I went to see this production at the Almeida with Kate (previously and latterly Susan) Fricker. I rated it as very good and I’m pretty sure that Kate really enjoyed this production too.
It was an adaptation of a short Pushkin play about the interaction/rivalry between the two composers. This play inspired Peter Shaffer to write Amadeus on the same topic but the pieces are quite different other than the core topic. Here is the Wikipedia entry about the play.
The dates on these reviews imply that Kate and I attended a preview in March 1989.
The diary is silent about what Kate and I did before or after the show; I’m sure we will have eaten something or at least taken some refreshment and had a chat. Perhaps Kate remembers.
My memory isn’t brilliant on this one. I would have sworn that we saw Stella Gonet opposite Tilda Swinton in this, but all the evidence says we saw Lore Brunner. I can see no sign of ever having seen those two (Swinton and Gonet) on stage together, although both were prominent in the leading roles we were seeing at that time.
In any case, I believe this was only my second visit to the Almeida, the first having been some six months earlier, to see Hello And Goodbye. I do recall falling for the Almeida as a place itself on this second visit – whereas that first visit I was simply bowled over by the production and didn’t especially associate that visit with the Almeida. That was partly, I think, because Kate was especially taken with what they seemed to be doing at the Almeida in terms of restoring an old theatre for modern use.
I think the meal at Le Caprice was my parents’ idea – to celebrate my qualification as a Chartered Accountant along with Uncle Michael, Auntie Pam, Stanley Bloom and his good lady (Sharit?).
Le Caprice was a trendy place even then – I’m not quite sure what would have made mum and dad choose it. Perhaps to show off a bit. Perhaps because they had heard that it was a restaurant that was able to cope with fussy eaters…we had at least one in our party that day in Auntie Pam.
Roll the clock forward 30 years and I note that Kim likes that place, perhaps for similar “trendy but able to cope with a fussy eater” reasons.
I don’t believe any photos were taken that evening to mark the occasion – such meals were not seen to be the thing of photos necessarily back then. But it is just possible that I’ll stumble across some pictures when I delve into dad’s “late works” box of negatives and prints, which still awaits my trawl.
“Kates” means Kate (Susan) Fricker’s place. I’m pretty sure Kate was, at that time, living in a pied-à-terre flat in Hampstead, part of the house that had been the family home before her family moved to York.
Evenings with Kate were always pleasant. We both enjoyed cooking and eating good food. We both liked decent wine and we would always have interesting conversations. I’m sure that Saturday evening would have been such an evening.
I’m guessing that we would have both been in celebratory mode, work-wise, at that time – Kate was called to the bar around the time I qualified.
Here is the typed up version, scanned from what I think must be carbon copies. Is there anyone else left on the planet who remembers what carbon copies were?
I guess I prepared these for our glorious return visit in January 1986 for the traditional UGM/AGM thingie.
On top of my Hackgrass reveal antics on our last morning in office, it seems we held some sort of bogus committee meeting later in the afternoon. More a symposium than a mere meeting, by the looks of it.
It looks as though I completed the minutes that December, ahead of our January 1986 appearance at the UGM I shouldn’t wonder, so I’ll publish the typed version at that date. The hand-written version that follows must have been part-written on the day and then concluded later.
Experts at handwriting analysis forensics might be able to work out exactly what went on. John White – I suggest you might choose not to apply for this role, if your attempt at the Hackgrass cypher is anything to go by.
I have extracted a few good pages from the May 1985 edition of Concourse. By that time, my Education and Welfare sabbatical year was coming to an end, so the paper was interested in ushering in the new and ushering out the old. Hold the front page…
Superb picture of John White on the front page, the main (nay only) reason I have uploaded this page
There had been some sort of hoo-ha about the FY exams that Easter, so it seems that I got busy and Margaret Gordon (a lovely lass, I wonder what became of her?) interviewed me about it:
FY stands for Foundation Year, the late lamented “try a bit of everything” course, sadly no longer taught at Keele. Gresham College is perhaps the closest thing to it.
I like the next two pages – a double page spread on the new sabbaticals. Nice to still have pictures of faces I remember. Hayward Burt’s comments on my style raised a smile with me.
