The following airmail was drawn by Anil and served as a birthday greeting to dad. I’m guessing we sent it c10 days ahead of the birthday.
Tag: Peter Harris
Visits To Greenwich and Brighton With Mum and Dad, 29 to 31 August 1977
I actually set out this morning (I am writing on 31 August 2017) to Ogblog 31 August 1997, in the form of a “what were you doing the day that Princess Diana died?” That I shall do once this piece is writ…now done – click here!
But once I realised that Janie and I went to a Greenwich tavern to meet John Random and Jenny Mill on 31 August 1997…
…and then realised that my previous visit to Greenwich for such purposes must have been about 20 years earlier…
…and then looked up that my previous visit had been EXACTLY twenty years earlier…
…I thought I’d better Ogblog both anniversaries and start with the earlier of them.
Here is a link to the Flickr album with the photos we took on those three days.
The diary page helped me a lot with this one:
I had wondered, when looking at the photo batch, whether I had got some negatives mixed up, as it looked to me as though some pictures of my dad in Brighton had got mixed up with a day trip to Greenwich.
But the diary reminds me that we went to Greenwich twice, going to Brighton on the day in-between.
That summer was the first time in my childhood that we had no family holiday.
Dad must have been very short of money at that time – the business had been doing badly for a few years by then. Dad probably couldn’t justify the expense of getting someone else to run the photographic shop for any amount of time during those commercially better end of summer weeks, even if he could have afforded the holiday itself…which he probably couldn’t.
So he/we simply took a long bank holiday weekend – I suspect he just kept the shop closed until the Thursday.
I have done this as a photo piece using the picture captions to tell the tale; I think the pictures themselves tell most of the story.
The diary suggests that we very much enjoyed our lunch at the Trafalgar Tavern.
Probably we enjoyed the lunch so much so that we didn’t get to see all the things we’d intended to see in Greenwich that day.
On 30 August, we went to Brighton. Only three photos from there that day – all of my dad being blown or blowing in the wind:
We clearly decided to return to Greenwich to finish our sightseeing on 31 August. We took lunch in the Cutty Sark this time, which I don’t think we liked as much as the Trafalgar Tavern back then, if I am reading between the lines of my diary correctly.
The weather looks miserable in the 31 August pictures, as does my mum:
Holiday In La Manga, Spain, With Mum And Dad, 21 August To 4 September 1976
This turned out to be our last family summer holiday together. The following year dad was brassic (skint) so we just did some day trips and stuff, e.g. Greenwich:
Then the year after that, I did BBYO camps while mum and dad went off and did their own thing early autumn.
I turned 14 on this La Manga holiday and I do remember feeling, even at that tender age, that I had sort of outgrown those family holidays. I sensed that mum and dad wanted some prime time together and I was no longer intrigued by going off and doing stuff with random youngsters who just happen to be on holiday with you.
We stayed in the Hotel Entremares – not the sort of place I might stay in now, but it is still there and looks OK. Mixed reviews now.
The hotel (and to some extent the resort) was brand new then and I suspect my dad picked up a late booking at low cost for a place that hadn’t yet gained a reputation.
Clearly we were treated like visiting celebrities:
There is a movie for this holiday which, believe it or not, actually did yield some “famous for 15 minutes material” many years later, when Visa rewarded me handsomely enough and used some clips in one of their adverts and vines. Here is the whole movie:
Here’s the Visa ad, which shows dad slapping on the tanning oil:
While here is a link to the Vine (remember those) of me and mum looking silly on a pedalo.
In those days La Manga was positioning itself for tennis in particular…
…but latterly (he says writing in February 2019) it has superb cricket facilities by all accounts – at least Middlesex CCC bowlers have just toddled off there to train.
In fact it was reading about Middlesex training in La Manga that made me reach for the 1976 file and Ogblog this holiday.
1976 was the cricketing year the the West indies thrashed England in every conceivable way. I missed the ODI thrashings by being in La Manga.
It also looks as though I missed a thrilling London derby at The Oval too – click here for the scorecard. I do like a match with a happy ending…
…and a season with a happy ending too – see the 1976 final table. So hopefully La Manga will be auspicious for Middlesex again in 2019.
