For those with limited ability to read clear, plain handwriting:
Monday 5 December: Started at SCF [Save The Children Fund] today.
Went to HCJA [High Court Journalists Association] dinner with B [Bobbie] in evening
I recall that HCJA dinner being rather good. I think we heard Joshua Rozenberg speak on that occasion.
M&P [Ma & Pa] return
Went to Mum & Dad for dinner (Italian)
There is a notebook page that is somewhat of a confession, or perhaps even incriminating evidence about that evening:
Well, I’m pretty sure that mother would have WANTED to be relieved of some tea towels rather than have me do without. I’m 99% sure mum voluntarily gave me the towels and that she declined to have me replace them.
Anyway, let’s not cast blame around here, but I did eat mussels that evening (perhaps a mistake) and I was tripping out on tiredness after several weeks of relentlessly pushing myself.
Wednesday 7 December: Laid up with chronic food poisoning
Thursday 8 December: Stayed off work again today
Thus, the bloke who had only previously taken time off work sick once, when he was grounded for letting flu turn to bronchitis, was now off sick in his first full week of a new job.
I think the meal at Le Caprice was my parents’ idea – to celebrate my qualification as a Chartered Accountant along with Uncle Michael, Auntie Pam, Stanley Bloom and his good lady (Sharit?).
Le Caprice was a trendy place even then – I’m not quite sure what would have made mum and dad choose it. Perhaps to show off a bit. Perhaps because they had heard that it was a restaurant that was able to cope with fussy eaters…we had at least one in our party that day in Auntie Pam.
Roll the clock forward 30 years and I note that Kim likes that place, perhaps for similar “trendy but able to cope with a fussy eater” reasons.
I don’t believe any photos were taken that evening to mark the occasion – such meals were not seen to be the thing of photos necessarily back then. But it is just possible that I’ll stumble across some pictures when I delve into dad’s “late works” box of negatives and prints, which still awaits my trawl.
“Kates” means Kate (Susan) Fricker’s place. I’m pretty sure Kate was, at that time, living in a pied-à-terre flat in Hampstead, part of the house that had been the family home before her family moved to York.
Evenings with Kate were always pleasant. We both enjoyed cooking and eating good food. We both liked decent wine and we would always have interesting conversations. I’m sure that Saturday evening would have been such an evening.
I’m guessing that we would have both been in celebratory mode, work-wise, at that time – Kate was called to the bar around the time I qualified.
I believe this scribbled note is the playlist from the Real Ale Bar Opening Disco
In the last episode, I described the re-opening of the Ballroom Bar as a Real Ale bar, with John White and I DJ-ing the disco in a less than sober fashion.
I am now pretty sure that the hand-scrawled disco playlist I discovered amongst my papers some years ago, see headline picture, must be the playlist from that gig. It looks like a playlist conceived by committee – it certainly doesn’t remind me of the type of playlist that John and I would (often quite hastily) construct earlier in the evening to give the disco the vibe and shape we wanted. Our personal choice tended to focus more on Motown, Northern Soul and general sixties dance music.
I vaguely remember the discussion with several members of the committee. Pady Jalali insisting that we play the Band Aid song at some point – John and I reluctantly agreeing to open with that song as a clarion call to let people know that the show was starting, as it would empty the dance floor anywhere else in the set. I’m pretty sure Kate Fricker chose the Madonna song and it had to be Pete Wild and/or Hayward Burt who insisted on some ZZ Top.
John and I unquestionably insisted on Police Officer by Smiley Culture, which was high on our list of personal favourites at that time:
Actually, you can hear the entire playlist, which I curated into a 40th anniversary playlist on my YouTube Music account – click here for that playlist – don’t be put off if the link is struck through – anyone can click and listen – you’ll get adverts if you don’t have a YouTube Music account, that’s all. I’ll be surprised f you haven’t had a little bit of a private dance (or in my case at the time of writing, hobble) by the time you hear Neutron Dance by the Pointer Sisters, if not before.
Let’s move on.
A Quick Trip To London, Including A Chance Encounter With Neil & Trish Hyman In Knightsbridge And A Planned Encounter With My Mum In Kings College Hospital
AI systems are now smart enough to read the charred remains of the Herculaneum scrolls…but still have no chance with my handwriting. I’ll have to do this transliteration myself:
Friday, 18 January 1985 – Very busy in office with busts etc. Went to London quite early. Stayed in etc etc
Saturday, 19 January 1985 – Rose lunchtime – drank and had haircut. Went to Chicago Rib [Shack, in Knightsbridge] in evening – Met Neil Hyman and Trish [Hyman] etc – weird. Stopped over.
