Tag: Caroline Freeman

FoodCycle, GoodSAM, The Samaritans, 1981 Keele/BBYO Redux & Being Boilered, This Is Lockdown 3.0, 20 February 2021

With thanks to Rachelle Gryn Brettler for snapping us in Rossmore Road, preparing to do our FoodCycle run on a wet winter’s day

We don’t get out much in Lockdown 3.0, other than to buy food and do our charity work.

That is giving me a chance to crack on with my retro-blogging; I’m working through 1995 & 1996 to cover the Ged & Daisy (Ian & Janie) “25 years ago” story. I’m needing to give more thought, though, to the formerly less well-documented, “40 years on” story of my early days at Keele University.

Strangely, 1981 and 2021 seem to have collided, forty years on.

I wrote last summer about my joy at being asked to make our FoodCycle collections from St Paul’s in Rossmore Road…

FoodCycle’s Spiritual Home In Rossmore Road & Other Tales, 24 June 2020

…mentioning the superb tapes Graham Greenglass used to make for me, including quirky numbers such as Rossmore Road by Barry Andrews. I still hum it or sing it more often than not when Daisy and I do FoodCycle from there:

Dreamy use of sax and double bass on that track.

Last week, I wrote up the very weekend during which several visitors descended on Keele and Graham presented me with a few cassettes, including that very track. The piece below is a thumping good read, even if you weren’t there, including an excellent undergraduate recipe for spaghetti bollock-knees:

The Best Pot I Had In Five Years At Keele, i.e. The First Weekend I Tried Cooking In The F Block Lindsay Kitchen, 11 to 15 February 1981

On Wednesday, before Daisy and I did our FoodCycle run, I did an NHS Responder gig to collect a prescription. Strangely the prescription was to be collected at the Tesco Hoover Factory in Greenford. Strange, because also on that little collection of quirky recordings given to me in February 1981 was the song Hoover Factory by Elvis Costello:

So, by some strange quirk of fate, forty years after being given recordings of those two rather obscure (but wonderful) recordings about lesser-known places in West London, I found myself doing charity gigs from those two very places.

I have already written up the ear worm I got from Hoover Factory a few months after first hearing the song:

Uncle Manny’s Funeral & The Hoover Factory, 15 May 1981

But the early 1980s connection this week does not stop there.

While I have been cracking on with the NHS Responder/GoodSAM app as well as FoodCycle, Daisy has been training to become a Samaritan and this week moved on from being a course trainee to becoming a mentee (i.e. doing real sessions with real calls under the supervision of a mentor).

Towards the end of her course, Daisy had been waiting with a little trepidation to find out who her mentor might be. Mentors work closely with their mentees for a few weeks. She knew that it might be one of her course trainers or possibly someone she hadn’t encountered before.

A couple of weeks ago Janie announced that her mentoring instructions had come through and her mentor was a new name to her: Alison Shindler.

GED: Oh, yes, I know Alison Shindler.

DAISY: What do you mean?

GED: She was a leading light in BBYO towards the end of my time there.

DAISY: Might not be the same person…

GED: …Ealing BBYO – bet it is!

Of course it is.

What a pleasant surprise.

Less of a surprise though, after their first session together, is that Alison & Daisy seem to be getting along really well. I’m confident that the mentoring partnership should be a very good one.

Meanwhile Alison has furnished me with a photo from so far back in the day, the biggest surprise is that we were in colour back then:

With thanks to Alison Shindler for this photo

That’s a c17-year-old me turning around, next to me Simon Jacobs who was central to my “going to Keele” story and part of the “cooking weekend”. In the red scarf I thought was Jilly Black (who has remained friends with me, Daisy and Alison throughout those decades – in fact it is a little surprising we haven’t overlapped before now )…but it turns out to be Emma Cohen disguised as Jilly. Opposite Simon is Lauren Sterling plus, slightly upstaged by Simon’s head, Caroline Curtis (then Freeman) who visited me and Simon at Keele the February 1981 weekend following the “cooking” one.

A Short Visit From Caroline To See Me And Simon At Keele, 20 to 22 February 1981

It’s all too weird, in a good way.

But now, after all that excitement, Daisy and I are in temporary exile at the flat. The replacement of the Noddyland boiler has over-run by a day, making Daisy right and me wrong, as usual.

