I have almost no memory of my last BBYO convention.
Clearly I spent a lot of time at Hillel House between my return from Keele University (13 December) and the start of convention helping to plan/prepare the thing.
I think I might have made some separate notes at the time, but if I did they have been lost with the other memorabilia from that era that my mother threw out at one time, because she “didn’t think anyone would want to keep all of those old jottings and such rubbish.” I’m still not over it.
The diary says I stayed at Howard’s the night before convention. I’m trying to remember which Howard that must have been. I’m sure I thanked you and your parents at the time, Howard, but thanks again.
Update: Jack Gilbert chipped in to suggest that this was probably Howard Wiseman, as I knew him well from events passim. A skim through my old, ragged address book suggests that it almost certainly would have been Howard Wiseman. Thanks Jack.
I think I sort-of acted as returning officer for the elections that year, as I do recall feeling that I had experience of such matters when I got involved with election appeals and such at Keele a few years later.
I know that we elected Lewis Sykes as President.
I know I was awarded life membership at that convention. I probably cried upon receipt.
The diary says that I went to Portsmouth with Jenny (must be Jenny Council) after convention and stayed at Barry Laden’s place. In truth I don’t really remember that specific visit although I do remember visiting Portsmouth several times. I’m sure I thanked you and your parents at the time, Barry, but thanks again.
But beyond the thin gruel in my diary, most of it is just a blur.
So this time, I am shouting out the the BBAK (BBYO alte kackes) community for help. Please chime in with your memories, however slight. They might trigger some of mine – my memory is quite good at being triggered these days.
So once again, my plea. Help! Please chime in with memories of that convention. Once those are gathered, I might be able to write a better piece than this.
…I thought I was probably conflating two visits in my mind, but couldn’t find reference to a second stay in my 1980 diary.
Now (January 2018) going through my 1981 diary looking for something completely different, I found reference to the second visit. In fact it was late December 1980, by which time I had started writing in my new diary.
Saturday 20 December 1980 …went to Manchester – NR Exec – South Manchester (Spencer’s)…Mark [Sunday 21 December] Lewis’s for night…convention meeting – home – v tired.
“Spencer’s” must mean Spencer Jacobs’s house.
So, the Spandau Ballet song that was rolling around in my head while remembering staying at the Lewis’s house was not a false memory, it was a current song at the time of that second visit. As was my memory of me (briefly) getting in a muddle between Spandau Ballet and Joy Division. Unforgivable.
If this disambiguation helps Mark (and/or Mandy) Lewis to recall more about those visits, that would be good.
It’s not a particularly long story:
Coda To This Long/Short Story – Late 2020
This memory has a sad coda, as I am writing up much of this period late in 2020, 40 years after the events. Mandy Lewis (latterly Amanda Goodman) died earlier in 2020 after a long illness.
A meeting of minds and a fun, fumbling, intimate time in the early hours, forty years ago, between me and Mandy, is hardly a matter of earth-shattering revelation.
But I do remember at the time being very taken with Mandy and striving, perhaps in the face of sound judgement and good sense, to reconnect after the event, in vain.
In an act of latter-day recklessness (heaven knows, you don’t mess with Mark Lewis over media matters), I have borrowed the following charming montage that Mark posted on Facebook as a tribute to Mandy soon after she died.
