Ronnies – Photo with thanks to Graham Gower Collection 1972
On return from Keele University in late June, but before starting work in early July, I sorted myself out, including, by the looks of it, a hair cut:
Thursday 1 July 1982 – had hair brutally severed – went to G[randma] Jenny in afternoon
I suspect I treasured my student mop, while recognising that I needed to look “young professional” for the summer weeks of work.
I never much liked having my hair cut.
My childhood memories from Ronnies in Leigham Avenue, Streatham (depicted above) involve my mother cajoling me into going to the place.
Under normal circumstances, a very patient, younger barber named Oliver would cut my hair while distracting me with the sort of chatter that kept a reluctant kid calm.
But occasionally Oliver would not be available and Ronnie himself would cut my hair. I didn’t take to Ronnie’s methods, which invariably (probably because I was an unwilling participant) seemed painful and not to my aesthetic taste. Mind you, my aesthetic taste at that time would have been to have hair as long as I possibly could get away with and on no account to present myself at any barber shop.
My haircut reluctance probably upset my mother a good deal, whose father, my Grandpa Lew, had been a barber all of his working life.
Grandpa Lew & Grandma Beatrice, both sadly predeceased my birth
My good friend Rohan Candappa had a much happier relationship with his hair and wih his barbers – he even wrote a performance piece about it: The Last Man Cave…
…here’s a cut from a performance of it (did you see what I did there?)
But Rohan’s early visits to the barbers would have been in Thornton Heath and Bromley – not Ronnies of Streatham.
I am pretty sure that Oliver had left Ronnies before my childhood ended. I am not sure whether Ronnies was still there in 1982 (knowledgeable folk on the Streatham history FB group might be able to confirm), but I have a feeling it was still there and that I probably went there for my brutal severing.
I don’t think I’d have made a fuss about it in that post-Keele cut of 1982. I took my revenge in my diary – suspecting that, at some stage in the future – say 40 years hence – I could publish the diary entry and the phrase “brutally severed” would no doubt take off as “a thing”, once and for all to expunge the despised hair-cut from the cultural canon.
I raised this matter with Rohan Candappa the other day, who suggested that Brutus Severus would be an excellent light-hearted name for a modern barbers. It’s probably just as well that Rohan’s days in advertising are now over.
Sadly, I have no pictures from 1982 to depict the exact “before and after” look, but I do have some from two or three years earlier, which probably will give the casual reader a reasonable idea and will give old friends a recognisable glimpse back in time.
Most of my diary notes from that period suggest that I had my head down working at that time. My impressionistic memory tells me that I was quite urgently seeking to switch from halls in Lindsay to a flat in Barnes at that time, although the diary is silent on that matter until a bit later in the month, when I pulled off that switch.
Still, the diary highlights some interesting events at Keele and an eventful trip to London at that time. Forty years on, it’s time for me to share the highlights.
Friday 5 February 1982 – …stayed in most of evening apart from dreadful film, “The Main Event“.
Yup, that’s not my kind of movie. Never mind.
Saturday 6 February 1982 – Went to Newcastle quite late. Did very little work really. Went to Michelle [Epstein]’s party in evening. Sharon & Louise came back after.
Richard van Baaren &/or Benedict Coldstream might well also have been at that party, as I recall Sharon & Louise being part of that crowd. No mention of Anju on this occasion – perhaps she had something else on. We missed Mari Wilson & The Imaginations for that party, so for sure there were other things to do on campus that night. At that stage, I think Michelle was going out with a character named Joel. I don’t think Michelle got together with Neil [Infield] whom she married – I kept in touch with both of them for many years – until much later in our time at Keele.
Sunday 7 February 1982 – Did some work during day. Went to see Carrie & Scanners in afternoon/evening + did some more work
I have one very clear memory from that psycho-thriller movie double bill at Film Soc. I went to see those movies with a young woman whose name completely escapes me. She was a close friend of Katie’s (aka Cathy) – she of my dad’s embarrassing moment a few month’s earlier. Those two were very close pals of each other and I remained a casual pal with both of them for much of my time at Keele
Update: Katie (Cathy) has put me back in touch with Linda (Jones), who was that young woman at Film Soc 40+ years ago.
In fact, we might not even have gone to those movies “as a date” but possibly both ambled along there solo and simply chosen to sit next to each other, as Film Soc folk often did.