I don’t think the term “stress head” had been invented back then, not least because, if it had existed, I think that is exactly the term Hayward would have used to describe me.
I love this little article about John White, Kate Fricker and the Students’ Union cleaners. John looks like a rabbit startled by headlights in the picture. Little did he know that he would subsequently become seasoned for photo shoots, such as his gig as the poster boy for Food Retailer Monthly magazine (or whatever it was called, why can’t I remember?)
Top tank top, John.
Finally the following review of the UGM. These days, the (anonymous) author of this piece would surely not get away with the ethno-physiognomy remark made about me, especially in that context. Where was editor Krista Cowman’s red pen when I needed it? Surely the UGM and Concourse should have been safe space from such comments for people like me? Is it too late for me to seek redress?
Strangely, I have no recollection whatsoever of reading that comment before, although I must have read it, so it must have seemed like water of a duck’s par for the course back then.
The piece I want to blog about is preceded by a long rant by Robert Coyle about the use of the term “fascists” to describe Conservatives. Good on Krista Cowman for allowing a Wally that much space, while still failing to resist giving the piece a derogatory headline.
But the piece “what a relief” made me laugh out loud and did bring back a very faint memory of the “official opening”. Don’t think it would have been Pomagne in my hand, though. I had eschewed cider-type beverages ever since my disastrous evening with cider at the Andorra after show party.
The running headline phrase “juicy bits” does not sit too happily with a story about new union toilets, but I think I should rapidly move on from that line of thought.
The Concourse team seemingly wanted its own gossip column to replace the now marginal/retiring Hackgrass, so came up with this Obiter Dicta column. Not sure who was behind it, but I’d guess that Krista Cowman (new editor) had a hand in it herself, possibly Quentin Rubens (the outgoing editor).
Something tells me that Ali Dabbs was involved. Partly the style, partly the strangely positive reference to his physique.
I had been approached by some FY (Foundation Year) students at the end of the autumn term who said that they would have preferred FY exams to be at the end of the term being examined rather than the first Friday of the new term. Those students suggested that they thought that the majority would agree with them.
I put the matter to Professor Watson Fuller, the head of the physics department and Chair of FY Committee, who agreed with me that I should do a survey of the students to ascertain their views on this. He would support a change if a clear majority wanted a change.
Annalisa de Mercur, who was Academic Secretary that year, worked with me on a simple survey. We considered using this as an opportunity to ask other questions, but decided in the end to focus on the single question, with a binary choice, plus room for comments.
Thinking very far ahead and very deeply indeed
Annalisa recalled that the first FY lecture of the spring term was a crowd puller with maximum attendance and thus a suitable time and space for us to maximise “voting turnout”. I am pretty sure it was Eddie Slade himself (also Physics, then Senior Tutor also) delivering the lecture and I am pretty sure he gave our survey a good plug. We had left a form on each seat in the packed FY lecture theatre.
In truth I cannot remember what the lecture was about. Perhaps it was cosmology or perhaps it was atomic physics. Something to do with one sort of big bang or another, I shouldn’t wonder…possibly both sorts.
Annalisa and I were focussed on guarding the doors and, between us, getting as many people as possible to vote. If I remember correctly, some 95% of the FY students turned up to that lecture and some 95% of attendees voted, making our turnout around 90% of all FY students.
I also recall that the interval between that lecture and the next FY Committee meeting was very short and that the deadline for papers was actually the Friday before the lecture. I agreed with Watson Fuller that I would write a short method paper to meet the committee papers deadline, and table the results of the survey itself on the day of the meeting.
The vote was, as I recall it, roughly 70% preferring to keep things as they were, with some 30% of FY students preferring to get the exams out of the way before the holidays.
Chi-squared distribution test for sampling proportions – surplus to requirements
Mercifully, I didn’t need to dig out my (at that time, probably quite rusty) notes on statistical significance tests, as a 70%/30% vote with the “sample” comprising some 90% of the entire population being sampled is, in technical statistical terms, “a slam dunk”. I also summarised for each side of the case the three or four most commonly stated (and main) points that came from the comments. Some people would prefer to be examined while the material was fresh in their minds and to get the exams out of the way – most wanted to use some of their holiday time to revise (or “vise”, I should imagine, if they were anything like me in the matter of FY lecture attendance).
