Tag: Keele

The Shaving Razor’s Old And It Stings, A Keele Fresher’s Facial Fiasco, Summer Term 1981

Rolls Razor Picture by Dr.K. 03:53, 5 October 2007 (UTC), CC BY-SA 3.0

A Couple Of Years Before I Started Keele

In the late 1970s, an American entrepreneur named Victor Kermit Kiam The Second announced that he was so impressed with the Remington electric shaver his wife bought him as a gift, he henceforward would eschew the use of the wet shavers he had used throughout his life and…

…get this…

…Victor Kiam bought the company that made Remington shavers.

My dad was way ahead of Victor Kiam in switching from blades to Remington electric shavers; by the late 1970s, dad had several of them. Two at the house, plus one at the shop, where dad’s routine required a five-o’clock shave, removing shadow ahead of late afternoon customers (or mostly lack thereof, by the late 1970s). Dad was not ahead of Victor Kiam in the matter of entrepreneurship. 

In my early days shaving, I used dad’s spare Remington at home to remove the odd visible patch of dark fluff from my face.

My First Term At Keele – The Shaving Story

Vintage Remingtons are still available for purchase, e.g. on e-bay

When I set off for Keele University in autumn 1980, dad lent me that spare Remington, plus lotion bottles (pre shave and after shave) plus an old spare illuminated art-deco-style shaving mirror. The makeshift electrical wiring and plugs for that paraphernalia looked like a physics experiment.

But whereas prior to Keele, my facial hair only became visible once every few days, I soon started to notice daily patches of hair and started to shave regularly.

Increased Remington use combined badly with regular intake of beer, cigarettes and the rest. My face and neck became sore losers of facial hair; itchiness and blotchiness abounded. 

Second Term At Keele

For my second term at Keele, Dad switched my loan from the old Remington to a more modern foil-headed electric shaver…

Another style of vintage Remington still available e.g. on ebay.

…but the skin irritation persisted; possibly it even got worse.

Bloodbath At Keele – Summer Term 1981

Dr.K. 02:46, 5 October 2007 (UTC), CC BY-SA 3.0

Thus, over Easter 1981, contra-Kiam as it were, dad and I agreed that I would switch from electric to to wet shaving. Dad rebundled my loan, replacing the Remington with the Rolls Razor he had used as a young soldier during the war. This contraption, which they stopped making before I was born, was a metal box containing a strop and a re-useable safety razor. You would sharpen the blade on the strop, then detach the razor for your wet shave. Eventually you would change the blade, which, if memory serves me well, required a screwdriver and a fair bit of dexterity.

The other thing that needed dexterity was the safe use of such a safety razor.

We could not buy the company that had made Rolls Razor – it had gone bust by then – but we should have invested in the makers of styptic pencils and sticking plasters.

Styptic Pencil –  Anhydrous aluminium sulfate seeing as you (didn’t) ask
Photograph by Rama, CeCILL

I recall seeing several horror films towards the end of my first year at Keele; The Amityville Horror and The Shining spring to mind, so I had plenty of suitable similes to describe the bloody bathroom scenes of my early Rolls-Razor efforts.

Aftermath And Analysis

I did eventually get the hang of it and that Rolls Razor took me through most of my five years at Keele. In fact I wet-shaved for 25 or more years, until I “went beard” at the end of 2007.

But why did a long-haired ha’porth of a student, with two cack hands and a skin-sensitive face even bother with shaving?

The answer lies not in the facial hair itself, but in the gaps between the patches of facial hair.

It was OK for the youngsters who were blessed with a full growth of facial hair at the age of 18. Simon Jacobs, for example, had five-o’clock shadow from the start at Keele.  But most of us looked ridiculous with sparse facial hair.

I recall Richard Van Baaren naming our Lindsay F-Block corridor’s five-a-side football team ‘Tempted ‘Tache, in honour of fellow undergraduate males’s failed attempts at moustaches.  No, I didn’t play for that team; I have two left feet as well as two cack hands.

Sorely tempted ‘tache-wise in Paradise, 2016

Inadequate facial hair was like a flashing neon sign saying JUVENILE…BOY…NOT YET A MAN.  No self-respecting Keele fresher wanted that. The tell-tale wispy, fluff-stuff had to go, even if the result was bloody carnage, born of cack-hands and a pimply face.

The Six O’Clock Alarm Would Never Ring, Starting My First Keele Summer Term, 24 April to 9 May 1981

It’s sometimes difficult to get up in the morning when you are a first year Keele student. Who knew?

Back then, I had an alarm clock a bit like the one depicted above. I could easily sleep through the ringing of that alarm. I remember bringing back a metal biscuit tin after the Easter holidays with the sole purpose of increasing the volume of the ringing, by placing the alarm clock within the biscuit tin. Didn’t work, I know, I know.

