At Keele in those days we had to take two subsidiary courses during our first degree year. I’ll write about those in time, but for now I want to write a trilogy of pieces about the informal subsidiary education I enjoyed around contemporary music at Keele that year.
My source for these pieces, for once, is not the diary – it is my collection of music; in this instance mostly cassettes that Keele people made for me.
I only had a radio cassette player at Keele – see image below for the one I had for the first couple of years – while my record and reel-to-reel collection at my parents house also burgeoned during my Keele years.
My system at Keele back then, a Philips Spatial Stereo Ghettoblaster/Boombox
Of all the pieces I shall write about friends influencing my interest in music, this is the most mysterious and perhaps the Keele alum community can help me identify Dave.
I don’t think I mention him at all in the diary – nor can I trace the particular evenings when, as my memory stores it – I went to his room with my blaster and he recorded several of his records onto cassette for me while we drank, smoked and chatted music.
Listing “the Dave Eight” just before my March-June charts rip tape sort-of dates it
I’m pretty sure he was Lancastrian – I can hear in my mind’s ear him saying “Depeche Mode” with the word “mode” sounding like the past tense of a cow making noise…”mooed”. Indeed, until recently I had assumed that Depeche Mode was a Northern electro pop band – only forty years on have I learnt that they were from Basildon. Dave was strangely attracted to their sound and style – I think he had cognitive dissonance about them. I was not a fan and have none of their music in my collection, but I must say, forty years on, the video below just oozes 1981/82 and I felt bound to share it with you.
Dave thought Depeche Mode had hidden depths, I thought hidden shallows
I think my fleeting, casual friendship with Dave sprung up around the topic of Van Morrison, whom I had discovered in the summer of 1981. I played Astral Weeks incessantly and I think Dave might have first introduced himself to me by knocking on my Lindsay F Block door on hearing Astral Weeks blaring from my room.
I think Dave was involved with social committee to some extent – perhaps on the technical side. Unusually, he had connection leads to enable us to connect my blaster to his “gramophone”.
I guess we made a din recording those albums
The two Van Morrison albums that comprise the first Dave tape – TB Sheets and Into the Music, while interesting and informative, did not get air play in my room to anything like the extent of Astral Weeks.
The tape with Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane and The Best Of Grace Slick & The Great Society on it got played so much, it is a miracle that it survived. For the Airplane heads amongst you, Dave’s “Pillow” was the 1967 UK release – I subsequently acquired decent copies of both the UK and the US version of the album. I also now have the digitally remastered Grace Slick & The Great Society collection.
Here are a couple of samples to whet your appetites:
In truth, I did not listen much to Crown Of Creation or Baron Von Tollbooth – perhaps I should give them a proper try now and see what I make of them in my dotage.
The other album I listened to oh so many times at Keele (and subsequently) was Goodbye Pop by National Lampoon. Much as I liked Not The Nine O’clock News, the sketches and especially the song pastiches on Goodbye Pop are of the very highest quality.
The Gilder Ratner song/sketch I’m A Woman is superb and seems just as relevant forty years on…
…and if you think the Sid Gormless character at the start of the Art Rock Suite reminds you a bit of Nigel from Spinal Tap, that might just be because it is indeed Christopher Guest playing that role. Oh, stuff it, here’s a link to the whole album. You can get it on Spotify and Apple and all those places now.
So thank you, Dave, whoever and wherever you are now.
Question for advanced students among the Keele alums of the time – any thoughts on who the mysterious Dave might be and where he might be now?
For the benefit of people who were not at Keele back then, the term “P1 Year” referred to second year students who, like me, had opted to the the Foundation Year (FY) in their first year. P stood for “principal” I think.
Those who didn’t enjoy the cognitive and recreational benefits of FY would describe their undergraduate years as T1, T2 and T3 – T standing for “three” I think.
Before I trawl my diary for that May period, I’d like to talk a little about the vibe in my flat, M65 Barnes. The diary is silent about it, so unless I describe it soon, my P1 year will be over, M65 will be demolished and I won’t have told you about our quirky group of four.
Barnes M65 From February To June 1982: Me, Ahmed, Margaret & Jo
…not least, I was very keen to secure a flat for the following year and guessed that, with two of us electing to continue to have a Barnes flat, we’d get first dips on the vacant ones due to the M Block demolition.
Ahmed Mohd Isa was the member of that flat who wanted to stay on in a Barnes flat and was due to be my flatmate beyond 81/82. He was part of the small Malay community at Keele in those days – I got to know that crowd well through Ahmed that year and then subsequently. I’ll write more about that gang separately. Most of them lived in a flat in Q Block Barnes, while Ahmed I think had been allocated to M65 entirely by chance at the start of his Keele career.
