that meal, which suggests, between the lines, some consternation.

Keele Action Group’s Long-Planned Mandate For An Occupation, 15 November 1982

I explained the background to KAG’s UGM mandate for a student occupation in a couple of earlier pieces – click here or below for the first of them:

Keele Action Group Springs Forth Campus-Wide, Constitutional Matters Mingle With A Crucial Culinary Debate In My Barnes L54 Flat, 8 to 11 October 1982

…here or below for the second of them:

Culture & Action At Keele, Late October 1982

In the end, it was me who proposed the motion – much to the chagrin of Union President Truda Smith, who afterwards gave me a metaphorical handbagging…or do I mean “metaphorical hairdryer treatment“…or do I mean a metaphorical “handbagging with hair-dryer within” treatment? Truda was not happy. Pete Roberts seconded the motion, which probably gave the motion the political gravitas we thought it needed, as he was the immediate past Education & Welfare sabbatical and he said that he thought the quality of our education and our welfare was at risk from the cuts.

The diary entry suggests that the result was a solid win on the vote:

Monday 15 November 1982: Busy day – writing speech etc. UGM went well – motion passed well etc. Paul & Mike came in after.

I’m not sure who Paul & Mike were in this context. Was it you, Paul Evans? I don’t remember you being into the politics much but perhaps the issue of the cuts floated your boat. For Mike, a bearded fellow in a duffel coat springs to mind but I don’t honestly remember for sure. Pete Roberts, Simon Jacobs or Jon Gorvett might help me out here. Or perhaps not.

J-Soc Friday Night Meal, Friday 26 November 1982

Whose blithering idea was it to attempt this at Keele – a University with a tiny, mostly secular Jewish community?

Actually I have a funny feeling it was sort-of my idea.

Following the success of the International Fair the previous summer and the “joint venture” I had fostered with Tony Wong of the Chinese Cultural Society, I was very cognisant of the fact that other cultural societies had centred their cultural offerings around food, whereas J-Soc had not really done so.

Further, we had some enthusiasts for doing a meal in the form of, if I remember correctly, Michelle Epstein (who was in her second year) plus a couple of newbies – Annalisa de Mercur (who became a good friend for many years, during and after Keele) plus Julie Reichman.

In short, I think it was my idea that we do food and “the girls” turned the idea into something with deeper cultural significance – a heimisch Jewish Friday Night meal.

Photo by Olaf.herfurth, CC BY-SA 3.0 – our event wouldn’t have looked quite as authentic as this…

…our event wouldn’t have looked or sounded anything like the vid below either:

My recollection is that the event “got big on us”, with a lot of work in the planning and the aftermath. The event dominates my diary from the Tuesday before until the day itself and even seemed to dominate until the Monday after.

I don’t even remember where we held the dinner, although something tells me that there was a facility in Horwood that we could and did use for events like this. Or, if not, possibly the Lindsay Hexagon.

I remember being delighted to leave much of the hands-on running of the event to “the girls” and feeling, by the end of it, that I was happy to leave J-Soc more generally in their very capable (and more enthusiastic than my) hands.

The attendees for the event included several people from the Chinese and Arab cultural societies, plus my own entourage (including Liza O’Connor & my new flatmate Alan Gorman, who came from Catholic backgrounds), which might have been fascinating and/or beguiling for them.

“Hastly” Day After The Big Event, Saturday 27 November 1982

Hastly [by which I think I meant “hassle-strewn”] day. Shopped in afternoon – Liza and Chantelle’s friend stayed for dinner. Went to union – got quite drunk…took L home quite late

The fact that I mention Chantelle’s friend in this context means, I’m pretty sure, that there must have been some sub-text. I don’t really remember, but I suspect that I was pretty “duncatering” by the Saturday and/but ended up preparing the Saturday dinner in question. “Got quite drunk” was probably a way to let off steam in the union after the catering stresses of the preceding few days.

The subtext is probably lost in the mists of time, but if I had a grump on in those days, people around me would have known about it. Actually I’m not sure the obviousness of my grump has changed much in the forty years since.

On the Monday I was “sorting out J-Soc stuff still” which probably irritated me, although I did find time in the afternoon to “visit Anju”.

But it is mostly work for the next few days, so I sense that I felt that I was behind where I wanted to be with my essays and the like. Either that or some sort of interpersonal grump that I was too polite to write down and which is now, mercifully, long-since forgotten.

Five Go Mad In Barnes, Keele, Early November 1982

Schubert The Sheep, emulating Timmy The Dog

I have one very clear memory from the first few days of November 1982, about which the diary is entirely silent, plus one discovery on that diary page which baffles me as I really cannot remember the occasion at all.