Stock boiler image: neither the actual old nor the actual new boiler

I’ve been grasping for a quirky early 1980s musical connection for a boiler replacement. So my earworm for the tail end of this tale is by that early 1980s mainstay, The Human League – Being Boiled:

Dinner At Caroline & Alan’s Place, 19 January 2019

It had been a while since we had seen Caroline and Alan…

…in fact, Ogblog is a helpful resource to answer such questions as, “when did we last see Caroline and Alan socially?”:

Dinner In Noddyland With Caroline and Alan Curtis, 21 January 2017, Followed By A Lazy Sunday, 22 January 2017

Ah, so it was the equivalent Saturday two years ago – that’s a bit uncanny.

This time we enjoyed lavish hospitality at Caroline and Alan’s place. We also enjoyed son Alex’s company for much of the evening. Alex is now a strapping young man, which was somewhat predictable when you think about it, but always comes as a bit of a shock when you haven’t seen a youngster for a few years.

I tried to avoid saying, “haven’t you grown since I last saw you”, but that phrase came out anyway – at least half in jest.

Yummy nibbles before dinner with a very jolly Viognier. Caroline tried to assess which of the nibbles we liked best, but we were wise to the risk of saying, e.g. “the salmon ones”, because that would have enabled Caroline to say, “oh, so what’s wrong with the asparagus ones and the avocado ones?”. Janie and I are old hands at that game, even when the host/hostess isn’t actually playing it. Then a yummy main meal of:

  • red pepper soup;
  • herb-crusted lamb rack with poshed-up rice and roasted vegetables;
  • chocolate tart and fruit cocktail.

A very tasty Châteauneuf-du-Pape complemented the main meal, especially the lamb.

Conversation naturally covered the biggest issues of the moment – i.e. cricket, with me, Alan and Alex all in the same room. We also discussed politics and world affairs to some extent – without any irony whatsoever, of course.

Alex stuck around for a higher proportion of the evening than was necessary for good manners, but when he returned downstairs having gone upstairs after dinner to watch a movie, Janie and I both realised that the time had flown, it was getting really late and that we were in danger of outstaying even the warmest welcome.

We also realised that we had been so busy discussing anything other than our trip to Japan that we hadn’t even started on that subject. So we covered that one briefly and promised to send Caroline and Alan some links to the blog on Japan – this one is probably best for a laugh and to pick up some other fine links:

Japan Reflections: I Need To Write About Toilets In Japan, 7 November 2018

Or, if photos are more their thing, here is a link to one of the several albums of pics:

But back to London in January – what else to say? – we’d had a very enjoyable evening – thank you Caroline and Alan.

Ossobuco At Janie’s Place, 16 August 1992

Ossobuco – picture by Stu Spivack via Wikipedia Commons

Since I published my “25th anniversary of meeting Janie” piece last week, I have had, literally, several people ask me how Janie and I ever got it together after she refused to give me her telephone number the first time we met.

The answer, of course, is “ossobuco”.

It happened like this.

After Janie’s refusal to give me her telephone number, I simply assumed that she wasn’t interested at all and I got on with my next week. My next week looked like this.

My guess is that I was actually out every evening that week apart from the Monday – I probably had impromptu drinks/food with work colleagues Thursday and Friday evening.

Saturday evening I can see was a dinner with Caroline at the Pavilion in Poland Street. This will have been her birthday bash on the eve of that landmark day. (Happy birthday, Caroline, if by chance you read this piece on the day I post it).

I noticed that The Pavilion is still there and still run by Vasco & Piero – click here for their website (which for sure wasn’t there in 1992).

I have had an exchange of messages with Caroline to establish what happened – I’m sure there were quite a few of us there at The Pavilion that evening. She replies:

I have to say that with the help of your diary your memory is much better than mine. The restaurant is in fact exactly the same now as then. It was a local from when I was working at the Burton group. Vasco and Piero ran it all those years ago. The food was always excellent. The decor was very pink! It’s amazing how quickly 25 years go.

I’m not sure what I ate at the Pavilion but I am sure that it was an Italian dish but not ossobuco.

