Tag: Keele University

Keele Student’s Summer Working In London 1983, Part One: A Social & Emotional Whirl…With Some Work Thrown In, July 1983

Actually I worked in 19 Cavendish Square, not 19a (depicted). I subsequently (many years later) went to the dentist/hygienist in 19a. Any resemblance between tooth pulling and me working as an accounts clerk in the university holidays is purely coincidental.

The summer of 1983 was to be the last of my summer holiday jobs working for Newman Harris in London. Two-and-a-bit years later I started working for that firm full time as a trainee, but that’s another story.

As with previous summer jobs, I spent an awful lot of time meeting up with people for lunch and after work. I also visited Keele during that summer – a benefit of having retained the Barnes L54 flat, along with Alan Gorman and Chris Spencer, for a further year.

I’ll set out my diary pages below and try to translate/transliterate them. The very first reference on my first day of work, “VL”, refers to Laurence Corner (the V stood for Victor), where I spent a fair chunk of that summer, as I had done previously in my summer jobs. Forty years on, I am still in touch with DJ and Kim from there – not least because I met Janie through Kim in 1992 and the rest, as they say, has been history.

https://www.allinlondon.co.uk/directory/surplus-stores/5766-laurence-corner

In July 1983 though, I was struggling with my sophomoric romantic travails with Liza. I did not want to seem to be pandering to my mum’s unreasonable aversion to the relationship…in truth I think mum had an aversion to me having ANY romantic relationship at that time…while in truth I had emotionally “checked out” by the end of the summer term, as reported in the last instalment…

The Sneyd, The Jedi, The Parents & The Return To London At The End Of My P2 Year At Keele, 1982/1983

…I just couldn’t see the Liza relationship working for me the following academic year.

There’s the context, so hold on to your hats for the deeds extracted from the diaries.

Monday 4 July 1983 – Started work – v busy. VL etc – unpacking etc evening

Tuesday 5 July 1983 – Work – v busy. Met Jilly [Black] for lunch [probably that Italian place on Henrietta Place where you could sit and eat in a railway carriage]. Unpacked till late

Wednesday 6 July 1983 – Busy day at office – Paul [Deacon] came over in evening. [I think there’ll be some good “mix tape” pieces from the summer of 1983, as Paul was in top form that summer with his record finds etc – my own form was not bad that summer either]

Thursday 7 July 1983 – Lots of work – stayed in this evening

Friday 8 July 1983 – V Busy – stayed in eve & relaxed

Saturday 9 July 1983 – Lazy day today – went shopping in Brixton -> G Jenny for tea – lazy eve

Sunday 10 July 1983 – Lazy day – did some reading – relaxed, ate, etc.

Grandma Jenny still lived in Sandhurst Court, Acre Lane, in those days, making a shopping trip to Brixton ahead of visiting her for tea a natural progression.

I expect you’ve got the gist of these summer diary pages by now, so I’ll only extract the highlights that might use some explaining from now on.

Tuesday 12 July 1983 – …met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch…Paul [Deacon] came round in evening – went over to Andrew [Andy Levinson, who also lived in Woodfield Avenue]

Friday 15 July 1983 – Office Ok – much work – left early. Went up to Keele – stayed in eve…

Saturday 16 July 1983 – went pub in morning – afternoon Ashley [Fletcher] came over – v tired crashed out early…

Sunday 17 July 1983 – then up late – ran late – brekker – lazy day – left in eve – got back a little late.

Forty years on, I’m struggling to process that weekend in my mind. I sense that I was finding full time work tiring that summer – I think there was a bit of a heatwave on that year – but the weekend in Keele looks quite topsy-turvey to me and I’m guessing that some aspects are unwrit and unremembered, at least by me. Ashley might remember a bit more once he sees the diary write up. Perhaps that weekend was the “dancing and mud cricket in the rain” occasion:

Remembering The Heatwave Of Summer 1983 At Keele, Late June or July 1983

Wednesday 20 July 1983 – …went to Wendy’s [Robbins – in Bromley back then] in eve – v pleasant.