2 November 1982 – The Launch Of Channel 4

Television played a minuscule part in my life at Keele, until the arrival of Alan Gorman in Barnes L54 equipped with a snazzy “starting University present” from his parents – a portable black and white television set and a licence to use it.

My first recollection of watching that television with Alan was the launch of Channel 4, an event that had been talked about in the news media with great fanfare.

I know that said fanfare had reached my parents, as I remember my mother once telling me that she had been watching Countdown since the day it was the very first broadcast on that new channel. I can imagine my dad having meticulously tuned the family television set to a Channel 4 Test Card days or even weeks before the big day.

My diary is silent on this matter, but I remember one aspect of that event very well.

We, by which I mean Barnes L54, gathered to watch Five Go Mad In Dorset that evening. That Comic Strip film had been trailed at length as a centrepiece of Channel 4 launch day.

The arrival of Channel 4 actually presented a problem to the Students’ Union, which had an extension with several rooms, only three of which were designated television rooms. In a world with only three television stations, this worked rather well, but the addition of a fourth TV channel was the subject of much debate. Should The Quiet Room be converted into a fourth TV room (no). In which case, what method should be used to select which of the four channels would be viewed in which of the three TV rooms? I’m not sure how that was resolved, but I suspect that Five Go Mad In Dorset would have been watched in at least one of the TV rooms that night.

Here is a link to a YouTube of the film. Trigger warning: it is rich in parody of non-woke opinions such that it couldn’t possibly be made without major script revisions today…or a special “licence to offend” from the current Home Secretary, (November 2022) that would no doubt be granted.

It felt very different from the TV comedy I had watched with my parents and I suppose it felt like comedy for our generation…not least because we were laughing at the mores of our parents generation.

In particular I remember Alan and I laughing so much at this film that evening. One other thing I recall well was having to explain rather a lot of the jokes/cultural references to Hamzah, who was from Brunei. Once we explained a joke, Hamzah would laugh, but it was not the same laugh as his natural laugh at universal gags; gags that he understood straight away. His laugh at explained jokes was that slightly forced laughter that one tends to hear at performances of Shakespeare or Greek comedies.

We watched several of those Comic Strip films over the coming months on the days they were first broadcast in an “appointment to view” style, which I’m sure is just what Channel 4 was after with people like us.

3 November 1982 “Repaired Furniture”

US Embassy Sweden, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I’m struggling to recall an evening repairing furniture. Frankly I’m struggling to recall the furniture to which I might possibly have been referring.

I have a feeling that Ahmed (who didn’t make it as far as ’82/’83 in the end) and I inherited some furniture from Jo and Margaret at the end of the previous academic year, when we resided with them (in my case briefly) in Barnes M65.

I vaguely remember a sort-of two seat sofa of non-descript look and vintage. Perhaps also a chair. I suspect that the furniture was not in the best of repair, so presumably we made a collective decision, as a flat, to repair it.

Now I have to be brutally honest here, especially in the absence of any memory of the evening in which I, according to my diary, “repaired furniture”. It is extremely unlikely that I made any positive, physical contribution towards the repairs.

At Alleyn’s School, handicraft was far and away my worst subject. Mr Evans, whom I recall trying (without success) to provide me with some patient, kindly tuition, gave up on me very early in my first year of secondary school. Actually I believe he gave up on all of us – I think he had some sort of a breakdown, no doubt triggered by his inability to transfer even a modicum of woodwork technique to one keen but relentlessly ten-thumbed new boy. That left me at the mercy of Mr Midgely, whose teaching method, especially when directed at less able boys, primarily involved ear-pulling and back-of-head -clipping.

No.

“Repaired furniture” can only possibly mean that the others – Alan in the main, I’d guess – repaired the furniture, while I directed operations and probably, helpfully, made the tea (aka dinner), something I was pretty good at doing. “Lashings of ginger beer” will not have been involved, but Alan and I might have downed some cans of cheap supermarket pale ale, which, in those days, could still be procured for as little as 26p a can if you were lucky. That I do remember.

RanjithSiji, CC BY-SA 3.0

Oh gosh, that is an improvement. Well done everyone.

Keele Action Group Springs Forth Campus-Wide, Constitutional Matters Mingle With A Crucial Culinary Debate In My Barnes L54 Flat, 8 to 11 October 1982

With thanks to Susan Gorman for this c2006 photo of Alan Gorman

These few days lead in to the start of term proper

Friday 8 October 1982 – Easyish day – quite busy sorting things out. Went to union in evening – got quite merry.

Saturday 9 October 1982 – Freshers Mart in morning – prospective students in afternoon. Ashley [Fletcher] stayed to dinner – went on to union.