At the meeting, Professor Fuller heaped this tiny piece of research with glowing praise, admiring our method – in particular the decision to keep the survey focussed and simple, the attention to detail in maximising the size of the sample and the clarity with which we expressed our findings.
So fulsome was he with his praise, I thought he might be taking the piss, but I was told by several academics afterwards that Watson Fuller would have been completely sincere when saying those things. He certainly repeated them at the Senate meeting when that point came up in the FY Committee report.
…yet I cannot ever remember a piece of my statistical work being heaped with such lavish praise as Professor Fuller’s fulsome praise of that January 1985 FY Committee paper on exam timings.
It was only my appointments diary that reminded me about that research interlude; my personal diary was relatively bland over that period. For the sake of completist readers (or more likely just for my own benefit) here is a transcript of those days:
Monday, 7 January 1985 – Not very productive day – stayed in and had early night.
Tuesday, 8 January 1985 – Got quite a lot done today. Played trivial pursuit at Pady’s in evening.
Wednesday, 9 January 1985 – Not terribly productive day. Petra came over in the evening and stayed.
Thursday, 10 January 1985 – Didn’t get much done today – went out for meal (UC) for Pady’s birthday to Micky’s.
Friday 11 January 1985 – Got lots done in morning – Union Committee in afternoon (chaotic). Staff party in evening – few showed – very unpleasant day.
Saturday, 12 January 1985 – Really low today. Went shopping. Moped around all day. Petra came over late evening. [That must have been fun for Petra judging by my description of my mood!]
Sunday, 13 January 1985 – Stayed in bed virtually all day. Went over to Kate’s for dinner in evening.
Monday 14 January 1985 – Very busy in office today. First real day of term. Stayed in the evening.
Tuesday 15 January 1985 – Lots on today – rushed a bit. Stayed in in evening – Petra came over.
Wednesday, 16 January 1985 – Senate etc today – lots to do. Opened Real Ale bar – did disco with John [White] – got v drunk.
Thursday, 17 January 1985 – Lots on today – including FY committee. Busy evening – Petra came over later on – cooked meal etc.
During our grand opening and disco, no doubt John sank several pints of Pedigree. I might have focussed on the Banks’s Mild but probably partook of both.
Ironically, I can no longer drink beer at all – as I worked my way through my forties I became completely intolerant to it. Still, better to have been able to drink the real ale back in my Keele days, when I was best placed to appreciate it. As with the FY exams question, I believe I got my timings right!
Whose idea was it to have a Keele Union Committee team-building countryside retreat in Somerset early January? I’d love to “blame” anyone and everyone on the committee but me. However, my appointments diary entry of 22 November reminds me that I was involved in the planning.
“Farm & Fricker (4.30 to 5.00 pm)”, I now realise, was a meeting with Kate (now Susan) Fricker and Chris “Farmer” Spencer, the later of whom had been one of my Barnes L54 flatmates and was now one of Hayward’s Barnes L54 flat mates.
Hayward Burt in Barnes L54, sitting in “my” favourite place
We discussed the logistics of getting the whole of Union Committee from Keele to Somerset. I think, from memory, the plan involved Chris visiting his family in Devon that weekend in the Union minibus, dropping us Union Committee folk at the Burt farm in Somerset and then collecting us again on the way back to Keele.
The happening was arranged for the first weekend of 1985.
Before I describe the singularly mortifyingly embarrassing episode from this adventure, I should say that, on the whole, I remember the event as being a success. We had, as a group, been through quite an ordeal with the Bar Management Saga, which had just reached its Tribunal conclusion just a few days ahead of this “Union Committee field trip”. The idea of team building and resetting for the remaining two terms of our three term tenure was a good idea that mostly worked.
Friday, 4 January 1985 – Left London early and came to Keele. All went off to Somerset in the afternoon – went to pub in evening.
Saturday, 5 January 1985 – Lazyish day in Taunton – walked in afternoon – went to pubs in evening etc.
Sunday, 6 January 1985 – Went out to farm for lunch, then came back to Keele early evening – had drink in Union.
