Tag: Ashley Fletcher

How Not To Revise For Your Finals At Keele, Part One: The Start Of The Easter Holidays, Early April 1984

The meaning of this image for this story will become apparent if you read on!

Forty years after the event, I can still give myself the collywobbles by reading my diary entries for the weeks approaching my finals at Keele. Economics and Law, just in case you were wondering.

I never have been much use at revising for exams. These were important exams to say the least. I sense that I distinguished myself for these big ones by being proportionately dreadful at knuckling down to revision.

I was, at least, quite brutally honest in my diary as to what I was – and wasn’t – doing around that time.

This multi-part article on how not to revise for your finals might serve as an object lesson to students everywhere.

Let’s start with a transcription from my diary for the first 10 days of April 1984:

Sunday 1 April 1984 – Got up late! Did little all day – Viv [Robinson] came round in afternoon – had nice meal and early night.

Monday 2 April 1984 – Got up quite late – Ashley [Fletcher] came round. Went into town – shopped and went to Ashley’s – Bobbie [Scully] left – easyish evening – went Union with Mel [Melissa Oliveck] for last orders – early night.

Tuesday, 3 April 1984 – Tried to do some work today – not too successfully. Went to Union in the evening with Mel.

Wednesday, 4 April 1984 – Late start – intermittent work – went to union with Malcolm [Cormelius] in the evening.

Thursday, 5 April 1984 – Did some work today – intermittently -big demo against Police Bill [which became the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984]. Went to KRA in evening with Malcolm.

Friday, 6 April 1984 – worked quite hard today – shopped etc – went to Union in eve – had a bop!

Saturday, 7 April 1984 – busyish day. Worked quite hard on project today. Went to union in eve – disco etc.

Sunday, 8 April 1984 – Worked on project today after late start. Visited Q92 [my Malay friends] etc. Went to Union for last orders.

Monday, 9 April 1984 = Shopped and worked today. Went to KRA with Malc, Farm [Chris Spencer] and Mel – nice evening.

Tuesday, 10 April 1984 – Worked hard on project all day. Went to Careless Talk meeting in evening, then union, then K41 do.

Some points to note here. Firstly, there are some references to working hard, but they are unquestionably linked to finishing my project – i.e. my Economics dissertation on the Economics of the Pharmaceutical Industry. I am proud of that piece of work, which achieved a first class mark, but in truth it should have been finished before revision time came around in April 1984.

My flat, Barnes L54, had just two of us regular residents: me and Chris “Farmer” Spencer. Pete Wild’s girlfriend, Melissa Oliveck, was there, at least for that first chunk of the vacation, while Malcolm Cornelius was occupying Alan “Great Yorkshire Pudding” Gorman’s room.

One aspect, unmentioned in the diary but which I remember very clearly, was a short-lived tradition of making Irish coffee at the end of the evening on return from the Union. I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago (March 2024) when my wife, Janie, ordered an Irish coffee after our meal in Petworth (see headline image and below).

“You were a role model…on how NOT to revise…”

I recalled that we were trying to get work done for our finals, so were not spending much time in the bar. Instead, Malcolm and I tried many different ways to prepare the Irish coffee in the flat – all in the interests of science of course.

I remarked to the maître d’ in Petworth that Malcolm and I had concluded that the essential component to make the cream float nicely was the sugar content within the coffee. The maître d’ explained that, to get a full-on Irish coffee to look the way the coffee looks in our photos, you also need to bring each ingredient to the right temperature before combining and use cream with the right fat content.

Back to the drawing board, Malc.

The woeful tale of my attempts to revise for finals will continue soon, after a short interlude next time, to describe a visit that Ashley Fletcher and I made to a Keeley food collective group in Newcastle.

Hitsville USA: The Story Of Motown, An Appointment To Listen At Keele January to March 1984

I had been taking an interest in Motown, Stax & Northern Soul music for a few years by the time the iconic BBC Radio series, Hitsville USA: The Story Of Motown, presented by Stuart Grundy, started in January 1984.

The diary is silent on’t, but the cassette recorder was not

I recorded the show every week, all but one on my trusty Grundig RR720, see image below and on this link, from Reverb, where you can try to buy such items.

The story of how this audio-beauty came into my possession is worthy of a piece in its own right. But in short, Ashley wanted to buy an Amstrad “all in one” thingie and offered me his Grundig RR720 for a ludicrously low price in order to raise the last few quid he needed to secure his purchase. I negotiated the price up for him as I couldn’t in all conscience buy the item for the price he quoted. I think the offer price was £12 and the strike price £20.