The other thing I remember clearly, although the diary is silent on this matter, is that I went out for an impromptu lunch on the Sunday with Annalisa. We went to Lee Fook on Westbourne Grove, a Chinese restaurant near my flat which was very much one of my favourites at the time. The excellent chef there was named Ringo, I remember that wonderful fact too.

The restaurant is, sadly, long gone now, but there is an Evening Standard review of that place from the late 1990s on-line – click here.

If that review ever bites the dust on the ES site, I’ve saved the Wayback machine the trouble on this one by scraping it here.

In short, by mid-afternoon I had eaten my fill that weekend and ambled home after lunch.

The telephone was ringing off the hook as I walked through the door.

I should point out, at this juncture, that, in those days, I had no answering machine for my phone. No cellphone either. Just the one, old-fashioned telephone.

“At bloody last”, said a female voice.

“Hello”, I said, “who’s calling?”

“It’s Janie, we met at Kim’s party last week.”

“Oh, hello”, I said, intrigued.

“You are impossible to get hold of”, said Janie, “I have tried to call you loads of times. Your answering machine isn’t switched on.”

“I don’t have an answering machine”, I said, while thinking to myself that if she had given me her telephone number in the first place she might have spared herself these difficulties.

“I have been out rather a lot this week”, I continued, “in fact, if I sound a little out of breath, it’s because I have just been out to lunch and heard the phone ringing as I came up the stairs.”

“Oh, that’s a bummer,” said Janie, “I was going to invite you over for ossobuco with Kim and Micky this evening, but if you have already eaten you obviously don’t want…”

“…no, hold on a moment”, I persevered, “I love ossobuco and I’d very much like to join you, Kim and Micky for dinner. But if I don’t eat a vast quantity of food, you’ll know the reason why. Is that a deal?”

“OK”, said Janie.

“You’ll have to give me your address and telephone number now”, I said, trying hard not to sound triumphal about it.

“I realise that”, said Janie.

It seems that Janie and Kim had done some scheming since the telephone number request rejection incident the week before. I subsequently discovered that Kim had given Janie an “are you determined to be single for the rest of your life?” lecture, once Kim had found out what had happened.

Given that the only way to resolve the matter was now for Janie to phone me, they came up with this “chaperoned Sunday evening meal at Janie’s place” idea. The only problem with that grand scheme was that Janie had tried and failed many times to phone me; basically because I wasn’t at home much and only took telephone messages through work in those days.

But all’s well that ends well.

The evening was a great success. I didn’t have room for seconds but I did discover that Janie can cook a mean ossobuco. Even to this day, we think of slow cooked shin of veal (not always done ossobuco style but all variants qualify in our book) as “our dish”.

Just feast your eyes on it again. Yum.

Osso Bucco – picture by Stu Spivack via Wikipedia Commons

Reduced To Tears By My First Consultancy Assignment, 27 January 1989

No-one said it was going to be easy, switching from freshly qualified Chartered Accountant to hot shot management consultant as soon as I qualified.

But there was one low point towards the end of my first consultancy assignment for Binder Hamlyn, trying to resolve a seemingly irreconcilable problem for Save The Children Fund (SCF), thus named back then, when I spread all of my hand-written notes and attempted spaghetti-looking work flow and data flow diagrams all over the living room of my little then-rented flat in Clanricarde Gardens…

…and burst into tears.

Quite a lengthy burst if I remember correctly. Four minutes, possibly, which you might choose to time by listening to the following while reading on:

Why hadn’t I listened to the recruitment agent who said that I needed a lot more work experience before I’d be ready for management consultancy?

Why didn’t I walk out of the job on day one, when I learnt that I had been recruited as part of a turf war and that the person who was now to be my boss, Michael Mainelli, had been angered by other partners recruiting me while Michael was away on a short break?

And of all the tough “sink or swim” assignments Michael might have allocated me to at the very start of this seemingly-soon-to-be-foreshortened career, why did it have to be something my heart really was in – a project that might, if successful, substantially help SCF, one of the most important charities in the world?

Of course, you realise, the story has a happy enough ending. Michael and I are still working together thirty years later (as I write in January 2019). I also met Ian Theodoreson, then a young, up-and-coming Finance Director at SCF. Ian continued to be a client on and off throughout the decades and we have remained in touch even since he gave up on major charity roles – e.g. this get together last year.