*** Spoiler alert for the movie Carrie ***
At the end of Carrie, the following “jump scare” scene occurs:
…at which point, my young woman friend screamed, jumped and pretty much landed in my lap. Fortunately for me she was quite a skinny, light girl, so she did me no immediate damage. Nor did she injure herself with her jump, other than a little injured pride perhaps as she couldn’t stop apologising for her scare-movie-timidity for the rest of the event.
Ever since then, I haven’t been able to think of the movie Carrie, nor even jump scares in movies generally, without thinking about that young woman and her reaction to that wonderful scene. I was reminded of it the other day (as I write in February 2022), almost exactly 40 years on, when a young woman in front of me and Janie at The Royal Court jumped almost out of her skin at the pre-interval coup de theatre in The Glow:
In February 1982, I didn’t think Scanners was in the same league as Carrie.
Monday 8 February 1982 – …went to [Barnes] G3 for dinner…
It was the G3 crowd (which I think included Rana Sen and Kath), who helped me to find my Barnes flat. I have a feeling that the cunning plan that led to my flat room-for-halls room swap a few week’s later might well have been seeded at that very dinner. More on that swap next time.
Tuesday 9 February 1982 – …went to see Gloria in evening – OK-ish.
Again, not my kind of movie I feel.
Wednesday 10 February 1982 – very busy day – tutorials moved etc. J-Soc committee & Internal Affairs – very busy day all in all. Presidential forum – Simon [Jacobs] & Jon [Gorvett] came back for coffee.
I only vaguely remember being on Internal Affairs committee. Spike Humphrey (who was VP Internal that year) had been a leading light on Concourse the previous year, so I suspect that I was “open to Spiky persuasion” when asked. Forty years on, a simple googling of the fellow, still with his Keele nickname, finds him still doing committees. In the fulness of time that link won’t work, but here is a scrape of it in February 2022.
The controversy-ridden presidential election for 82/83 will have been the following day, but I make no mention of the election in my diary, perhaps because I wasn’t really involved with such things at that time. Yes, Truda Smith, who had, until recently, been going our with Jon Gorvett, was one of the candidates. But I didn’t actually support Truda for that election; I was supporting the official Labour candidate, a lovely lass named Jan Phillips, whose candidacy was ill-fated, perhaps because of Truda’s or perhaps because the power-brokers-that-were (e.g. Toby Bourgein) felt that Jan was unelectable. Meanwhile the Tory contingent, mostly under the Machiavellian guidance of a chap named Chris Boden, were looking to disrupt the election process that year. I’ll explain the resulting hoo-ha next time. Seems that I simply voted on the Thursday (not a noteworthy event) and got ready for my rare London trip.
Thursday 11 February 1982 – Lazyish day – did some work. Went to buffet supper in evening – did some work after.
Friday 12 February 1982 – Left for London early afternoon – Grandma Jenny had come for dinner – injured herself – spent evening in Kings casualty
If I recall correctly, the family crisis had already started to unfurl when I arrived at my parents’ house and we all went straight off to Camberwell. Now THAT’s my idea of a Friday night out in London!
Saturday 13 February 1982 – Got up quite early. Did some taping – spoke to people. Mum & dad went out – had relaxing evening in.
Sunday 14 February 1982 – Got up late. Went to Polyanna’s for lunch. Made tapes and spoke to people for rest of the day – quite enjoyable.
I should return at some point to the tapes I was making back then, some of which catalogue the soundtrack of our lives in the early 1980s.
Not sure who dined at Polyanna’s – probably just me and my parents, as I don’t mention anyone else. Polyanna’s was a rare example back then of a proper European-style bistro restaurant on Battersea Rise. It seemed well-decent back then compared with most suburban fare. Now The Humble Grape.
Monday 15 February 1982 – Met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch – > came back to Keele. Went to lousy UGM in evening -> Simon’s for coffee.
The lousiness of the UGM was no doubt linked to the presidential election hoo-ha, about which more next time.
Tuesday 16 February 1982 – Busy day as usual. Worked in evening – got quite a lot done. Didn’t go out at all.
Wednesday 17 February 1982 – Useful day. Spent afternoon in the library. Went to see Andrea [Collins, now Woodhouse] in early evening -> John Cooper Clarke -> Simon & Jon came back – up till quite late.
I am relieved to see several mentions of Simon Jacobs in the diary around this time, as Janie and I are seeing him for lunch tomorrow – Simon doesn’t much like these forty years on pieces unless he gets a few mentions!
I remember the John Cooper Clarke concert very fondly and am really glad I attended it.
Dave Lee’s book The Keele Gigs! has more on the topic of this concert. Dave kindly not only reminded me but sent me a copy of support act, Mightier than Kong, singing their only minor hit, a rather good cover version of Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me.