I continued to use and get pleasure from the RR720 for some 25 years, until its increasing hiss-noise and obsolete look condemned it around 2007 or 2008.

Anyway…

…my habit, most weeks, was to go into Newcastle shopping after listening to and taping this programme on a Saturday. I think it very unlikely that I got much if any work done before the lunchtime broadcast. I probably ate lunch (or some might argue brunch) while listening.

I note that Episode 5 was when Jilly was visiting at the end of an action-packed week:

An Action-Packed Week At Keele In Mid-February 1984

I recall “making” Jilly listen to that episode, arranging our tour of Keele around the Motown programme time. Jilly became quite engaged with the subject after 30 minutes in the masterful hands of Stuart Grundy’s documentary and clips. I’m pretty sure that is where the idea of “The Lesson Tapes” that I made for Jilly started, as she confessed knowing next to nothing about that sort of music, classical music student that she was.

I recorded Week 10 at my parents house while decompressing and getting a little bit of work done there late March:

A Fortnight Of Conducting My Keele Studies In London, Then Assisting Stop The City From Keele, Late March 1984

I remember discussing the series with Paul Deacon when I saw him that evening. Were you already working for the BBC Music Library at that time, Paul, or did that come later?

One or two of the cassettes that I made back then didn’t make it through the decades. I did scrape them all onto reel-to-reel at the time and those spools might still work…although they will be decaying (or already decayed) in storage. But none of that sort of thing matters any more, because a few clicks in the direction of the Internet Archive finds the very thing – all episodes neatly digitised and set out, Items 4 to 14 inclusive, through this link or the picture link below:

There are far worse things that you could do than listen to them all “in a podcast stylee”, as I think it is as good an audio documentary about Motown has yet to be made.

For me it brings back memories of when I should have been finishing my assignments and revising, but was still fiddling around with music and socialising and grub instead. A process I continued for many weeks after this series ended:

How Not To Revise For Your Finals At Keele, Part One: The Start Of The Easter Holidays, Early April 1984

Rare Signs Of Me In A Bad Mood At Keele Towards The End Of The 1983 Autumn Term

These images of Keele thanks to Graham Sedgley. How can you be in a blue funk in a place with red skies like that?

Something irked me in the penultimate week of term that year. The diary has more than its usual smattering of negativity.

I cannot remember what would have led to the phrase:

…UGM in eve – sabotaged…

…but that will for sure have irked me.

I sense that I was pretty busy that week with both studies and union stuff and I suspect that, whatever the sabotage was, I thought it disruptive and a cause of uneccessary work on my part.

I know I was already sensing that the 1983/84 committee on the whole was not very good and that there were aspects of the Union that mattered to me that felt out of control.

I also recall planning with Viv Robinson to promote the election season to try to ensure that the students engaged with that process – more on that will follow early in 1984. Similarly, I took it upon myself as Chair of Constitutional Committee to attempt to revise the constitution in order to remove some of the procedural loopholes that were enabling sabotage. More on that anon too.

Thursday – A Liberal Array Of Activities

A moving story if ever there was one

One of the more strange collections of activities is listed for Thursday:

V busy day – odds and ends – helped Ashley [Fletcher] move bed in afternoon – went J-Soc -> Liberal party in evening

I don’t think I am a good candidate for helping anyone move a bed from one part of Stoke to another, especially not a team comprising me and Ashley.

Just the thought of it brings to mind the following short film:

As for the “Liberal Party” later in the day, that would not be the actual political party, of course, but a party thrown by the bunch of Liberal activists who had arrived at Keele that year, who included my flatmate Pete Wild and Hayward Burt, both of whom depicted in the following picture:

Tony Roberts (Conservative), Pete Wild (then Liberal) and Hayward Burt (then Liberal, now Conservative), photo thanks to Mark Ellicott (formerly Conservative but subsequently radical)

My Barnes L54 flatmate Chris Spencer would no doubt have been there, as would Melissa Oliveck, who was Pete’s girlfriend at the time and a regular visitor to Barnes L54.

Friday 9 December – Busyish day – really pissed off today – went Hanley in eve with Ashley – Bobbie’s for a while in eve

I wonder what pissed me off. The Union business? Writers block for one of those pesky essay deadlines? Back ache from helping Ashley to move his bed? Head ache from overindulging liberally at the previous night’s party? Whatever caused it, I don’t suppose Bobbie enjoyed the experience of my mood on such days. Relatively rare in my case but I must have been REALLY pissed off to have noted such in my diary, which was normally spared such emotions.