The Key To Getting A Good Night’s Sleep As A Keele Undergraduate

Mind you, it doesn’t help if you start the term as described above. Here is a transcript for any readers not so well versed in the rarefied script that is my handwriting:

24 April 1981 – Exams today. After dinner went to Mark’s [Bartholomew] -> Union. Talking till late with Sim [Simon Ascough], [Mad] Harry & Dave [Johnson, I think].

25 April 1981 – Easy day. Went to Union in evening -> Roy’s for drinks – Melanie [Print], Ashley [Fletcher] & Louise [Lorenc] – locked out – stayed…

26 April 1981 – …overnight. No sleep. Found keys in morning- had lunch – wandered aimlessly & slept from 6 pm until 8 am.

With thanks to Ashley for recalling Melanie & Louise’s names. Neither of us really remember what passed that night, other than a lot of bullshit chat no doubt and Ashley probably went to town with his Adolf Hitler and Ian Paisley (senior) pastiche/parody speeches.

“The flag of my country is hanging upside down outside this building”.

I simply cannot imagine sleeping 14 hours straight through any more. It’s not just that I know I couldn’t do it; I really cannot even imagine it.

Still, that extended night’s sleep got me up in good time for the first FY lecture of the term. What a fresh start.

My First Rolo & My Last Rolo

That peculiar sleep pattern got me up in time to see Professor Paul Rolo’s 9:00 history lecture and Professor David Adams’s 11:00 American Studies lecture.

I recall being fascinated by both of those lectures. Peculiarly, the allure of Russian and Fascist revolutions did not enable the alarm to rouse me on the Tuesday, but the idea of another Paul Rolo lecture somehow enabled the alarm to interrupt my slumbers on the Wednesday and get me to the FY Lecture Theatre for 9:00.

Similarly, the prospect of order in the post-war international system, combined with the alarm clock, failed to get me out of bed on the Thursday morning, yet the subconscious thought of another David Adams lecture woke me and got me to the Chancellor’s Building for the 9:00 lecture on the Friday for the third time that week.

This is the first sign of a pattern that persisted throughout my student years; I was able to get up for lectures, even at 9:00, if I thought they’d be worth the candle. Otherwise I tended to skip the lectures, read up on stuff at leisure (if need be) and sleep in like a teenager…which is what I was.

I didn’t get to know Professor Paul Rolo – he left a year or so after I did FY – but he could lecture and he sounds like a fascinating chap.

Professor David Adams I did get to know when I sat on Senate and also prior to that, when I sat on the train from Stoke to Euston or from Euston to Stoke. He must have gone to London quite a lot because I remember encountering him several times. A really interesting and lovely chap.

What Else Did You Get Up To, Kid?

Ok, ok, I’m getting to it.

Monday 27 April 1981 – First lectures etc. – finished moving etc [all the way from pokey Lindsay F1 to salubrious room with a view Lindsay F4] after dinner -> Union, quite pleasant

Tuesday 28 April 1981 – Light day. Went to see film in evening (Fame – v good,) -> on to union with gang – quite good.

Wednesday 29 April 1981 – OK day. Went to Concourse meeting – on to Mis [Miriam Morgan] & Heather [Jones] for heavy evening

Thursday 30 April 1981 – easyish day. Did little. Short stay in Union – reasonably early night.(Simon [Jacobs] & Sim [Ascough] came back after)

Friday 1 May 1981 – not bad day. Busy afternoon (Kallah photos). Went to see film (yuk). Went back to union – bon.

I’d started going to Film Society by the end of the second term and went a lot in this third term. I am pretty sure the 1 May film which I did not name but described as “yuk” was Fellini Satyricon. If I remember correctly, there weren’t all that many of us in the FY lecture theatre at the start of the movie and by the end I think just three or four of us had stuck it out.

Saturday 2 May 1981 – Easy day. Shopped in Newcastle – went to see David [Perrins] & friends, supper they came over -> Sneyd, Union bop -> Amanda’s.

Sunday 3 May 1981 – Lazy day – went to Lloyd’s [Green] and Amanda’s -> Union in evening.

I feel bad saying this, but I cannot remember who Amanda is/was, but she was unquestionably a diary highlight that weekend. Simon might remember. Lloyd might remember. But I feel that it is me who should remember. Apologies. If you are out there, Amanda, please do get in touch and jog the memory…if by chance you remember anything about it.

Tuesday 5 May 1981 – Busyish day. Saw All That Jazz in the evening. Simon’s [Jacobs] for coffee after – good.

Wednesday 6 May 1981 – OK day. Went to see Discipline and Lounge Lizards in evening – v good.