Thursday 21 July 1983 – …met Caroline for lunch …

Friday 22 July 1983 – Work OK – deadlines. Went to Annalisa’s [de Mercur, who lived in Harley Street in those days] for lunch and went for a drink with Marianne [Gilmour, daughter of Geoffrey, also doing holiday work at NH those summers] – Paul came over later.

Saturday 23 July 1983 – …had haircut… [a rare and therefore diary-worthy event back then]

Sunday 24 July 1983 – Lazy day – nice lunch (Chinese) [probably at Mrs Wong’s] Finished with Liza in eve – not nice.

I vaguely recall seeking counsel from several friends in the run up to the Sunday call with Liza, which possibly in part explains the social whirl of the end of the week. I’m not going to pretend that I handled the matter well, but I was bringing little or no experience to the matter. In any case, it isn’t a situation that lends itself to being handled well.

Monday 25 July 1983 – …Ashley [Michaels, from NH, not Fletcher from Keele] took me to lunch…

Tuesday 26 July 1983 – …Met Jim [Jimmy Bateman] after work – boozed & ate in eve [almost certainly a Sun in Great Ormond Street/Lambs Conduit Street event] along the lines of evenings during holiday jobs passim…

Perseverance With Work & Meeting Up With Friends, 28 March To 10 April 1981

Thursday 28 July 1983 – …met Hamzah [Shawal, my departing Keele flatmate – I think this was the last time I saw him] for lunch…

Friday 29 July 1983 – …went for drink with Ashley [Michaels] and Dilip Vora] after work …

Saturday 30 July 1983 – …went over to Paul’s for afternoon…

Sunday 31 July 1983 – Did little today. Set up hi-fi. Met Liza in Edgware – drank quite a lot!

I vaguely remember that evening in Edgware. I think Liza’s brother Sean and sister-in-law Marlene had invited her down with a view to setting up a face-to-face between me and Liza. Possibly they wrongly envisaged a possible reconciliation if Liza and I met in person. In any case it was a grown-up ploy, because breaking up by phone had been far from ideal; I think (hope) Liza and I parted on better terms as a result of that very boozy evening.

Remembering The Heatwave Of Summer 1983 At Keele, Late June or July 1983

In July 2022, we’re having a heatwave. The brain addles, but also the odd memory flash arrives.

39 years ago we also had a heatwave, right at the very end of the 82/83 academic year, at Keele.

It was probably the only period in all my years at Keele when I (and many of us) felt stifled by the heat up on that hill.

I have one very clear memory of that heatwave, from when the weather broke. The sky darkened, there was thunder and it started to pour with rain, much like a tropical storm.

Ashley Fletcher

There were very few students still around. It was either right at the very end of the summer term or possibly even after term had finished; I returned to my Barnes flat (L54) at Keele for a weekend or two that summer, as I was going out with Liza O’Connor from The Sneyd at that time.

I remember that Ashley Fletcher was around at the flat when the weather broke; Ashley immediately said, “let’s go outside and dance in the rain”.

Several other people came out of other flats onto the edge of the playing fields and danced with us.

Although it was 1983, I don’t think we quite managed to emulate Flashdance…

…but still – what a feeling!

Anything to add, Ashley?

Postscript: Yes, Ashley Did Have Something To Add…

…pseudonymously – only because it is my tradition for King Cricket to provide noms de guerre for my friends…or should I say, for Ged Ladd’s friends:

Rain starts play (a 1983 ‘Thunder Match’ report)

The Sneyd, The Jedi, The Parents & The Return To London At The End Of My P2 Year At Keele, 1982/1983

The last few decadent days of my P2 year at Keele, 1982/1983, revolved quite a lot around The Sneyd Arms.

By the end of June, my girlfriend Liza O’Connor was back at the Sneyd, working off the rent money she had needed to move in with friends Mike and Mandy in Stoke for the second half of her first year at North Staffs Poly (see Ogblogs passim).