Feld’s borscht looked absolutely nothing like this
Sunday 14 December. Went to Feld’s ->…
Strangely, I had a memory flash about Feld’s restaurant the other day (December 2020), when Kay Scorah kindly sent over some soup recipes from her Essex Road Recipes collection, including one for beetroot soup (at the time of writing, not yet published on-line)…
…which reminded me of Grandma Anne and the palaver we went through whenever we went to Feld’s eaterie in Mortimer Street in the hope of getting her a decent plate of borscht. I quote myself:
My Grandma Anne was an addict, but even 50 years ago it was hard to find a reliable source of beetroot soup in a hostelry. “Mr Feld – your borscht tastes like vorter today”, she would holler at the top of her voice in that strange eponymous eatery on Mortimer Street, if the beetroot soup was not up to snuff on that occasion. “Shake the jar!!” Dad, Mum and I would yell in unison when Grandma ordered the borscht, imploring Mr Feld to action, in the hope of staving off the voluble accusation of “vorteriness”…
Let’s be honest about this – Feld’s was not a great place. The salt beef was fine and frankly that’s why we were there. The latke was a sort of lottery, where you might get a clump of pepperiness or an unexpectedly chunky bit of potato. The matzo balls were similarly random. I recall he added almond essence to those, but sometimes you’d get a seriously almondy shot and sometimes the almond essence would be undetectable. I was partial to his tomato soup, which for some reason had a consistent quality to it (it probably came out of a Heinz catering tin), with the unusual addition of a matzo ball for good measure. Don’t ask about the lockshen pudding.
…SR Pressies -> dinner & drinks with Caroline .
SR Pressies would be a meeting of BBYO chapter presidents from across the Southern Region. I clearly went to one such meeting in the South that weekend and something similar in the North the following weekend.
Hence Keele to Manchester via London. I was never THAT geographically challenged.
Caroline would be Caroline Freeman (now Curtis).
Monday 15 December 1980 – Went to Hillel all day. YC meeting. “Return to sanity”.
I have no idea what the insanity was and what the “return to sanity” meant. My guess is that this was all connected with pulling together a National Convention in an environment where the National Exec was much depleted and somewhat in disarray.
My 1980 diary falls silent at that point but have no fear – my 1981 diary started in December 1980.
Tuesday 16 December 1980 – Anil came round for day. Busyish evening.
Anil looking quite smug
17 December 1980. Went to Hillel. Grandma Jenny came around in the evening.
Grandma Jenny
18 December 1980. Easyish day at home. Easyish evening.
19 December 1980. Stayed at home again. Did little in evening.
Given the high activity level of most of my time during that first vacation of my University life, I suspect I spent much of that two day break making up cassettes and mix tapes to take up to Keele with me. I recall feeling very short of music compared with most and compared with my usual experience at home with records and reel-to-reels to play with. I’ll revisit the music aspect when I write up the festive season.
There was only one “drunken fart” involved when I waded through my FY Philosophy topic on Descartes…and it wasn’t René Descartes. Memorable for me only because it was my very first Keele essay and I do recall finding the topic tough.
I have a vague memory of trying out Cartesian philosophy on my parents, eliciting bafflement, followed by an encouraging, “whatever you say, dear”, from my mum, which means I must have explained it all very well.
Everything is self-evident, sonny-boy
So deep was I in philosophy that weekend, I even failed to write up Sunday, which must surely have comprised finishing the essay, having lunch with my folks & travelling back to Keele…not necessarily in that sequence.
I remember telling dad that I had several essays to write in the next couple of weeks, which would limit my ability to go out drinking with my friends, so he gave me a little glass hip flask (quarter bottle size I think, or perhaps 5oz) full of whisky, which he said would sustain me on such evenings and could be refilled whenever I came home to visit. On reflection forty years later, dad’s kind idea not entirely devoid of enlightened self-interest.
I drink therefore I am…it wasn’t quite as posh as this example.
I think the hip flask had its first big dip on the Wednesday, when I finished my Law essay for Michael Whincup. I can’t remember for the life of me what the topic was about; a very general introduction to law, I think.
I’m pretty sure that I had near made my mind up by the time I completed that Law topic that I fancied switching to Law for half of my degree – my heart was already set on Economics for the other half. Philosophy (with all that Descartes) and Politics sessional (mostly Psephology with Mr Kimber that term) didn’t grab me sufficiently.