Dave Lee’s forthcoming (as I write in April 2021) book The Keele Gigs! will no doubt review Discipline (whom in truth I don’t really remember), and The Lounge Lizards (a gig I remember well and very fondly). You can see something quite similar to the gig we saw on YouTube – click here:

Thursday 7 May 1981 – Easyish day. Laundry etc. Easyish evening.

Friday 8 May 1981 – Busyish day. Went to Burslem in evening. Enjoyable evening. (Came here for coffee).

Saturday 9 May 1981 – Late start, Newcastle shopping – ate – Union in evening – back here after.

That new room of mine, Lindsay F4, was salubrious enough to become a focal point to the extent that people had started coming back to my place. It might also have had something to do with the fact that I was going in to Newcastle on the weekend to buy food so always had something to eat – possibly even some left overs of cooked food but at the very least plentiful biscuits. My mum would have approved.

I should highlight the fact that Simon Jacobs gets a couple of mentions in this piece – he wrote to me saying that he was mightily put out that he didn’t get a mention in the previous Keele piece.

Bless my cotton socks, I’m in the news…

Reflecting On The End Of My Second Term At Keele, 14 March 1981

Photo: Me, User:Mholland, CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons

Gosh that was quite a fortnight at the end of my second term at Keele. But by the end of it, I was back at my parents house writing grumpy notes in my diary:

Allow me to summarise while I reflect. The first few days of March I spent, much in the company of Dave Lee, racing against the clock to prepare Concourse:

A Five Day Marathon To Produce Concourse With Dave Lee, The Result Being A Student Union Lock-In & Near Death Experience, Late February/Early March 1981

After the near death experience on the night of 4/5 March, a very different type of night on 6/7 March, written up as a short performance piece 40 years on:

The Love Letter, ThreadMash Performance Piece & Review, 4 March 2021

Then the joy of releasing Concourse on Monday 9th March:

The “Film Star Makes President” Edition Of Concourse, 9 March 1981

Then the peculiar events of the Easter Ball, including Robert Plant’s secret gig, which I wrote up some years ago and with which I solved a temporal anomaly in the Led Zep/Robert Plant on-line history

Robert Plant’s Secret Gig, Room 14, University of Keele Students Union (UKSU), 11 March 1981

I’ll hold back on writing further about that Easter Ball, pending Dave Lee’s forthcoming book on Keele gigs, entitled The Keele Gigs!

I love my aftermath diary notes from that Ball, on 12 March:

Simon’s for coffee, Neil came back afterwards -> brekky, ballot box, FY Committee slept.

Simon would be Simon Jacobs. Neil I’m pretty sure must have been Neil Infield and I guess we all wandered over to Lindsay refectory for breakfast.

Ballot box that day I’m pretty sure must have been the election for Social Secretary that year. Eric Rose won that election, only to be bundled out of the job around the following Easter for financial impropriety and who at the time of writing (March 2021) is festering in a New York State prison for murdering his wife. Not cool. Not Keele at all.

I’d forgotten that I served on FY Committee that year. I served again as Education & Welfare Officer in 84/85.

I’m fairly sure the “slept” comment refers to subsequent behaviour and not the idea that I slept during the FY Committee…but there is an absence of punctuation in the diary note between the phrase “FY Committee” and the word “slept”. Subsequently, I did once fall asleep during a Senate meeting in 84/85 – understandable circumstances – which earned praise from several of the senior academics on that august body, not least Philip Boden who declared it to be the most succinct and incisive contribution to the meeting that day. A teaser until this “40 years on” series gets there, some time in 2025, all being well. But I digress.

Perhaps returning to the bosom of my family in March 1981 felt like a real anti-climax, or perhaps I was rather hungover by the time I returned to Streatham, but I describe a…

Rough evening

…on the Friday night of my return and…

not a good day

…on the Saturday, despite:

Taped. Went to Record & Tape Exchange…

…which was usually the stuff of very good days for me, not bad ones. Especially as I bought heaps of records on that occasion, which I shall write about in one or more music-oriented postings about “that vac”.

Music & Video Exchange, Notting Hill cc-by-sa/2.0 – © Chris Whippet

I liked Record & Tape Exchange shops so much in the 1980s I moved around the corner in 1988, where I can sometimes still be found!

No, I think I was probably arguing with my parents about politics and social affairs; them sensing that I was not quite the same boy who had gone off to Keele for the first time six months earlier and me sensing that my parents world and their attitudes were smaller-minded than I had previously supposed.

My relationship with my parents didn’t get too bad, but I suspect that hackles were raised a fair bit that time.

Further, I suspect that I was missing Keele already. The prospect of five weeks of office work in the West End of London to rebuild the coffers was nowhere near as enticing as the fortnight that had just passed at Keele.