Two Sweltering Days At Lord’s, The First With Ian Theodoreson, The Second With Rohan Candappa – Part One: With Ian T, 23 July 2018

Yes, somehow the project did turn out to be a success. After the tears, I realised that I needed to focus the report on the evidence-based conclusions I had reached and the single bright idea I had come up with in the several weeks I had spent with SCF.

Little did I know back then that:

  • having even one bright idea during a 20 day assignment is a significant success if that idea is helpful/valuable enough and finds enough favour to be implemented;
  • the seemingly irreconcilable problem I encountered at SCF was an example of a perennial problem in all organisations that have potentially complex relationships with their customers, members or donors. If you can even partially solve or make progress despite that “natural fault line”, you’ve done well;
  • this single assignment would prove to be career-defining for me in so many ways. In part because it cemented my place at Binder Hamlyn working with Michael as well as other partners. In part because I still spend much of my working time with charities and membership organisations (albeit looking at wider issues). In part because many of the things I learnt on that challenging assignment stood me in good stead for later challenges in the subsequent decades.

Ogblog is primarily a “life” retroblog, not a “work” one, so this piece is a rarity – perhaps even a one-off – being more work than life. But this period was such a major change for me, not least in shifting my work-life balance substantially towards work for several decades, that I feel bound to write it up. I also spotted some intriguing notes on the diary pages for those first few weeks of January 1989.

Compared with late 1988, this is almost all work, not much life.
That meeting with Ian Theodoreson on 10 January will have been my first formal meeting with Ian and possibly even the first time I met him at all, although we might have had a “canteen chat” in Mary Datchelor House (the SCF offices back then) before we met formally. I was making a point of being visible in the canteen for informal chats throughout the project; a technique I had leaned from my Student Union sabbatical experience just a few years earlier. I also note that I had spelt Ian’s surname incorrectly back in 1989, a mistake I was to repeat (differently) on the acknowledgements page of the hard cover edition of Price of Fish. Sorry, again, Ian.
Again, lots of work, not all that much life there. A second meeting with Ian, now mis-spelling his name in the same way as The Price of Fish error – at least some sort of consistency set in. Hannah and Peter on the Thursday evening are my neighbours from downstairs. Peter is still downstairs – Hannah (Peter’s mum) returned to Germany some years ago and is spending her dotage there. I cannot remember the evening of 22 January 1989 with Caroline – I’ll guess that I cooked Caroline dinner at Clanricarde given the time and lack of other information in the diary. Caroline has reciprocated – most recently at the time of writing a week or so ago!
The amusing entry on this page is the morning of 25 January. Someone suggested that I visit Barnardo’s by way of comparison with SCF. I’m not sure who provided the above assistance for my journey, but it reads:

Barkingside St. [Station] Church – beside it c60s US “Prison”

Anyone who has visited the Barnardo’s campus would recognise that “1960s US Prison” description and it should make them smile. It would be ironic if it had been Ian Theodoreson who provided that helpful description for my journey, as he subsequently spent many years as Director of Corporate Services there and I did several assignments at that Barnardo’s campus, in the late 1990s and early years of this century.

Please also note “G Jenny” in small writing for 26th evening and then again on the Saturday afternoon. I know that I deferred my visit to Grandma Jenny 26th because I had a report deadline looming…

…in fact the “evening of tears” might have been 26th not 27th…

…but I also know that the report deadline was really for the Monday morning, when I needed to go into the office with the report ready for review. So I also remember postponing Grandma Jenny again on the Saturday, while dinner with Jilly I think went ahead after I finished my draft report on the Saturday.

I put Grandma Jenny back into the book for the following Tuesday and I’m sure I will have gone that evening. She forgave me for the multiple rescheduling I’m sure, especially when she learnt that I was doing work for a charity in which she believed strongly. I also remember her imparting the following worldly advice to me several times during that era:

all work and no joy makes Jack a dull boy.

Well of course there was joy as well as work during those “hard yards” weeks and months at the start of my consultancy career. But I don’t suppose there was much joy inside my tears on that evening, when I thought it was all going horribly wrong.