My diary is very light on detail, so it is just as well some aspects have stuck indelibly in my memory. No idea where we did our pub drinking, but the picture below, dated 1985 by the author, is quite possibly one of the pubs we tried. In any case, The Greyhound Inn is great eye candy and a pleasant diversion ahead of the tale of my embarrassment.
Whose idea was it to have an informal sort-of confessions game one evening as part of that Union Committee team-building exercise? I’d love to “blame” anyone and everyone on the committee but me. Unfortunately, it was my type of idea. I am pretty sure that I suggested it, or at least warmly welcomed the idea when someone else suggested it while we were planning the event.
One of the reasons I was keen to play such a game was my increasing unease at the fact that only a small sub-group on the committee (basically the other sabbaticals) knew that I had started going out with Petra Wilson the previous term.
It wasn’t that I had deliberately kept the matter secret, it was simply one of those things that emerged by stealth and which I had only, until then, disclosed to those with whom I was spending more time; in the case of the committee I think just the sabbaticals. Annalisa also knew by then.
Anyway, point is, I thought the confessions game, one evening in the pub, would be an ideal opportunity to let the others know…
…which it would have been…
…but for the unfortunate seating arrangement, with Ali Dabbs directly to my right and therefore having his go at the confessions game just before mine.
Ali Dabbs confessed to having a crush on Petra. Ali probably didn’t speak for all that long – I think we were all aiming for “just a minute” or 90 second vignettes – but I was mortified with embarrassment and Ali’s speech seemed to be going on for ever.
I didn’t want to catch the eyes of any of the other sabbaticals, who all will have been acutely aware of what was unfolding – not least because I had told them of my plan to use this game as my opportunity to let the rest of the gang know that I was going out with Petra.
[Life must be so much easier these days, where all you need to do is change your social media relationship status and wait for people you know to spot it. On second thoughts, social media relationship status might raise more potential problems and questions than it answers. I digress.]
Worse yet, it dawned on me very quickly that I couldn’t possibly use the confession that I had planned to use. It would have been cruel, albeit truthful.
The whole episode just felt like a kick in the eye for both me and Ali Dabbs. Coincidentally, I was listening to the Bauhaus track of that name quite a lot at that time:
I’m not good at constructing an oral argument without carefully planning what I am going to say. That’s one of the reasons why I like to write rather than make speeches. I’m also not good at lying, nor am I good at bluffing.
In those few seconds that I had to decide what I was going to say, I decided…
…that I couldn’t think of anything at all. My mind was a complete blank, apart from the acute sensation of embarrassment.
In the end, I pathetically aped Ali’s speech and pretended that I had a crush on someone else. I think I picked on one of Petra’s friends, Margaret Gordon, for no better reason than I couldn’t really think of anyone to pick on and her name seemed to have a “least harm” aspect to it if…or I should really say when…the sorry matter needed to be unpicked…within a few weeks. I have a diary mention of Ali Dabbs coming round to my flat on 2 February, which was part of that unpicking.
“I have…I mean, I DON’T have an announcement to make”. Hayward, Trish, Me, Kate (Susan), Ali, Pete.
For some strange reason, I have been utterly averse to confession-type games ever since.
My embarrassing episode, while top of the pile, was not the only embarrassing thing I remember from that “field trip”. I remember Hayward’s dad, who, in my mind’s eye, I’m sure unfairly, resembled The Farmer from Shaun The Sheep movies, referring to Chris Spencer, our Barnes L54 flatmate, as…
…that old bloke you’ve hired to drive your van.
Chris did have a moustache, which possibly made him look a bit more grown up than the rest of us, but I don’t think he looked old. Hayward more or less managed to maintain his trademark deadpan delivery when saying:
That’s not an old bloke, dad, that’s Chris, my flatmate.
Small beer embarrassment compared with mine, but still.
With thanks to Dave Lee for the “loan” of this frosty Horwood picture.
For those who haven’t been avidly following this saga, the Shrewsbury Industrial Tribunal relating to our Union Committee’s dismissal of the Students’ Union bar managers was supposed to conclude 19 December…
…but required two additional days, which were set as Friday 28th and Monday 31st December.