Robert Plant’s Secret Gig, Room 14, University of Keele Students Union (UKSU), 11 March 1981

Katie Turner, Rick Cowdery, Robert Plant, Frank Dillon & Carol Downs, with many thanks to Frank Dillon for the photograph (added June 2017) – also thanks to Steve A Jones for restoration work on the e-pic (October 2018)

In many ways this is a darned simple story.

Robert Plant secretly arranged to play a warm up gig with his new band, The Honeydrippers, at the UKSU Ball on 11 March 1981. The gig was in one of the smaller performance rooms, Room 14, despite the fact that Robert Plant was the former lead singer and lyricist of Led Zeppelin, among the biggest names in rock then and indeed ever.

I was at that ball. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time when one of Robert Plant’s roadies was getting some drinks in just before the start of the gig.

I politely let the roadie go ahead of me at the bar; he returned the favour by tipping me off to get upstairs to Room 14 before word spread. I remember partly doubting the roadie’s word, but he did have a roadie lanyard and he also surreptitiously showed me a Robert Plant badge, so I thought, “if this is a practical joke, it’s a clever one and I don’t mind falling for it”.

I am extremely lucky to have seen that gig; Room 14 is small, so I don’t suppose more than 100-150 of us saw the gig. Even that will have blown the fire limit; once word spread most people who tried simply couldn’t get through the door. Far more people claim to have seen the gig than actually saw it.

The gig became a big news story at the time.

With thanks to Steve A Jones for sending me this image…several times, increasing the quality each time. This version hopefully good enough quality for most/all Ogblog readers.

The intriguing, complicating factor is that, back in 2013, I stumbled across a reference to this gig on-line and discovered that on-line sources, of the “rock history” variety, were all quoting the wrong date for this gig. Some 10 March, some 9 March, none 11 March.

My diary was not always a totally reliable source of dates back then – heck, whole days could disappear at Keele and sometimes I would “back-write” a few weeks if I got behind.

But this was at a ball and balls normally happened on Wednesdays. In any case, there was enough going on in my diary that week to suggest that I was…on the ball at that time (pun intended).

I posted some corrective comments on-line which triggered contact from the relevant Led Zep archivists. They were appropriately helpful but sceptical at first. They wanted additional evidence, so I sought the help of John White (who for some reason I recalled was at that gig, although I didn’t know him all that well back then).

John sent me a redacted copy of his diary page – John specialised in existential angst in his diary back then apparently – but I must say this is one of the most heavily redacted diary pages I have ever seen:

Many thanks to John White for his efforts digging out this page and redacting…almost all of it. We do learn from that note that Dr Feelgood was the main act at that ball. We also learn that John, back then, preferred the cabaret to Feelgood and Plant.

Our diary trawling efforts, together with the redoubled efforts of those real archivists once they had some more leads to go on, got to the bottom of the matter. There was a private, secret gig in a pub in Stourbridge on 9 March, but the secret gig that blew the story open was indeed at Keele two days later, So the Robert Plant Secret Keele Gig is now “officially” confirmed to have happened when it did happen; 11 March 1981. Some on-line sources might not yet have caught up with this news.

In short, as a result of our efforts, the date sources for this gig now go up to 11 – click here only if you don’t get this joke or cannot resist seeing this Spinal Tap clip for the eleventh time.

Prior to our temporal triumph, I also tried to engage the help of Daniel Rushton, a Keele alum who had worked at Z/Yen for a while but had recently returned to alma mater. Dan drew a blank, but subsequently said:

extremely happy to hear that this has all been cleared up and that a slight weight has been removed from my weak shoulders. Now I can go back to imagining having been there!

One further intriguing matter from an Ogblog perspective. In my correspondence with the Led Zep archivists back in 2013 I wrote the following:

I might write this business up for the Keele Alumni mag – some of the stuff in my diary has reminded me of some ripping yarns from that end of term week, not least that Robert Plant gig.  I envisage a sort-of pseudo blog/diary – what would I have written back then if blogs and Twitter had existed?  If/when I do write it up, I’ll let you all know.
This small matter might have planted (pun intended) the thought seed for the entire Ogblog project. Reading that 2013 e-mail again has certainly tweaked my interest in that week of my 1981 diary…there must be quite a bit of other juicy stuff in there.
Watch this space.

The “Film Star Makes President” Edition Of Concourse, 9 March 1981

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the “Film Star Makes President” edition of Concourse, I have republished the whole paper in the form of high-quality scans in a Flickr album – click here or the embedded image at the bottom of this page.

Dave Lee edited this edition and I provided him with a great deal of help, including a near-fatal lock-in for the deadline.

A Five Day Marathon To Produce Concourse With Dave Lee, The Result Being A Student Union Lock-In & Near Death Experience, Late February/Early March 1981

Dave had generously given me a great deal of editorial control over the political pages, so the front page and the next two pages were very much mine, content-wise.