Maybe I even cried for the six-and-a-half minutes it takes to listen to this Dowland-ish Stevie Wonder song.

Left My Job At Newman Harris, Moved To Clanricarde Gardens And Started Work For Binder Hamlyn Management Consultants, 18 November to 1 December 1988

The end of 1988 was a momentous time for me. I’ll have quite a lot to write about those weeks on Ogblog.

The brace of events I am recalling in this piece, reflecting briefly on that time thirty years later, are the core happenings. I changed job and moved house within the space of a couple of weeks.

Clanricarde Gardens

A few doors down, picture linked from (and clickable to) Philip Wilkinson’s wonderful blog piece about our street

There is a superb blog piece about our street by Philip Wilkinson – click here.

I shall write up my flat hunting experience on a separate piece in the coming weeks. Suffice it to say here that my Clanricarde Gardens flat was the first place I saw and that I liked it straight away.

It was only the fact that I had nothing with which to compare it that kept me flat hunting for several more days. I have some interesting yarns to tell about some of the other places I saw. I asked to take a second look at Clanricarde Gardens on the Thursday and took Bobbie Scully with me to help me decide. “What are you waiting for? Just take it,” is a reasonable paraphrase of her sound judgement.

By way of context, I should explain that I was renting, not buying in late 1988. Some friends at that time thought I was bonkers by not jumping on the home ownership bandwagon “before it is too late”. But then some friends suffered some serious negative equity for several years after jumping on that bandwagon when it peaked back then.

Unusually, when I decided it was time for me to buy, in 1999, it was also an opportune time for the owners to sell, so I was able to buy the flat I had been renting for over 10 years. Try before you buy.

From Newman Harris To Binder Hamlyn Management Consultants (BHMC)

Again, I shall write more in separate pieces about these events over the coming weeks.

With the benefit of hindsight, taking just eight working days off between jobs with a view to:

  • finding a flat to rent;
  • moving into that flat;
  • learning to drive;
  • seeing friends and family in relatively large quantity;
  • going to plenty of theatre & stuff;
  • doing exam marking for Financial Training to help pay for all that…

…was a little ambitious, to say the least.

I rather like my only diary note on the day I started at BHMC:

Started at BHMC today – drink at lunchtime

Frankly, I probably needed a drink after that fortnight. But what a very 1980’s tradition for a new joiner at a City firm – the drink at lunchtime.

At Binder Hamlyn (BDOC) c1992

BHMC soon changed its name to BDO Consulting (BDOC). Five-and-a-half years after I joined the firm, Binder Hamlyn “merged” with Arthur Andersen (AA) and I concluded that the latter firm would not like my hairstyle. Michael Mainelli, who had not recruited me to BHMC but with whom I was mostly working by then, felt similarly about not wanting to persevere in Andersens, although not for hairstyle reasons…

…and thus Z/Yen was born.

I don’t remember meeting Michael on that first day or two at Binders – my memory of meeting him really starts at the Christmas lunch on 14 December. But Michael is pretty sure that he at the very least spent a few minutes saying “hi & bye” to me (probably to check that I didn’t have two heads or something) before packing me off the following week on a tough assignment with Save The Children Fund…from which the rest is history.

Reflecting On Those Weeks And Events

Further, when I look at my diaries and see what else I did during those momentous weeks, I still see many familiar names and activities.

Here are just two examples.

I went to Jacquie and Len’s place for dinner with Caroline on 30 November 1988. Janie and I are going to dinner at Jacquie’s tonight (1 December 2018) and only a couple of days ago, Caroline got in touch to arrange a get together.

27 November 1988, had John, Mandy, Ali, Valerie and Bobbie to lunch

I’m still in touch with most of them and am seeing John on Monday.

Those two momentous things I did in late 1988 have in essence been sustained for thirty years and still going. Also many of the people who were central to my being back then are still there too.

So I shall soon write up the many and various events of those frantic weeks.

Some of the tales will be about characters who entered my life only fleetingly – such as Larry the Drummer, the larger-than-life character I met through the Streatham Hill Driving School people, who became Larry the Man With A Van to help me move.

But some stories will benefit from the reflections of those people with whom I am still very much in touch.