On the Friday evening, 5 December 1980, I:
Went to Union – Sim’s mates from Donny there
Ah yes, my next door neighbour Sim (Simon Ascough) and his home town mates from Doncaster. Sim was a great bloke and I very much enjoyed being his neighbour in F Block Lindsay for about four terms in the end. In those early days, I especially remember listening to his Neil Young Triple Album, Decade:
But I recall Sim’s friends from Donny being into a harder-boiled variety of rock than that; Iron Maiden, Rainbow and the like if I am not mistaken. I also recall them finding Keele quite baffling; they were pretty disparaging about the place and the whole idea of Sim being at University. I think I added to their sense of bafflement because I was Jewish; a state of being which, I guess, had barely entered their consciousnesses before and certainly never previously manifested to them in human form. I don’t think they were bad lads, but when Sim dropped out of Keele a year or so later, it felt to me like a real shame and I did wonder whether Sim had anyone “back home” encouraging him to persevere with university.
The next day, on the Saturday, Simon Jacobs and I went off to Leeds for a BBYO thingie. I apologise unequivocally to the people of Leeds who might have read the phrase:
Simon and I went to Leeds (yuck)…
..imagining that I had something against Leeds. In fact, I was fond of Leeds back then (still am to some extent) and I suspect the word “yuck” was a word play on the fact that we were going, in part, to a YCC meeting as representatives of BBYO. Simon had, in fact, resigned as National Vice-President over the summer, but I think might have still retained some involvement in whatever the YCC is/was – frankly I’m struggling to find anyone who can remember.
It’s a bit like SLAC Convenors at Keele – people vaguely remember the existence of the post but no-one seems able to recall what SLAC was…
John White in 1985 checking out the bona fides of SLAC Convenor Cath Coughlin – with grateful thanks to Mark Ellicott for this picture.
…but I digress.
Returning to December 1980, in my diary, in the matter of that Leeds trip, I went on to say:
…stayed at nice house (early night)
Sunday 7 December – coffee morning -> lunch -> YCC (🗸 & X) -> Inst[allation]. Simon & I left early
No idea what the 🗸 & X represented. Presumably something went right (from my point of view) and something else didn’t. The YCC was probably like that…whatever it was.
What I didn’t say in the diary, but popped straight into my main memory when I read this diary note, was the hellish journey Simon and I endured between Keele and Leeds. No wonder we left early.
As I recall it, we took the bus to Stoke, took a train to Stockport, where we changed to a train to Staleybridge, where we changed again to take a train to Leeds.
Staleybridge station looks in better nick now.
Then we did the whole trip in reverse, with the added excitement of a 1980 Sunday service to contend with. On returning to Keele after that epic journey, Simon and I agreed that we wouldn’t be attempting that voyage again by public transport in a hurry. I still haven’t attempted a rerun and strongly suspect that Simon Jacobs also can only boast that single expedition from Keele to Leeds and back, without oxygen.
Reading my diary references to Caroline’s visit to Keele in late November 1980 gave me a memory flash of an event earlier that term.
Caroline Freeman (now Curtis) was a good friend, through BBYO, of mine and of Simon Jacobs . Caroline chose not to go to university, although from memory she had as many UCCA points from her A levels as Simon & I had put together from ours.
I had long been the beneficiary of Caroline’s mum’s cooking on the many occasions I found myself in North-West London doing BBYO stuff in the year or so before heading up to Keele.
“That poor boy needs a good meal” – c1979
Anyway, I think Caroline must have got it into her head that Simon and I might struggle to feed ourselves properly at the weekends. Keele provided refectory meals to freshers Monday to Friday but at the weekends we had to look after ourselves.
Frankly, I don’t think the self-catering element of student life was a challenging aspect for either me or Simon…
…nor was I in want of food; I was just burning calories at a furious rate back then…
…but early in our time at Keele, Simon and I both received, through the post, from Caroline, an emergency food parcel styled in the mode of a Red Cross jobbie as depicted above. I don’t recall exactly what was inside the parcels, but I suspect it was more like “boarding school kid tuck” than “genuine emergency rations”. Simon and I were both amused, I certainly remember that.