Presentation-wise, I think it was entirely down to Dave that we went for an audaciously eye-catching front page – big headline, big photo and election results table only. This was not the regular Concourse way but I think it did help us sell.

I was very proud of the headline; a nod to Ronald Reagan’s recent election and the fact that Mark Thomas headed up the Film Society.

I realise also on re-reading the paper that I interviewed almost all of the protagonists from that early part of the election season: Mark Thomas, Frank Dillon, Anna Summerskill, Ric Cowdery, Steve Townsley, Vince Beasley, Jon Rees…

…I already knew some of them reasonably well and got to know most of them a lot better as the next year or three went on.

Other highlights include:

  • Dave Lee editorially eating his own liver over the previous editors’ resignation scandal and the Katy Turner column faux pas, on Page 4 and then again at length on Page 13;
  • Jon Gorvett & David Perrins fret-piece about fire risk, following a Dublin disco fire, on Page 7;
  • Some Concourse memorabilia on Page 11, looking back 10 years (which now is 50 years), including a snippet about Neil Baldwin from 1971;
  • A couple of damning album reviews, one by me and one by Simon Jacobs, which I have previously Ogblogged about – here, or see it in printed form on Page 14;
  • A couple of damning gig reviews on Page 17, including the Krokus one by Simon Jacobs which I have Ogblogged about here and the Rob Blow & Di Ball one from deadline night;
  • I rather like Phil Avery’s hockey team review on the back page, not least because I had to read the entire thing to the end to work out which sport he was reporting. If only his weather forecasts were so suspenseful.

If you want to browse/read the whole thing, simply click the link below and you will find all the pages in high quality digital form, easy to read/navigate on most devices and for sure downloadable.

March 1981 Concourse P1L

A Five Day Marathon To Produce Concourse With Dave Lee, The Result Being A Student Union Lock-In & Near Death Experience, Late February/Early March 1981

I have already written about the star-crossed relationship between SU President Katy Turner & Concourse editors Paula & Hugh, which came to a head in early February 1981…

Keele Concourse Controversy, A Weekend Back In London, Plus Several More Late-Nighters, 1 to 10 February 1981

The upshot of all that was the resignation of Paula & Hugh, the interim appointment of Dave Lee to edit the March edition (hot on the heels of the ill-fated February one), the rapid appointment of Owen Gavin and Gerry Guinan to take over the editorship immediately after the March edition, to alternative applicant Dave Lee’s chagrin …

Dave Lee, trying not to look displeased

…you might well be thinking to yourself, “none of this commentary bodes well for the harmonious and timely production of that March issue”.

What Does the Diary Say?

Never wanting to be seen as a rat who leaves a sinking ship, I offered Dave Lee my whole-hearted support to produce that March issue and/but found myself as part of a core team of two on the production side. To his credit, Dave steeled himself to the time-sensitive task with great determination.

Many other contributors of course; Simon Jacobs, Gerard O’Kane, Julia Parkes, Moira Neish, David Perrins, Jon Gorvett, Diana Ball, Robert Blow, David Bakhurst, Dexter…

David Perrins indicating that someone was out?

…but not a great deal of company in the Concourse office itself. To be fair on the others, it was a ridiculous post-shenanigans deadline, towards the end of term. I could just about get away with it as a Foundation Year student, but for most that level of commitment at that time of year was impractical.

Saturday 28 February – got up very late – went into Newcastle – ate & Concoursed

Sunday 1 March – late start – Concourse office most of the day and evening

Monday 2 March – OK day – busy with Concourse in evening

Tuesday 3 March – Not bad day – in Concourse office in evening.

Wednesday 4 March – Tough day working on Concourse. Nine Below Zero Concert…

I wrote a lot of copy – I was the political editor and there had been a whole swathe of union elections during February to report. I also did one heck of a lot of typing of my own and other people’s articles. My spectacularly fast four-finger technique was without question the best typing skill on offer…well, probably it was all that was on offer.

Yes, I remember matters becoming increasingly fraught as the days went on. Financially, missing the print deadline would mean ruination.

The set pages needed to go to the printers on the designated day, otherwise the printers would charge for the print run regardless but there would be no paper to sell.

Steve “Spike” Humphrey, a lovely, gentle chap whom I got to know quite well in other walks of Keele life afterwards, was the business manager of Concourse. Spike took pains to remind me and Dave that the print deadline really was just that; an immoveable deadline.

I’m not sure if this is William Randolph Hearst or Spike Humphrey in later life.

On that evening of 4 March, I’m pretty sure Dave & I were already well aware, even as we took a break to see the Nine Below Zero concert, that to get the pages ready for the printers the next morning, we’d be working much of the night to get the job done.