And although, if I recall correctly, Michael Mainelli and I didn’t actually meet until I had been at the firm for a couple of weeks…

…1 December 1988 was, technically speaking, the date we started working together. So happy thirtieth anniversary, Michael.

Pearl factory, Wuxi, China

Last Night In Woodfield And First Night In Clanricarde, 29 & 30 November 1988

That Tuesday, 29 November, had been an action packed day, as described in the piece linked here and below…

Moving All My Stuff To Clanricarde Gardens With Larry The Drummer, 29 November 1988

…yet still I cooked dinner that evening for six of us: me, Bobbie, Vivian Robinson, Andrew (her beau), Neil Infield and Michelle Epstein (soon to be Infield). All of those people were living in the vicinity of Woodfield Avenue at that time, so I guess it was a sort-of goodbye to friends in that neighbourhood.

No idea what I cooked – I hope for my own sake that I tried to keep it simple – I probably did. If anyone who was there can remember details of that particular evening, I’d love to hear about it from someone else’s perspective.

The Wednesday was also a pretty packed day. Here’s my page of notes for that day.

That page doesn’t even mention the two driving lessons – one at 9:00, the other at 11:00.

Nor does it mention the ordering of a washing machine (perhaps I had already done that the previous day, as Pratts (Streatham’s John Lewis store) was specifically mentioned that day. I wrote copious notes, too detailed even for me and Ogblog, listing various makes, specs and prices of washing machine. I settled on Zanussi and the thing was delivered to Clanricarde Gardens on the Saturday.

A weird quirk of that era; a purportedly fully-furnished flat did not come with a washing machine and I recall that Tony Shaw said at that time that he was happy for me to have one there but that I would have to pay for it and own it. These days, unfurnished flats are the thing but a washing machine is seen as a standard utility item in an unfurnished flat.

I have also retained my shopping list from that Wednesday, which reads like something The Flight Of The Conchords might include in one of their lyrics. Cereal, coffee and wine – what else does a bachelor flat need?:

That page of notes also includes a note of Jackie and Len’s address for that evening (redacted in green on the above picture) plus a note to remind myself to take my Newman Harris P45 with me for Binders the next morning – good thinking.

I know I also left a chirpy note for mum and dad to find when they returned from their holiday on 6th December. Words to the effect of:

Have moved out, as promised.

If you are lucky, I’ll call and let you know where I’ve gone. Hope you had a great holiday.

Lots of love

Sonny Boy.

So, then on to dinner at Jacquie and Len’s place, joined by Caroline Freeman. How can I be so sure? Here”s the diary page:

I wonder whether Caroline remembers this particular evening? I cannot remember what we had for dinner but I don’t think it would have been a herring fest. More likely poultry was involved – for sure it will have been a splendid meal whatever we ate. This much later picture does show the actual table, although not the precise contents:

Briegal table, minimally laden when the photo was taken, thanks to Hils for the photo

One thing I do remember about that evening is that Len, on the matter of me having qualified as a Chartered Accountant and then immediately having moved away from that profession (his), seemed decidedly less perturbed than some. I remember him saying repeatedly:

The world is your lobster. Not just your oyster. Your lobster.

I was watching very little television by that time, so it was many years later that I discovered that this cute phrase was not Len’s own, but is an Arthur Daleyism. Not a very kosher metaphor, that oyster/lobster one. But “the world is your pickled herring” just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?:

A Two Week Break After Summer Job, Then Return To Keele, Late September To Early October 1983

Keele Beckoning

After finishing my 1983 summer job with a swathe of nights out…

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

…the diary suggests that I spent a couple of weeks seeing friends, buying records and making tapes – the perfect preparation for the 1983/84 academic year that would be my P3 year (i.e. fourth year at Keele, third and final year of undergraduate studies).

It seems I was enjoying myself so much I even got my days mixed up in the diary:

Monday 26 September 1983 – …Paul [Deacon] came over for dinner _> Radio Kings in evening – click here for article on that event.

Wednesday 28 September 1983 – …went out for dinner with Jilly – came back here [Woodfield Avenue] after – late night

Thursday 29 September 1983 – Went to Brixton with Jilly in morning – lazyish afternoon – Andrew [Andy Levinson] came over late afternoon – dinner – wine bar

Frankly I wouldn’t have remembered that Streatham Hill had such a thing as a wine bar in those days. Perhaps it was new and we wanted to try it. I vaguely remember one in the 1980s on Sternhold Avenue – perhaps that was the one.