The other two in M65’s last year were named Margaret and Jo. Margaret was from Manchester I think – while Jo was from the South-West if I remember correctly – Hampshire perhaps.
Both of them were vegetarians who disapproved of (but did not prohibit) my meat preparation and eating in the flat. I remember one occasion when a really bad smell started to pervade the kitchen and the girls became convinced that I had left some meat to rot somewhere.
Jo wandered around the kitchen, sniffing in a rodent-like manner behind cupboards and fittings, determined to find my errant flesh product. In fact, she discovered something especially foul-smelling that could not possibly be attributed to my carnivorousness. Behind the corner cupboard/pantry shelf, Jo found a decomposing cabbage, which she delicately removed from the flat at arms length with one hand while holding her nose with the other hand.
But the girls did have an absolute golden rule in the flat and woe-betide either me or Ahmed if we broke this rule: complete silence between 19:30 and 20:00 when Coronation Street was being broadcast. Margaret was the strictest enforcer of this rule. “Shhh”, she would hiss if either of us was so thoughtless as to want a glass of water or to grab a spoon and go back to our room during that broadcast. They would both sit in a leaning forward posture – usually with heads propped forward between fists, to ensure complete concentration and maximum proximity to the tiny screen of their portable black-and-white telly.
I’m pretty sure that Tony, who moved out to allow me in, had been to some extent at war with the girls, which was the main reason he moved out – but I didn’t have direct evidence to support that theory.
Margaret and Jo were finalists and in many ways were quite tolerant of both me and Ahmed as stop-out non-finalists, although we were both reasonably respectful of their need for some peace and quiet for revision.
They had some interesting friends, the most eccentric of whom was a posh lad known as “Dips”, who was the young country gent type and was known on occasion to drive his Land Rover across the playing fields – a recipe for getting caught red-handed and fined as his was almost certainly the only vehicle on campus that would leave tyre marks of that exact kind.
Who knows, 30 years later I might have re-encountered Dips at the Mollington Point-To-Point
It’s a shame I have no pictures of that flat or any of that crowd.
Given It Was The Business End Of That Academic Year, I Don’t Appear To Have Done Much Business For At Least A Couple Of Weeks
Here is a transcript of the first scrawl-ridden diary page:
In truth I don’t recall doing readings for Jon Gorvett and Mark Ellicott, but I am in touch with both of them forty years on, so I’ll ask them if they remember me reading for them.
I also don’t recall what ailed me – probably just a debilitating cold.
Thursday, 13 May 1982
Easyish sort of day – did some work but not too much.
Contrived a suitably easy night.
Friday, 14 May 1982
Went to my tutorial and straight off to London with Rob [Schumacher?] and Simon M[orris?].
Lazy evening with Ma and Pa.
Saturday 15 May 1982
Did some taping etc today. Lounged a lot – spoke to some people.
[Cousins on mum’s side] Hannah [Green], Sidney [Pizan], Jacquie and Len [Briegal] came for dinner – very pleasant evening.
Up till very late washing up.
Sunday, 16 May 1982
Rose quite late – had lunch – taped, lounged and spoke to more people.
Completely lazy evening – good break (from what? – Ed).
I guess the dinner with cousins was a slightly belated 60th birthday event for mum.
I particularly like my sarcastic note to self, which I must have written more or less immediately after writing the phrase “good break” asking myself, “from what?”
Self aware, that comment.
I hardly seem to have been over-exerting myself in the summer term of my P1 year, perhaps because there were no exams of any consequence that year – just finishing off some written work.
Sunday 17 May 1982
Return from London in the morning – spent the rest of the day writing my last essay of the session.
Tuesday, 18 May 1982
Essay went in.
Went to Anju [Sanehi]’s in the afternoon – decided to give film a miss – lazy evening in instead.
Wednesday, 19 May 1982
Easyish sort of day – spent whole evening in union – drank quite a bit etc.
Thursday, 20 May 1982
Did some work today – not too exerting though.
Lazy evening in tonight.
Friday 21 May 1982
Lazyish day today – did very little.
Spent quite a bit of time in union (EGM etc – chatting). Boozy afternoon and evening.
Went to film [McVicar – thank you Tony Sullivan for keeping records]– disco – back to Anju’s for tea.
Saturday 22 May 1982
Big shopping spree today – a late start.
Went to union in evening and to disco with Simon [Jacobs], Jon etc etc. Earlyish night.
Sunday, 23 May 1982
Easyish day – did very little – spent most of evening in the union do very little really – cooked a lot.
Monday 24 May 1982
Easyish day – mainly in union. UGM in the evening – a goody I feel.
Joe [Benedict Coldstream] came back after.
The mood of my May 1982 diary, which uses terms like “easyish” and “lazy” rather a lot, suddenly changes on the next page or two.