Sunday, 20 January 1985 – Went home in the morning – lunch at Levinsons [friends in our street]. Went to see mum – then back to Keele. Went to see Petra [Wilson] briefly.
I’ll explain, in a later article, a bit more about my role as Education & Welfare officer helping students who had been busted. No idea why I saw so many on that Friday – I don’t think it was anything to do with our disco a couple of nights before.
I assume I stayed at Bobbie’s place in East Finchley. “Rose lunchtime, drank, had haircut” does not sound like me any more (he says, while writing between 6:00 & 7:00 am), but it does sound like the 22 year old me.
It will have seemed and still seems a strange coincidence to encounter Neil Hyman & his sister Trish, friends from my BBYO days, in the Chicago Rib Shack in Knightsbridge. Firstly, because Neil and Trish were from the Lytham St Annes group, which is some way removed from Knightsbridge . Differently posh, I suppose.
Secondly, the Chicago Rib Shack is not the first place you might think of to encounter, by chance, friends from a Jewish Youth Organisation. Perhaps we were all trying out some seminal vegan options in the place.
In some ways more coincidentally, on the back of a subsequent conversation, I discovered that Bobbie’s mum was Greta Spector’s sister. Her sons, Martin Spector and the late, great Jeffrey Spector were mainstays of BBYO in St Annes and indeed nationally. Neil and I served together on Jeffrey’s National Executive for a while in 1979.
Jeff Spector, Spring 1979
On the Sunday I went over to Streatham for lunch with my dad at Norman & Marjorie Levinson’s house. Presumably they were taking pity on dad and feeding him while my mum was in hospital. Very kind people they were – to me as a child and great friends to my parents for the rest of their lives.
Norman up front, my dad to the right
Mum was in hospital having her second hip replaced in Kings College Hospital. She had the first one replaced there in February 1975 and then needed the second one done 10 years later. Don’t know what it is about the start of years with a five in them, but I need to have one of my hips replaced and shall do so in a couple of week’s time (as I write in January 2025).
Back To Keele, Where Wednesday’s Wine Win & Waffles Needs Explaining
What do you mean, you can’t read or understand that? Oh, all right then:
Monday 21 January 1985 – Union Committee in morning – very busy rest of day. Const [itutional Committee] in evening – drink after. Petra came over later.
Tuesday 22 January 1985 – Busy day today – meetings etc. Cheap drink in evening. Petra came over later.
Wednesday, 23 January 1985 -Lots to do and meetings etc. Won wine today. Stayed in in eve – went for Waffles at Ben’s [Benita Wishart] later.
Thursday, 24 January 1985 – Busy and productive day. Lots of meetings in early evening. Petra came over later.
“Cheap drink” presumably means one of those promotion evenings in the Union, when one of the suppliers would try to encourage students towards their brand with infeasibly cheap offerings. I remember being put off Pernod for life with one of those earlier in my time at Keele. Sadly, with my diary being unspecific about the brand involved on 22 January 1985, unless a reader chimes in with a detailed memory, we’ll never know which particular tipple was cheap that night.
Clearly I didn’t over-indulge as my diary for the next day reads very industrious and perky. And who wouldn’t be perky when they had “won wine”. A whole case of Henri Maire wine at that.
While I was with my parents for Christmas, my dad showed me some vouchers and forms he had collected for an Henri Maire wine prize competition. He had bought enough of the wine for two entries. You had to answer a few quite simple questions about Henri Maire wine and then provide a slogan. Top prize, a case of Henri Maire wine. Several other prizes were also on offer. Dad had no clue on the slogans and asked me to help.
My entry – i.e. the one in my name, which ended up winning the case of wine that was sent to me at Keele, was:
Whatever the fare, drink Henri Maire.
Simple and to the point, I thought it might pick up a consolation prize. Dad preferred my other, more baroque idea for a slogan:
Tous les “Hooray Henris” boivent Henri Maire
The arrival of the winning case of “more than half decent” wine caused quite a stir in the Students’ Union that morning. Not exactly an every day event at Keele, that.