Here is the full stack of photos from our 1976 family jaunt:
My Very Brief Junior Career As A Limbo Dancer, The Peacock Club, 10 August 1975
This event came to me as a memory flash while in e-conversation with Rohan Candappa in December 2020 on the topic of that “limbo period” between Christmas and New Year. Rohan pointed out:
Limbo is a strangely schizophrenic word. It’s either a time when nothing is going on, or the most extreme dance you can imagine.
Suddenly it all came flooding back to me. The dinner & dance the day after my Barmitzvah. The Peacock Club in Streatham. The limbo dancer my parents arranged as entertainment for said evening. My limbo dancing “career”, not just remembered but I knew for sure that I have photographs.
Why the choice of limbo dancer for a Barmitzvah party? The answer to that question is truly lost in the mists of time. Some would suggest that it was a very “South London” choice. Others that it was an inappropriate choice steeped in cultural appropriation.
My guess is that someone dad knew through his photographic shop business was connected with the charming young lady in question.
Dorothy.
I know that she is/was named Dorothy because the pictures in my parent’s memory book / photo album have clearly been labelled “Dorothy”.
[Infantile readers may insert their own version of the joke revolving around the idea that “Ian was a friend of Dorothy when he was thirteen years old” here.]
Ian [Thinks]: I could be in here…whatever “being in” might be.
Dorothy showed us how it should be done.
Steve Lytton was one of several people who had a go. Unfortunately for him, his photo survived and has lived peacefully in my parent’s memory book for 45 years and counting:
Friends from the neighbourhood and school might recognise Andy Levinson in the background of the above and following picture. He’s hiding behind is mum. It seems he didn’t have a go at limbo dancing.
My technique showing real promise there. If only I had persevered with the practice, I could have been a contender.
Then Dorothy started to show off.
I mean, really, was that completely necessary?
Seriously, I do remember Dorothy being sweet with me and making the whole event feel special. She was clearly very talented at limbo dancing.
One day I’ll write up other aspects of my Barmitzvah. Sadly, for lovers of music and theology, there is a recording of me singing my rite of passage passage and I’ll feel Ogblog-honour bound to upload it, if only for the sake of completeness.
Anyway, the limbo dancing was great fun. Dad clearly felt that he had pulled off a blinder by booking Dorothy…
…while mum did far more dancing than was good for her, just three months after having a hip replacement:
Update/Footnote Post Publication
I managed to track down and get in touch with Steve Lytton after publishing this piece – it seemed only polite to let him know that his youthful limbo dancing efforts were now in the public domain.
It was really nice to catch up with Steve and e-chat after so many years.
One thing that Steve said solved at least part of the “why a limbo dancer at my Barmitzvah party” mystery:
…what a coincidence. We had a limbo dancer at MY Barmitzvah party…
…said Steve. The penny dropped. We had a limbo dancer at my celebration because I/we had so much enjoyed the limbo dancer at his, a year or so earlier. So the question now really should be, “why did Steve have a limbo dancer at his Barmitzvah party?” Or maybe it was simply the fashion for such parties at that time.
You Don’t Have To Be Madrigal To Learn About Music Here, But It Helps: Madrigals Of Love And War From The Radio, 4 June 1974, Plus The Top Five From That Week To Worm Their Ways Back Into Your Ears
Sony TC377 Reel-To-Reel
Music At Alleyn’s In Spring/Summer 1974
Although my 1974 diary fell silent for a few months in April 1974, I recall some aspects of my musical education from that period rather well. Alleyn’s School played a major part in that, but not the only part.
I started learning the violin in that first year at Alleyn’s, Mostly I learnt that the violin was not the instrument for me, to my mother’s chagrin, as that type of bowed instrument (including, I later discovered, the hand saw) was purportedly in my blood:
Pop Kennard, our Alleyn’s music teacher, did not do a great deal for my singing voice that year either. I recall him getting us to listen to and then try to sing Schubert’s Das Wandern in an English translation “To wander is the miller’s joy…”, which did not sound like the following in our unbroken and untrained voices:
My contribution to such singing in those days would have provided enthusiastic volume but would have lacked desirable sound, I am pretty sure.
I have subsequently been taking singing lessons by Zoom with “Miss Honey” since early in the pandemic and have improved beyond measure – my early efforts at improvement blogged about here:
Spring/Summer 1974 – Music At Home
I noted in my diaries early in 1974 that my dad invested in a high quality hi-fi at that time. He plumped for that ahead of a colour television set, which we did without for another couple of years while he saved up for one of those as well.