Saturday 1 October 1983 – went to visit Marianne [Gilmour] – pleasant lazy evening

Sunday 2 October 1983 – went to Makro with Dad in morning. Wendy [Robbins] came over in afternoon

My “business ” at Makro on that occasion was probably limited to a few record albums at discounted prices (see link to my October 1983 album purchase list) and some stationery for the forthcoming academic year. Goodness only knows what Dad wanted there.

Monday 3 October 1983 …went up West & to R&T today…

R&T meant “Record & Tape Exchange” as it was then named.

I bought lots of albums on that visit – the use of a different colour of ink listing them on my log tells me exactly which ones, so I have listed them in a separate article – click here or below.

Albums I Bought In Early October 1983 Ahead Of My Return To Keele

6 October 1983 – went to shop with Dad in morning – went to office – met Caroline for lunch

I suspect I helped Dad prepare his books that morning, hence stopping at the office (Newman Harris) on my way to lunch. Efficient, I was, even back then.

7 October 1983 – …went to G Jenny’s in afternoon. Paul came over in evening.

8 October 1983 – Busy day packing etc. taping too – getting ready to come back to keele

9 October 1983 – Left early – came to Keele lunched at Post House – unpacked some – went to Union – quite dull

I can only imagine that this meant that Dad drove me up on this occasion, as I cannot imagine why else I’d have eaten at a roadside convenience place such as The Post House. Of course nothing much up at Keele would have been open on a Sunday. In the circumstances, The Sneyd would not have been a diplomatic choice.

I love my comment that the Union was quite dull – yet again, in my enthusiasm, I had come back to Keele ahead of the excitement. But there was plenty of fun, as well as hard work, to come in that Autumn 1983 term. watch this space.

Keele Students’ Union – only dull when there is no-one around.

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

Centre Point Snooker Hall – This Picture “Borrowed” from the Crossrail Learning Legacy

My last few weeks of work that summer were a busy time. I was mostly working on Laurie Krieger’s various enterprises during the second half of that summer, which included Price Buster Records in Rupert Street (the one bit of the Harlequin Records empire he retained), Leisureplay (which was an arcade games business) and Centre Point Snooker Hall (depicted above), which at that time he was expanding also to include a gym venture, one within Centre point and the other out east (Barking if I remember correctly).

I spent most of my time for him pulling together various accounting records at the empire’s nerve centre – a modest former retail unit in Kenton. The team there was governed by a wonderful administrator named Marge who had a trusty part-time assistant (Jean I think), occasionally interrupted by Laurie’s former majordomo Mossy (Mr Moss) who ran Leisureplay and the occasional visit from Laurie himself.

You’re a young man. What do you think of this idea…

…he’d say, bouncing some new commercial idea off me. I usually didn’t much fancy the offer, but would always caveat my answers by saying that I’m probably not his target audience.

…yes…alright, but do you think young people in general will go for that?

…Laurie would often persist. He was a relentless entrepreneur.

The previous summer I had endeared myself to Marge and the team at Kenton by proving to be more than useful at the daily quiz on Radio London, which seemed to please them no end:

Winner, Winner, Radio London Pop Quiz Winner, Seven Singles – Summer 1982

Anyway, we’re here to talk about the tail end of the 1983 summer in this piece, so here are the diary pages and some comments/links to explain the interesting bits

Wednesday 31 August…Marianne [Gilmour’s] for dinner

Thursday 1 September…met Jilly [Black] went on to proms..

My First Night At the Proms: Me, Jilly & Claudio, 1 September 1983

Sunday 4 September 1983…[Uncle] Michael for lunch [he’d have visited my grandparents’ graves as was traditional at that time of year]…Paul [Deacon] came over later.

Friday 9 September 1983 – …helped Mum – Jacquie, Len & Mark [Briegal], Michael & Pam [Harris] came over for dinner – v nice

Sunday 11 September 1983 – Stanley & Doreen [Benjamin] came over for lunch – went over to Wendy’s [Robbins] in evening.

Basically the Jewish holidays Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur dominated these weeks.