Hawk-eyed readers (especially those with cipher-cracking skills) might have spotted the 17 November entry: “Jay was supposed to come – “did he heck”. Goodness only knows what that visit from Jay Marks was supposed to be for and why it went awry, but it will have been part of a BBYO National Executive unravelling towards the end of our year which makes the last 74 days of the Trump presidency…
…well, on reflection, it was bizarre (but in the grander scheme of things trivial) stuff around resignations, unresignations, with some of us trying to keep the show on the road with sufficient dignity to hand over to a new committee over the new year holiday. So nothing at all like the last 74 days of the Trump presidency.
Anyway, Caroline’s first visit to Keele is quite well documented in the diary:
Friday 21 November 1980 – Not bad day. Met Caroline at Stoke. Went to Lindsay, Union & coffee lounge.
Saturday 22 November 1980 – Simon & Roy popped in early hours. Got up q late. Found Simon., lunch there…
So far so sensible. Simon had met Roy and started going out with him almost as soon as we arrived at Keele. I’m pretty sure Caroline stayed in my pokey room, which was tolerably fine back then and would be unthinkable now considering the size of those student beds and bedrooms. “Lunch there” I guess was in Simon’s block in Barnes (D if I remember correctly), where the facilities for weekend self-catering were marginally better than those in my Lindsay block (F I recall most certainly).
I have used sophisticated computer-aided techniques to decipher the next bit and am pretty sure it must say:
…romped in lakes. Simon left. Spiff dinner (over top) -> over to Roys.
The Lakes at Keele is a rather charming wild garden beyond the ornamental gardens of Keele Hall. Originally planned to be a network of seven substantial artificial lakes, money and/or motivation must have run out for the Sneyd family in the early 19th century as the more far-flung lakes are more like puddles and only two or three have any scale to them. Still, they are pleasant enough to walk around and I dread to think what romping entailed on that occasion. Whether “Simon left” in disgust or simply to go over to Roy’s place is lost in the mists of time. Almost certainly the latter.
No idea what the sentence “Spiff dinner (over top) -> over to Roys” actually means. I sense an in-joke long since forgotten.
Sunday 23 November 1980 – Lounged around all day. Roy, C & I met Simon, went out for dinner. V nice.
Monday 24 November 1980 – Not bad day. Caroline left at 3:00 pm. Relaxing evening.
It would have been helpful if I had noted where we went out for dinner. There were a couple of passable restaurants in Newcastle-Under-Lyme and I suspect it was one of those. The Sneyd Arms didn’t qualify as going out for dinner. Nor did the Union and nor did The Golf. So Newcastle it almost certainly must have been.
Caroline will surely remember every detail and help fill in all the blanks. After all, she was the one with more UCCA points than me and Simon put together.
Mind you, she was almost silent about my write up of her visit the following term, which for reasons of happenstance I wrote up before this one:
With thanks to Alison Shindler for the photo, taken somewhere between Glasgow & Preston, 12 October 1980. Me, Simon Jacobs, Caroline Freeman, Lauren Sterling, Emma Cohen, Warren, Maxine…
Not only did I throw myself into student life I also continued attempting to serve on the National Executive of BBYO.
Here’s an extract from my diary from what should have been my first weekend at Keele:
Saturday 11 October 1980 – Lecture by Vice Chancellor -> Glasgow -> open house -> hosts for din-dins -> disco/dance till v late (feeling ill)
Sunday 12 October 1980 – YCC (non quorate in morning – farcical) -> hosts lunch -> installation -> home with Londoners (as far as Preston) – went to bar on return.
Un-named hosts in Glasgow – apologies to whoever it was and thank you for your hospitality.
I suspect that my feeling ill had something to do with the copious quantity of drinking I’d been doing to prepare for and in my first few days at Keele; nothing to do with Glasgow BBYO.
I don’t clearly recall what a YCC was but I’m sure it was very important and certainly must have been farcical without a quorum.
Preston to Keele on a Sunday evening would have been a non-trivial journey in those days. I’m guessing Crewe and then a cab.
…before knuckling down to a week of being Jewish & BBYOish all over again.
Monday 27 October 1980 – not bad day. Relaxing evening, good fun (Clive Lawton – J Soc etc.)
This picture of Clive from Portsmouth BBYO in 1979. In the summer of 1980 he mentored me (informally) when I was working at Hillel House.