A fair chunk of dad’s enthusiasm for a hi-fi will have been to do with my musical education and the sense my parents will have had that my most impressive musical skill would be listening to music rather than performing it.
I’ll write separately about the small but neat collection of classical gramophone recordings my parents acquired for me and helped me to acquire. Mostly middle-brow stuff, getting me familiar with the conventional classical canon.
But one evening, dad spotted a concert being broadcast on BBC Radio and decided to get busy properly rigging up the hi-fi so that the concert might be recorded to a (then) high quality on the reel-to-reel for future listening.
Monteverdi’s eighth book of madrigals – The Madrigals Of Love And War – performed by the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra under John Elliot Gardiner.
It transpires that this vague memory of mine must relate to the evening of 4 June 1974. Here’s a link to the BBC genome record for this broadcast.
The concert concerned took place on 6 October 1973. It was well received, by this Telegraph account at least:
Madrigals of Love & War 6 October 1973 08 Oct 1973, Mon The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Why dad was so keen to record this particular broadcast I don’t really know. I think he liked the sound of Renaissance music but found it hard to relate to sacred music from that period. High quality secular music of that period was not to be heard on the radio every day.
Dad made this recording on a 5 3/4 inch spool which I still have in a dungeon somewhere and have digitised along with all of the other spools from the Harris collection.
If you want to hear what those madrigals sound like, the following recording by the Consort of Musicke is a very decent quality version – frankly more to my taste now than the Eliot Gardiner style.
Anyway, fact is that this stuff became my ear worms at the end of my first year at Alleyn’s.
What Were Supposed To Be My Ear Worms In Early June 1974? The Top Five In the Charts, That’s What.
To close this piece, here are the top 5 UK chart hits from that week in 1974.
5: There’s A Ghost In My House by R Dean Taylor became an ear worm of mine many years later, when I got into Motown and Northern Soul, but I doubt if it even entered my consciousness in 1974:
4: The Streak by Ray Stevens went on to be number one for a while and was certainly the subject of our schoolboy chatter back then. “There seems to have been some disturbance here” was a catch phrase that did the rounds then, along with the Monty Python ones. I wonder what Pop Kennard would have had to say about the music therein:
3: Hey Rock ‘n’ Roll by Showaddywaddy was most certainly an ear worm back then. This number had entirely escaped my consciousness until I reheard it just now. Now it is stuck in my ear again. It was a seriously retro number even in 1974, although not as retro as Monteverdi madrigals, obviously:
2: This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us by Sparks. In truth, I don’t remember this track from that 1974 period. A few years later I had a copy of this track on a compilation album and then sought out a copy of Kimono My House (the album from whence it came) which was and remains an all-time favourite of mine. Kimono My House was very much my earworm in March 1981, when the story described in the following ThreadMash performance piece was live:
In short, I think this Sparks track is wonderful:
1: Sugar Baby Love by The Rubettes. Another ridiculously retro sound topped the charts that week.
How did that get to number one in the charts in 1974? Yet – listen closely. Do I detect a variant of the folia progression in there? Is Sugar Baby Love, in a sense, a setting for six voices based on a tradition pioneered in 17th century madrigals? Might Paul de Vinci of the Rubettes possibly have been related to Leonardo?
Monteverdi and Pop Kennard might be turning in their respective graves.
Egg, Sports, Drama, TV & A Heap Of Truly Geeky 11-Year-Old Alleyn’s Boy Diary Stuff, Two Weeks – Late January To Early February 1974
A strange mixture of interesting, baffling and mundane diary entries in this chunk of my second term at Alleyn’s.
27 January To 2 February 1974
Sunday 27 January 1974 – Still no Mr Freed [Hebrew classes]. Grandma Anne’s. Made dad a blue moon egg.
Monday 28 January 1974 – Cricket with Banson v good batting and bowling.
Tuesday 29 January 1974 – Art good. Classes good.
Wednesday 30 January 1974 – Fives with Cookie – from 11-3 down to 16-14 up. He one [sic] other game.
Thursday 31 January 1974 – BAD DAY IN ALL
Friday 1 February 1974 – Maths test. Form drama, The Cave. PE basketball match.
Saturday 2 February 1974 – scool [sic] morning. Afternoon played filter paper.