I remember excitedly calling my dad to let him know then news. He excitedly told me that my other slogan had also won a prize.
Screw you, Henri Maire. (That wasn’t the slogan). That prize, forty years on.
Dad was absolutely insistent that I keep the corkscrew. I still have it, although, as you can see, it has seen better days. I did keep back a couple of bottles of the prize-winning wine for dad, which I took down on my next visit to my folks.
For some strange reason I became tremendously popular at Keele, for a short while, after that case of wine arrived.
I don’t really understand the diary reference that says that I stayed in that evening but then went over to Benita’s place for waffles. It can only mean, I think, that my intention had been to stay in and that I had sunk into an evening off mode, before Petra (who was very friendly with Benita at that time) persuaded me to join the waffle party…
…possibly with one of those bottles of wine in hand.
Lovely lass, Benita. I think I have tracked her down on the net so we’ll see if she has anything to add to the memory of waffles or even other matters in this series of articles forty years on.
My last few weeks of work that summer were a busy time. I was mostly working on Laurie Krieger’s various enterprises during the second half of that summer, which included Price Buster Records in Rupert Street (the one bit of the Harlequin Records empire he retained), Leisureplay (which was an arcade games business) and Centre Point Snooker Hall (depicted above), which at that time he was expanding also to include a gym venture, one within Centre point and the other out east (Barking if I remember correctly).
I spent most of my time for him pulling together various accounting records at the empire’s nerve centre – a modest former retail unit in Kenton. The team there was governed by a wonderful administrator named Marge who had a trusty part-time assistant (Jean I think), occasionally interrupted by Laurie’s former majordomo Mossy (Mr Moss) who ran Leisureplay and the occasional visit from Laurie himself.
You’re a young man. What do you think of this idea…
…he’d say, bouncing some new commercial idea off me. I usually didn’t much fancy the offer, but would always caveat my answers by saying that I’m probably not his target audience.
…yes…alright, but do you think young people in general will go for that?
…Laurie would often persist. He was a relentless entrepreneur.
The previous summer I had endeared myself to Marge and the team at Kenton by proving to be more than useful at the daily quiz on Radio London, which seemed to please them no end:
Anyway, we’re here to talk about the tail end of the 1983 summer in this piece, so here are the diary pages and some comments/links to explain the interesting bits
Wednesday 31 August…Marianne [Gilmour’s] for dinner
Thursday 1 September…met Jilly [Black] went on to proms..
Sunday 4 September 1983…[Uncle] Michael for lunch [he’d have visited my grandparents’ graves as was traditional at that time of year]…Paul [Deacon] came over later.
Friday 9 September 1983 – …helped Mum – Jacquie, Len & Mark [Briegal], Michael & Pam [Harris] came over for dinner – v nice
Sunday 11 September 1983 – Stanley & Doreen [Benjamin] came over for lunch – went over to Wendy’s [Robbins] in evening.
Basically the Jewish holidays Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur dominated these weeks.
Monday 12 September 1983 – Busy day Kenton – went out with Caroline in evening.
Tuesday 13 September 1983 – Finished P/B [Price Buster] today – went to office. Took mum and dad to The Rivals in eve.
Friday 16 September 1983 – busy day of work – lunch with Ashley [Michaels]…
Saturday 17 September 1983 – Yom Kippur – broke fast with G Jenny & Uncle Louis [Barst]…
Sunday 18 September 1983 – Nice lunch – Wendy came over in afternoon…
Tuesday 20 September 1983 …went to Annalisa [de Mercur’s] for lunch – went out with Jilly in eve – Pastels [was that a wine bar or something?] -> Joy King Lau [a favourite Chinese restaurant near Leicester Square]
Wednesday 21 September 1983 …worked late – boozing with Mike [King] till late
Thursday 22 September 1983 Felt grotty today! [see worked late / boozing till late the day before – what did you expect, kid?] Went to lunch late with [Sandy] Yap…cold coming on [this all reads a bit self-inflicted to my older eyes forty years later]
Friday 23 September 1983 – Last day. Went Stockpot lunch Yap – after work Phoenix -> Mayflower for feast – v nice.
Either I was now seen as part of the team or the gang wanted to make absolutely sure I was gone. You, dear reader, can decide.