Saturday 10 December – Busy sort of day. Shopping etc. Helped Ashley move in evening -> Black Lion -> two parties in eve. Stayed B.

The Black Lion public house, Trent Vale by Colin Pyle, CC BY-SA 2.0

Seems that my mood was more or less restored by the weekend. What a relief for all concerned.

Doing Stuff In The Keele Students’ Union, An Anarchist Bonfire, The Fall Supported By The Stockholm Monsters and Partying In A High-Falutin’ Place, Mid November 1983

Ticket image borrowed from The Fall Gigography

It’s hard to imagine a week getting more exciting after the “Truda Smith incident” on the Monday, reported last time…

A Keele Finalist In Autumn: Visits To Careless Talk, The Financial Times And The SU Women’s Toilet, Early November 1983

…and indeed the rest of that week has little worthy of report in it.

Union Stuff

The diary suggests a fairly settled pattern of work, spending time with Bobbie and spending time in the Union, mostly around elections and such matters. The Chair of Constitutional Committee also chaired Election Appeals Committee and it seems there were elections that week.

I found a stray voting slip some years ago, when rummaging through a file for something else – it might well have been for the election that week.

Keele Students’ Union By-Election Voting Slip, guessing November 1983

The other thing that is clear from my diary that week is that I became good friends with Vivian Robinson around that time. She was SU Secretary (and therefore also returning officer) that year – so we were thrown together ex officio in terms of running elections.

Fortunately we got on well and I think the elections that year ran smoothly – even the one that I ran in…just about. Viv and I remained friends after Keele, not least when she lived on Bedford Hill in the late 1980s, about 10 minutes walk from my parents house. Watch this space for future tales.

Anyway, that week, it seems, Viv cooked me dinner one night and I made her lunch a couple of days later.

Anarchist Bonfire Party, 11 November 1983

I like the reference to going to an “anarchist bonfire party” after dinner with Viv on 11 November. Ashley and/or Sally Hyman might remember some details about that event, but I must admit I don’t remember much about it.

Perhaps it was part of a trend at that time to perceive Guy Fawkes as a radical hero, which, frankly, he wasn’t. Or perhaps it was more an excuse to have a bonfire party a week or so after the conventional Guy-effigy-burning occasion and avoid the unpleasant connotations of all that, by simply having a lively bonfire party, which I’m sure it was.

The Anarchist Bonfire Party won’t have looked like this

The Fall Supported By the Stockholm Monsters, 16 November 1983

This was a pretty memorable Keele gig in my book, as much for the buzz there was around The Fall at that time as the sound itself, which was only sort-of to my taste.

The Stockholm Monsters were a more than half-decent support act, well suited to support The Fall. In 1983 they sounded like this:

The Fall appeared on The Tube just over a week after our Keele gig. Their set on The Tube looked like this:

Andrea’s Party At Bushy House, 19/20 November 1983

By the end of that week I was writing in red ink, reporting on a trip to London. I love the fact that I note that I had a haircut on the Saturday morning. I’m guessing that my mum would have strongly suggested I needed a haircut, probably because of the location of the party I was going to that night.

My friend Andrea Dean was living in Bushy House, Teddington at that time. Her father had become Director of the National Physical Laboratory and a rather sprauncy apartment came with that job.

Andrea c1979

Bushy House is a former residence of King William IV, although I suspect he made use of the whole house.

I remember more than one entertaining party/gathering at Bushy House when it was Andrea’s place. This November 1983 one was especially memorable.

…And Forty Years On?

I rather like the juxtaposition of an anarchist bonfire party one weekend and a party in a formerly royal residence the next in November 1983.

Forty years on, both of those parties were good training for the week that I have just been through:

Pomp Given The Circumstances: Mansion House & The Lord Mayor’s Show, 11 November 2023
After The Lord Mayor’s Show Comes…The Lord Mayor’s Banquet, Guildhall, 13 November 2023

Keele Students’ Union By-Election Voting Slip, guessing November 1983

This is a strange thing to have survived in my document box. I think it has done so because Ashley Fletcher scribbled his telephone number on the reverse.

Still, we see Kate Fricker standing for a minor election, presumably just a few months before she ran for President. Running against someone by the name of Ged, but on this occasion not one of my multiple personalities.