“Blue moon egg” – my dad liked fluffy omelettes and I learnt how to make them when I was still quite small. They were (are) difficult to get absolutely right in terms of fluffiness – a bit like making a soufflé in a pan – but if I got it right, dad would announce that the egg was a blue moon egg.
I’ll talk about cricket in January at Alleyn’s separately in more detail elsewhere. At this seminal stage of our cricketing careers, I suspect that Barry Banson held back on head-cuffing as his modus operandus for “encouragement”.
In the matter of fives (Rugby fives), to be fair on Alan Cooke (aka “Cookie”), it is clear from other diary entries that I was usually the victim of his more able performances. During that early effort in January 1974, I must have found a little something extra to turn a match around thusly. Interesting that we were already playing to 15 rather than to 11. I’m pretty sure that our “proper” junior matches were played to 11.
When a bad day is all in block capitals, it must have been pretty bad. I might well have thought it needed no further exposition, as I would remember the details of its badness for the rest of my life. However, I can now report categorically that I have no idea what made that particular day bad. I can only say with some certainty that, at the time, that Thursday had not been a good one.
By Friday all was well again, with Drama Friday to enjoy and a basketball match in PE. I’m struggling to work out what “The Cave” might have been. I have already asked “Sir” (Ian Sandbrook) who is equally baffled.
There is a play called The Cave by Mervyn Peake which was written in the 1950s but not formally published until after 1974. It is possible that Alleyn’s had some “for school” copies of that piece, as some of the resources we used were not formally published books. Ian Sandbrook says:
The Mervyn Peake hypothesis has some merit as I think the English Dept did consider the Titus Groan trilogy as a candidate for the Mode 3 English Syllabus – although that is perhaps rather a fragile link.
If anyone out there remembers, then do chime in.
The late John Clarke (chemistry teacher) would no doubt have been proud of me playing with filter paper on Saturday after school. Just the sort of thing he would have wanted (perhaps even expected) boys from his chemistry class to do.
3 To 9 February 1974
This week has some even more obscure or difficult references in it. Some of it is handwriting related but some items are simply, to my mind now, truly weird things to write in one’s diary.
Sunday 3 February 1974 – Classes, Freed in March. Bechat Hamazon [grace after meals] v good.
Monday 4 February 1974 – cricket great bat good eye a hit bowl straight and good catch 4 v good, 1 good, 1 bad.
Tuesday 5 February 1974 – Art painting on wall. Classes good. Alf Garnet [sic] good.
Wednesday 6 February 1974 – Fives v Cookie. Man About The House v good.
Thursday 7 February 1974 – Very bad day. Horrible H’s in bad mood. I got the bad.
Friday 8 February 1974 – Monitor for entrance exam. Learnt some magils and /`read] a chapter second WW. Timeslip v good.
Saturday 9 February 1974 – scool [sic] in morning. Changed shoes Tuf /` + reinforcers 400] Dr Who v good.
“Freed in March must mean that I was told that I would transfer from Miss Aarons’s class to Mr Freed’s in March. Not that I was due to be released in March, nearly 18 months before my bar mitzvah. That wasn’t going to happen. Why I was so keen to mention the grace after meals I have no idea. I vaguely recall the Brixton Synagogue Hebrew Class including a sweet, calorific elevenses with Danish pastries, challah bread, jam and the like. This was partly to motivate attendance and partly to teach the meal graces in a happy context. I’ll write more on this topic in a specific piece or two and direct it towards the several friends from that era with whom I am still in touch, 50 years later. I think Andy Levinson was the only other Alleyn’s boy from our year who also attended those classes.
I’m not entirely sure what all of the Monday cricket entry means, but the England selectors might want a look at that young man, based on my description.
The Tuesday diary entry suggests that the art teacher, Mr Brew, liked one of my pieces. This wouldn’t be the last time that Mr Brew took to my crude drawings, despite my near hopelessness. My Dad, being a genuinely good artist with a steady hand and fine eye, tutored me a little at home, rendering me a bit less than useless and very keen.
Alf Garnett was the main character in Till Death Us Do Part – a comedy that wouldn’t pass muster in the modern era because, although it was ridiculing racist and misogynistic opinions, the Alf Garnett character spouted them with abandon. Here is the episode I watched that night with my parents:
Wednesday – the fact that I say “fives v Cookie” without mentioning the score tells you that Cookie must have won – probably won well.