Tuesday 28 October 1980. Not bad day. Went straight after politics to Scarborough [Northern Region Convention] – film, casino etc. Jay’s resigning.
Scarborough 2014 (it hasn’t changed all that much, but it is in colour now)Jay in 1979
Wednesday 29 October 1980 – slept well. Speakers (Janice [Leberman – Rebecca Lowi’s successor], mayor, divorce) programme, AGM, cunted votes, installations, life [membership for those who had served]. (felt ill went to bed)
Feeling ill seemed to be par for my course those weeks. I think I was overdoing everything, frankly.
Thursday 30 October 1980 – left v early. Got back just in time for law. Guiness [sic] evening – good fun. Went to Mike’s for coffee.
I think Mike was one of Simon Jacobs’s friends in those early days; perhaps from his hall of residence or perhaps from one of his courses.
Friday 31 October 1980 – Good day. Went home after history. Good journey, enjoyed it.
Saturday 1 November 1980 – Left house fairly early, went SR [Southern region] convention – skits, songs etc.
Sunday 2 November 1980 – SR Convention – business, reports, AGM, v good. (Got all in who wanted). Installation awards, life, went home…
Monday 3 November 1980 …Ben’s van [must be Ben Davidson, whom I knew from Alleyn’s School and who was at Keele] got back (around 4?0 Late start in morn. Easy day.
In truth I remember little about those regional conventions, but that doesn’t stop other former BBYOniks with better memories or who were better placed to remember those particular conventions to chip in with details.
To be honest, I don’t even remember whether that Southern Region one was in Brighton or Oxford or possibly even somewhere else.
OK, so it seems that I somehow managed to blag my way in to Keele University…with a little help from my friends (in particular Simon Jacobs) and teachers (in particular Colin Page).
I returned alone from a week in Bournemouth with my parents (a one anecdote story about that trip will appear on Ogblog in the fullness of time), while my parents went on to explore the South-West of England for a week.
So, I had the run of Woodfield Avenue for my second and last week of holiday before steeling myself to the arduous task of student life.
I needed to do some training to get fit for the specific Herculean labours that the early part of my student life was likely to involve.
Fortunately I had plenty of friends to help me. Here, with just a little shame as well as pride, is my diary of that week.
Sunday 28 September. Left [Bournemouth] for London with [Dina? Nina?]. Advisors doobrie. Simon & Caroline came back. Went out for food. Drank.
SimonMe & Caroline
Out for food in Streatham in those days probably meant Italian at Il Caretto or Chinese at the Blue Whatnot. I’ll guess Il Caretto.
29 September 1980. Simon & Caroline left. Went to Grandmas. Easy evening.
Not sure if there is an apostrophe catastrophe there, as it is quite possible…even likely…that I did a round trip of both Grandmas; Anne and Jenny.
Grandma AnneGrandma Jenny
Tuesday 30 September 1980. Went to office. Helped Jay [Marks]. Came home., read, slept.
A relatively gentle start to my training. One evening on, two evenings off. A bit feeble, actually. Then, mercifully, my friends rallied around and matters got serious.
Wednesday 1 October 1980. Easyish day. Simon came over early evening, stayed over, drank.
Thank you, Simon.
Thursday 2 October 1980. Simon left. Easy day. Lewis [Sykes, I assume] came over – stayed over, drank.
Picture “borrowed” from David Menashe. I’m sure David won’t mind, but if there is ever a blank space where the picture once lived, then you’ll know that David did mind..
Friday 3 October 1980. Lewis remained. Anil came over. Anil & Lewis stayed. Drank.
Anil. Yup, I’m sure we smoked too.
Saturday 4 October 1980. Anil & Lewis left. Simon, Caroline, Richard [Marks, I assume], A.N. Other [I can only apologise to this forgotten person], Melisa [yes, I remember Melisa, Hendon BBYO I think, but I shall need to do some more archaeology on my archive], came over, & Andrea & Wendy who stayed. Drank.