Nine Below Zero, Thirty After Three…

As for the Nine Below Zero gig, I’m sure Dave Lee’s forthcoming (due Summer 2021) book, The Keele Gigs – click this link for more details, will have more to say about that. They looked and sounded like this:

The other point to make about that gig, the very night of our deadline, was that Dave had commissioned and was determined to use, a review of the gig from Di Ball and Rob Blow.

That deadline upon deadline resulted in a little whimper of a hidden plea from me to Dave Lee at the end of that (quite lengthy) piece, when the copy finally arrived and when I finally got it ready for setting:

I apologise unequivocally, forty years on, to Dave, Di and Rob, none of whom were ever guilty of producing rotten articles. I must have been tired and emotional in the early hours of the morning, so, unforgivably, I mis-spoke.

I think Di & Rob kept us company for some time late that evening, as they completed their copy while Dave & I busied ourselves typing and setting other stuff.

But it was just me and Dave who remained once the porters (two from Ted, Walter & Wally no doubt) told us that they had to lock up and we agreed to being locked in.

With thanks to Mark Ellicott for this picture of Walter & Wally

Locked In…

In those days there were no CCTV cameras or anything like that. Yet I have somehow managed to uncover a couple of photos that seem to be pictures of me and Dave at work during that night.

I’d never done any page-setting before, so I think that’s a tentative me
Yup, I’m fairly sure that’s Dave Lee putting the finishing touches on a page

I’ll guess that my 3:30 am plea in that article was accurate but also that it marked the near conclusion of our work. I think we had set everything else by then and simply needed to slot in the material from that night’s concert to be done. In fact, I suspect that my joke paragraph was in part a device to use up the space we had estimated for that article.

So I’ll guess that we were done around 4:00 or 4:30 am.

I’ll guess we expected the union to be opened up around 7:00 am.

I recall that we both had a little bit of silver in our pockets and chose to decompress after our labours using the amusements available.

We might have played table football…

…but I have a feeling that Dave was more a pinball person…

…or perhaps my extensive experience playing table football with Simon Jacobs most evenings put me in a different league for table football…

…or perhaps we quickly landed on the notion that table football is a game where you try to use up your goes as quickly as possible, whereas pinball is a game in which you rejoice in your opponents success – especially if it yields free balls and free games so you can continue to play.

I was an enthusiastic pinball player in those days. here is one of the games we might have played – for sure UKSU had this one at that time:

Once we had blown all the silver in our pockets, I think we both felt the onset of fatigue and so we decided to retire to the quiet room at the end of the union extension to grab forty winks before the sun would go up and the union would re-open.

…Then Nearly Knocked Out!

I think we both woke up to the same sound – that of shouting.

“All right you scallywags, where are you? I know you’re in here!”

Words to that effect.

We dozily wandered out of the quiet room, to see Pat Lyons, the building manager, hurtling along the extension passageway towards us.

It’s possibly a false memory, but I remember him wielding something a bit like the above implement.

My life flashed before my eyes. I imagined a Cluedo-like synopsis of our demise: “Mr Lyons, in the Union Extension, with the pipe wrench”.

Dave and I had but a few seconds to advocate for our very survival. Fortunately, as skilled communicators, used to summarising key facts into few words for journalistic purposes, we somehow managed to convince Pat Lyons during that short period of time that we had been deliberately locked in to produce Concourse.

Again my doubtlessly false memory has Pat upon us, about to wield a killer blow just a fraction of a second before our story rang true to him and he disarmed.

“You scared the bloody living daylights out of me,” said Pat

Words to that effect.

The feeling was entirely mutual.

Still, in the end no harm was done and in fact I think we produced a pretty darn good edition of Concourse, all things considered.

We put the paper to bed (unlike ourselves) in the early hours of 5 March and it returned from the printers for sale on Monday 9 March 1981.

In the spirit of this “forty years on” Ogblog journal, I intend to publish scans of those Concourse pages on 9 March 2021. Watch this space…

The “Film Star Makes President” Edition Of Concourse, 9 March 1981

…ah, there it is. Click the above link – or here.

Meninblack by The Stranglers, Album Review for Concourse, March 1981

I didn’t write a lot of album reviews for Concourse, the Keele Students’ newspaper, but I did write this one, in March 1981.  I think my neighbour in F Block Lindsay, Paul, had bought the album; I’m sure I didn’t buy it.

I ended up writing a great deal of that beleaguered March 1981 issue of Concourse, as I shall explain in another post, but clearly I had been commissioned to write this review before the hoo-ha that led to interim editing and all hands to the pump for the paper deadline.

Anyway, my hatchet job on The Stranglers sits next to an equally acerbic review of The Steve Gibbons Band by my good friend Simon Jacobs, without whom I, for sure, would not have ended up at Keele.  But that’s another story.