Festival week was over, so there was a real “end of year” laziness about Keele by then.

Seems I got my Tuesday and Wednesday mixed up at one point

Tuesday 28 June 1983 – Lazyish day. Ashley [Fletcher] came over in afternoon -> graduation -> Hanley – Return Of The Jedi -> Chippy.

“Graduation” was neither mine (I graduated in absentia in 1984 – more on that anon) nor Ashley’s (Ashley in the end chose not to complete his degree). But it was quite traditional to turn up at the back of Keele Hall and help those whom we knew who were graduating to celebrate their occasion.

The way the diary note is phrased, I’m guessing that Ashley must have joined us on that trip to Hanley to see Return Of the Jedi. I remember Liza being so incredibly keen on all things Star Wars and insisting that I simply must see that film with her that I don’t in truth remember anyone else being there apart from the two of us. Probably there were several of us, including Ashley and others.

I can still in truth say that I have never seen Star Wars and indeed that the only film from the entire franchise that I have ever seen is Return Of The Jedi on that historic occasion in Hanley.

This type of movie didn’t float my boat then and still doesn’t.

Wednesday 29 June 1983 – Part One results. Lazy day – Ashley came – got pissed -Liza and Martin came over – watched TV in evening -> Sneyd.

[Might that Martin have been you, Martin Ladbrooke?]

I watched very little TV in those days, but my flatmate Alan Gorman had left his TV behind in the flat for us to use during those bits of the summer when we were around, so on that evening we watched some TV. Couldn’t tell you all we watched but I’m pretty sure we did watch an episode of Blackadder, or more accurately The Black Adder, which I remember finding very funny.

I simply wouldn’t have imagined, back then, that 20 years later I’d get to know that show’s producer, John Lloyd, quite well:

A Quite Interesting Sunday Evening In A Television Studio, 26 January 2003

Thursday 30 June 1983 – Lazy day – shopped by day – spent lazy and decadent afternoon & evening.

Friday 1 July 1983 – Easy day. Went to see Phil Rose [my law tutor] in morning – easy afternoon & evening.

Saturday 2 July 1983 – Packed during day. Lazy afternoon. Went to Micky’s Bistro in evening.

I only have the vaguest memories of Mickey’s Bistro. Newcastle-Under-Lyme I am pretty sure. Not the best but not the worst either.

Sunday 3 July 1983 – Mum & Dad came up. Lunch at Sneyd. Came down to London.

Now there was an awkward situation. Mum was totally discombobulated by me going out with pub landlord’s daughter who did not exactly fit my mother’s image of the nice Jewish girl mum was hoping for. Not that mum ever approved of nice Jewish girls she got to meet through me either, as I recall pointing out to her on the several occasions we argued over this matter in the early stages of that summer.

To add to my confusion over the matter, I was mentally checking out of the relationship with Liza myself, but sure as hell didn’t want mum to think that she could kick up a stink over my choice of girl and get her way by making a fuss.

“So what happened?”…I hear hundreds of readers cry. You’ll have to read the next instalment or three of this epic. It’s like the Star Wars saga…except without the action and without the violence and without creatures from other planets and without the cosmological dualism.

But still, epic. Watch this space.

Ying-Yang Symbol, Vivoterra, CC BY-SA 4.0

Keele Festival Week, With Infeasible Levels Of Cricket, Movie Watching & Social Activities, Late June 1983

Image produced in collaboration with Dall-E

It’s hard to believe quite how much went on in that one frantic week at the end of the Keele 1982/83 academic year. Let me divide the story/stories into their several component parts.

First Part Of The Week – Cricket On & Off

Cricket has played an important part in my life, on and off, throughout my life. But it played only a tiny part in my life at Keele. Still, I did participate in three festival week “Players Of The Left v Gentlemen Of The Right” cricket matches over the years, 1983 being the second of the three. These have each been written up on Ogblog and also as a single piece about my cricket nom de plume, Ged Ladd, on the King Cricket website:

Players (of the left) v Gentlemen (of the right) – match report + wagon wheel

Aficionados of “noms de plume” might enjoy the idea that my 1980s Keele Concourse non de plume, H Ackgrass, is writing a cricket biography of my subsequent nom de plume, Ged Ladd.