Monday 12 September 1983 – Busy day Kenton – went out with Caroline in evening.

Tuesday 13 September 1983 – Finished P/B [Price Buster] today – went to office. Took mum and dad to The Rivals in eve.

The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Olivier Theatre, 13 September 1983

Friday 16 September 1983 – busy day of work – lunch with Ashley [Michaels]…

Saturday 17 September 1983 – Yom Kippur – broke fast with G Jenny & Uncle Louis [Barst]…

Sunday 18 September 1983 – Nice lunch – Wendy came over in afternoon…

Tuesday 20 September 1983 …went to Annalisa [de Mercur’s] for lunch – went out with Jilly in eve – Pastels [was that a wine bar or something?] -> Joy King Lau [a favourite Chinese restaurant near Leicester Square]

Wednesday 21 September 1983 …worked late – boozing with Mike [King] till late

Thursday 22 September 1983 Felt grotty today! [see worked late / boozing till late the day before – what did you expect, kid?] Went to lunch late with [Sandy] Yap…cold coming on [this all reads a bit self-inflicted to my older eyes forty years later]

Friday 23 September 1983 – Last day. Went Stockpot lunch Yap – after work Phoenix -> Mayflower for feast – v nice.

Mayflower – was excellent – now closed – image “borrowed” from Hungry Onion.

Either I was now seen as part of the team or the gang wanted to make absolutely sure I was gone. You, dear reader, can decide.

Saturday 24 September 1983 …went to Caroline [Freeman’s…now Curtis] party – stayed at Simon’s [Jacobs]…

Sunday 25 September 1983…left about midday. Had Chinese meal at home…

The Chinese meal at home was probably from Mrs Wong. Not quite the same ass Mayflower feast, but it would have been good enough. Anyway, 40 years later, Mrs Wong is still there…

…well, the restaurant is, possibly not the middle-aged woman who ran the place abck then…

…whereas Mayflower is gone.

Image “borrowed” from All In London

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.

Ten Days In London For Passover & Easter 1982

There was a lot of taping involved, apparently.

Saturday’s “Paul came round in the evening” will be Paul Deacon. Some notion of music/tape swapping or at least an exchange of views on the topic of ,usic will have been high on the agenda.

“Bushey for the day” on the Sunday will have been multiple stone-settings at the Jewish cemetery to mark the end of mourning for Uncle Manny’s death…

Uncle Manny’s Funeral & The Hoover Factory, 15 May 1981

…and that of Grandma Anne:

Twenty Days Of Summer Holiday Work During Which Grandma Anne Died, 10 to 29 August 1981

I vaguely recall the family taking refuge between ceremonies in a ghastly hostelry on the side of the A41 near to the Bushey Cemetery. “Yuk” indeed.

Spending some time with Wendy (Robbins) that evening will have been respite for sure, although my sense of humour that evening probably didn’t extend to the events of the day.

Tuesday evening with Anil Biltoo at The Fox On the Hill and an overnight stay at the Biltoo house will also have been fun.

The word “lazy” appears a lot in my diary for that Easter break.

Wednesday 7 April 1982 …Seder in evening with Louis & Marie [Barst], G[randma] Jenny & [Lionel & Dinah] Aarons.

Seder is the traditional Passover feast and ceremony. In truth I don’t recall that particular Seder well. Dad will have tried to “speed trial” his way through the prayers and story-telling bits. We would have taken our time over the singing, however, not least because Marie was a proper singer (who taught and sang with the BBC Choir) which made the singing worth hearing when she was around. We latterly went to communal Seders in Kingston with Louis, Marie and Grandma Jenny – more on those in subsequent pieces I’m sure.

I should have some latter pictures of Louis and Marie but the one below of Louis at Jenny & Grandpa Lew’s wedding will have to do for now.

Grandma Jenny left, Louis Barst right – 1930s.

Lunch with Caroline [ then Freeman, now Curtis] and on to RTE (Record & Tape Exchange) on the Thursday was a very “me” thing to do in the University holidays.

Yup – that visit to RTE led to more laziness, more taping and another visit from Paul.

On my return to Keele it seems I was lazy no more – instead I festered. I’ll pick up on what festering might have been about in my next Keele episode.