In those days I was very much myself; Chair of Constitutional Committee and Election Appeals Committee. So perhaps I need to ask myself some serious questions about this stray ballot paper. Is that a hanging chad at the top of the slip?

198384 By Election Scrap with Ashleys Number on Reverse

A Keele Finalist In Autumn: Visits To Careless Talk, The Financial Times And The SU Women’s Toilet, Early November 1983

1983 – Long before gender neutrality for conveniences had been invented

I sense from my autumn 1983 diary that I was hunkering down to do a reasonable amount of studying that year. That said, the first two evenings on the page below show me focussed at least as much on student politics. There was a UGM on the Monday, which passed with a mere “OK” from me…

Careless Talk

… on the Tuesday it says I went to Careless Talk. Straining my brain, I think that was an anarchist discussion group, which was colloquially known as “Bob & Sally’s Thing”, much to the chagrin Sally Hyman, and the late (also lovely) Bob Miller.

In truth, it was probably Ashley Fletcher more than anyone who nicknamed the group “Bob & Sally’s Thing”, knowing full well that the idea that the group had leaders or figureheads was anathema to Bob & Sally. It was outrageous for Ashley to nickname the group – it was Bob and Sally’s thing, so really only they should have had the power to name the group. Which they did. Careless Talk.

Photo by Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 2.0

I think we might have met in The Victoria. Sally or Ashley might remember. I vaguely recall Ashley perpetuating the “power joke” because the chosen place was in Miller Street. I remember Bob especially liking whichever pub it was because it served the best pint of Bass he could find in town. That was an aspect to which Bob would have given a great deal of care and attention.

At the time we possibly thought we might solve the world’s problems through sheer weight of discussion and reasoned debate. Forty years later…it seems we didn’t make a great fist of it. Heck, but at least we tried. And some of us still do charity work to try and patch some of the broken bits back together again – e.g. Sally Hyman and her superb charity CRIBS International – not to be described as “Sally’s Thing”.

The Financial Times

Thursday 3 November 1983 – Lots to do before leaving for London after Election Appeals. Had Chinese meal and stayed up quite late.

Friday 4 November 1983 – Busy day – went to FT [Financial Times] in day – worked on it after. Watched Woody Allen & Richard Pryor film.

I had an Economics dissertation to research (the economics of the pharmaceutical industry – supervised by Joe Nellis – more on that in a future article). My parents were away and the Financial Times, bless them, were prepared to let an undergraduate like me loose on their archive library. In those days, that meant me going to their offices, taking up a desk for a day and the FT allowing me to photocopy and/or print out from microfiche a gazillion articles. Nowadays I suspect they might grant students a free electronic archive subscription for a limited time…or possibly make students pay.

I remember crawling across town to my parents’ house with a couple of bags full of printouts – I probably looked like a bag-person.

Goodness knows where I got the Chinese meal having got back to London after election appeals on the Thursday. I’m going to guess that I stopped off in Soho to eat and got a late bus from there.

I must have got home before 1.00 am because the Richard Pryor Live In Concert movie was shown on Channel 4 at 00:50. I had been dying to see that movie ever since Graham, who worked for a Laurie Krieger’s myriad businesses and who used to drive me to and from Kenton quite often that summer…

Keele Student’s Summer Working In London 1983, Part Four: Twixt Kenton, Centre Point, West End, Streatham, Friends & Family, September 1983

…waxed lyrical about Richard Pryor Live In Concert to me on one of our many long chats over the summer, claiming that it was the funniest movie he had ever seen. It is a good movie and some of it is very funny.

The only clip I can find feels more like prescient and sobering documentary than comedy today – TRIGGER WARNING: Richard Pryor uses the N-word a great deal, especially so in this potentially distressing clip.

The movie The Front, which I watched on the Friday evening, I recall having a profound affect on me and I still remember its poignancy. It is about left-wing people who were blacklisted in the US media, especially Hollywood, in the 1950s McCarthyism scare. US potty politics precedes Trump. The film was mostly made by people who had suffered at that time, including the wonderful Zero Mostel.

https://youtu.be/nL4LYkDKLhc

I remember also working hard on my research project and also doing a fair bit of taping on the Saturday and I saw Paul Deacon on the Sunday, who I’m sure presented me with another tape, which I might well go through separately from this piece if/when I have time.

Constitutional Committee & The Truda Incident, 7 November 1983

7 November 1983 – Returned from London – went to classes – const. comm. in eve – stayed down bar – went back to B’s [Bobbie Scully’s] after Truda [Smith] incident.