My participation in the 1983 match started with a net session on the Monday before the match. How I performed in the nets is lost in the mists of time, but my “thanks for coming” level of involvement in the fixture was probably the result of that net performance. The late, great Toby Bourgein, bless him, was loyal to the extent that he selected me again, given that I played as a last minute substitute in 1982…

“Got Roped In To Playing Cricket All Afternoon”, Gentlemen v Players Cricket Match, Keele Festival Week, 24 June 1982

…but not so loyal as to risk his plans for a Players victory in 1983. Toby’s plans succeeded that year. If you want to read all about it, click here or the block below:

My Second “Thanks For Coming” (TFC) Keele Festival Week Cricket Match, 21 June 1983

Yet there was more to that week for me than cricket, as the diary attests…

…despite the fact that the 1983 Cricket World Cup was coming to its exciting (and probably cricket history transforming) conclusion. I wrote up Wednesday 22 June 1983 a few years ago, the concluding phrase, “tired and pissed off after” still resonating with my older (but perhaps not much wiser) psyche:

The Day England Were Knocked Out Of the Cricket World Cup By India, While I Made A Three-Hundred Mile Round Trip Visit, Probably Against My Will, 22 June 1983

Second Part Of The Week – Movies

There are references to seeing several movies that week, which certainly warrants a mention. Not least because the least famous of them sticks in my mind peculiarly.

Thursday 23 June 1983 …went to see Young Frankenstein and Wild Women Of Wongo.

I probably don’t need to say much about Young Frankenstein, other than the fact that this 1974 film was already deemed a comedy classic by 1983 and I do remember all of us who went that evening finding it uproariously funny. I still remember it fondly.

This 1958 film was a memorable part of the “classics double-bill” experience because it fell into that category of low budget films that amused young people like us because they were “so bad, they were almost good”. By gosh, this film was bad… but we laughed.

Thursday 24 June 1983 …went [The] Secret of NIMH…

Probably chosen by Liza and her art school gang, although I have always been a sucker for animated films and I remember this one being very well animated, although not really my first choice of subject matter. I should try and see it again some time.

Third Part Of the Week – Wendy Robbins Visits & The Keele Festival Week Socialising Is In Full Sway

Wendy Robbins c1979

In fact Wendy Robbins had arrived ahead of us all going to see The Secret Of NIMH so undoubtedly was with the group that went to that movie and then came back to L54.

Wendy was an old friend of mine from Streatham BBYO (youth club) and even earlier. When you are 20, people whom you have hung out with throughout your teens are “old friends”.

As was his wont, my flatmate, Alan Gorman, had fled Keele as soon as his study commitments had concluded, allowing me to invite Wendy and provide her with a room in our flat. I think Hamzah had already gone too. Indeed, Chris Spencer might also have disappeared ahead of festival week that year, so perhaps I and my friends had the entire run of the place.

Whoever else might have been there, the flat for sure became “festival week/end of year central” in my Keele world for that weekend.

Saturday 25 June – Went shopping in morn – Ashley [Fletcher] came over in afternoon – we all went to Candles – P? came over after

Sunday 26 June – Lazy day – late rise. Played cards etc. Ashley ? went to union in eve – I went meet Liza – pissed off ???

I’m not 100% sure what the pissed-offness was about. I know that Liza had taken a job to help pay off her share of rent for Shelton and I know this put strain on her participation in the end of Keele year social activities.

I also recall that Liza didn’t take too kindly to Wendy, for reasons I could and still can only surmise.

The diary for the next week says that Wendy left on the Monday – I took her to Hanley so I guess she came up by coach.