More Speed, Less Haste: The Rest Of May 1982
I sense that I rather realised that I really did need to get a bit of work done that term. I also remember quite clearly that I attempted at least one terrible technique for getting stuff done.
In short, although the diary is fairly quiet about it – the next week went a bit weird.
Tuesday 25 May 1982
Busy day of work – did quite a lot. Stayed in in the evening and did quite a bit more work.
Wednesday 26 May 1982
Busy most of the day getting ready for flat inspection. Did a little work – watched football [European Cup Final – probably a big screen job in the ballroom] & film [probably a TV broadcast not Filmsoc]– ok.
Thursday, 27 May 1982
Flat inspection today – last tutorial – [Union election] counts – FA Cup [Final replay] – cheap beer – futurist disco* dash home for supper// and all nighter of talk and writing.
Friday, 28 May 1982
The day seem to flash by – went to Pete [Roberts]’s office in ‘noon – took early night.
Cheap beer and hanging out with friends is more likely to have been my motivation for the football matches than the football itself.
I have no idea what a Futurist Disco might have been – presumably not futurist music as I now understand the term:
Social Committee preparing for a futurist disco?
…but the symbols suggest I had a good time and then retreated to take some speed to get me through a period of intense talking and writing. I remember this stupid experience well – it was the second and last time I experimented with that dangerous stuff. I remember feeling at the time that I was getting through loads of writing and getting loads done, only to realise that, after having lost a day-and-a-half, that I had written utter drivel and would need to rewrite everything I had attempted to get done that way.
I also chewed my lips to shreds…again.
Not a good idea, Speed in the hope of cognitive productivity. Certainly not for me – I would now advise against it.
Saturday, 29 May 1982
Rose late – lazy sort of day.
Went to union -> Mark’s [Bartholomew this time I think] with Si [mon Jacobs], Johnny Rothman [who must have been visiting Simon] etc. – stayed till late…
Sunday, 30 May 1982
… Went to Amphitheatre in the early hours. Got out about 8 am.
Went to bed – got up for a few hours and went back to bed!!!
Monday 31st of May 1982
Lazyish day about place – tried to work in eve.
Tuesday, 1 June 1982
Quietish day. Tried to do some work. Saw film [The Deer Hunter – thanks again, Tony Sullivan] in eve.
Yes, I remember wandering off in the early hours, after that ad hoc party of Mark & Simon’s, with a chap whose face I can picture but whose name I’ve forgotten and we ended up jabbering some sort of a theatrical role play of our own devising in that amphitheatre until well after sunrise. As with my speed-induced writings, it seemed terribly profound when we were doing it and then on reflection the next day was mere drivel. Still, it was fun and every Keele student should have a spring or summer nighter down the amphitheatre under their belt before they leave Keele.
On rereading my diaries forty years on, I realise it is just as well I didn’t have too much serious academic work or examinations to prepare that term – I was well off the pace in the spring of 1982.
Forty years on, I realise that Keele student life is not all about parties and gigs…
…except in some ways it is. The most memorable stuff in my diary around the start of that summer term of 1982 is all about parties and gigs.
If some Keele alums from that era are reading this and thinking, “crumbs, I REALLY don’t remember The Cure coming to Keele that term”, you can relax. The Cure didn’t come to Keele – I went with some Keele mates and got to see them play in Leicester.
Blooming marvellous they were, thank you for asking.
It happened, as best I can recall it and transcribe my hand-writing, like this:
Wednesday 28 April 1982 – Easyish sort of day – did quite a bit of cooking etc. Rana, Paul, Rick ate at mine & stayed till quite late – Diplomacy etc.
If I recall correctly, those Diplomacy fellas were quite heavily involved in the Rag Week and one of the things we talked about was going off in Rick’s car for the weekend to sell Keele rag mags to poor, unsuspecting students in other universities. The fellas had identified Leicester as a suitable place for Friday night as there was to be a Cure gig there and one of the guys had access to a crash pad for us in Leicester that night, from whence we could go on and sell more in Nottingham.
That’s what we did, after I spent Thursday attending many meetings so interesting I didn’t bother to describe them and a “busy morning” on Friday – lectures and tutorials I would guess.
Friday 30 April 1982 – Set off in afternoon for Leicester…sold mags there – went to pub -> Leicester Union – The Cure – more mags – stayed over in empty house.
Actually I don’t think the venue was Leicester Union – I suspect the gig was held at De Montfort Hall under the auspices of the Leicester Students’ Union. (Correction – The Cure Gig list tells us that it was Queen’s Hall Leicester that night – that hall was part of the Students’ Union in Leicester.)