RichardAndreaWendy
I am wondering what we drank. My dad usually had a handy stock of more than half-decent Bulgarian red wines in those days, as he was friendly with his importer neighbour near the shop on St John’s Hill, Battersea. I’m guessing that dad left me a case for that week with a nod and a wink. He was that kind of dad.
Forty years later, I’m still in touch with most of the people who helped me train that week. Thank you so much, folks, for helping me prepare for University. So kind and the kindness is not forgotten.
I do hope that residents and lovers of Bournemouth forgive me for my damning four word review of the place…or at least understand the context of that diary statement from the 18-year-old me.
I was eagerly anticipating the next phase of my life by late September and I don’t think I was especially keen on a “Jewish holidays” stay in Bournemouth with my parents and Grandma Anne.
The compromise we agreed (not least because I had BBYO commitments) was that I would join them for a week in Bournemouth and then travel back to London for a Sunday commitment and then my own holiday week “training to be a student”:
I went to the Bournemouth BBYO meeting on the Sunday. The phrase “nothing to do here” was clearly a reference to Bournemouth as a town, not the warm hospitality I was no doubt afforded by the youth group there.
I suspect that the phrase “there’s nothing to do here” was handed to me by one or more of the BBYO-niks when I asked them on the Sunday for suggestions that might spice up my week.
We stayed at the Cumberland on this occasion, as evidenced by the photo below.
Until I found the above photo, helpfully labelled “The Cumberland” by my mum, I mistakenly thought we had stayed at the New Ambassador, as we had three years earlier – a mini-holiday from 1977 that I shall certainly write up in the fullness of time.
But whereas the fifteen-year-old me had revelled in the company of fellow youngsters in a Jewish hotel during the half-term week of October 1977, this 1980 visit was clearly not to my taste.
To add to the boredom factor for me, this holiday coincided with Sukkot, which, to religious Jews, is a major festival, observed strictly at kosher hotels such as the Cumberland (or New Ambassador, come to that).
The food would have been plentiful and all-inclusive; breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner, with several courses both to lunch and dinner. Grandma Anne will have massively over-eaten, especially at lunchtime. Then, every day, she would have gone through the four stages of post-lunch gastro-grief: irritability, wind, sleep and finally hope (i.e. hope for a few hands of kalooki before tea and cakes are served).
On the main Sukkot festival days (the Thursday and Friday that year) plus shabbat (Saturday every week), games like kalooki were forbidden, thus worsening Grandma’s afternoon mood when her kalooki hopes were dashed.
Grandma Anne – “I’m forcing myself to eat”
Still, a week in “Borschtmouth” was quite a pleasant change for someone, like Grandma Anne, in their late 80’s.
But not what I was looking for in my early 18’s.
In fact, if we go by the diary, nothing at all memorable happened during that week in Bournemouth. But I have one very strong, abiding memory from that trip.
Master Blaster Jamming Revolving Doors
Image “borrowed” from a defunct catawiki listing on fair use basis for identification
Neither my parents nor I were particularly interested in the religious holiday element of the visit. Grandma Anne was a rabbi’s daughter and dad had been raised in a very traditional Jewish household. Mum far less so. Once I had shown little and diminishing interest in the religious side of things, our household had become pretty secular.
Anyway; we had one mission while we were in Bournemouth which was to sort out my combined 18th birthday and going away to University gift. I wanted a ghetto blaster, so I could listen to radio and cassettes in the confined space I knew was to be my lot for several years at University.
Having left matters until late in the week, mum, dad and I hatched a cunning plan to get this piece of shopping done during Sukkot. The hotel basically acted as a synagogue for such a high-holiday and the vast majority of residents – not least all of the religious ones – would attend the service.
We worked out that we would have plenty of time to sneak out of the hotel, procure a suitable item and get back with the booty while all the religious lot were still ensconced in ritual and prayer…
…except that…
…shopping expeditions with my family were never particularly timely affairs and this purchase required thought and due diligence.
I bought a Philips Spatial Stereo Ghettoblaster/Boombox (see above picture) and very pleased with it I was too, all packaged up in its great big box .