Forty years on, Wendy and I are still in touch, although i haven’t seen her for a while.

Me, Jilly, Simon [Jacobs], Andrea & Wendy in 2017. Janie took the picture so once again she isn’t in it!

The Cricket World Changed That Day And I Totally Missed It, Keele, 25 June 1983

The cricket world cup final of 1983 changed the world of cricket pretty much overnight. Spoiler alert: India beat the mighty West Indies, at which point the entire population of India, which previously had not really seen the point of one day cricket, suddenly got it and adopted the shorter form of the game, for ever.

Meanwhile I was at Keele enjoying Festival Week and the entire event went unmentioned in my diary and probably largely unnoticed by me, other than reading about it in the newspapers afterwards.

That Saturday diary entry reads:

Went shopping in morn – Ashley came over in afternoon – we all went to Candles – Pat came over after.

“All” will have included Liza O’Connor (then my girlfriend) and Wendy Robbins who was visiting for a few days, as well as Ashley Fletcher.

Candles was a restaurant – in Hanley if I remember correctly.

I owe Pat a massive apology but I cannot recall who he (or she) might have been. Pat has other similar mentions in the diary around that time but those mentions aren’t helping my memory. Perhaps someone else (or Pat personally) might find this piece and chime in.

I do recall a bit of an atmosphere during that Wendy visit; I’m not sure that Liza appreciated Wendy’s presence and I’m pretty sure that I didn’t appreciate Liza’s lack of appreciation.

Wendy was (and still is) a big personality and I suspect that Liza felt somewhat upstaged. We were all very young then.

Me And Wendy Robbins On Westminster Bridge

I have no pictures with Liza and the above picture, from about four years earlier, probably taken by a visiting American and sent to me, is the only one I have of me and Wendy around that time.

But I digress. Point is, it was festival week, I had visitors, so apparently I took no interest in the cricket world cup final. Tut, tut.

Here is a link to the scorecard and other cricinfo resources for the match.

While below is a YouTube of highlights:

The Day England Were Knocked Out Of the Cricket World Cup By India, While I Made A Three-Hundred Mile Round Trip Visit, Probably Against My Will, 22 June 1983

Kapil Dev, India’s cricket captain, didn’t help my mood that day.

I missed seeing any part of England being knocked out of the first cricket world cup in 1975, for good (albeit unsuccessful) sporting reasons:

A Truly Thrice Awful Day In My School/Sporting Life, 18 June 1975

I also missed seeing any of the 1979 final, in which England lost out to the West indies in the second cricket world cup; no doubt because no-one else at Alleyn’s school was sufficiently willing to score a first team cricket match rather than watch the final:

The Day England Lost The Cricket World Cup Final To The West Indies, While I Scored A Different Match, 23 June 1979

But I have a seemingly weak reason for missing the entirety of the 1983 semi-final, in which India made short-shrift of England, while on their way to that historic trophy-lifting victory in the third cricket world cup.

Yes, I played cricket the day before; an epic “thanks for coming” appearance for The Players in the Keele Festival Week traditional Gentlemen v Players beer match:

My “Thanks For Coming” (TFC) Keele Festival Week Match, 21 June 1983

So what could possibly have prevented me from hanging up those boots and spending at least some of the day watching the cricket on TV? It was, after all, festival week, a time of year that I especially loved at Keele, after all the term work and exams were over, when I could enjoy all that Keele had to offer without even the slightest pang of guilt.

The relevant passage reads (and yes I did need a magnifying glass and some deep thought to translate it):

Rose early – went – hitched- to London to see Sean and Marlenne [sic] – got train home – tired and pissed off after.

Sean and Marlene (I’m pretty sure I have spelt the name wrong in the diary) were the brother and sister-in-law respectively of my then girlfriend, Liza.

This was the one and only time I hitched all the way from Keele to London and it was an experience that, clearly, I was so keen not to repeat that I insisted on us getting the train home rather than trying to hitch home.

