Tag: Keele

Essaying With Exams, Girls & Snooker Towards The End Of My Foundation Year At Keele, 31 May to 8 June 1981

Did The Keele Students’ Union Snooker Room Look Quite This Modern?

After the drama and excitement of the first part of that late May weekend…

From Morecombe To Wise(r) Via A Linguistically Out Of Key Note, Keele, 29/30 May 1981

…the next few days read quieter and calmer – apart from a few signs of aftershock from the abusive note incident.

Sunday 31 May 1981 – Late rise – did little all day (essay) – Union in evening – reasonably early night.

Monday 1 June 1981 – Union Committee in morning – finished essay in afternoon – UGM in evening – Mark [Bartholomew]’s afterwards.

Tuesday 2 June 1981 – Late rise – handed in essay – went to see The Last Waltz – awful – latish night.

I don’t honestly remember attending Union Committee on the Monday morning. I do remember that word reached the SU about the abusive note that had been placed under my door on the Friday evening and that they took the incident very seriously. In some ways more seriously than I took it.

I think some people, with all good intentions, were considering an emergency motion at the UGM that evening or some sort of statement. I think I dissuaded them.

I’m pretty sure Simon Jacobs (plus others, no doubt) were at The Last Waltz (a highly-regarded film that simply did not work for me, nor did it seem to work for most of my entourage that evening, if I remember correctly) with me and would have been part of the unmentioned activities (probably beer and smokes somewhere) that led to the latish night.

A Veritable Procession Of Visitors

I’m sorry to say that I have no real recollection of the “so-called revision day” on Wednesday 3 June, which reads to me more like a visitors day than a revision day:

Wednesday 3 June 1981 – Revised today – OK – Mary [Keevil], Rani, Miz [Miriam Morgan], Hilary [Kingsley] etc. popped in -> Sneyd -> coffee with Hilary

Where this sudden burst of popularity with females had come from, I have no idea. Perhaps Sandra had been talking me up. More likely, these were well-intentioned check-ins from concerned friends in the matter of the abusive note, which seemed to be affecting some others more than it was affecting me.

Forty years on, I find it hard to imagine getting much, if any, revision done with that number of visitors.

My handwriting analysis suggests that I wrote this part of my diary up some days after the event. But still, the word “etc.” after a string of four visitors suggests that there were several others.

I’m pretty sure that part of Hilary’s purpose (a visit AND post-pub coffee) was to persuade me to agree to sit on the JSoc (Jewish Society) committee, something I had previously stated my extreme reluctance to do. I’m not sure whether Hilary was yet going out with Lloyd Green (a friend of mine from my Streatham childhood and coincidentally a Keele student a year or so ahead of me) but they did go out with each other at Keele and subsequently married each other.

Thursday 4 June 1981 – Exams today?? – Roy’s binge in evening – quite entertaining.

Friday 5 June 1981 – Politics exam today – Union in evening -> Sands [Sandra]!

Saturday 6 June 1981 – late rise – restive afternoon – went to Union with Sim [Simon Ascough] – supper – Union again – dullish evening

Roy was Simon Jacobs’s boyfriend pretty much throughout that year. Roy will have completed his finals around that time, so my guess is that the binge was related to that. Simon did not keep in touch with Roy after Roy left Keele. Nor did I keep in touch with Sandra after she left Keele, nor did I see much of her the following year, when she was doing finals.

I think I probably meant “restful” when I said “restive” afternoon, although there is something restive about my tone for the next few days. I needed to go to London to resolve some matters ahead of my late June return for the summer and/but was no doubt itching for the more exciting-sounding events that would form the end-of-term/end-of-academic-year summer activities.

A whole weekend between exams must have seemed like an imposition.

Darker. The UKSU snooker room was darker if I recall correctly.

Sunday 7 June 1981 – Late rise – did little – snooker – bar in eve – dull day.

Monday 8 June 1981 – Read in morn – exam in afternoon, Union in evening – v late night.

I mention snooker a few times in my diary towards the end of that summer term. I recall playing the game a few times with Sim and Tim – I’ll write that up a bit more when I get to the second half of June – but perhaps these early efforts were with Simon Jacobs.

Forty years on, Simon and I discussed this matter when he visited us (late May 2021), agreeing that our ability to play snooker was slightly improved by a drink or two, then rather more dramatically diminished by each subsequent drink. If only we had been able to retain information from formal scientific experiments in class as well as we have retained the empirical evidence from those informal “clinical trials”.

