Did The Keele Students’ Union Snooker Room Look Quite This Modern?
After the drama and excitement of the first part of that late May weekend…
…the next few days read quieter and calmer – apart from a few signs of aftershock from the abusive note incident.
Sunday 31 May 1981 – Late rise – did little all day (essay) – Union in evening – reasonably early night.
Monday 1 June 1981 – Union Committee in morning – finished essay in afternoon – UGM in evening – Mark [Bartholomew]’s afterwards.
Tuesday 2 June 1981 – Late rise – handed in essay – went to see The Last Waltz – awful – latish night.
I don’t honestly remember attending Union Committee on the Monday morning. I do remember that word reached the SU about the abusive note that had been placed under my door on the Friday evening and that they took the incident very seriously. In some ways more seriously than I took it.
I think some people, with all good intentions, were considering an emergency motion at the UGM that evening or some sort of statement. I think I dissuaded them.
I’m pretty sure Simon Jacobs (plus others, no doubt) were at The Last Waltz (a highly-regarded film that simply did not work for me, nor did it seem to work for most of my entourage that evening, if I remember correctly) with me and would have been part of the unmentioned activities (probably beer and smokes somewhere) that led to the latish night.
A Veritable Procession Of Visitors
I’m sorry to say that I have no real recollection of the “so-called revision day” on Wednesday 3 June, which reads to me more like a visitors day than a revision day:
Wednesday 3 June 1981 – Revised today – OK – Mary [Keevil], Rani, Miz [Miriam Morgan], Hilary [Kingsley] etc. popped in -> Sneyd -> coffee with Hilary
Where this sudden burst of popularity with females had come from, I have no idea. Perhaps Sandra had been talking me up. More likely, these were well-intentioned check-ins from concerned friends in the matter of the abusive note, which seemed to be affecting some others more than it was affecting me.
Forty years on, I find it hard to imagine getting much, if any, revision done with that number of visitors.
My handwriting analysis suggests that I wrote this part of my diary up some days after the event. But still, the word “etc.” after a string of four visitors suggests that there were several others.
I’m pretty sure that part of Hilary’s purpose (a visit AND post-pub coffee) was to persuade me to agree to sit on the JSoc (Jewish Society) committee, something I had previously stated my extreme reluctance to do. I’m not sure whether Hilary was yet going out with Lloyd Green (a friend of mine from my Streatham childhood and coincidentally a Keele student a year or so ahead of me) but they did go out with each other at Keele and subsequently married each other.
Thursday 4 June 1981 – Exams today?? – Roy’s binge in evening – quite entertaining.
Friday 5 June 1981 – Politics exam today – Union in evening -> Sands [Sandra]!
Saturday 6 June 1981 – late rise – restive afternoon – went to Union with Sim [Simon Ascough] – supper – Union again – dullish evening
Roy was Simon Jacobs’s boyfriend pretty much throughout that year. Roy will have completed his finals around that time, so my guess is that the binge was related to that. Simon did not keep in touch with Roy after Roy left Keele. Nor did I keep in touch with Sandra after she left Keele, nor did I see much of her the following year, when she was doing finals.
I think I probably meant “restful” when I said “restive” afternoon, although there is something restive about my tone for the next few days. I needed to go to London to resolve some matters ahead of my late June return for the summer and/but was no doubt itching for the more exciting-sounding events that would form the end-of-term/end-of-academic-year summer activities.
A whole weekend between exams must have seemed like an imposition.
Sunday 7 June 1981 – Late rise – did little – snooker – bar in eve – dull day.
Monday 8 June 1981 – Read in morn – exam in afternoon, Union in evening – v late night.
I mention snooker a few times in my diary towards the end of that summer term. I recall playing the game a few times with Sim and Tim – I’ll write that up a bit more when I get to the second half of June – but perhaps these early efforts were with Simon Jacobs.
Forty years on, Simon and I discussed this matter when he visited us (late May 2021), agreeing that our ability to play snooker was slightly improved by a drink or two, then rather more dramatically diminished by each subsequent drink. If only we had been able to retain information from formal scientific experiments in class as well as we have retained the empirical evidence from those informal “clinical trials”.
Anyway, by the Monday, that was it, academically-speaking. Last essays done, last exam done. I had no formal purpose at Keele for the next few days, so I popped back down to London on the Tuesday.