Meninblack plus

 

Getting My Head Around Hormones, Three Parties In Four Midweek/Mid-term Nights, This Was Keele, Late February 1981

In truth, I don’t think mushrooms were central to most of those parties

The diary & scribbles in my FY programme suggest that I wasn’t going to let lectures get in the way of my planned activities much that week, or indeed for the rest of the term. It seems I managed three FY lectures in the last three weeks of that term.

Well, it was cold and icy.

Also, I had worked out by then that you could get pretty much everything you needed from the FY lecture notes. Keen scouts who liked attending FY lectures would bring fistfuls back to F Block Lindsay for the rest of us to read. It looks as though that system broke down for the last week of term, but that’s another story.

I did attend a swathe of topic tutorials and write a couple of essays that week, though, so it wasn’t all parties and student journalism.

I think one of the essays was part of my law double topic, finishing off my law studies for that year but sealing my decision to study law along with economics for my degree. Thank you, Michael Whincup.

I remember doing a topic on Hormones & Reproduction with Dr Peter Chevins and I think I wrote my essay for that topic that week. There were 10 to 12 of us in that class; I think I was the only male (other than Dr Chevins).

I don’t think I was taking it all in. I blame my riotous teenage hormones.

I have a feeling I spent most of the class time ogling the girls and not enough of it getting my head around the relevant reproductive aspects of endocrinology. Still, I think some private study (unfortunately for me there was no practical experimental learning in pairs for that topic) meant that I managed to write a decent essay. Clearly I also learnt enough then and subsequently to get me started when I wrote a student guide book on sexual matters, Sexplanations, when I was Education & Welfare Office in 1984/85.

Tuesday 24 February 1981

Not bad day – wrote essay. In evening, went to see California Suite. Late night in Harry’s // etc.

Somewhat cheesy movie if I remember correctly – great cast though, with Jane Fonda, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Alan Alda, Michael Caine, Walter Matthau, Maggie Smith…

I have written about Mad Harry previously, at length in this piece – click here or below:

Winter Draws On At Keele, FY & The Union & Lindsay Bar & My First Concourse Article, 18 to 31 January 1981

In late February, then, I guess we were still in the period twixt Harry’s small trouble and big trouble. My guess is that this party was a fairly impromptu affair centred around Harry’s room. The // symbol indicates that we imbibed some dope and that I didn’t even then remember much about the gathering. We probably talked a whole load of rubbish while convincing ourselves that we were putting the world to rights. Possibly we even did put the word to rights – in which case it is such a shame that none of us the next day remembered the answers we came up with that night. Oh well.

Wednesday 25 February 1981

Easyish day. Went to party in evening // at Miriam’s – pretty good.

Miriam will be Miriam Morgan, who, along with her partner Heather (Jones) was the doyen of the Keele Gay Society. I have written up an earlier party with that crowd the previous term, at which I first met Ashley Fletcher – click here or below:

A Typical Keele Weekend For A Bunch Of Freshers, 15 & 16 November 1980

Discussing those parties with Simon Jacobs in late 2020, Simon recalled that, at one of them, there were some magic mushrooms doing the rounds. He and I both very tentatively sampled the mushrooms, probably being too timorous to take enough of the mushrooms to get enough effect to impact on the senses beyond the drink and the (if the // symbol is anything to go by) dope available at the party.

I have a feeling that this party was part of Gay Lib week, as Simon wrote that week (and party) up in the March 1981 Concourse and I cannot imagine another Wednesday night being the party night to which he refers, given my documented events of the various Wednesdays that term:

Reading Simon’s article again after all this time (I probably typed it up for that Concourse – I typed up much of the darned thing), I am struck by how tiny and nascent the Gay Soc was at that time – a dozen or so people – perhaps including me and one or two other “supporters”. Within a year or so that tiny group of active students transformed that Society and well done them.

Ashley reminded me (in correspondence late 2020) that, at one point, I was designated the Gay Soc Mascot, by dint of my support for the group. I had a feeling that honour came later than this, but perhaps it was at this event that the honour was bestowed.

Thursday 26 February 1981

Not bad day. Concoursed in evening etc.

This is a bit of an anti-climax, don’t you think? I can only apologise to readers for interrupting this programme of parties with such an ordinary-sounding day. Note that “working on Concourse” has become a single-word verb; concoursed. Let us move swiftly on.

Friday 27 February 1981

Busy day academically. Anna’s party in the evening // pretty good.

Hostess with the most-ess

Anna Summerskill’s party was probably quite a low key (perhaps a dozen or so of us) but almost certainly a dope-ridden affair. I’m trying to remember where Anna lived that year; I think Harrowby House, but I could be wrong and someone out there might correct me.