Anyway, by the Monday, that was it, academically-speaking. Last essays done, last exam done. I had no formal purpose at Keele for the next few days, so I popped back down to London on the Tuesday.

From Morecombe To Wise(r) Via A Linguistically Out Of Key Note, Keele, 29/30 May 1981

There is a Morecombe and Wise sketch, with André Previn, in which Eric Morecombe, on being berated for making a complete mess of playing the piano, exclaims:

I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.

Hold that thought for a moment, dear reader, as this piece is really a chunk of my coming-of-age story, not really a piece about corny 1970s comedy television.

The summer term of 1981, the end of my first year at Keele, held many important landmarks for me:

The relevant words for the seminal night in question, for those who might not be accustomed to reading rarefied calligraphy, are:

Union in evening -> H Block party – Sandra came back – stayed

Not much to go on there, without memories. My memories of this period have been magnified and clarified lately. First of all by being reminded about the Patrick Moore interview, then, a couple of weeks later, by attending a pilot of Rohan Candappa’s new performance piece on 31 October 2017:

What Listening To 10,000 Love Songs Has taught Me About Love. It’s an exploration of love, and music, and how the two intertwine. it’s also about how our lives have a soundtrack.”

At the end of May 1981, I can tell you that Hoover Factory by Elvis Costello and the Attractions was stuck in my head, for reasons explained – click here.

Anyway, Sandra was, I think, in the third year of a four year course. Social Work and Social Anthropology? Something like that. I am pretty sure we got chatting in earnest in the Union, ahead of the H Block party. I reckon the idea of her coming back to my place had been signalled if not completely decided before we went to the party.

Without going into detail, I’d suggest that my previous experiences in the passion department might have been analogous to Eric Morecombe’s piano playing. Sandra was a warm-hearted girl who gently helped me to sequence and to play the metaphorical notes better.

But before Sandra and I got to play a duet, we had to navigate an unwanted note of a very different kind.

When we got back to my study/bedroom, we found a note that had been slid under the door, containing the following message:

YID’S OUT

That sort of thing was very uncommon at Keele. It (by which I mean direct racist abuse) only happened to me that once in the five years I spent at Keele…

…it would have had to have happened that night of all nights, wouldn’t it…

…I remember my heart sinking and I half expected the poor girl to run away. But instead she smiled and said, “whoever did this is such an idiot, he cannot even spell a two-syllable phrase.”

A grocer’s apostrophe.

We laughed and made light of it, while agreeing that it was an awful as well as a pitiful note. We dallied with the idea that the note was more of an insult to the language than it was to my tribe.

Soon we decided that we might not have understood what the author was trying to say – that is after all one of the problems with bad spelling and grammar. Perhaps the author wanted a singular yid to take something out. Possibly the note was deliberately intended as a note of encouragement for us to revert to our original purpose, which we did.

I might still have the note somewhere. I kept it for ages as a sort-of badge of honour and also as a demonstrable artefact to wave, if people were suggesting that we didn’t have overt racism on our Keele campus at all.

Anyway, the whole experience that night can’t have been that awkward or traumatic for Sandra because, according to my diary, she returned for more, on several occasions, before the end of term. Not least, later that day/the very next evening, after the Jazz Night. The ticket for Jazz Night was preserved because I wrote “Patrick Moore Interview” on the reverse to insert into the interview cassette case:

In my unaided memory, that liaison with Sandra had been a one-off, but it is clear from the diaries that it was a seminal dalliance that played out several times over a few weeks.

That does make sense, really, when I think about it. As my baroq-ulele teacher, Ian Pittaway, would surely point out, you can’t acquire much technique with only one lesson…

…and I’d like to think of myself now as…

…to borrow Woody Allen’s Broadway agent character, Danny Rose’s phrase, when describing his water glass virtuoso:

the Jascha Heifetz of his instrument.

An Horrific Time At Keele Towards the End Of My Foundation Year, 20 to 28 May 1981

By Seulatr – Public Domain.

The final term of my FY year was pretty darned great, actually. So when I say, “an horrific time”, what I really mean is, “a short period during which horror seemed to feature a great deal”.

Wednesday 20 May 1981 – OK day. Went to see The Cramps – OK.

Such gigs will be properly reviewed in Dave Lee’s book, The Keele Gigs!, due out Summer 2021. Suffice it to say that my mini review: “OK”, doesn’t help much. I do recall that The Cramps style of music was described as Psychobilly and we were even told that their 1981 phase had its own sub-genre name: Voodooswampabilly.

It looked and sounded very much like this 1981 live clip from San Fransisco later that year:

Thursday 21 May 1981 – Last day of lectures – union in evening.