As for John Cooper Clarke himself, Evidently Chickentown went down extremely well, as did most of his set. Here is an audio of a live performance from around that time (late 1981). Trigger warning: contains…indeed more or less comprises…bad language.
I also recall a Ringroad sketch entitled John Cooper Clarke which was a parody of a JCC poem, each verse of which ended with the line “John Cooper Clarke”, each preceded by an increasingly bizarre simile which rhymed with Clarke. Was it one of yours, Frank Dillon? I might have a copy of it in my “Ringroad cornflake box copies file” at the flat – if so I’ll scan it and upload it in the next week or so.
…a rather sedate week of work with very few socials thrown in: lunch with Caroline (Freeman, now Curtis) on the Tuesday and dinner at Anil (Biltoo)’s place on Saturday evening.
“Lazyish day” on the Saturday would have mostly comprised watching the third day of the Old Trafford Ashes test on the TV, much as “relaxing evenings” on the two preceding days would have included hunkering down in front of the old B&W TV in the tiny spare room to watch the highlights.
My faint memory only recalls that Saturday as “Ian Botham going berserk, scoring runs for fun, all-but winning the match for England, as usual”, because, to the youthful me, that was an unremarkable norm in the summer of 1981. The Ridiculous Ashes podcast provides more detail on that match and that day, in particular the contrasting sloth of Chris Tavaré that day. Scorecard ? – the match panned out like this.
I probably discussed the cricket with Mr Feld that day, as was our wont by that time. Feld might even have been listening to the match on his transistor radio behind the counter, as Day Four of this match was played on the Sunday – an experimental thing for some of the tests that year, I believe.
There is no doubt in my mind that Grandma Anne will have implored Mr Feld to shake the borscht jar, eaten her last plate of borscht that day and that she would have berated Mr Feld with the phrase, “your borscht tastes like vorter today” had the borscht not been up to snuff…which, frankly, it almost certainly wasn’t.
As the diary scribbles attest, Grandma Anne was taken into hospital in the early hours of the following Tuesday morning. Apart from a dinner at Anil’s on the Thursday and dinner with Michael and Pam on Saturday (who were no doubt primarily in the area visiting Grandma), my life was all work and visiting Grandma for a few days.
Here’s what I wrote in the diary for the following few days:
Sunday 23 August 1981 – Went to hospital – bad news – returned – back to hospital – G. Anne died.
Monday 24 August 1981 – Went round sorting out admin side. Met Uncle Michael – returned home.
Tuesday 25 August 1981 – Lavoyah (funeral) & shivah (mourning) today – tiring and gruelling.
Wednesday 26 August 1981 – Back to work – too much of – did little in evening.
Thursday 27 August 1981 – Met Jilly [Black] for lunch. Spoke to several people in evening.
Friday 28 August 1981 – Nothing special for b’day – work as usual – slap up meal in evening.
Saturday 29 August 1981 – Lazy day – went to Grandma Jenny for lunch – shopped a little – lazy evening.
At that time Grandma Jenny still lived in Sandhurst Court on the Acre Lane in Brixton. I’m pretty sure that shopping spree was “down Brixton Market” to gather some bottles and jars of condiments to take back to Keele with me in a few weeks’ time, in order to try and perk up the otherwise rather bland weekend diet.
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.
The meaning of the two bob bit in this context will become apparent a bit later.
It is not the two bob that Mr Sandbrook offered to pay any of us if we spotted him make a spelling mistake on the blackboard. Mercifully, Mr Sandbrook did not similarly threaten to fine us 10p for every spelling mistake we made. Had he done so, he’d be a wealthy man and I (and several 1S colleagues) would each be a fair bit poorer.
My diary is riddled with dreadful spelling. I apologise unequivocally to Mr Sandbrook and to those who tried to teach me English before and after him. In the end, it was WordPerfect, AmiPro and Microsoft Word who drummed better spelling into me by dint of their spellcheckers. Teachers and parents, despite their entreaties, got only so far.
Week 6 to 12 January 1974 – Return To Alleyn’s School On the Thursday
My last few days of Christmas holiday freedom were not very eventful.
Sunday 6 January 1974 Missed [Hebrew] classes, went out for lunch with Grandma Anne. A rather bad day.
Lunch with Grandma Anne was probably at Feld’s restaurant in 1974, as I think Folman’s was gone by then.
I quite often mentioned having a good day or a bad day in those early diaries, without so much as a clue as to what might have made the day deserving of the chosen adjective.