I don’t remember all that much about that London-bound, hitch-hiking journey other than the several discomforts of it; both physical (when sitting in passenger seats of 1970s/1980s lorries and mental (when I got that creepy feeling that the driver was more interested in my winsome, blond companion, Liza, than in the communitarian/sharing economy principles of helping a young couple who were hitch-hiking).

Sean and Marlene were (possibly still are) a very nice, very welcoming couple who lived in Stanmore. Sean, like Liza, had been raised in Keele itself, so they were not natural London sub-urbanites but seemed to fit into that mould very readily.

I recall that Sean was a hairdresser and the other thing that sticks in my mind is that they lived next door to a chap who had been in The Vibrators.

The diary entry infers that this day did not please me greatly. I am sure this was not Sean and Marlene’s fault; nor should I really blame Liza who had probably suggested the idea ages before – i.e. long before I realised that this 300 round trip to visit family in Stanmore was scheduled for bang slap in the middle of Festival Week and the day of the cricket world cup semi final to boot.

So it wasn’t a good day for me in North London.

It wasn’t a good day for England in Manchester either.

You can watch the highlights of the cricket match below:

https://youtu.be/8P4Rq9mtxhc

Highlights (or should I say lowlights?) of the debates Liza and I might well have had about the quality of that day out and the possible repetition of such excursions are, mercifully, not available.

My Second “Thanks For Coming” (TFC) Keele Festival Week Cricket Match, 21 June 1983

The Players Team In A Previous Year – c1981 – Thanks Frank Dillon

I made a right pigs ear of writing up this match originally, combining memories of the 1982 and 1983 games. It took the good offices of Mark Ellicott to put matters right in the matter of the 1982 match.

“Got Roped In To Playing Cricket All Afternoon”, Gentlemen v Players Cricket Match, Keele Festival Week, 24 June 1982

On the back of my 1982 derring-do (one catch, following a series of mishaps), presumably I qualified as an incumbent (Mark Ellicott was absent all year 1982/83) and was therefore invited along to the Players net session, which my diary shows taking place on Monday 20th; the day before the match.

If our captain, the late Toby Bourgein (who sadly died in 2020) had hoped, on the back of my willingness and enthusiasm to contribute, that there was some innate cricketing ability to be teased out in the nets, he was probably sorely disappointed.

Hardly surprising, given my relative lack of ability and the fact that I probably hadn’t played for five years or so. Even house games at school had resorted to using me as a neutral umpire towards the end of my schooldays. I was keen on the game but out of practice & quite useless by 1982 (and 1983). Latterly I got a little bit better again.

But Toby was the loyal sort and anyway probably only had eleven volunteers from which to pick his team, so I was in again.

As in 1982, I didn’t expect much of a role and yet again got pretty much what I expected.

Again I fielded, almost certainly with my trusty skiff of ale for company, but I recall nothing of note this time around.

The 1983 Keele Festival match proved to be an historic win for the Players. I recall Toby holding back a couple of our better batsmen who were more or less able to finish the job when we were six or seven down. I recall one of the match-winning batsmen fell just before the target,  so I was sent in to achieve a glorious 0* without even facing a ball.

As I put it in my diary:

…famous left-wing victory.

Toby, being Toby, remembered my derring-do from 1982 and TFC record from 1982 & 1983, so asked me to open the batting in the 1984 fixture. But that is another story of another great win for the mighty Players.

O Captain! My Captain! – Gentlemen Of The Right v Players Of The Left – Keele Festival Week Cricket Match, 26 June 1984

I have no photos from the 1982, 1983 nor the 1984 match, but this one from a couple of years earlier, thanks to Frank Dillon, should give the reader a pretty good feel for the look of the mighty Players team.

With thanks to Frank Dillon, this picture of an earlier “Players” team, probably 1981

If anyone out there has more memories and/or photographs of our festival week beer matches, especially this game, I’d love to hear from you.