Saturday 24 September 1983 …went to Caroline [Freeman’s…now Curtis] party – stayed at Simon’s [Jacobs]…
Sunday 25 September 1983…left about midday. Had Chinese meal at home…
The Chinese meal at home was probably from Mrs Wong. Not quite the same ass Mayflower feast, but it would have been good enough. Anyway, 40 years later, Mrs Wong is still there…
…well, the restaurant is, possibly not the middle-aged woman who ran the place abck then…
I was keen to see this production of the Rivals, as I had read good things about it. Mum and dad were quite easily persuaded.
I remember it as a very good production and a very successful night out.
Going to The National became a very regular thing for me as the years went on, but this was a big night out for Mum and Dad – it might be the only time they ever went to The National.
Fabulous cast – Michael Horden, Fiona Shaw, Geraldine McEwan, Edward Petherbridge and many others. Peter Wood directed it. Here is the Theatricalia entry. Tim Curry was famously in this production as Acres, but had moved on by the time we got there in September. Barrie Rutter was an excellent replacement.
Below is John Barber’s rave review in The Telegraph:
There is an internet adage known as Godwin’s Law, which states (I paraphrase) that any internet discussion will eventually descend into a Hitler comparison.
But surely my own safe space, Ogblog, can be a Hitler-free site? Well, up to a point.
I had a massive recovered memory over New Year 2018, because Janie, bless her, decided to treat us to a quiet caviar-fest:
I don’t suppose this is making any sense at all to the casual reader, so I had better get on with it and explain.
Edwina was a GP who went way beyond the call of duty.
For example, because I was…how should I put this?…more than a little fearful of my jabs as an infant, she came round to our house to dispense the vaccinations. On one famous occasion, when I was feeling particularly averse to being stabbed, Edwina indicated to mum that my rump might make a better target in the circumstances. I worked out the coded message and tried to bolt. The end result was a chase around the room and eventually a rather undignified bot shot delivered by Edwina under the dining room table – I was, later in life, oft reliably reminded by my mum.
Not even the trike was fast enough for me to escape Edwina’s needle
This extraordinary level of pastoral care and attentiveness went beyond zealously inoculating reluctant Harris miniatures – Edwina and her family became close friends with our immediate family, Uncle Manny’s branch of the family and especially Grandma Anne:
Grandma Anne With Dad (left) & Uncle Michael (right), c1930
In the early 1970s, at Christmas-time, my parents would go to Edwina’s house for a seasonal party, along with many other patients and members of the local community. Naturally, my parents plied Edwina and her family with gifts…many of Edwina’s other patients and guests most certainly did the same.
A strange tradition arose around that time, in which Edwina reciprocated our present giving by handing down a generous gift she would always receive from a family of wealthy Iranian patients; an enormous jar (I think a pound; probably twice the size of the jar shown in the photo below) of Iranian Beluga caviar:
By Mai Le [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsEdwina and family didn’t like the taste of caviar. Nor did my dad, as it happens. But mum loved it and I acquired a seasonal taste for it too.
Each year, mum and I would eat Beluga caviar on toast for breakfast for the first couple of weeks of the year.
Even back then caviar, especially Beluga caviar, was very expensive. Not equivalent to the “critically endangered, barely legal, hard to get hold of” price levels of today, but still very much a pricey, luxury item.
I remember mum warning me not to tell my friends at school that I was eating caviar on toast for breakfast, because they would surmise that I was a liar or that we were a rich family or (worst of all) both.
There was only one problem with this suburban community idyll; Mr Knipe. Don Knipe. Edwina’s husband.
Don liked his drink. Specifically Scotch whisky. More specifically, Teacher’s, as it happens. A bottle of Teacher’s always formed part of our family Christmas gift offering, but that sole bottle formed a tiny proportion of Don’s annual intake.
By ramkrsna (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ramkrsna/384365364/) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsEven when I was quite little, I remember being warned that Don Knipe was eccentric, that I shouldn’t pay much heed to some of the silly things he says, etc. But I guess as the years went on, Don’s eccentricities gained focus and unpleasantness. Specifically, Don’s views became increasingly and extremely right wing. He joined the National Front, at that time the most prominent far-right, overtly fascist party in the UK.
I recall one year, when I was already in my teens, my parents returned early from the Knipe/Green party. I learned that Don Knipe had acquired a large bust of Hitler, which was being proudly displayed as a centrepiece in the living room. My mother had protested to Don about the bust, asking him to remove it, but to no avail. Mum had taken matters into her own hands by rotating the bust by 180 degrees. When Don insisted on rotating Hitler’s bust back to its forward-facing position, mum and dad left the party in protest.