I don’t remember why the Truda incident occurred. Truda had been the SU president the year before, with limited success and even less goodwill left in the tank at the end of it all, in my humble opinion. I seem to recall that the immediate past President sat on Constitutional Committee ex officio, which might explain why she was there and why I felt some sense of responsibility for helping her post meeting.

I don’t recall anything in the meeting upsetting her – the meetings were orderly and well-tempered throughout my year as Chair as I recall it – but I think that meeting might have brought home to Truda the past-President’s absence of power.

Private Eye would describe her as “tired and emotional” that evening. I remember that Ashley was around. Bobbie wasn’t. At some point, quite late in the evening, someone (possibly one of the stewards) approached me and Ashley because they (or someone) was concerned that Truda had staggered into the Women’s toilets in the main lobby of the SU some time earlier and…not yet staggered out again. There were no women on hand to check the situation out.

I recall Ashley, quite skittishly, celebrating the opportunity to see inside the Women’s…

…I’ve always wondered what it might be like in there. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen it either, Ian…

I was not really concerned about the aesthetics of the Women’s loo compared with the Men’s – I was wondering whether there would be blood…or vomit…or blood & vomit…

…actually there were none of those things. Just a very drunk, very weepy Truda who needed consoling – so we did our best to console – although frankly neither of us felt especially sympathetic to her (lack of) plight.

For pity’s sake, give it a rest.

Keele Rememberings: Confusion, Films, Adam Fairholme RIP & Elvis Costello Live, Late October 1983

I had returned to Keele in Autumn 1983 armed with my copy of Punch The Clock

At times I really didn’t write enough in my diaries. This last week of October 1983 is an example of that.

Put aside the fact that I went to see three films that week without noting any of the film titles. Anyone out there keep notes on Film Soc 1983/84? Where’s Keele Film Soc archivist Tony Sullivan when you need him? – I think Tony had left Keele by then, unfortunately.

Worse yet, I cannot recall what led to the Monday note:

…Busy day – classes etc. Const[itutional] Comm[itee] in eve – confusion in Union!…

I don’t think the confusion and the committee meeting were connected, but maybe they were.

Perhaps the confusion was connected with the other aspect of my memory which I am pretty sure was that week, which was news of the tragic, sudden death of Adam Fairholme.

As I remember it, Adam had gone into town with friends to see a movie and had succumbed to an epileptic fit. No-one in the party had known what to do to reduce the risk of serious injury or death in such circumstances and Adam had tragically choked on his own tongue.

I remember the news of the circumstances so clearly because several of us had gone to the flicks in town with Adam only 10 days or so before the tragedy – ironically to see The Meaning Of Life:

A Wild First Week Of The 1983/84 Year At Keele: Pete Wild, Amazulu, The Man Upstairs, Bobbie Scully, The Meaning Of Life & More

I remember in particular discussing with Ashley Fletcher the irony of our last evening with Adam, given the film’s title, together with the unquestionable fact that, had Adam had his fit while with us, we wouldn’t have known what to do in those circumstances either. Possibly we would have instinctively done something different and helped save him. More probably, we’d have been in the same helpless situation as his companions that night, who must have been in great distress.

My own sadness at the loss of Adam was accentuated by the fact that I had beaten him in the election for the Chair of Constitutional Committee the previous term…

Getting Elected To The Naffest Role In The Keele Students’ Union, But Did I Have The Constitution For It In May 1983?

…a role which I think Adam really wanted, whereas I ran for that election more than a little reluctantly. I vaguely remember Ashley making an off-colour joke about me now unquestionably being better qualified for the role than Adam…and then feeling badly about even thinking such a line, let alone speaking it.

Adam was a very decent fellow. His family, his friends, Keele and who-knows-what beyond was deprived of one of the good people when he died so young.

I am pretty sure the heavy drinking session and resulting hangover Friday/Saturday was in part a sorrows-drowning exercise with regard to Adam.

…went to party in Thorns – drank to[o] much

Saturday 29 October 1983 – Felt very ill when I rose – Hungover wasn’t the word. Recovered in time for Elvis Costello concert – brill.