Towards The End Of 1982/83 At Keele, In Which I Do A Literally Dopey Thing Ahead Of A Law Exam, Then Lazily Start To Get Into The Keele Festival Week Spirit, June 1983

John Stuart Mill, Of His Own Free Will, On Half A Slice Of Hash Cake…

I did, with the benefit of hindsight, a really silly thing ahead of my Part One Finals Jurisprudence (Law) exam paper. It can only have been the election evening/night when we all sat around in Rectory Road Shelton watching the Tories romp back home and leave the Labour party in disarray.

While some drowned their sorrows in cheap beer (or perhaps something stronger) and puffed away at cigarettes, I had quit smoking and was not going to drink any booze (which was still often upsetting me a bit post glandular fever).

So Liza, Mike and Mandy decided, in order for me to be able to do something intoxicating with my sorrows, that they would bake a cake, infused with lashings of hashish sprinklings, thus mellowing my and everyone else’s mood.

Dall-E has tried to help me replicate the scene in an image.

It was done an act of kindness, but perhaps at least one of us should have known a rather important, basic, biological fact about the mind-affecting substance in question. When smoked, the effect wears off in a few hours at the most. When ingested, the effect lasts a good deal longer – 12 to 24 hours.

The Next Day – 10 June 1983

I basically ended up sitting my Jurisprudence paper feeling high as a kite. I don’t think I got a great mark…but nor did I flunk the exam. Philip Rose might have thought I was still icky from my glandular fever and taken pity on me. Or possibly my scribblings were enhanced by my relaxed state of mind, such that my paper really wasn’t at all bad.

A reasonable chunk of what I know about jurisprudence has subsequently been captured for posterity in the Gresham Lecture I gave in 2008 on Commercial Ethics. The video seems to have gone, but the transcript, sound file and pictures are all still on the Gresham site here. I wrote and delivered that lecture without the help of mind-affecting substances.

Returning to June 1983 at Keele – after doing two law papers (I think the other paper I cognitively-floated through was Torts) I went to see Victor/Victoria in the evening.

This film was highly acclaimed but I remember not liking it much. There were one or two good set pieces, such as the cockroach scene at the start of the film, but ultimately I found the conceit of it – a failing actress pretending to be a male female impersonator – a little irksome. I remember especially disliking the trailer for the film, which laboured the point about the Julie Andrews character being “a woman…pretending to be a man…pretending to be a woman” – just in case the audience was too thick to work out what was going on.

After The Exams – 13 to 19 June 1983

Monday 13 June – Last exam today -> Newcastle afternoon -> UGM in eve – stayed up late after

Tuesday 14 June – Lazed around all day. Stayed in eve drinking etc.

Wednesday 15 June – Lazy day again. Shopped – lazy evening

Thursday 16 June – Did little today – went to Shelton & NSP [North staffs Poly] – lazy evening. Cooked meal.

Friday 17 June – Lazyish day, Shopped – in evening went to see Diva – v good.

I do especially remember that movie Diva. I thought it was stunning. Not what I would now think of as my kind of movie, but the visuals and sounds were an explosion of sensory extremes that I rarely feel in the movies. Here’s the IMDb link. Below is the trailer:

Saturday 18 June – Did little today – Liza working most of the day and evening – stayed in cooked meal.

Sunday 19 June – Rose late – went Int [International] Fair – wet lunch at Sneyd – went Newcastle in eve – Liza v ill after

Lazy is the key word for the week after my exams. The following week was different again, as you’ll discover next time…

Ahead Of My First General Election: Rectory Road Shelton, A Day In Chester, The Missionary &, Of Course, Keele, Early June 1983

Chester, Image by Nessy-Pic, CC BY-SA 4.0

I continued shuffling backwards and forwards between Rectory Road Shelton & Keele until after my June exams, which included my Law part one finals and also (I think) a couple of Economics papers.

Forty years on, my more grown up…well, older at least… self does not think that going to Chester for the day with Liza and Mandy was such a good idea, when I should have been revising for my Keele exams.