Monday 7 January 1974 went to West End and bought 9? books., lunch at Auntie Francis, a very pleasant day. PS Getting lamp from Heals.
The only picture I can find depicting Auntie Francis is the following one from my parents’ wedding, in which everyone looks a bit miserable. Possibly it was a curated moment of reflection on absent friends and relatives. Or possibly everyone was caught on camera just at that “I’ve overeaten” realization moment.
I absolutely loved my Heals lamp. It was in the shape of a giant incandescent lightbulb. So cool. You’ll just have to believe me.
Tuesday 8 January 1974 – uneventful. Saw Andrew [Andy Levinson] in morning. G Jenny in afternoon.
Wednesday 9 January 1974 – had lunch with Andrew. Saw Mary Poppins in afternoon. She’s Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
Return To School 10 to 22 January 1974
Thursday 10 January 1974 – First day of Lent Term. The t[w]o H’s are on form. No activities so classes early.
Friday 11 January 1974 – Whent [sorry Sir] to Dad after school – lift from U[ncle] Manny.
Saturday 12 January 1974 – School in morning afternoon uneventful.
The two H’s were Keith Handy and Richard Hollingshead, who tended to give me a pretty hard time in those early days at Alleyn’s.
Sunday 13 January 1974 – Miss Aaron [Hebrew class teacher] away. Mr Ragshaw [relief teacher presumably] gave teaser I was right. Lamp is nice.
Monday 14 January 1974 – was robed [presumably I mean to write “robbed”, but I probably, more accurately, “was thieved from”] at school. Mr Fanner [Headmaster] lent 10p. NOTHING ELSE.
I don’t remember the theft incident. I’m sure I would have remembered it had I actually been robbed at school. I suspect my bus fare money “disappeared” from my pocket during PE that morning or games that afternoon.
Still, the incident must have been deemed serious enough for me to have been sent to the headmaster, Mr Fanner, who kindly ponied up a couple of bob to see me home safely. I think I only needed 2p or 4p for that purpose in those days.
I was once actually robbed – i.e. duffed over on the train to school and had my pocket money stolen – but that was certainly not in term two of my first year.
Tuesday 15 January 1974 – repaid Mr Fanner. Biology – no wormery yet. Classes good.
I love the fact that repaying Mr Fanner was a diary-worthy event. I can imagine mum telling me multiple times that it was vitally important that I got that money back to the Headmaster that very day, otherwise he might imagine all sorts of terrible things about me and my family.
I think Bernard Rothbart was our biology teacher that year, making that diary entry especially bitter-sweet thinking about him and Mr Fanner and Mr Tindale (see below) all dying prematurely.
I’m not sure who McG is/was. Answers, please, on a postcard. McG presumably beat me in order to be assessed as a good player.
Thursday 17 January 1974 – Tindale [French master] away. No violin. Classes good. Prepared lecture for tomorrow.
I’ll talk about my diabolical relationship with the violin some other time. Me and the violin did not get on.
Friday 18 January 1974 – Lecture went well. Drama v good. Heard tape of me 7 years ago.
Not sure what the brief for the lecture was, or indeed for drama that day, deserving of v good. But I can work out what “tape of me 7 years ago” must be referring to, which was the simply delightful recording, which I still have, of my dad reading “Hare And Guy Fawkes” to me on 5 November 1967:
Did someone, e.g. Mr Sandbrook, dig out a reel to reel tape recorder and play that recording in class? Or does that diary entry refer to family activity later that day at home? If only I had been more detailed and specific with my diary entries back then.
Saturday 19 January – school morn. Afternoon played with myself. Everything is OK.
Played with myself is not a smutty and/or euphemistic reference. As an only child, I had a variety of games that I had adapted for solo entertainment when needed. I had a version of cricket darts where I would play both batting and bowling roles. I had my own version of Cluedo which enabled me to play solo – goodness knows how – I think that might have come a bit later.
And I had fridge ball, which I have documented on this blog from a December 1974 reference:
Tuesday 22 January 1974 – No fencing. Female art teacher is good. Classes good.
There is my first reference to cricket in the diaries. Possibly my first ever cricket lesson. I like the sound of my diving one-handed catches.
…more like this DALL-E reimagined picture.
As for the female art teacher, I cannot remember anything about her and certainly not her name. Sorry, Miss. Perhaps others can recall her. I remember Mr Brew and I remember Mr Friedlander, but no female comes to mind in that context. Still, she was good, in my eyes, in January 1974.