Man About The House was a much gentler comedy than Till Death Us Do Part. Below is the episode we watched that night.
Interesting to read that 1st year pupils did monitoring for entrance exams. I have no idea what “learning magils” means. It might have been some homework for my bar mitzvah class. Also unsure what the second world war reading was about, as for sure we were studying ancient history that year. Perhaps just reading for general interest.
I had to Google “Timeslip”, but when I did so remembered that children’s programme. Unlike the above two shows, which first broadcast the above episodes on the day of the diary mentions, Timeslip was first broadcast three or so years’ earlier. Below is a short trailer which might trigger some of your memories:
I had to Google Tuf to realise that my note about changing shoes included a brand name. Back then, the brand was meant to be indestructible footwear for kids…
When the going gets Tuf, eh?
“Reinforcers 400” can only be a reference to buying a packet of 400 hole reinforcers. This might be the geekiest diary entry ever and surely confirms my membership of the Dull Men’s Club. We’re only a few weeks’ in to my diary and no doubt there are some well geeky entries to come.
Dr Who very good – who knew? The Doctor was Jon Pertwee at that time and Invasion of the Dinosaurs was the mini series at that time. Here is a short explaining how that season of Doctor Who worked:
Some of this TV stuff might be in colour for you (and for me now) but in 1974 the Harris household was still strictly black and white.
I’d forgotten all about hole reinforcers…I wonder whether I can find some in my draw and repair some damaged holes in my file pages?…
Holiday In Bulgaria, Golden Sands, August 1972
A peachy holiday. Mum, me, Denise, Steve & Tony Lytton.
Oh boy did the memories come flooding back.
Just before the end of 2020, I tracked down Steve Lytton, with whom I hadn’t been in touch for many decades, on the back of a memory trigger about limbo dancing:
We had a very enjoyable e-chat. At one point, Steve said he couldn’t remember how we met, but I remembered it clearly. We met as a chance encounter between our two families in Golden Sands, Bulgaria, in August 1972.
Our parents got on well with each other. Steve and I got along well too, which I’m sure pleased all four parents, as Steve and I were both only children.
Not only did our families hang out together a lot during that holiday but (unusually for holiday friendships) that connection continued for a good few years when we got home, despite the Harris family living in Streatham and the Lytton family living in Hendon.
This was not one of our more photographic holidays, but still there were half-a-dozen pictures from this holiday in “Mum’s maroon album” and I managed to find an envelope with a few more pictures of varying quality/vintage, some black and white from “my camera” (I was only allowed simple stuff at that age; dad wanted me to prove my bona fides as a photographer before letting me use better equipment and materials) and some contact prints, I’m guessing from the Lytton collection. I’ve put them all (16 of them) in the following Flickr album – click here or below:
There is also just a couple of minutes-worth of cine film. The Lytton family feature as much or perhaps even more than my own family in the film. I think dad possibly shot more, but some of the film got sun-damaged – there’s some slight evidence of that damage in the surviving film.
You get 15 seconds of the previous year’s holiday (Port Leucate in Occitania, South-West France, since you asked) as well as the couple of minutes of Bulgaria. A fair bit of clowning around, but the highlight of this movie is unquestionably the beach football, in which mum takes a tumble and then Steve, rather than assisting the injured player, cynically takes possession, playing on. Shocking sportsmanship, caught on film for ever.
I had a few abiding memories from this holiday, despite this holiday being 18 months or so before I started keeping a diary. But the very best of the memories was triggered by Steve, when we e-swapped reminiscences.
Let’s start with my abiding memories and use Steve’s wonderful recollection as the grand finale.
Abiding Memory 1: A Standing Room Flight
My first memory is about getting to Golden Sands. We flew on the Balkan Bulgarian Airline:
In those days they were using Ilyushin Il-18 Soviet Russian planes that had shown a recent propensity to crash, apparently, although mercifully we were in blissful ignorance of that fact when we flew:
RuthAS, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What I especially recall, though, was the “standing room only” short hop from Sophia to Varna in one of those. People were standing in the aisles of the plane holding on to grab-handles like passengers on a bus or tube.