Keele was bitterly cold when I returned to the campus on 27 December and remained so until we left on 31 December. It also felt incredibly bleak too, with almost nobody around.
The diary barely tells the tale, but let me translate my scrawl:
Thursday 27 December – Got up quite early [at parents’ house] – came back to Keele. Kate came over for a while.
I recall that Kate (now Susan) Fricker and I were a little spooked by the bleakness and the fact that Ralph was wandering around the campus. I don’t think he intended to spook or intimidate us, I think more likely Ralph was struggling to come to terms with what was happening to him and was walking a lot, as people with heavy weights on their minds often do.
In my (I now think false) memory, Kate asked to stay at the flat and I slept on the floor, but the diary says “came over for a while”, so on reflection I think the idea of her staying was mooted, but Kate decided in the end to spare me the floor and returned to her own flat for the night.
Friday 28 December – went to Tribunal – seemed to go OK – lazy evening in.
Saturday 29 December – shopped and read in day. Went to Koh-I-Noor with John & co in eve.
I think we sensed that Friday, perhaps for the first time, that the Tribunal was going our way. It was mostly Kate under the cosh that day, plus summing up from both sides, if I remember correctly. I certainly got the impression that Kate was fending off the cross-examination questions well and that the members of the panel were getting more than a little frustrated with interrogation by cross-examination that wasn’t really getting anywhere.
Would you believe the Koh-I-Noor restaurant is still there, forty years later, in Newcastle-Under-Lyme – click here. “John & co” suggests that Kate didn’t opt to join us that evening but that some other members of the committee were with us. Pady and Andy I’d guess. Perhaps also Pete & Melissa. The Koh-I-Noor was a good choice when we had vegetarians with us, as, in those days, Indian restaurants tended to be the only type of meat-serving restaurant that really “got” vegetarianism.
Sunday 30 December – Lazy day in reading etc. Kate & I went to see Ghostbusters in eve. Latish night.
Ghostbusters was THE movie to see in December 1984. I remembered that I had seen it “around the time the movie came out”, but did not remember, until I saw this diary entry, that I had seen it with Kate on the night before the tribunal judgment.
Forty years on, I have “cog. dis.” as to whether that particular movie on that particular evening was especially appropriate or especially inappropriate in the circumstances.
Great movie. The theme song had charted at the end of that summer, so John & I had been playing it at regular discos (i.e. not our 60s/Motown/Northern Soul ones) for some months. It charted again over Christmas when the movie came out. You know you want to hear it…and maybe even shimmy around your living room to that infectious rhythm:
When we returned to Shrewsbury on the Monday morning, we were given the judgment quite quickly, in summary form, with the promise of a full judgment to follow in writing. Basically the tribunal had unanimously found in our favour.
The Evening Sentinel summarised that oral judgement the next (publishing) day:
Of course we were all relieved, not least Tony Derricott, the Permanent Secretary, who must have felt especially exposed – as to a great extent did I – if the judgment had gone against us.
When we got back to the Students’ Union late morning/early afternoon, I remember Tony getting out cigars and offering them to us, which felt inappropriate to us student reps. We were relieved but not celebratory.
John and I had arranged to meet Annalisa de Mercur and Petra Wilson in London for New Years Eve, so we were also in a hurry to head down to London.
Rushed back to London with John to meet Annalisa and Petra…
…says the diary.
I remember far more than the diary tells. John might remember yet more or other details.
We had arranged to meet the girls at the Albert Memorial. No idea why there, other than it being a well-known landmark which all of us felt reasonably able to find easily and which we felt wouldn’t be a crowded place early evening on New Years Eve. It wasn’t.
John and I had a drink or two (or in John’s case possibly more than two) on the train down. Perhaps we can explain John’s, previously undisclosed, identification blooper as, at least partially, a result of the drink.
As John & I strode along Kensington Gore, John and I had a conversation along the following lines:
JOHN: (excitedly) I think that’s Annalisa in the distance, standing in front of the railings…
ME: (unconvinced)…I don’t think so…(even less convinced)…whatever it is, it’s not moving…
JOHN: (embarrassedly)…oh gawd, it’s not Annalisa. It’s a large pile of bin bags.