Mum explained to Don and Edwina that they remained welcome at our house but that she would not be visiting their house while Hitler remained on show.
One evening, just a few weeks or months later, I think, my parents had Edwina and Don (and some other people) around at our house. The topic of Hitler and Nazi atrocities came up. Don started sounding off about the Holocaust not really having been as bad as people made out.
Edwina And Don At My Bar Mitzvah, Natch.
My father stood up and quietly told me to go upstairs to my bedroom. I scampered up the stairs but hovered on the landing out of view to get a sense of what was happening.
My father was a very gentle man. I only remember him being angry twice in my whole life; this was one of those occasions.
“You f***ing c***!”, I heard my dad exclaim.
I learned afterwards that my father, not a big man but a colossus beside the scrawny form of Don Knipe, had pinned Don to the wall and gone very red in the face while delivering his brace of expletives.
I heard the sound of a bit of a kerfuffle, a few more angry exchanges, ending with “get out of my house”. Then I heard Don and Edwina leave the house. Edwina was weeping, apologising and trying to explain that Don doesn’t know or mean what he says.
Dad – a supremely gentle fellow…usually
The story gets weirder as the years roll forward. Edwina remained our family doctor, although social visits were now at an end. Uncle Manny’s branch of the family and Grandma Anne continued to spend a great deal of time socially with the Knipe/Green family.
Most importantly, for this story, the seasonal exchange of gifts remained sacrosanct.
For reasons I find hard to fathom, I became the conduit for the seasonal gift exchange. Why my parents (specifically, my mother, who organised the errand) felt that I would be less defiled then they were by visiting a household that displays a bust of Hitler, I have no idea.
Maybe it shows that mum had great confidence in my judgement such that, even as a teenager, I wouldn’t be corrupted by Knipe’s vile views…or his habits. But perhaps the lure of a huge jar of Beluga caviar was so great that all other concerns and considerations went out of mum’s mental window.
Anyway, for several years I would go to Edwina and Don’s house to deliver our presents and collect the fishy swag. I think there was an unwritten rule that I didn’t go into the large living room where Hitler’s bust lived; the Knipe/Greens had quite a large house – I would usually be received in a smaller front drawing room.
As I got a bit older, Don would ask me to join him for a whisky and a cigarette on these occasions; offers which I accepted.
My diaries are utterly silent on this annual ritual, other than, each year, the mention of the word “shopping” on one day in the run up to Christmas. I vaguely recall that I would always bundle the errand with my single little shopping spree to get small gifts for my immediate family. The shopping trip provided a suitable time window; a smoke screen (as it were) and a bit of a sobering up period from the underage drinking involved.
Don never raised political topics when I made those seasonal visits. He’d make the occasional oblique reference to it being a shame that he didn’t see my parents socially any more. I can’t recall what we talked about. I think he just asked me how I was getting on and we chatted vaguely about my family and the weather.
But I do recall what we talked about on my last full-tilt visit in this ritual. 1981.
Grandma Anne never really recovered from the shock of Uncle Manny’s demise and died in the autumn that same year.
By late December 1981 I had completed four terms of University at Keele and was far more politically aware/sensitive than I had been in earlier years.
Don greeted me at the front door, as usual, but this time said, “come through to the living room and have a whisky with me.”
“Not if Hitler is still in there,” I said.
“Oh don’t start all that”, blustered Don, who I think must have made a start on the whisky before I got to the house that morning. “I really want to chat to you about your late uncle and your grandma.” Don started to cry.
I relented and entered the forbidden chamber.
There was the bust of Hitler, resplendently positioned with books about the Third Reich and such subjects on display around it.
I accepted a generous slug of Teacher’s and a Rothmans; then I reluctantly sat down.
Don was crying. “I miss your Uncle Manny and your Grandma Anne so much”, he said, “you have no idea how fond of them I was. I love your family.”
I remember saying words to this effect, “Don, I understand that you sincerely love my family, but I cannot reconcile that love with Hitler, Nazi memorabilia, your membership of the National Front and you keeping company with those who hold such views. Those are antisemitic, out-and-out racist organisations and people. It makes no sense to me.”
“It’s not about Jewish people like your family. I love your family.”