Sunday 10 October 1982 – Up quite early. Constitutional Committee lunchtime. Planned to stay in evening – quite tired – ended up running around campus with K.A.G [Keele Action Group] leaflets.

Monday 11 October 1982 – 1st teaching day of term – K.A.G at lunchtime. Went to union in evening.

Keele Action Group (KAG) & Constitutional Committee (CC): WTF?

Keele Action Group (KAG) was a grassroots students’ response to “The Cuts” – i.e. the early 1980s reduction in government funding to Universities. While the 1981/82 Union Committee had been reasonably supportive of firm but peaceful protest – e.g. our pseudo-destructive demo in London earlier that calendar year…

Protest Outside the UGC Offices Against Grant Cuts, University of Keele, 6 January 1982

…we received fewer assurances from Truda Smith and that we would get much support from her and her 82/83 committee. I am pretty sure that the protagonists of KAG were mostly the same gang – Simon Jacobs, Jon Gorvett, me and several others…

…I’m seeing Simon soon and shall update with more names if he can remember specifics…

…who basically wanted to show the University the strength of feeling among the students and encourage the powers-that-were to pressurise the government more.

Who knows whether or not that might have worked, but at least we were making our feelings known.

Constitutional Committee (CC) was a different matter. I cannot remember who it was that lent on me to take on that burden, but in the back of my mind it was people like Spike Humphrey, Frank Dillon & Vince Beasley, all of whom had suffered, while on Union Committee, at the hands of a Constitutional Committee dominated by FCS (Federation of Conservative Students) law students who, as a matter of national policy, were hell-bent on using loopholes in student unions’s constitutions to make it difficult for more enlightened student reps to get anything done. FCS candidates could achieve because the idea of being on a constitutional committee was so mind-numbingly dull that they tended to be appointed unelected…

…as indeed was I when my friends of the left persuaded me to help seize back the initiative by getting a few more enlightened people onto that committee.

Was it a barrel of laughs?

David Brown, Neil Mackay, Jamie Russell of Liquid Image for BBC Scotland., CC BY-SA 4.0

No. Anyway, the debates that ensued around KAG and CC were as nothing to the culinary debate that clearly bedevilled the early days in Barnes L54.

Culinary Debate: Name That Meal

I noticed my use of the term “dinner” to describe Ashley Fletcher’s visit to join us for an evening meal on 9th. I also note my use of the word “lunchtime” on 10th and 11th.

But I was a lone voice with such temporal-culinary nomenclature in L54 at that stage.

Chantelle hails from Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, while Alan Gorman was a Lanky from Chorley…Brinscall actually.

Those two were having no truck with the idea of naming the evening meal – which is the one we had agreed to share the cooking of rota-style most evenings – dinner. Dinner was a word they reserved for the lunchtime meal. The evening meal was to be known as “tea”.

Hamzah didn’t have a vote in this matter, as he opted out of our cooking rota, on the grounds that he ate exclusively Halal food and would have his evening meal with his/our Malay mates in Barnes Q92.

There is lots of material on-line about this sort of debate now, much of it in tongue-in-cheek terms on sites such as King Cricket, not least when discussing North/South and class distinctions:

Them North v South matches start this week

Or the following “expert” piece which seems to suggest that I might have been right all along that lunch/dinner are terms preferable to and more consensual than dinner/tea. (If in doubt, it is surely a good idea to quote The Lad Bible as an authoritative answer.)

Actually, Alan Gorman had a more open-minded and scientific approach to this topic than most people. Firstly, he had no real problem with the lunchtime meal being described as “lunch”. He didn’t major on lunchtime eating anyway – it was the evening that mattered most for food. But Alan did object to naming of the early evening meal “dinner”.

Alan’s nomenclature was to describe the early evening, shared/communal flat meal as “tea” and a later ad hoc meal as “supper”. Both of these meals were important and Alan was most certainly a “four meals a day” person at that stage. The “two evening meals” thing ensured that the stomach was filled early evening ahead of either:

  • an evening of private study which might well go on until quite late, or
  • “a sesh” down the union or boozer.

In either of those instances, there would be a need for a “supper” of some sort that would soak up the booze and/or ensure that there was a satisfied belly for bed time. I joined in this “four meals a day” habit for the two years we flat shared. Remarkably, looking back, we both remained skinny nonetheless.

