Rob Croes / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
In truth, any summer job would have seemed like an anti-climax after the last few weeks of my first summer term at Keele.
Being sent out on audit to a furniture factory in Braintree just brought home the lifestyle contrast.
Strangely, I remember rather liking the commute, as I had acquired a taste for reading on the move during my National BBYO period (1979-1980) and was reading voraciously by the summer of 1981.
Only one night out during the week that first week – the Tuesday – an evening with Jimmy (Bateman), a friend from Alleyn’s School. I have described a similar evening with Jimmy in an earlier piece, from my Easter holiday job:
I say in the diary that I was summoned back to the office from Braintree before the end of the working day on the Friday. My mum had complained to “the authorities” (via my Uncle Michael no doubt) that my lengthy commute was too onerous a duty for her little one. Her motivation for this unwanted intervention was the delay my long commute caused to the family meal. Dad’s drive from the shop to the house only took 10-15 minutes.
I was really irritated when I discovered that mum had intervened, but the die was cast and I was back in the office for the rest of the summer, with only London-based clients in my auditing-orbit. That did enable me to socialise with my friends a bit more, I suppose, which I most certainly did that summer.
On the Saturday I spent much of the day watching Wimbledon finals day. In those days, the whole tournament was a week earlier than it is today and the men’s finals day was on the Saturday.
That Borg/McEnroe final was an absolute classic and I remember it well. I also remember watching the subsequent doubles matches too. In those days, my mum was keen to watch and probably watched much of it with me.
Below is David Irvine’s take on it all from The Guardian on the following Monday.
Wimbledon Finals Day 4 July 1981 Reviewed In Guardian 06 Jul 1981, Mon The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
I also mention taping charts and Paul (Deacon – also a friend from Alleyn’s) visiting in the evening. There’ll be some more playlists to follow in the fulness of time, but for now I shall sign off this piece, exactly forty years on.