I have written a fair bit about Anna already in the same “Winter Draws” piece as Mad Harry – click here or the links above. Mark Bartholomew – also written up in that earlier piece, would no doubt have been there. Probably (but not necessarily) Simon Jacobs and one or two others from that mini dining club in Lindsay refectory, which by sacred tradition included Anna’s ceremonial fellating of a banana at the end of almost every meal, before Anna would roller-skate off to her next engagement. It’s hard to believe she’s no longer with us (sadly she died of lung cancer in 2012), she was such a force of nature, was Anna.

Not quite sure what came together to make that a (rare) busy day academically, but I was probably trying to get work out of the way ahead of my anticipated marathon efforts towards the looming Concourse deadline over the next five days…

…and there’s a story to the meeting of that deadline, I could tell you. Indeed I shall tell you, in the next episode.

A Short Visit From Caroline To See Me And Simon At Keele, 20 to 22 February 1981

While trawling the diary for Concourse memories, I spotted a few entries that brought back memories of a visit by Caroline during our second term at Keele. When I say “our”, I mean me and Simon Jacobs.

Allow me to translate:

Friday 20 February: Not bad day – went to meet Caroline – went to see Too Many Chefs – Simon’s for coffee – not too late a night.

Saturday 21 February: Late start – went to Sneyd for lunch – lazy afternoon – went to “O” party in evening // late night snowballing and making…

Sunday 22 February: …pancakes. Late start. Simon’s for ploughman’s and booze. Romped in snow – lazy evening.

Caroline will have dossed out at mine on this visit – Simon was with a really nice chap named Roy at that time.

“Too Many Chefs” will have been this movie – actually named Who Is Killing All the Great Chefs Of Europe – at Film Club. Reading the synopsis, I remember this kitsch, eminently forgettable movie surprisingly clearly.

Sneyd for lunch, eh? How many times did I end up eating a meal there during my time at Keele. Often. It wasn’t at all bad, as I recall. Landlord Geoff O’Connor knew and liked his food…but not in a Too Many Chefs sort of way.

“O” party in the evening is not a reference to a 1950’s erotic novel. I think it was the block in Hawthorns where Miz and Heather lived…or perhaps the one in Barnes where Roy lived. Anyway, it will be the name of a block.

I really like the notion of late night snowballing and making…pancakes – spilling from Saturday night to Sunday morning. My guess is that I was trying to reflect the actual timings of those things. Such simple, youthful pleasures. Romped in snow was, I’m sure, similarly innocent fun.

I don’t mention Caroline’s departure, but she must have departed at some point – at least I’m pretty sure she isn’t still visiting Keele as I write. I hope I took her back to Stoke in much the same way as I went down to Stoke to meet her. I’ll guess that Caroline’s departure was between the romp in the snow and the lazy evening.

If anyone else (Caroline? Simon??) remembers this weekend, please do chime in with your memories.

Krokus Concert, Keele Ballroom, 18 February 1981

I remember this particular evening surprisingly clearly. It has been brought back to mind in the spring of 2019 by correspondence with Dave Lee, with whom I and other friends worked on Concourse, the student newspaper.

My diary records the event:

18 February 1981: Easyish day – in evening went to Labour Club. Simon then forced me to see Krokus – yuk.

“…forced me to see” is not a phrase you’ll often see in my diary. But I do recall on this occasion that I did not want to see the Swiss hard rock (or should I say heavy metal) band Krokus, but Simon had agreed to review the concert for Concourse, so he had to go.

I remember Simon exerting some “more than gentle” emotional pressure, along the lines that he really didn’t want to attend this particular heavy rock gig on his own. Something about fear was mentioned, as if Simon attending along with an eighteen-year-old, eight stone weakling like me was going to make the evening any safer.

Of course, being a Keele Ballroom gig, there was no real danger of the gig being over-run by packs of Hells Angels intent on causing trouble for weedy students anyway, but I suppose we were newbies still and had not been to such a gig before, so didn’t really know what to expect.

Simon reviewed the gig in the famous “Film Star Makes President” March 1981 issue of Concourse, about which I shall write plenty in the fullness of time.

For now, please just enjoy Simon’s review, headlined “live or dead?”:

I think it is fair to say that Simon didn’t like the concert much.

I especially like the line that describes:

three overpowering guitarists with about as much style as an airbourne [sic] rhinoceros.

As it happens, I have subsequently been to visit rhinoceroses in person (in the jungles of Assam in 2005) and can confirm the resemblance:

The airborne one can just be seen in the distance through the undergrowth.

In any case, I think my single word diary entry review – “yuk” – says enough. Although possibly my take would have been insufficient detail for Dave Lee’s editorial needs at that time.