Abiding Memory 2: Viennese Waltz Chicks
Was it really the music of Johann Strauss II that touched my heart, or did I have a kiddy-crush on these lovely musicians? I’m well over the Strauss now, anyway, but here’s the piece that particularly sticks in my mind from that holiday:
Abiding Memory 3: The Olympic Flame
There was a great deal of excitement when word went around that the Olympic flame, doing a circuitous route from Athens to Munich via several Balkan/Eastern European countries, would be staying outside OUR hotel, The International in Golden Sands, for the night.
Detective work on my part tracks down this museum record – click here – which suggests, if I understand the dots on the map correctly, that we are talking about 12/13 August 1972.
We had rooms overlooking the front. I am pretty sure I joined my parents on their balcony to watch the excitement unfold.
A crowd within and without the hotel, pregnant with anticipation.
Then cries from within and without:
Es kommt…Sie kommen…Hier kommt es…
…that sort of thing. The vast majority of tourists in Golden Sands in those days were East Germans.
The torch bearer ran up some steps, ignited the “eternal flame cauldron” where the Olympic flame was to repose for the night, stepped back down to the sound of tumultuous cheering and applause…
…while the Olympic flame petered out in the cauldron.
There was a rapid inspection and rejigging of the cauldron, then the ceremony was repeated, this time successfully.
I was just shy of 10 and was already aware that Santa doesn’t exist. Now I learnt that the Olympic flame is not as eternal as the authorities would have us believe.
Bird’s Eye View Of A Nudist Beach
Thanks to Steve, I have recovered another wonderful memory of this holiday.
We all had rooms with excellent views overlooking the seafront. But Steve’s room, at one end of the hotel, had an especially splendid view. It overlooked a sectioned-off nudist beach.
Steve, very kindly, shared this world of wonders with me. We would sneak off to Steve’s room whenever the opportunity arose, to have an ogle and a giggle. Steve was around 11, I was coming up to 10 – I’m pretty sure neither of us had a clue what we were ogling at or where all those moving parts might go.
Fortunately for genteel readers, I have no images from that aspect of the holiday and am averse to Googling “1970s East German nudist sunbathers” for fear of the dreadful dark recesses of the internet that such a search might reach.
However, the image of dad, above (modestly attired in shorts, of course) gives a sense of the size and scale of the (mostly) East German gentlemen who frequented that beach. And I have managed to find a similarly modest but suitably scaled East German woman shot …
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-B0901-0014-003 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Anyway, I do now recall that my mum liked to dine out on this story for quite a while. Apparently both sets of parents wondered why Steve and I seemed so keen to sneak off to Steve’s room. I fear that it was me that blew our cover in this innocent yet guilty secret pursuit, by asking to borrow dad’s binoculars.
The parents worked us out, caught us out, made light of it and shared in the humorous side of this story. Dad taught me that quality rather than quantity is what matters when observing the human form, a lesson that has served me well in art and in life.
Tutankhamun Exhibition, Spring or Summer 1972
Roland Unger, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I remember being taken by my parents to the Tutankhamun exhibition at the British Museum in the spring or summer of 1972. It was the thing to do that year.
I remember the excitement of planning the trip. I remember the crowds outside the British Museum and having to queue for ages.
I remember being shepherded through the exhibition, in truth not seeing much as a tiny tot, but still being exhilarated by it all.
To compensate me for the long queues and not all that much to see once we’d been through the exhibition, my parents bought me a souvenir of the visit; a Tutankhamun Mask Mug, which still to this day forms part of my minuscule trophy cabinet, in itself part of a slightly larger drinks cabinet:
For several decades, that “Treasures of Tutankhamun” relic of mine has served as the collection dish for small coins that are better off in the charity coin jar than in my pocket. While it still serves that purpose, in theory, in practice (nearly 50 years later) I rarely use cash these days so the jar fills up mighty slowly.
Earlier in 1972 – The Curse of “Toot”
My favourite memory surrounding the huge public phenomenon that was the Tutankhamun exhibition was my Grandma Anne’s take on the topic, in early spring of 1972.
Grandma Anne, bless her, was more than a little deaf by 1972. Also, despite having lived in England since just after the first world war, English was not even her second language, after Russian and Yiddish.
Driving away from Streatham one Sunday, I’ll guess just before the arrival, or early in the days of, the exhibition, Grandma Anne exclaimed, as we drove along Bedford Hill, that someone had cursed the common.
We asked her what she was on about. She’d heard it on the radio. She was emphatic. Grandma Anne didn’t know the details, but someone had put a curse on the place and if you went there, bad things were likely to happen to you. She was keen for me especially to keep away from the place.