My recollection is that going door to door around the halls on a Friday afternoon was hard work and not very effective for sales – mostly because few rooms were occupied at the time – whereas we hit pay dirt in the evening at the concert venue – selling loads of rag mags in a short space of time.
The students at the venue were very welcoming to us and the organisers absolutely insisted that we went in to the hall and watched the concert in consideration of our efforts towards the rag cause. This was an unexpected bonus, not least because The Cure were utterly superb live.
Here is The Cure song that sticks in my mind from that experience:
While here is a recording of a concert held just four days earlier in Edinburgh – the one we saw & heard will have sounded mighty similar:
Saturday 1 May 1982 – Rose quite early – went to hall -> Nottingham campus & town. Went on to Uttoxeter – pub and then on to party. Decided to return to Keele therefrom.
I didn’t realise that I used archaic adverbs like “therefrom” back then. I’m not sure about it. One for the adverb colander next year perhaps.
Anyway, I don’t think the return to the hall or the Nottingham campus proved all that fruitful for rag sales – at least not compared with the door of The Cure gig. I have a feeling that the Uttoxeter party was something to do with Rick and something to do with pre-nuptials for someone-or-other – his brother or sister perhaps.
Monday 3 May 1982 – Busy sort of day – sorting out for evening etc. Motion at UGM went through – Simon [Jacobs] & Jon [Gorvett] came back after.
The “failure” of it, I suspect, was that it was insufficiently specific to guarantee that the Union Committee did anything sufficiently radical for our taste, as we took an all-too specific occupation motion to the Union early the following academic year – with predictably hilarious results to be reported when those events become “forty years on”.
Tuesday 4 May 1982 – Busy day working. Went to film (9 To 5) in evening – quite good. Rana & Chevonne came back after for coffee.
I’m not sure how well all this “having people back” was going down with my new finalist flatmates – more on them anon.
The rest of the week reads relatively quiet. “Helen’s in evening – crowd there” on Wednesday 5th is probably Helen Ross, a big personality who was very friendly with Ashley Fletcher. I choose to mention Ashley in this context because he complained recently that he was getting insufficient coverage in the more recent Ogblog pieces.
Saturday 8 May 1982 – Lazyish day around campus. Went to Union in evening – Clint Eastwood & General Saint. Very good. Went back to Mark’s [Bartholomew] with loads of others – rolled back early hours [Sunday, presumably].
It seems they appeared on the Old Grey Whistle Test just a couple of weeks before our gig, so their rendering of the anthemic Another One Bites The Dust shown below is probably quite similar to the version we saw:
I certainly recall them getting all to shout out “another one bites the dust” in the stylee depicted in the above video.
The pop music of the time would mostly reach my ears through the Union disco and/or the juke box in the main bar of the Students’ Union. I didn’t listen to much pop radio in those days – Radio One didn’t please me much at that time – nor was there much alternative back then outside London.
My habit was to tape from the radio at my parents house onto reel-to-reel…
…then make a cassette copy to play at Keele on my trusty Philips Spatial Stereo Ghettoblaster/Boombox:
Image “borrowed” from a defunct catawiki listing on fair use basis for identification
Here’s the track listing of the spool I made during that Easter break – the first dozen during that Easter break – which I took back to Keele on cassette – the rest on my next visit to my parents:
Blue Eyes, Elton John
Party Fears Two, The Associates
The Damned Don’t Cry, Visage
More Than This, Roxy Music
Ghosts, Japan
Ever So Lonely, Monsoon
Give Me Back My Heart, Dollar
Just An Illusion, Imagination
Fantastic Day, Haircut 100
Six Months in a Leaky Boat, Split Enzz
Black Coffee in Bed, Squeeze
Really Saying Something, Bananarama & The Funboy Three
Papa’s Got a Brand New Pig Bag, Pig Bag
I Can Make You Feel Good, Shalamar
Night Birds, Shakatak
Is It a Dream, Classix Nouveaux
Ball and Chain, XTC
Perfumed Garden, The Rah Band
It’s an eclectic list. As usual when I revisit these tapes, some of the choices make me cringe, while others please me and might even become ear worms again, forty years after their first wriggle inside my head.
By the time you get to this article, some of the links below might have gone, but you should be able to hear and see most of the items from the list if you wish.
https://youtu.be/KybfTKNl2NM
Some stand the test of time far better than others. But oh, the synthesisers…oh, the hair styles.
Before I talk about the festering and fomenting, I’d like to share a few thoughts on the sounds that were the soundtrack of my time at Keele that spring.
I was listening to some popular music of the time, naturally, but also I had started collecting and listening to albums spanning the late 1960s to that time.
I acquired Astral Weeks by Van Morrison around that time and listened to that wonderful album a lot. Here is the title track:
I was listening to several more recent albums too. Dare by The Human League and Wilder by The Teardrop Explodes are two examples of albums I almost played to death back then. A lot of us did.