Nothing horrific about finishing with lectures. Of course when I say “lectures”, in my case I really mean, in respect of that day, “lecture” as the ticks and crosses in my FY programme book make it very clear that I only made it to the 11:00 job that day: Mr Allinson talking about the electronics of television.

Not that television played any part in my day to day life back then – I had no television of my own and didn’t visit the television rooms much during my whole time at Keele – I’m not sure I went into them at all in my FY year.

I did interview a television personality around that time, though – Patrick Moore – an event that didn’t seem important enough to record in the diary but is already up on Ogblog:

My Keele Interview With Patrick Moore, Conducted In My Little Study Bedroom (Lindsay F4), circa 28 May 1981

But I digress.

Friday 22 May 1981 – OK day. Amityville Horror -> Union in evening. Back with people after – late night.

Film Society, perhaps in cahoots with the Union, seemed to be having a horror-themed week. They showed The Shining the following Tuesday. The Amityville House in Long Island is depicted in the headline picture btw.

Putting to one side the fact that my stroppy relationship with my dad’s old Rolls Razor at that time was yielding similar amounts of real blood as those movies were yielding the fake stuff…

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

…I developed a form of cognitive dissonance towards such films at that time, which never went away. I was/am, in almost equal measure, thrilled and shocked by them, yet also amused by the over-the-top melodrama of some elements of those film productions.

I was clearly doing a lot of reading at that time, presumably for my final essay (which was on topology if my memory serves me well) and in preparation for the sessional exams in politics and history.

Saturday 23 May 1981 – Earlyish rise – reading loads – Cabaret Futura in evening.

Have I yet mentioned Dave Lee’s book The Keele Gigs! due out in Summer 2021? No doubt he will cover that Cabaret Futura gig better than I did in my diary – not even a one word review from me for that one. I vaguely remember enjoying the evening for its quirkiness without really digging the music.

Good article here about Richard Strange and the Cabaret Futura thing from 1981 in The Guardian.

I’m pretty sure that Eddie & Sunshine performed the following as part of the Cabaret that night. Anyway, I recall electro-weirdness of this kind…and the reel-to-reel tape recorder to make me feel at home:

Sunday 24 May 1981 – Plenty of reading again – Union in evening.

Monday 25 May 1981 – Wrote essay today – out in evening

Tuesday 26 May 1981 – Handed in essay – went to see The Shining after drinks – coffee after, late night.

Wednesday 27 May 1981 – Easyish day (not good). Relaxing evening, late night again.

Thursday 28 May 1981 – Not bad day (laundry, vote etc). Easy evening in union after celebration.

I’m not too sure what we were voting on 28 May nor why I was joining in celebrations. The major elections tended to be over long before late May, but perhaps it was Steve “Spike” Humphrey’s election against Tony Roberts, which had to go to a re-ballot, as reported but not explained by the cub political editor back in March.

Roberts, vanquished but still smiling. Photo thanks to Mark Ellicott.

The thought of the FCS managing to get a ballot voided and then get their candidate elected would have been horrific, so Spike prevailing in the revote would have been cause for celebration.

But all such horrors – musical, cinematographical or political, were mere aperitifs for the seminal yet horrifying matters that unfolded over the following day or two. I wrote those up a few years ahead of this “forty years on” series, so the next episode is already there to be read:

From Morecombe To Wise(r) Via A Linguistically Out Of Key Note, Keele, 29/30 May 1981

Trigger warning: an horrific example of racial and linguistic abuse is described within that piece.

My Keele Interview With Patrick Moore, Conducted In My Little Study Bedroom (Lindsay F4), circa 27 May 1981

My memory of this event was triggered at lunch the other day (October 2017) when Patrick Moore came up in the conversation.

“Oh yes, I interviewed him when I was at Keele”, I said, “I didn’t find him all that impressive”.

Janie ticked me off afterwards for being (or at least seeming) churlish about the matter, especially as Alan and Sue (who had brought Patrick Moore into the conversation) were obviously keen on him.

On reflection, I couldn’t recall why I had been unimpressed by him. But I could recall that I had recorded the interview and had digitised the tape a few years ago, without really listening to it again at that time.

I promptly listened to it carefully – you can hear it too if you wish:

Listening to the interview brought back a flood of memories and also made me feel very badly about my teenage impression of Patrick Moore. Because I realise, on listening to the recording, that the unimpressive contributor is me, not him.

I was under-prepared for that interview and Patrick Moore to some extent interviewed himself.