Here I’m going to give myself a big gold star, as my memory sensed that this concert was at Victoria Hall Hanley, not in the Union. Checking in to the Elvis Costello wiki enabled me to confirm my memory and indeed to see more about that gig on a web page than I could possibly have imagined – click link below for all the details of the tracks played and even a link to the Evening Sentinel review that followed:

Elvis Costello & The Attractions, Victoria Hall Hanley, 29 October 1983

I cannot remember who came with me to that concert. Simon Jacobs, Keele’s one-man Elvis Costello Fan Club, had left Keele that summer and tells me that he is sure he did not return for that gig. Yet in my mind Simon was there. I cannot imagine having seen Elvis Costello perform without Simon being there.

Latterly, in the 1990s, as I report elsewhere, I got to know Elvis Costello surprisingly well, as we were both members of Lambton Place (now BodyWorksWest). I chatted with him idly for years before asking him what he did for a living and then, when he said he was in the music business, asking him his name.

Simon Jacobs is just about still talking to me after I told him about that. At least I hope Simon is, otherwise next week’s meal (I say, reporting 40 years after the Hanley concert) will be a rather quiet one.

Well, Elvis Costello does look different latterly and I had no TV in the 1990s… Photo by Shayne Kaye, CC BY 2.0

A Wild First Week Of The 1983/84 Year At Keele: Pete Wild, Amazulu, The Man Upstairs, Bobbie Scully, The Meaning Of Life & More

Pete & Me, c1985, photo thanks to Mark Ellicott

A hyperactive week to say the least, from Monday onwards, following my “Union – quite dull” diary comment on the preceding Sunday.

The diary page for that week will need some unpicking, forty years on. Stuck together with ancient, yellowing Sellotape, some aspects might best be left unpicked.

Monday 10 October 1983 – Busy sorting things out today – went to town etc. Ashley [Fletcher] came for dinner -> Union – saw loads of people.

Tuesday 11 October 1983 – Lots to do today – did a little work – etc. Went to Union in eve – saw more people.

Hello people! I’m sure you all know who you are…who you were…whoever you are/were. Sometimes I really wish I’d written more down.

Wednesday 12 October 1983 Busy day – did a little work – went to [New] ‘Castle [Under-Lyme]. Showed Pete [Wild] around – went to Freshers Union do in eve.

Pete Wild was a fresher, allocated to us in Barnes L54 quite by chance. Aficionados of this Ogblog series might recall that Alan Gorman was such an allocated fresher the previous year, when my former flatmate Ahmed Mohd Isa was not invited to return for the 1982/83.

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

For 1983/84, the Barnes L54 line up was supposed to be me, Alan Gorman, Chris Spencer and “A. N. Other-Person”, the name of whom escapes me. Indeed I cannot recall anything about that fourth person other than the fact that they, like Ahmed before them, failed to make the cut for the 83/84 academic year and we had a vacancy. Chris Spencer might remember and I am now in touch with him again. Alan is sadly no longer with us, although I have made contact with his family in the USA.

One might be forgiven for wondering whether Barnes L54 was cursed, as a 25% drop out rate was way above the Keele norm at that time. But certainly those of us who remained were blessed rather than cursed, as these happenstance thrown together flatmate groupings somehow worked and thrived. Chris, Alan and Pete stuck with it the following year, when Hayward Burt signed up for the fourth place in Barnes L54 and **SPOILER ALERT** all of them actually took up residence as planned!

My immediate take on Pete was that he was fun and would fit in, which he did. The rest of us already had flat nicknames and his emerged pretty quickly and obviously:

  • Alan Gorman – The Great Yorkshire Pudding…or just “Pudding”;
  • Chris Spencer – “Farmer” – from Devon, you understand;
  • Me – “Bagel Boy” – I could probably have them all arrested for that now;
  • Pete – “Hippy” – see hair in headline photo.

Thursday 13 October 1983 – Busyish day – Exam in afternoon etc. Union in evening – drank a little went to see Amazulu.

I cannot recall what the exam might have been right at the start of term. The only thing I can imagine was that it was an econometrics exam, as that discipline was meant to test our ability to analyse numbers from our instinctive/unconscious competency in economics rather than from swatting.

Amazulu were great live, I recall. A good choice for Freshers week. They were little known at that time, but certainly lit up the ballroom that night. Here’s a clip of Amazulu live in London a few months later:

https://youtu.be/HYPD24des44

Friday 14 October 1983 – sorted things out departments etc. – went to town in afternoon. Went to Michelle’s [Epstein]. Went to see [Monty Python’s The] Meaning Of Life in evening -> Lindsay – The Man Upstairs – Ros came back

Saturday 15 October 1983 – Got up late. Liza [O’Connor] came around – stayed until early evening – went to Union in eve – Bobby [sic – ie Bobbie Scully][ came back stayed till late

Sunday 16 October 1983 – Easyish Sunday – rose v late- did some things – went union in eve with Ash [Ashley Fletcher]

I’m not blooming surprised I “rose v late” on the Sunday.