We realised that we had cut it a bit fine and hurried back to the hotel.
Get yer skates on, Dad!
We realised that we had goofed as we saw people started to come out of the makeshift hotel synagogue. But rather than slowing down and unobtrusively braving our way in by sneaking through the doors and up the stairs while the assembled frummers were preoccupied with chat and thoughts of lunch…
…we panicked. In our rush, Dad and I got in the same section of the revolving door – a potentially door-jamming mistake at the best of times, but with the additional space-taking-device that was my ghetto-blaster in its box, we were stuck.
Not as posh-looking as this one, but you get the gist
Mum tried to rectify matters by pulling the revolving door in the reverse direction, but revolving doors don’t work like that – or at least this one certainly didn’t. I think a receptionist spotted our embarrassing circumstances and helped to rescue us. Goodness only knows how many people saw us and if any of those who might have seen us really cared. No-one said anything to us about it.
In later months and years, mum, dad and I would joke about the incident. It would have made a good scene in a sit-com or sketch in a comedy TV show.
Just in case some readers don’t realise what a suitable headline phrase “Master Blaster Jamming” is to describe the revolving doors story…and just in case some other readers want to hear the song Master Blaster (Jammin’) again, the following Stevie Wonder smash was all over the airwaves at that time and was for sure one of my welcomed earworms at the time:
So good, that track.
Anyway, I had my ghetto blaster and it gave me good service at Keele for my first two or three years, until I traded it up for an armour-plated Grundig one…but that’s another story.
Master Blaster Jamming…We’ll Be Jamming The Revolving Door…
12 August 1980. Not too bad a day. Went to Chrystal [sic] Palace with PDeW in evening.
Let’s not talk about my inability to spell the word Crystal at the age of seventeen.
Let us instead try to work out, just over forty years on, what the blithering heck might have been going on here.
The not too bad a day would have been at Hillel House working; I was trying to run the BBYO office that summer in the absence of a proper grown-up full-timer, as Rebecca Lowi had left and not yet been replaced.
I do recall an impending governance crisis on the National Executive around that time, which inevitably embroiled both me and Paul, as we were both on that National Executive. We had things to talk about and I do remember having several after work discussions with Paul that summer.
But if you had asked me, the day before yesterday, if I had ever been to Selhurst Park to see Crystal Palace play football, I would have said, categorically, no.
Football is not really my thing. Never really was, although in my youth I could be persuaded to go to football matches and certainly went to a few.
But Crystal Palace with Paul DeWinter on 12 August 1980 makes no sense for several reasons.
More importantly, despite my limited knowledge of football and Paul DeWinter, one thing I do know for sure is that Paul is a lifelong devotee of Brighton & Hove Albion FC (The Seagulls), not Crystal Palace FC (The Eagles).
Several of my South London friends are devotees of Crystal Palace and I am aware that there is intense rivalry between the two teams. I have often enjoyed, from the metaphorical sidelines, many enjoyable bants between the fans of those two teams, especially when Paul DeWinter is around.
Indeed, as I understand it, there is intense speculation as to whether representatives of the two species (eagles and seagulls) might be observed cross-fertilizing. I’m no ornithologist, but eagles are from the order of Accipitriformes (birds of prey), whereas seagulls are from the order of Charadriiformes, a diverse order which includes waders and auks as well as gulls, so I think it highly unlikely that those two species would even attempt cross-breeding. Certainly not visibly. But I digress.
So did Paul and I go to Crystal Palace to do something other than watch a football match? Perhaps we went to one of those open air concerts I remember my parents taking me to at Crystal Palace Bowl. Handel’s Water Music, Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik…that sort of thing. But I doubt if those concerts would have been Paul’s bag.
What about Bob Marley…didn’t Bob Marley play “The Bowl” that summer? But the bowl was done weeks before August in 1980 and anyway my diary would certainly have noted (and my memory would have retained) such an event.
No. For sure it would have been football.