“So what sort of people is it about?” I asked.
“Other people. You don’t understand”, said Don.
To that extent Don was right. I didn’t understand. I still don’t understand. It isn’t as if members of our family were so secular and Westernised that you wouldn’t recognise the family as ethnic. Uncle Manny’s branch of the family were (I believe still are) traditional, orthodox practitioners of Judaism.
“Godwin’s Law, Godwin’s Schmo, Don Was Always A Mensch Towards Me”
So I don’t understand who or what these “other people” might be, nor why someone like Don Knipe would be attracted to racist ideologies, despite knowing (and even loving) plenty of good decent local people from diverse ethnic groups.
I think I was polite in making my excuses and leaving fairly quickly. The visit certainly didn’t end in any acrimony or hostility. But I did resolve not to run that errand again, at least as far as sitting in the despicable living room of the Knipe/Green house again.
Strange case.
All that memory came flooding back simply as a result of sampling caviar with Janie…
My impressionistic memory of that last week of term is a blissful one. The weather was brilliant. I had a nice spot outside my room where I could sit reading and/or listening to music.
If I fancied a quiet spot for reading, I ambled down to the centre of campus and sat on the grassy knoll in front of the library, reading books for leisure.
The Keele Library grassy knoll was appropriate for me that season, I now realise, having studied modern history as an FY sessional with Trevor Jones, in which the Bay of Pigs and a better-known grassy knoll loomed large.
The book I especially remember reading that week was Catch-22. I still have the well-thumbed copy I read back then – it is depicted above, on the shelf where it now lives. I think I read a few play texts as well.
The word “lazy” appears in my diary a lot for that week. “Restful” and “relaxing” also appear.
…and if you’re wondering now if they were any good…take my word for it, they were a special act for most students of our era. Forty years on, Dave Lee’s forthcoming book The Keele Gigs! will no doubt answer our questions about that gig and a great many others.
The diary says I was up all night for the ball (seems realistic) and that I went to bed very early the next night in the hope of a long night’s sleep ahead of my parent’s first visit to Keele and the journey back to London with them on the Sunday.
I really had fallen in love with Keele and was delighted with the prospect of three more years there. In fact, as it turned out, I stayed four more years.
At the time, during those carefree, idyllic, summer days at Keele, I remember the 18-year-old me thinking that I could happily live at Keele for ever.
But there is/was a catch.
Let’s call it “Catch-18” in this case. In fact, Joseph Heller originally titled his seminal work precisely that, before other works with numbers in the titles pushed him and the publishers towards a different choice of number for his catch.
My 18-year-old’s catch is this: if you are wise enough at the age of 18 to realise that a perennial summer break surrounded by books, youngsters, sunshine, beer and gigs would be a wonderful way to live your entire life…
…you are also wise enough to realise that no such life is realistically possible.
Oh shoot!
On the Monday I started my holiday job and by the Tuesday I had been sent to Braintree to audit a furniture factory.
“Vedi Braintree e poi muori”, as Goethe would not have said, had he ever been to Braintree. But he might have said “Vedi Keele Library e poi muori” while sitting on that grassy knoll.
There was only one “drunken fart” involved when I waded through my FY Philosophy topic on Descartes…and it wasn’t René Descartes. Memorable for me only because it was my very first Keele essay and I do recall finding the topic tough.
I have a vague memory of trying out Cartesian philosophy on my parents, eliciting bafflement, followed by an encouraging, “whatever you say, dear”, from my mum, which means I must have explained it all very well.
Everything is self-evident, sonny-boy
So deep was I in philosophy that weekend, I even failed to write up Sunday, which must surely have comprised finishing the essay, having lunch with my folks & travelling back to Keele…not necessarily in that sequence.
I remember telling dad that I had several essays to write in the next couple of weeks, which would limit my ability to go out drinking with my friends, so he gave me a little glass hip flask (quarter bottle size I think, or perhaps 5oz) full of whisky, which he said would sustain me on such evenings and could be refilled whenever I came home to visit. On reflection forty years later, dad’s kind idea not entirely devoid of enlightened self-interest.
I drink therefore I am…it wasn’t quite as posh as this example.
I think the hip flask had its first big dip on the Wednesday, when I finished my Law essay for Michael Whincup. I can’t remember for the life of me what the topic was about; a very general introduction to law, I think.