In my defence, the reason I was under-prepared was because I hadn’t expected to conduct the interview until later that day. I certainly hadn’t expected to conduct it in my own little study/bedroom.

This is what happened.

I was the Concourse (Student Union newspaper) journalist assigned to interview Patrick Moore and was due to interview him early evening before he delivered a talk to students. This was arranged through Dr Ron Maddison, who was a good pal of Patrick Moore’s and was the Astronomy lead on Keele’s rather impressive observatory.

Being me, I went to Ron Maddison’s office early afternoon on the day of the interview/talk just to confirm all the arrangements. It turned out that Patrick Moore was already there with some time on his hands. They both suggested that I could conduct the interview there and then. I explained that I would need my tape recorder and notepad, at which point Patrick Moore volunteered to come with me and be interviewed in my room.

I told him that my student room was less than salubrious, especially when I was not expecting guests, but my protests seemed to make him all the more eager to take this opportunity to observe how students really live.

Patrick Moore, the man who usually wielded the telescope towards the stars, was choosing to observe student life under the metaphorical microscope.

So we marched from the Astronomy Department to Lindsay and my very humble little room, F4.

I remember telling him, along the way, that I had planned to prepare the questions that afternoon so was under-prepared. He told me not to worry and that between us he was sure we’d cover plenty for my article.

I remember making us both a coffee when we got to my room. I possibly even had some biscuits to offer.

If you listen to the interview, it sounds a bit like a John Shuttleworth interview, but without the music. You can hear the sound of the coffee mugs being moved around. It is very folksy sounding, which indeed it was.

Some of my questions and interjections are positively cringe worthy, but on the whole I sense that I had roughly worked out a skeleton for the interview in my head and we worked through it – perhaps not as methodically as I would have planned, but the interview does cover a lot of ground. He was clearly a seasoned interviewee who could have conducted his own interview without me.

The recording runs uninterrupted for over 15 minutes, until c17:20, at which point I began stopping the tape periodically to try to make sure we were covering everything I wanted/needed for my article.

At 21:25 I ask a particularly ill-phrased question about black holes, followed by, during the embarrassing seconds that followed, the clear sound of someone knocking and entering the room. I remember this clearly. It was my neighbour, Simon Ascough (Sim), who was quite taken aback to see Patrick Moore in the room.

Sim had presumably popped in on a matter of extremely urgent student importance. Perhaps to recommend that we listen to In A Gadda Da Vida (yet again), possibly to suggest a mid afternoon spliff or quite possibly both. But I think (mercifully) that Sim’s request went unspoken; in any case I turned the recorder off at the moment of the knock.

At 23:55 comes the laugh out loud moment on the tape, when you can clearly hear the sound of a female (or females) being chased around the corridor of F Block. Again I turned off the recorder. I remember Patrick Moore asking me if my friend, having found me otherwise engaged, had decided to chase girls instead?

What I should have said was, “no, that’ll almost certainly be Richard Van Baaren and Benedict Coldstream chasing girls around the corridor”. But I didn’t say that. In fact, I think both Patrick Moore and I had a fit of the giggles for quite a few moments before I switched the recorder back on.

My only other profound memory of this interview was playing the recording to Paul Deacon during the summer holidays soon after the event. Paul is a DJ, voice recording artiste and a superb mimic; Patrick Moore is certainly one of Paul’s voices.

I remember Paul playing over and over again the bit at the beginning of the interview when Patrick Moore says, “and then along came Mr Hitler”, mimicking it better and better each time, until I begged Paul to stop. Perhaps it was the Paul comedy aspect that dampened my enthusiasm for Patrick Moore.

Subsequent contribution – May 2019: Dave Lee, who was the interim editor of Concourse in the months prior to the interview, has been in touch by e-mail to remind me, “If I remember you said at the time of Patrick Moore that he farted and stunk the room out. That might have been a distraction!”  Oh yes, I now recall Paul Deacon including fart noises in his impersonation. Maybe it was the flatulence that diminished my opinion of the fine  communicator that was Patrick Moore.

One of the strangest things about this very memorable event was that I didn’t register it at all in my diary, so I cannot be 100% sure of the date on which his lecture (and therefore my interview) took place.

It looks to me as though my diary got quite a long way behind at that stage of that term. To be fair on my 18-year-old self, it was a busy time. Uncle Manny (dad’s older brother) died suddenly a couple of week’s earlier, so I needed to go home unexpectedly to help with family duties and attend the funeral & shiva.

It was also essay and exam time – not ridiculously onerous in Foundation Year (FY) but I had been behind anyway (show me the FY student who wasn’t) and the Uncle Manny business had set me behind further.