Sometimes I’m really glad that I didn’t write more down. To my shame I cannot even recall who Ros was in this context.

Ashley Fletcher might remember, at least in terms of who came with us to see The Meaning Of Life – I know it was a reasonably sized group of us and for the saddest of reasons, which I’ll write about in a couple of week’s time, I recall at least one of the people who was with us that night.

Anyway, the upshot of my metaphorical revolving door weekend was that I settled in to a relationship with Bobbie, who forty years later, is still talking to me…at least she was a month ago when she came along to Hampton Court…

Gresham Society Visit To The Royal Tennis Court, Hampton Court, 14 September 2023

I guess “forty years on” history pales into insignificance when you lose yourself in “400+ years on” material.

I also want to write a bit about The Man Upstairs, which was a band comprising Keele students hat did many gigs around the campus in the early 1980s. They were a good bunch and were able to get the Keele students going with their fashionable live sound. Warmly remembered by many of us.

I think they had left Keele by the autumn of 1983, so were returning as a touring band that happened to comprise Keele alums. Here are links to some of their stuff…

…and here’s a link to an interview with Nigel, whom, I always thought of as their leader. (If that link has gone, click this scrape).

Keele Student’s Summer Working In London 1983, Part One: A Social & Emotional Whirl…With Some Work Thrown In, July 1983

Actually I worked in 19 Cavendish Square, not 19a (depicted). I subsequently (many years later) went to the dentist/hygienist in 19a. Any resemblance between tooth pulling and me working as an accounts clerk in the university holidays is purely coincidental.

The summer of 1983 was to be the last of my summer holiday jobs working for Newman Harris in London. Two-and-a-bit years later I started working for that firm full time as a trainee, but that’s another story.

As with previous summer jobs, I spent an awful lot of time meeting up with people for lunch and after work. I also visited Keele during that summer – a benefit of having retained the Barnes L54 flat, along with Alan Gorman and Chris Spencer, for a further year.

I’ll set out my diary pages below and try to translate/transliterate them. The very first reference on my first day of work, “VL”, refers to Laurence Corner (the V stood for Victor), where I spent a fair chunk of that summer, as I had done previously in my summer jobs. Forty years on, I am still in touch with DJ and Kim from there – not least because I met Janie through Kim in 1992 and the rest, as they say, has been history.

https://www.allinlondon.co.uk/directory/surplus-stores/5766-laurence-corner

In July 1983 though, I was struggling with my sophomoric romantic travails with Liza. I did not want to seem to be pandering to my mum’s unreasonable aversion to the relationship…in truth I think mum had an aversion to me having ANY romantic relationship at that time…while in truth I had emotionally “checked out” by the end of the summer term, as reported in the last instalment…

The Sneyd, The Jedi, The Parents & The Return To London At The End Of My P2 Year At Keele, 1982/1983

…I just couldn’t see the Liza relationship working for me the following academic year.

There’s the context, so hold on to your hats for the deeds extracted from the diaries.

Monday 4 July 1983 – Started work – v busy. VL etc – unpacking etc evening

Tuesday 5 July 1983 – Work – v busy. Met Jilly [Black] for lunch [probably that Italian place on Henrietta Place where you could sit and eat in a railway carriage]. Unpacked till late

Wednesday 6 July 1983 – Busy day at office – Paul [Deacon] came over in evening. [I think there’ll be some good “mix tape” pieces from the summer of 1983, as Paul was in top form that summer with his record finds etc – my own form was not bad that summer either]

Thursday 7 July 1983 – Lots of work – stayed in this evening

Friday 8 July 1983 – V Busy – stayed in eve & relaxed

Saturday 9 July 1983 – Lazy day today – went shopping in Brixton -> G Jenny for tea – lazy eve

Sunday 10 July 1983 – Lazy day – did some reading – relaxed, ate, etc.

Grandma Jenny still lived in Sandhurst Court, Acre Lane, in those days, making a shopping trip to Brixton ahead of visiting her for tea a natural progression.

I expect you’ve got the gist of these summer diary pages by now, so I’ll only extract the highlights that might use some explaining from now on.