I sense from the write up of that day and the next that the effort of the day trip to Chester made me feel a bit poorly. I was still not completely better from my glandular fever a few months earlier. Still, I report “worked hard” the next day, 2 June, ahead of attending the count and election appeals.

Let me be clear about this. 2 June was not the general election. Rather, it was an extremely important election in the University of Keele Students’ Union calendar, the exact nature of which is lost in the mists of time but it was beholden upon me to go for a drink with the others from election appeals committee afterwards. I think it was probably the last SU election of the year.

I have no idea what might have been annoying about the Saturday afternoon. I suspect I didn’t get much done. My intended revision simply refused to revise for itself and I, in turn, didn’t get much revision done for it. Revision was never the thing I did best.

I report going to the flicks to see The Missionary on the Sunday and then returning to Keele, so my guess is that this film was on at the cinema in Hanley. I remember liking it. Everyone who is (or was) anyone in English comedy drama is on that cast list – national treasures a plenty. That type of whimsical comedy film, it was.

I am writing up these diaries forty years on, but I wrote up the election itself six years ago, around the time of the 2017 general election. Here (and below) is a link to the piece I wrote then:

My First General Election, A Student’s Eye View 34 Years On, 9 June 1983

The Keele “Naff” Guide by Frank Dillon & “Friends”, A Concourse Freebie, c1983

Frank Dillon: “It wasn’t just me, it was also them”

In 1983, the humorous publishing “mode du jour” was The Complete Naff Guide:

Purportedly by three authors, it was in fact written almost exclusively by William Donaldson, who was better known as Henry Root. I read the Henry Root Letters books earlier than 1983 in my time at Keele and found them laugh-out-loud funny. I still treasure my copies of those.

Perhaps it was those Henry Root book covers that inspired The Price Of Fish…

…but I digress.

The point is, Frank Dillon and others decided to put together a spoof of The Complete Naff Guide, in the form of a booklet, which was given away with Concourse. It caused a bit of a flurry, because it was, to Keele students at the time, very funny.

Indeed, at the time I recall thinking that the Keele “Naff” Guide was, to my mind, a lot funnier than the real thing. Returning to both recently, my view has, if anything, hardened on this. The Complete Naff Guide seems terribly dated and riddled with in-jokes directed at particular media people of that era, presumably those who were not on William Donaldson’s Christmas card list. I suspect that rather a lot of well-known people were not on Christmas card terms with Donaldson.

As for the Keele “Naff” Guide, while some jokes are dated, chunks of it remain funny and probably relevant. I think many of the jokes will resonate with Keele alums and students throughout the ages.

You can judge for yourselves and let us know what you think. Here, with Frank Dillon’s permission, I republish it in full. All 20 pages of it.

Frank says the following:

I did write at least some of it, but can’t take credit (or blame) for the whole thing, though the idea that I had “friends” will come as a shock to many.

I suspect that the harsher observations contained therein would not evade the blue pencil of 21st-century mores, so apologies to those who might have been offended (and are yet to be so, upon re-publication).

I echo the last sentence of Frank’s message, but suggest that you would need to be super-sensitive to be offended by any of the content, as long as you read it in its context: a 1983 comedic piece. The first item in the list of “Naff Records To Request At the Disco”, for example, reads like a cruel joke today, in late May 2023, whereas it was, at the time, a reference to a record that didn’t need to be requested, because it was almost always played at union discos and/or on the main bar jukebox!

Returning to the Keele “Naff” Guide…

…you can view the document two ways. I have uploaded all 20 images to Flickr, which is perhaps more navigable (or at least makes it easier to enlarge the pages) – the first link below is the cover, clicking on that one takes you to Flickr. Below that are the other 19 images shown within this piece – each one is clickable if you want to delve deeper or larger into that one page.

Keele Naff Guide 01 es

It does bother me a bit, though, that Frank and “friends” were persuading me to run for Chair of Constitutional Committee around the same time as they were listing that role as quintessentially naff.

I thought you were my friend, Frank. 😉