Although sparse and almost illegible, the notes in my diary from that week bring back a flood of memories.
Here is the page for that week in its glorious technicolour sparseness and illegibility:
I was going through a “coloured tempo pen” phase at that time. I think the Saturday entry was written in invisible ink, which I then remedied with the “antidote” stuff that makes invisible ink visible. That is not conventional diarist method, I now realise, but that idea must have made sense to me at the time…probably because I had bought invisible ink from the joke shop that week.
Let me start deciphering diary entries:
Sunday, 15 December 1974 – Hanukkah party at classes. Dined at Feld’s. [Visited] Jacksons to teach backgammon. TV Planet of the Apes v good
Monday, 16 December 1974 – Played at Andrew’s all day. TV Likely Lads, Waltons and Carry On Christmas very good indeed.
Aficionados of Motown music will be disappointed to learn that I did not visit nor teach backgammon to The Jackson Five.
The Jacksons, in this instance, were Doreen Benjamin’s parents. Doreen’s mum, Jessie Jackson…yes, I know…was a very close friend of Grandma Jenny and Doreen was a very close friend of mum’s.
Tuesday, 17 December 1974 – Andrew and I went to “Bossils”? and Hamleys. Classes v good. Mum and dad went to [Angela and John’s] wedding. Fooled all with joke shop hot sweets.
With Hanukkah well before Christmas that year, I suspect that I had already received some seasonal gift money, as had Andy Levinson no doubt, so we were both in a position to treat ourselves on a big day out during the school holidays.
We probably knew where to go (e.g. Hamleys) because of a tradition we were lucky enough to be conjoined in when we were a bit smaller. Mrs Garrett, grandmother of our friend from the street, Bernard Garrett (no, not the Bernard Garrett depicted in the film The Banker), took us up to Hamleys with Bernard a couple of times in the early 1970s as a Christmas treat.
I’m not sure where the joke shop was – I recall visiting Davenports near The British Museum with Andy, but that must have been a different trip I think. I think the source of our joke shop sweets, stinkeroos and invisible ink was a joke shop at the Carnaby end of Soho.
“Fooled all with joke shop sweets” makes me think of the comics we used to read when we were little. I was allowed one a week; my comic of choice was Whizzer and Chips.
I’m sure the conceit that two comics had merged into one made me think I was getting as BOGOF by choosing Whizzer and Chips. Someone else in the street (possibly Andy Levinson) or maybe at Primary School (Alan Cooke?) was more the Beano type, so I would sometimes swap and get to see more than one comic in a week.
I think I had outgrown such comics by the age of 12, but I had clearly not completely outgrown the language I learnt from them. Yaroo!
Wednesday, 18 December 1974 – Dentist in the morning first thing. Essential filling. Andrew in afternoon. “Enhanced”? stinkeroo from the joke shop worked. Went to Fairfield Hall with Paul Deacon – very nice time there.
Mum and dad’s evening at Angela and John’s wedding feast had not been a total success, as I recall. Dad had rather overindulged and mum felt he had embarrassed her. This combination of mum berating and dad hungover was quite clear to me that next morning. Meanwhile I was suffering from my own collywobbles ahead of that trip to the dentist for an “essential filling”.
I have had very few fillings in my lifetime – this might have been my first one or possibly the second.
Our dentist was Harry Wachtel, a gentleman of n Austrian origin, who had been a refugee from the Nazis. He spoke with a thick Germanic accent and did not suffer fools gladly.
I didn’t think that Mr Wachtel had CCTV cameras in his surgery. Yet, a couple of years later, John Schlesinger recreated, in Marathon Man, the scene of that filing, with such exceptional accuracy…I’m now thinking that Harry Wachtel must have filmed that filing event and sent the rushes to Schlesinger.
I cannot remember what Paul Deacon and I went to see at The Fairfield Hall on 18 December 1974. Do you remember, Paul? In any case, many thanks to you, Paul, (or should I say, thanks to your folks) for treating me along with you. My diary suggests that we had a great time.
Thursday, 19 December 1974 – morning Andrews. Lunch at Andrews. Afternoon at home with Andrew -> Classes – TV Mastermind and Xmas Oneupmanship v good.
Friday, 20 December 1974 – Alan [Cooke] here all day – very nice indeed. TV Goodies and the Beanstalk very good. G Anne’s v good got lots of presents.
Saturday, 21 December 1974 – Made a start on model Auntie Pam gave me. TV “something clover v good”?
I’m going to guess that Cookie and I spent a fair part of that day playing the bespoke game we invented with my Hot Wheels car track and a rather motley collection of Timpo Wild West buildings, which we would half-heartedly construct at the end of the Hot Wheels run and then demolish with the Hot Wheels cars.
Maybe you had to be there…or maybe you had to be 10-12 to appreciate this activity, but Alan and I would spend hours at this activity. Hey, Alan – look at those e-bay links – it wouldn’t cost THAT much to recreate the scene. I’m sure Janie would understand and I’m sure we could make space here for yet more clutter.
Sadly, my terrible handwriting, together with the effluxion of time makes the TV element of my log illegible. Happily, BBC Genome comes to the rescue, enabling me to confirm that I rated Doctor In Clover “v good”.