As for the contemporary hit music of the time, I was playing the following mix tape a lot in the run up to and over the Easter Break:
Thursday 15 April 1982 – Easyish sort of day – festered quite a lot. Went to the Union in the evening.
Friday 16 April 1982 – wrote motion today etc. – showing it around quite a bit – went to Union in the evening – OK.
Saturday 17 April 1982 – Went into Newcastle during day – lazy afternoon. Went to Union in evening. Sally & Liz came back for coffee after.
Sunday 18 April 1982 – Rose rather late – did some work today – festered in the evening.
Trying to get my head around the fomenting involved in “writing a motion and showing it around”, I had a Zoom the other day (forty years on – April 2022) with Jon Gorvett and Simon Jacobs, both of whom I recall were involved in that fomentation (or whatever one calls it). I am delighted to inform readers that their recall is as hazy or hazier than mine. We managed the following vague recollections:
Sally & Liz were friends of Mark Bartholomew and we suspected that Mark was the Machiavellian figure behind this attempted grassroots student pressure on the committee.
Liz was skinny (I can sort-of recall her face even) whereas Sally was not;
That motion (whatever it was – something to do with “the cuts” – the exact content is long since forgotten) didn’t succeed in the summer term of 1982, but we learnt from it and fomented differently and more successfully the following term (autumn 1982) – I recall the second fomentation more clearly and you’ll read about it “forty years on” in the unlikely event that you are still a reader by then;
Monday 19 April 1982 – worked reasonably hard today – lounged around somewhat as well. Went to Union in evening – Liz came back for coffee.
Tuesday 20 April 1982 – Did some work today – went to Union – quite crowded – left quite early.
Wednesday 21 April 1982 – Did some work today and went to town. Easy evening in. Simon & Jon came round quite late.
Thursday 22 April 1982 – Easyish day – loads of people back etc. Went to Union in eve – lack to Rana’s [Sen] after for coffee etc.
Friday 23 April 1982 – Easyish sort of day – saw quite a lot of people. Union in eve – Jon, Liz & Sally came back after disco.
Saturday 24 April 1982 – Went to town. Andrea [Collins, now Woodhouse], Mary [Keevil] and Karen came over in afternoon. Went to Union in evening – OK. Jon came back after.
Sunday 25 April 1982 – Rose late – did a fair bit of work today. Went over to Rana’s for a while – worked quite hard.
Monday 26 April 1982 – Not bad day. First day of lectures. Lindsay in afternoon. Went to bar. Simon, Jon & Liz came back for coffee etc.
Taking full advantage of my new status as a Barnes flat resident, I decided to stay up at Keele for most of the Easter holidays in 1982. The idea was to get ahead with my studies.
Unfortunately, it seems that the weather had other plans for me. While the Christmas holidays that preceded this break had been snow bound at Keele, it appears that late March had surprisingly good weather that year, which seems at least partly responsible for my limited diligence.
Monday 22 March 1982 – Got up very late. Spent an idle sort of day wearily recovering from the weekend’s activities.
Tuesday 23 March 1982 – Lazyish day lounging in sun etc. – did a little work – took it easy on the whole.
Wednesday 24 March 1982 – Did quite a bit of work today – in afternoon lazed around in the sun a lot – worked in the evening.
Thursday 25 March 1982 – Signed on today – did some work (not a great deal). Went for nice long walk to ??? etc. Quiet evening in.
There’s a pattern here, folks and it is not one of heavy industry…nor one of playing hard, to be frank.
Friday 26 March 1982 – Did little today. Went to library for a while. Went to Union in evening -> flat for coffee after.
The narrative suggests that people came back to the flat with me, but names are omitted – quite possibly some of the people named in later diary entries about that particular spring break.
Saturday 27 March 1982 – Went to Newcastle in afternoon – did some work. Went to union in evening -> Chalky’s via Lindsay.
I wrote about Neil “Chalky” White in a piece about the Christmas holidays – here and below is a link to that piece – which makes me realise that my friendship with Neil was mostly based on being around in the holidays – I tended to see little of him during term time:
Sunday 28 March 1982 – Late start but did some work in afternoon and evening – OK.
Monday 29 March 1982 – Quite busy doing some work today – did not go out in evening even.
By gosh, the industry quotient is going up. Did I possibly sustain this fierce level?
Tuesday 30 March 1982 – Quite busy running around getting things done today. Went to uncrowded union in eve for a while.
Wednesday 31 March 1982 – Easyish day. Did a little reading. Went to Union in evening – quite uneventful.
Thursday 1 April 1982 – Last day at Keele – did little. Went to Union in the evening. Ok. Packed after.