I’m guessing it must have been some sort of pre-season friendly between Crystal Palace & Brighton; the intense fan rivalry belying an actual spirit of co-operation between the two clubs at an operational level.
Paul might actually remember what happened and put my feeble memory out of its misery.
Anyway – forty plus years on – thanks again for taking me to the footie in 1980, Paul.
I spent the summer of 1980 trying to run the BBYO office in Hillel House. Rebecca Lowi, our wonderful full-timer, had left. I was on the National Executive, had just finished my ‘A’ Levels and had made no plans for the summer. The arrangement made sense for everyone.
I’ll have plenty to write about that summer in the fullness of time. The diary is rich with clues and the memory still holds some intriguing details. I was 17 going on 18 and that is surely a good age for seminal, memorable stuff.
This piece, though, is very specifically about a hoo-ha that kicked off very early in my time running the BBYO office, concerning that year’s kibbutz groups.
I shall try to extract the relevant scribbles:
Monday 21 July – Not too bad a day. (Kibbutz trouble though).
Tuesday 22 July – Hardish day. More bad reports about the Kibbutzniks
Wednesday 23 July – Hard day. Still worried about Kibbutz lot…
Thursday 24 July – Not too bad a day. (Afek sorted out).
Now the fact of the matter is, I really need some help from some of the people who were on those Kibbutz groups to piece together exactly what happened.
From memory, there were two groups i.e. two Kibbutzim. One Kibbutz seemed fine, whereas the other Kibbutz didn’t seem to recognise that groups of young teenagers from England (I think these were 14 to 17 year old groups) could not be expected to work full adult worker hours in Israeli summer weather.
I received several calls – I think from worried parents – saying their kids were very unhappy and that there did not seem to be equivalence between the Kibbutzim. I was concerned on the first day reports came in but things really kicked off on the second day.
I was 17 years old, I had been a schoolboy three weeks earlier, but it was my job to try intervening and helping to resolve this problem.
Would you want the fate of your kid to be, to any extent, in the hands of this…er…kid?
I remember talking to some sort of shaliach – i.e. a liaison officer from the agency through which the tours had been organised; The Jewish Agency, if I recall correctly. I think he was quite negative about the situation, suggesting that the problem Kibbutz (which I think must have been Afek given my diary note, but possibly was the other one) was not a suitable venue for teenage kibbutz experience tours.
I remember talking to the agency on the telephone in quite animated terms. Those readers who know me well, especially those who knew me well back then, can imagine how arsy I might have sounded. Did the person at the other end of the phone realise that he was talking to a kid? Possibly. That might have made their predicament seem scarier.
I remember saying that I had really angry parents on the phone constantly, some of them lawyers, who were already threatening to sue anything that moved if the problem wasn’t resolved rapidy.
I remember thinking that I was laying it on a bit thick. I also remember thinking that the “ach, so what do you expect us to do?” attitude I was getting back from my initial enquiries was not getting me anywhere. So laying it on thick with a metaphorical, oral trowel was probably the best approach.
If Afek really was the problem site, then the whole incident panned out (from my point of view) within 72 hours. Word soon reached me that conditions had been changed. Did some youngsters switch Kibbutz? – I think that might have happened in some cases. Or were arrangements made for the groups to meet up some more and have shared leisure time?
Anyway, I do recall that the returning youngsters seemed to have had a good experience in the end and that my intervention was perceived to have helped solve the problem.
I’d love to hear from people who were actually on those kibbutz groups and find out what memories you have of those trips.
I’d love to see some photos, if anyone has them to share.
Coincidentally, there was a play at London’s Royal Court that year, Not Quite Jerusalem, about British youngsters going off to experience Kibbutz life and it not being what they expected. Even more coincidentally, it had its initial public airing through rehearsed readings that very weekend, 25 and 26 July.
I didn’t get to see that Royal Court production, but 40 years on…a few days after writing these words, I shall see the play’s first revival at The Finborough Theatre:
Unsurprising, then, that my memories of that 1980 experience came to mind and I was keen to get my thoughts written down before my weak memories morph with the play!
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