The curse of Tooting Common. It took us a while to twig her confusion and we three were in stitches about it. I’m not sure Gradma Anne ever got her head around why they named a park in South London after an Egyptian Pharaoh …or maybe a Pharaoh after a South London park.
Anyway…
Cursed Or Lucky? Autumn 2012
…roll the clock forward more than 40 years after the 1972 exhibition in London – Janie and I got something close to a private viewing in Cairo in 2012 when we inadvertently arrived in Egypt on the day some trouble kicked off, so we visited the Cairo Museum in the absence of 95% of the normal number of tourists:
There’s lucky, not cursed…hopefully.
A Family Holiday With The Schambill Family In Port Leucate, August 1971
We befriended the Schambill family while in Juan-les-Pins the previous year.
In that baby-boom era, I suspect that Jean-Pierre & Marie-Therese (Monsieur et Madame) Schambill were as conscious as my parents that their son, Jean-Michel and I were relatively rare examples of only children. The fact that Jean-Michel and I had got along well and allowed the grown ups to enjoy their holiday time in relative peace was probably a fair chunk of the rationale behind the Port Leucate adventure in 1971.
The Schambills had a villa in Port Leucate, as did a friend of theirs, depicted above, who was also to holiday their with his son, Luke and (I think) his mother or mother-in-law.
I think Luke was a bit older than us, but not too much so and we all got along. I remember that Luke liked a cartoon character named Lucky Luke, so of course that was his nickname and of course we played cowboys with him in the Luke role, whatever that might have been.
In truth I don’t remember all that much about this holiday. The small stack of 20 photographs that I have uncovered, fifty years on, help a bit – Flickr album here or below:
There is also some cine – just a couple of minutes 13’15” to 15’20” in the following reel:
You get to see what the Port Leucate beach looks like and also the villa we stayed in is depicted briefly.
I remember the food. Several of the French adults had been raised and/or had lived for several years in North Africa, so meals in the villa had a distinctly French/Maghrebi style to it. I remember finding it very exotic and taking to it; whereas I think my mother found it a bit strange. Cous-cous? What’s that?
I know we corresponded with the Schambills for some time after that holiday – certainly Jean-Michel and I were sort-of pen pals for a while. I have a feeling that one or other or possibly both of Jean-Michel’s parents in time visited mum and dad in Streatham, but I don’t think I saw them again after that 1971 holiday.
I wonder what they…and in particular Jean-Michel, might be up to now?
A Family Holiday In Juan-les-Pins, August 1970
This holiday in Juan-les-Pins was my first taste of travel outside the UK and my first time on a plane. I was coming up to eight years old and remember little about it in truth.
One of my few abiding memories of the holiday is connected with the headline photograph – I do remember learning to swim under the tutelage of the swimming instructor depicted. The picture illustrates the physical element of his method, which was combined with the constant repetition of his sole word of English – “swim” – stated in a baritone French accent, part entreaty, part hypnotism I imagine.
Suffice it to say, the fellow’s method must have worked on me – I did eventually learn to swim. I think my neck might be a bit longer than it otherwise would have been too.
My other abiding memory was meeting & befriending the Schambill family. Jean-Michel was bit older than me, but well “within range” and our respective parents seemed pleased for us to become pals.
A rummage through old photographs has uncovered a few pictures from that holiday that I probably hadn’t seen since the time, including the picture below, with me and Monsieur Schambill on a pedalo, with Madame Schambill doing the hard work by the looks of it.
We got so friendly with the Schambill family that we ended up holidaying with them again the following year, in Port Leucate.
Meanwhile, in Juan-les-Pins, we stayed in the Hotel De France, as depicted in the picture below.
Looks quite posh. I don’t think it is there now – at least not under that name.
There is a decent stretch of 8mm cine from that holiday – the first 13’10” of the reel below. You can see “Monsieur Swim” at work. You can also see Bill Ruffler – of Ruffler & Walker fame, having a go at water-skiing. I do remember mum and dad going on about the coincidence of running into the Rufflers in Juan – Bill’s business premises were a few doors down from dad’s shop in Battersea.
The photos above and a few more are all in a Flickr album – click here or below:
Not many detailed memories from that age and stage, but my impressionistic recollection is that I had a wonderful time and found the whole “going abroad” thing quite thrilling.