Friday 2 April 1982 – Left Keele quite early. Had a relaxing afternoon and evening in London.
Quite right, relaxing in London for the rest of that day. I’d been at it “full tilt” at Keele for best part of a fortnight…at least that’s probably what I told mum and dad.
End Of Term Blues Band & The Interminable Signing On Ritual
Writing forty years on (March 2022) I am quite impressed reading about my diligence at the end of the second term of my P1 year…and how that diligence soon turned to partying and mayhem once my work was out of the way.
Friday 12 March 1982 – Easy sort of day. Went to the ball in the evening. Quite a good ball *. Jon [Gorvett] lost keys – stayed in flat.
I’m pretty sure that there is more than one reference in my diaries to Jon mislaying his keys and dossing out at my place.
According to Dave Lee’s book The Keele Gigs!, the ball that I described as “quite good” was controversial in its choice of The Blues Band as they had played Keele only a couple of years earlier and were not deemed, by some cognoscenti, as ball material. I remember finding them pretty darned good.
The Keele gig from 1980 is available on-line as it was recorded as a Rock Goes To College broadcast, so you can see it below. The 1982 manifestation was really quite similar:
Saturday 13 March 1982 – Rose late – went to Newcastle during day – shopped. Rana [Sen]’s dinner party in eve -> Simon [Jacobs]’s party – Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] up for weekend. V Good.
That’s quite a busy couple of evenings, even by my standards back then! No wonder I took it relatively easy the next day or two.
There is a strange comment in my diary on the Monday:
…went to union in evening – got mixed up in everyone else’s problems.
I have no idea who or what “everyone else’s problems” might have been referring to. Probably just as well I didn’t extrapolate in the diary and cannot remember a thing about it.
Tuesday 16 March 1982 – Last official day of term. Andrea [Collins] popped in to say goodbye – went to the union in the evening – much emptier!!
…and therefore fewer problems to interrupt my flow, presumably.
Wednesday 17 March 1982 – Went to sign on in morning – sent away again. Did little during day – stayed in evening.
Thursday 18 March 1982 – Did a little work today after signing on with Kath [I think the same person as Kate] after hanging around for hours – went to union in evening.
I have written before about the ridiculous bureaucracy of having students sign on each holiday. It’s good to see that bureaucratic nonsenses had “sending away empty handed” and “hanging around for hours” events even 40 years ago. Bureaucratic denial and delay techniques are more sophisticated and partially-automated forty years on, of course.
Speeding Away From Keele To Eardisley, Herefordshire
What did the beautiful little Herefordshire village of Eardisley ever do to deserve us?
The answer, it seems, is that Jon Gorvett’s parents had a cottage there and a Keele student posse decided to descend upon it when those parents were not around.
My poor memory had this as a “trip to Wales” rather than “on the English side of the Welsh border” but never mind. We did venture into Wales a couple of times.
Jon Gorvett writes, with more authority than my memory:
Trip to Wales… that wasn’t the trip to my folks’ place in Herefordshire, was it?
It was right on the Welsh border. Gerry Guinan was there, indeed, and Julie McClusky and Vince [Beasley] and George Scully, along with the three of us [Jon Gorvett, Simon Jacobs & me] and two friends of Vince’s who came up from London.
I seem to remember that my folks’ tiny cottage was rather jam-packed with people, with not a lot of sleep possible except on the floor - though possibly there wasn’t much sleep in any case because of the various substances imbibed…
Indeed.
My diary covers the event quite well:
Friday 19 March 1982 – Decided on impulse to go to Eardisley (Jon’s parents’ country home). Left Keele about 7 – got there – went to pub – ate dinner etc. Up most of the night I felt a…
Saturday 20 March 1982 – …bit ill – crashed – went out to Wales (c12:00) – great time there climbing hills etc – really nice. Got back quite late – had supper etc. – again up all night…
Sunday 21 March 1982 – …playing Risk etc. – walked a long way early morning – did little else – went back to Vince’s for supper – returned – crashed out very tired.
There are a few elements of this story that are clear in my memory but missing from the above notes.
I seem to recall that the impulse to do this trip came from the fortunate discovery that Jon’s parent’s cottage and the Keele Student Union minibus were both available for a group of us to use at short notice.
I do remember not feeling brilliant that first night, being relieved that I felt fine and had a great day walking the hills on the Saturday. I think that was my first “hill walking with friends” event and the joy of such walking has stuck with me ever since. A much better experience for me than my ill-fated school walking trip some eight years earlier.
As for the Saturday to Sunday all-nighter, I recall that I was desperately keen not to wimp out again and crash. I chose, on unsound advice, to try speed (Amphetamine).