ME: Don’t worry, John, I won’t tell her.
Now let me be crystal clear on this point. Annalisa doesn’t and never did resemble a pile of bin bags. John’s excited outburst was no doubt enthusiasm for the anticipated evening with the girls. We were at a ridiculous distance to try to identify anyone – or to distinguish between objects and people.
Also in John’s defence, his optical delusion might have been born of eagerly looking forward to telling Annalisa and Petra that we had won our case. In those pre-mobile-phone days, there was no sensible way to get messages out ahead of meeting up – hence the pre-arrangement to meet at the Albert Memorial.
In fact, John & I had arrived at the Albert Memorial well ahead of the girls, leaving us quite literally in the cold for a good few minutes.
In the February 1985 issue of Concourse, in H Ackgrass’s final/parting newspaper column, I…or rather, better to say, H Ackgrass…wrote:
It’s all coming back to me. John will no doubt claim that he was simply finding imaginative ways to try and keep warm.
Soon enough Annalisa and Petra joined and the mood soon lightened once they learnt that the tribunal judgment had gone our way.
I am 99% sure that we ate at Melati in Great Windmill Street that evening, which was one of my/our favourite places at that time, although the diary is silent on that detail.
I’m pretty sure we then ventured in the cold to get as close to Trafalgar Square as we could – which in those days I think meant so darn close that we were actually in the square. For sure we could hear Big Ben striking loud and clear. For sure we celebrated the New Year with the crowds. I vaguely remember hugging and kissing rather a lot of strangers on that occasion. In those days, such conduct was not micro-aggressive or inappropriate – it was simply doing what everyone else was doing in those circumstances.
Petra had arranged for the two of us to stay in a flat in Kennington – her brother, Christian had friends there – they were away and were happy for us to stay. Christian had sensibly advised Petra that we would want to be walking distance from wherever we were going to stay if we were going to do the “midnight in Trafalgar Square” thing. Kennington fitted that bill.
It was actually quite a long walk in the cold after such a long day. I also recall clearly a long cold night at that flat as well. Either the heating in the flat didn’t work or we couldn’t work out how to make it work…we found imaginative ways to try and keep warm. We just about managed to avoid hypothermia.
Tuesday 1 January 1985 – went home mid morning. Lunch. Lazy day at home.
Wednesday 2 January 1985 – went to town – met Caroline lunch. Went NH [Newman Harris] then shopping then met Pete Roberts for dinner.
Thursday 3 January 1985 – rose late. Went Junction [Dad’s shop] in afternoon after taping etc. Lazy evening in taping etc.
I’ll talk some more about the taping in a separate piece about music.
I often met Caroline Freeman (now Curtis) for lunch in those days. I’m intrigued that I visited Newman Harris that day. I sense that I had told someone (Stanley Bloom, presumably, by then) that if the tribunal went against us, I would resign from the Students’ Union and be looking for work in January. I’m just guessing that this visit was to tell them that we had won and to arrange a start date in September.
The only other possibility is that I was already, by then, helping dad keep his shop’s books, in order to help keep his costs down (goodness knows, dad wasn’t doing much business by that time). This visit might have been to deliver or collect something pertained to dad’s accounts, which might explain me visiting the shop the next day.
Dinner with the Pete Roberts will have been fun and interesting. Pete was my predecessor’s predecessor’s predecessor Education & Welfare Officer (in other words 1981/1982). He had become a friend and mentor before he left Keele, and we met up/kept in touch for several years after we both left. I think he was living in Parsons Green by this time or perhaps he was still around Pimlico.
Pete will no doubt have helped me to reorient my thinking about my role post Tribunal. I remember bouncing ideas off him and really valuing his experience and wisdom in matters E&W. He was also reliably good company with an interesting and often amusing take on most subjects.
I thought he’d gone quiet on Facebook of late and was saddened to learn that he died in December 2023.
My time in London was short yet again, as I shortly returned to Keele ahead of a Union Committee team bonding long weekend in the Somerset countryside. What could possibly go wrong with that sort of idea?
Billington on Mozart Salieri Mon, Apr 10, 1989 – 37 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Ratcliffe on Mozart Salieri Sun, Apr 16, 1989 – 43 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