Photos: thanks to Sue Gorman for Alan and Mark Ellicott for me

Actually, thinking about it, Hamzah would have probably approved of Alan’s logic on linguistic grounds. In Bahasa Melayu, including its Bruneian variety, meals are named after the time of day:

  • “sarapan pagi” means breakfast
  • “makan tengah hari” means midday meal
  • “makan petang” means afternoon or evening meal;
  • “makan malam” means late evening or night-time meal.
16 years later, a bit of basic Bahasa Melayu came in very handy, whatever the time of day

The Next Few Days Included The Beat & Culture Club – 12 to 15 October 1982

I actually wrote up the next few days five years ahead of this “Forty Years On” series based on a memory flash. You can read all about those days (and the memory flash) here or below:

(I Married A) Monster From Outer Space – And What That Did For One Of My Earthly Romances, 15 October 1982

Enter Stage Left, My New Neighbours & Flatmates At Keele In Barnes L54, 4 to 7 October 1982

Barnes flats, as they appear in my cherished memories of living there. The above image, borrowed from https://www.studentcrowd.com/hall-l1004515-s1043587-barnes-hall-keele_university-keele, shows them at their best.

I had arrived at Keele a few days before almost everyone else that academic year, to learn that my flatmate from the preceding few months, Ahmed Mohd Isa, had dropped out of Keele and was to be replaced by an allocated fresher.

Hence, my flatmates for 82/83 were to be:

  • Hamzah Shawal – a Bruneian mate of Ahmed and the Malay crowd, who was to be a finalist that year and who seemed like a very nice chap on the one or two occasions I had met him the previous year;
  • Chantelle Conlon [I think, surname], a “yeller belly” from the latterly-to-be-internet-unfriendly town of Scunthorpe. Ahmed, Hamzah and I had found Chantelle through the flat share notice board at the end of the previous academic year, as flat application forms needed to have four names and none of us had a chosen fourth. She seemed like a nice young woman and passed the interview by dint of agreeing to join us and signing the form;
  • Alan Gorman – the allocated fresher. Provenance entirely unknown until arrival.

This inauspicious sounding team selection resulted in…SPOILER ALERT… a happy final year for Hamzah, two very happy years for me and three such years for Alan in that flat.

Monday 4 October 1982 – Got a few things done today – some new neighbours moved in etc. Went to Union in evening etc. Julia stayed over…

I’m pretty sure the new neighbours in question were Veera Bachra (who became a good friend) and at least one of her flatmates (probably Debbie). Julia was a friend of Veera’s (or perhaps Debbie) who had dropped out of Keele but came up to see her friends there at the start of term. I remember Julia as a sweet young woman whom I had admired from afar in my FY year. The happenstance of Julia visiting my new neighbours presented an opportunity for us to admire each other at closer quarters that night.

This hit from that late summer/early autumn became my earworm for a few days at the start of that term:

A little unfortunate, as I never much liked Duran Duran, but I have for forty years retained a soft spot for that song. I digress.

Tuesday 5 October 1982 – Rose quite late. Hamzah arrived. Kept busy etc. Went to union in eve – the calm before the storm

Wednesday 6 October 1982 – Rose quite early. Alan arrived at flat – lunched etc – showed around – shopped etc etc. Chantelle arrived. Went to union freshers do in evening etc. Up late.

I have an absolute favourite memory of the morning of Alan’s arrival at the flat.

The Gorman family came from (I think still come from) Chorley in Lancashire, not much more than an hour’s drive to Keele. They arrived quite early.

On that October morning, Barnes didn’t much look like the publicity picture I have used as the headline, it looked more like this:

With thanks again to Paul Browning for this picture

On such misty autumn mornings, the playing fields would be populated by a few hippy-ish students in search of psycho-active fungi.

The magical fungi looked a bit like this – photo by Patrick Ulrich

The students probably didn’t look quite so buff as these two – photo by Joe Mabel

I made Harold and Theresa a cuppa and sat them at our kitchen table, which overlooked those playing fields.

Oh look, Theresa, there are some biology students out on the fields collecting samples…

…said Harold, enthusiastically. I didn’t have the heart (nor did I have the guts) to tell Alan’s parents the truth of the matter.

I don’t think I shared this story with Alan on day one. Alan had a fierce and sharp sense of humour – perhaps not apparent in the whirl of arrival with parents, but evident very soon after that. I’m pretty sure I shared the story with Alan soon after that first day; we’d have had a good laugh about it. But did Alan ever tell his parents about those “mycology students”?

Very sadly, my use of the past tense throughout the above paragraph is not a grammatical error; I learnt while researching this piece that Alan Gorman died in 2015. But I have made contact with his widow Susan and, through her, his family might see this and future pieces about Alan. Thus I am hoping for some feedback to help refine my memories, but they will unfortunately not be directly from Alan.

Thursday 7 October 1982 – Rose quite early – still sorting out flat etc. I got somethings done, not too hectically. Went to union in evening – up till late.

It looks as though Alan and I started the “up till late” chatting habit very early in his University career.