This experiment certainly helped me to stay awake all night but I do recall that I almost bit my bottom lip to pieces in the process. I don’t think I did very well playing Risk in that state – I’m not sure I ever did well playing Risk. I would tend to play carefully, then get overconfident, invade somewhere beyond my means and get crushed.
Speeding as I was, I have a feeling that I didn’t even go through the “play carefully” stage and I have a dreadful feeling that I might have invaded Ukraine – it just always looked so enticing in the middle of the board. Forty years on, I hang my head in shame at my drug-addled, over zealous, over-confident, reckless former self.
My other unwritten but abiding memory of this trip was the long walk we did on the Sunday, walking from Eardisley across the border into Wales and back. WE must have looked like a right motley bunch by the Sunday and I particularly remember Gerry Guinan wearing a bright green cape-like outfit and remarking that the strange looks she was getting left her in fear of being burnt at the stake as a witch by the horrified-looking villagers as we strode through various villages.
But I am glad to report that there were no witch burning incidents or even “running the students out of our village” incidents as far as I can recall.
It was a seminal little trip for me in several ways. Perhaps I even fell in love with the look of Tudor-style architecture that weekend.
Eardisley (Herefordshire) probably looked like this 19 March 1982 Noddyland, (London W3) did look like this 19 March 2022
Postscript: Jon & Simon chime in with their memories
Jon makes the following informed contribution in addition to the notes (above) which he sent prior to my write up:
1982, eh? Eardisley… I have to say, though, that my folks’ old place there would have regarded the Tudors as fancy young interlopers with no sense of style or tradition at all, I’m afraid. The Cruck House, as it was known, was a 14th century jobby, made out of a single massive oak tree spliced vertically down the middle and then inverted into a kind of Plantagenet ‘A’ Frame. What the ghosts of the house made of us, mind you, speeding like crazy all weekend, I’ve no idea. Gerry Guinan’s cape might even have seemed comfortingly familiar…
Simon’s recollections are no more focussed than Jon’s and mine:
I remember our trip to Eardisley pretty well except that I can’t remember precisely who was there. Vince Beasley was, for sure. I recall going for a brief walk after a first or second night of not sleeping at all and having stomach cramps as a result of the somewhat toxic powder we’d been happily imbibing.
My experience staying in Barnes G3 Flat with friends over the Christmas holidays had convinced me that I had missed a trick by staying on in Lindsay for my second year. Quite early in that second term I started to investigate possibilities to swap my way into a flat. It took until mid February for me to hit pay dirt, by which time I was getting a little tetchy, if the diary is anything to go by:
I won’t even both to translate most of that – the word “dull” appears several times and “none too eventful” is an Ian diary euphemism for…”dull”.
Sunday 21 February 1982 – None too eventful day – went to see Beneath the Valley [of the Ultra Vixens] film -> U Block. Did some work in evening – found out about flat.
My guess is that we saw a quite heavily cut version of the notorious Ultra Vixens movie – I found it mostly silly and minimally dirty, but what do I know of such films?
More importantly, “found out about flat” means that my cunning plan to swap my way into a Barnes Flat had basically come to fruition. The difficulty was finding a swap that worked. A finalist named Tony in Barnes M65 wanted to move out of that flat into a Lindsay room. Problem was, he wanted to move into a quiet, finalists block and my room in F Block Lindsay was not that. One of the reasons I wanted to move was to seek a quieter environment.
I solved the puzzle by finding a fresher (name long since forgotten) who had found himself amongst finalists in a Lindsay block – the fresher was seeking a livelier environment. Hey presto – we pulled off a three-way swap to everyone’s satisfaction.
Monday 22 February 1982 – Did little today. Confirmed move into flat – though had busy evening sorting that out.
“But just a minute,” I hear Keele 1980s experts cry. “M65? M65?? There was no M Block…”
The tragic demise of M Block had been writ in the Keele plans by then – M Block was subsiding into a disused mine beneath it. there were already significant cracks but it was deemed safe for occupation for the remainder of the 1981/82 year.
With thanks to Paul Browning for this authentic picture of Barnes later in the 1980s – the furthest block to the left of that picture is L Block (latterly my home). M Block, demolished by the time this picture was taken, would have been partly obscured by that charming tree.
Some friends thought I was crazy to move into a condemned block, but I figured that refugees from the condemned block would be top of the list for Barnes Flats the following year – ahead of any ballot – as long as at least two of us were planning on staying in a Barnes Flat, which was the case with me and Ahmed Mohd Isa, who was the other non-finalist in M65. I was right.
Wednesday 24 February 1982 – Made half-hearted effort to start packing. Went to see Theatre of Hate – walked out again – oh well.
Well, it seems that I walked out on an historic gig. Theatre of Hate were supported by Southern Death Cult at that gig. According to Dave Lee in the Keele Gigs!, Billy Duffy of Theatre of Hate was so impressed with Ian Astbury of Southern Death Cult that he popped the question and the result was The Cult.