Tuesday 12 July 1983 – …met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch…Paul [Deacon] came round in evening – went over to Andrew [Andy Levinson, who also lived in Woodfield Avenue]

Friday 15 July 1983 – Office Ok – much work – left early. Went up to Keele – stayed in eve…

Saturday 16 July 1983 – went pub in morning – afternoon Ashley [Fletcher] came over – v tired crashed out early…

Sunday 17 July 1983 – then up late – ran late – brekker – lazy day – left in eve – got back a little late.

Forty years on, I’m struggling to process that weekend in my mind. I sense that I was finding full time work tiring that summer – I think there was a bit of a heatwave on that year – but the weekend in Keele looks quite topsy-turvey to me and I’m guessing that some aspects are unwrit and unremembered, at least by me. Ashley might remember a bit more once he sees the diary write up. Perhaps that weekend was the “dancing and mud cricket in the rain” occasion:

Remembering The Heatwave Of Summer 1983 At Keele, Late June or July 1983

Wednesday 20 July 1983 – …went to Wendy’s [Robbins – in Bromley back then] in eve – v pleasant.

Thursday 21 July 1983 – …met Caroline for lunch …

Friday 22 July 1983 – Work OK – deadlines. Went to Annalisa’s [de Mercur, who lived in Harley Street in those days] for lunch and went for a drink with Marianne [Gilmour, daughter of Geoffrey, also doing holiday work at NH those summers] – Paul came over later.

Saturday 23 July 1983 – …had haircut… [a rare and therefore diary-worthy event back then]

Sunday 24 July 1983 – Lazy day – nice lunch (Chinese) [probably at Mrs Wong’s] Finished with Liza in eve – not nice.

I vaguely recall seeking counsel from several friends in the run up to the Sunday call with Liza, which possibly in part explains the social whirl of the end of the week. I’m not going to pretend that I handled the matter well, but I was bringing little or no experience to the matter. In any case, it isn’t a situation that lends itself to being handled well.

Monday 25 July 1983 – …Ashley [Michaels, from NH, not Fletcher from Keele] took me to lunch…

Tuesday 26 July 1983 – …Met Jim [Jimmy Bateman] after work – boozed & ate in eve [almost certainly a Sun in Great Ormond Street/Lambs Conduit Street event] along the lines of evenings during holiday jobs passim…

Perseverance With Work & Meeting Up With Friends, 28 March To 10 April 1981

Thursday 28 July 1983 – …met Hamzah [Shawal, my departing Keele flatmate – I think this was the last time I saw him] for lunch…

Friday 29 July 1983 – …went for drink with Ashley [Michaels] and Dilip Vora] after work …

Saturday 30 July 1983 – …went over to Paul’s for afternoon…

Sunday 31 July 1983 – Did little today. Set up hi-fi. Met Liza in Edgware – drank quite a lot!

I vaguely remember that evening in Edgware. I think Liza’s brother Sean and sister-in-law Marlene had invited her down with a view to setting up a face-to-face between me and Liza. Possibly they wrongly envisaged a possible reconciliation if Liza and I met in person. In any case it was a grown-up ploy, because breaking up by phone had been far from ideal; I think (hope) Liza and I parted on better terms as a result of that very boozy evening.

Remembering The Heatwave Of Summer 1983 At Keele, Late June or July 1983

In July 2022, we’re having a heatwave. The brain addles, but also the odd memory flash arrives.

39 years ago we also had a heatwave, right at the very end of the 82/83 academic year, at Keele.

It was probably the only period in all my years at Keele when I (and many of us) felt stifled by the heat up on that hill.

I have one very clear memory of that heatwave, from when the weather broke. The sky darkened, there was thunder and it started to pour with rain, much like a tropical storm.

Ashley Fletcher

There were very few students still around. It was either right at the very end of the summer term or possibly even after term had finished; I returned to my Barnes flat (L54) at Keele for a weekend or two that summer, as I was going out with Liza O’Connor from The Sneyd at that time.

I remember that Ashley Fletcher was around at the flat when the weather broke; Ashley immediately said, “let’s go outside and dance in the rain”.

Several other people came out of other flats onto the edge of the playing fields and danced with us.

Although it was 1983, I don’t think we quite managed to emulate Flashdance…

…but still – what a feeling!

Anything to add, Ashley?

Postscript: Yes, Ashley Did Have Something To Add…

…pseudonymously – only because it is my tradition for King Cricket to provide noms de guerre for my friends…or should I say, for Ged Ladd’s friends:

Rain starts play (a 1983 ‘Thunder Match’ report)