I do recall, indeed my diary shows that, I was doing my own fair share of girl chasing at that time – not the screaming and corridor running type of chasing I hasten to add – with a kindly third year named Sandra. But that is another story – now to be found by clicking here or below:

From Morecombe To Wise(r) Via A Linguistically Out Of Key Note, Keele, 29/30 May 1981

Forensics on the scrap of paper emblazoned with the legend “Patrick Moore Interview” inside the cassette box reveals the following on the adverse side:

I’m guessing that the interview would have been a couple of days before the Jazz Night, as the following week there were lots of exams, so I am guessing that the interview was one of those quieter days between the essay deadlines and the exams; 27th or 28th May.

Here is a picture of the tape, box and legend itself:

If anyone reading this has any more information (or recollection) of that Patrick Moore visit, not least the date, please do chime in.

For some reason, I don’t seem to have kept the article that emerged from the interview, although it might yet emerge from some further archaeology through my old note pads and scrap files. If anyone has a copy of the Concourse article that resulted from the recorded interview, I’d love to see it again.

So, having dredged back the memories, I take back unreservedly my sense that Patrick Moore was unimpressive. Patrick Moore was the commensurate professional and incredibly natural/unassuming in the peculiar circumstances of this interview. My teenage self possibly mistook unassuming for unimpressive; that was poor judgement on my part.

The recorded interview is also an interesting thirty minutes in itself. Here’s the recording again.

We Interrupt This Keele FY Summer Term: Matters Of Life & Death, Plus A Couple More Mix Tapes, 8 To 19 May 1981

The summer term of my Foundation Year (FY) at Keele was mostly, in my memory, idyllic. The music I was listening to at the time, on the Philips Spatial Stereo Ghettoblaster/Boombox depicted above, still brings to my mind so many sensations from that first spring/summer at Keele, forty years ago as I write.

I have just written up the comedic story of that ghettoblaster’s procurement, in Bournemouth just before I set off for Keele. It should please those who like slapstick sitcom scenarios:

A Week In Bournemouth: “Nothing To Do Here” (Apart From Master Blaster Jamming), 21 to 27 September 1980

Anyway…

…one thing my memory does not recall one jot is the Friday evening of 8 May 1981, when, according to the diary:

…went to Burslem in evening. Enjoyable evening. Back here [my salubrious new room, Lindsay F4] for coffee.

What on earth was there to do in Burslem back then that was enjoyable? I hope someone remembers and chips in with a memory or two.

I went to see And Justice For All at Film Soc on the Tuesday (heavy, star-studded stuff). They were clearly into star-studded, deep stuff that term, as the following Tuesday I saw The Deep.

I reported several essay and exam results 12 & 13 May (all B+s and B-s, median returns for a 1980/81 FY student, I should imagine), before the utterly unexpected interruption; the sudden death of my Uncle Manny, which I wrote up a few years ago:

Uncle Manny’s Funeral & The Hoover Factory, 15 May 1981

That was serious, growing-up stuff, as I explain in my write up of the circumstances and the funeral.

I like the way I wrote up Monday 18 May in my diary:

Decorator moved in – I moved out! Back to Keele – finished politics.

The decorator was named Ron Day. Why I remember that fact, when I cannot remember the names of people I met recently and whose names I have good reason to remember, I cannot fathom. Anyway, it’s good to know that I had completely mastered politics by 18 May 1981.

But before I moved out – almost certainly on the Saturday evening which I describe as an “easy evening”, I made a couple of mix tapes for myself, mostly from the second-hand records I had been buying at Record & Tape Exchange over the preceding few years:

Visiting Record & Tape Exchange With Paul Deacon, 29 April 1978

Those readers who like this sort of thing might enjoy the listings and the recordings below. Where possible this time I have used the digitised versions of my actual old crackly records.

Hidden Treasure Side A
Hidden Treasure Side B – minus the two tracks (presumably from the radio) embedded below

Dusty Side A
Dusty Side B

A real mixed bag there.

As I have said elsewhere, anyone who lived south-facing in Lindsay D, E and especially F blocks, plus the military outpost that was G Block that year, all enjoyed the benefit of my musical miscellany at high volume on my blaster for the remainder of the summer term of 1981 whenever it made sense to open the windows and/or sit outside – which was quite a lot that summer term if my memory serves me well.

Image “borrowed” from a defunct catawiki listing on fair use basis for identification

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.

This image “borrowed” from Adrian Belew’s Facebook Page, with thanks/appreciation

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