Below is a recording of Southern Death Cult from a bit later in 1982:
Below is a recording of Theatre Of Hate live a little later in 1982:
Thirdly, below, is The Cult, live, a few years later.
Thursday 25 February 1982 – Last day in room – busy packing etc – did no academic work – had quite a good time considering. Lindsay dinner in evening.
Did I time my departure to ensure that I had some sort of special dinner just before I moved? Sounds like it!
Friday 26 February 1982 – moved into flat today – went to count of election. Stayed in evening, unpacking etc.
The election count during the day that Friday will have been the controversial re-run of the presidential election, during the original version of which there had been some shenanigans, which (if I remember it correctly) the “shenaniganistas” (mostly under the auspices of a Machiavellian character named Chris Boden) then used as a mechanism for insisting that the election be rerun.
The result of all that was that Truda Smith got elected for a second time and was actually deemed the winner on that Friday.
Saturday 27 February – Tried to get sorted out in flat – shopped in afternoon. Went to union in evening – met Andy Shindler & the lovely Dalia? Busy.
I don’t really remember meeting up with much Andy Shindler at Keele but if I wrote that it must be true. As for “the lovely Dalia?”, perhaps Andy remembers more about that than I do. I’ll try to find out – I still have my sources, even 40 years on.
By Monday 1 March, it seems I was the President (or was the term Chair?) of JSoc – an honour I seem to remember not really wanting but I found a shilling in the bottom of my beer glass or something like that…
…I am the boss!!!…
…stated with some sarcasm, I imagine.
The beginning of March was not too exciting, despite the new surroundings.
6 March 1982 – Busy morning. Went to Liverpool late afternoon – ball etc – really bad do. Came back in very early hours indeed.
7 March 1982 – Got up very late. Did little during the day. Went to see Watership Down & Animal Farm. Did some work in evening.
8 March 1982 – Did quite a lot of work during the day. Went to UGM in evening. OK
9 March 1982 – Did some work – busy day, Went to Lawsoc AGM – did work after.
I don’t recall the Liverpool visit. Probably with Rana and his flatmates – they had wheels – but I’m not sure.
The Watership Down animation was so much better than the Halas/Batchelor Animal Farm stuff – yet I remember thinking that the latter film was so much better.
I find it hard to believe that I ever went to a Lawsoc AGM and can only imagine how excruciatingly dull such an event must have been. There’s me using the word dull again.
But we’re zooming towards the end of term, when life starts to speed up again.
…I am delighted to report that Frank Dillon has managed to recreate most of his John Cooper Clarke poem from memory. Just as well, as I do not have a copy of it in my Ringroad scripts collection.
Frank wasn’t even in the country when John Cooper Clarke played that gig at Keele. Frank however writes:
As for John Cooper Clarke, I don’t have a copy of it, but I offer the following recreation, honed (or harmed) by the sands of time (i.e. 40 years).
It’s vitally important to read it in the voice of the great man, and with a hint of hysteria.
(And I do mean the great man – for this was a homage, nay, a pastiche, rather than an attack on JCC, for whom I retain an enduring fondness).
I hope it brings back fond memories. Anyway, here goes:
He runs the whole gamut of feelings, from A right through to B. At school he wore a cone-shaped hat that bore the letter D. He’s the first one, but he’s useless,Just like the word Aardvark, John Cooper Clarke. Where he came from is a mystery indeed. His mam and dad, they must have been too bloody thick to breed. If he’s half the age his jokes are, Then he came from Noah’s Ark, John Cooper Clarke.His so-called style is dissolute, his muse, the commonplace. The burden of banality is etched upon his face. He’s told more boring stories Than a bloody copper’s nark, John Cooper Clarke He’s the new enfant terrible of the trendy literati.His mordant wit is de rigueur at all the coolest parties.But like a puppy, laryngectomised, His bite’s worse than his bark, John Cooper Clarke He’s a Wimpy-bar philosopher, his lines are full of glee. He can find the secret of existence in a cup of tea. But like a wanker with his eyes poked out, He’s shooting in the dark, John Cooper Clarke He thinks he’s T S Eliot, or Keats, or Wilfred Owen And literary publishers will clamour for his poems He’s got more front and chutzpah Than a flasher in the park, John Cooper Clarke John Cooper Clarke John Cooper Clarke
I must say that I don’t remember that last couplet. My recollection of the closing couplet was:
But like a masturbating eunuch,
He’ll never make a mark,
John Cooper Clarke, John Cooper F*****G Clarke, John Cooper F*****G B*****D Clarke…
Still, a pretty impressive bit of brain archaeology from Frank there.
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.