I’m pretty sure that I had near made my mind up by the time I completed that Law topic that I fancied switching to Law for half of my degree – my heart was already set on Economics for the other half. Philosophy (with all that Descartes) and Politics sessional (mostly Psephology with Mr Kimber that term) didn’t grab me sufficiently.
On the Friday evening, 5 December 1980, I:
Went to Union – Sim’s mates from Donny there
Ah yes, my next door neighbour Sim (Simon Ascough) and his home town mates from Doncaster. Sim was a great bloke and I very much enjoyed being his neighbour in F Block Lindsay for about four terms in the end. In those early days, I especially remember listening to his Neil Young Triple Album, Decade:
But I recall Sim’s friends from Donny being into a harder-boiled variety of rock than that; Iron Maiden, Rainbow and the like if I am not mistaken. I also recall them finding Keele quite baffling; they were pretty disparaging about the place and the whole idea of Sim being at University. I think I added to their sense of bafflement because I was Jewish; a state of being which, I guess, had barely entered their consciousnesses before and certainly never previously manifested to them in human form. I don’t think they were bad lads, but when Sim dropped out of Keele a year or so later, it felt to me like a real shame and I did wonder whether Sim had anyone “back home” encouraging him to persevere with university.
The next day, on the Saturday, Simon Jacobs and I went off to Leeds for a BBYO thingie. I apologise unequivocally to the people of Leeds who might have read the phrase:
Simon and I went to Leeds (yuck)…
..imagining that I had something against Leeds. In fact, I was fond of Leeds back then (still am to some extent) and I suspect the word “yuck” was a word play on the fact that we were going, in part, to a YCC meeting as representatives of BBYO. Simon had, in fact, resigned as National Vice-President over the summer, but I think might have still retained some involvement in whatever the YCC is/was – frankly I’m struggling to find anyone who can remember.
It’s a bit like SLAC Convenors at Keele – people vaguely remember the existence of the post but no-one seems able to recall what SLAC was…
John White in 1985 checking out the bona fides of SLAC Convenor Cath Coughlin – with grateful thanks to Mark Ellicott for this picture.
…but I digress.
Returning to December 1980, in my diary, in the matter of that Leeds trip, I went on to say:
…stayed at nice house (early night)
Sunday 7 December – coffee morning -> lunch -> YCC (🗸 & X) -> Inst[allation]. Simon & I left early
No idea what the 🗸 & X represented. Presumably something went right (from my point of view) and something else didn’t. The YCC was probably like that…whatever it was.
What I didn’t say in the diary, but popped straight into my main memory when I read this diary note, was the hellish journey Simon and I endured between Keele and Leeds. No wonder we left early.
As I recall it, we took the bus to Stoke, took a train to Stockport, where we changed to a train to Staleybridge, where we changed again to take a train to Leeds.
Staleybridge station looks in better nick now.
Then we did the whole trip in reverse, with the added excitement of a 1980 Sunday service to contend with. On returning to Keele after that epic journey, Simon and I agreed that we wouldn’t be attempting that voyage again by public transport in a hurry. I still haven’t attempted a rerun and strongly suspect that Simon Jacobs also can only boast that single expedition from Keele to Leeds and back, without oxygen.
I’m pretty sure my parents came to see Andorra on the middle (Friday) night of the run. And I’m fairly sure the following dialogue (or something like it) took place on the drive home after the show.
MUM: I wasn’t very impressed by some of your school chums in the audience behind us.
ME: What happened, Mum?
MUM: Well, during the interval one of them said to his pals, “I’m looking forward to the bit where Harris has to run around the stage yelling ‘I’m not a Jew, I’m not a Jew.” Then they were giggling. I wasn’t going to let that pass without comment.
ME: Oh, God, Mum, what did you say to them?
MUM: I turned around and asked them why that was so funny. One of the boys explained, “because Harris is a Jew. But he has to run around the stage saying “I’m, not a Jew”. Then the boys giggled some more.
ME: …and then…
MUM: I said, “I’m well aware of all that. I’m his mother and I’ve helped him to learn his lines. I’m just trying to understand what makes it funny.” They went very quiet after that.
ME: Oh, Mum. I’m going to get mercilessly teased on Monday when I get back to school. Or worse. Why couldn’t you just let it go?
DAD: I knew it. I could have told you he’d be upset.
To be fair on the poor boys involved (and I do wonder who they might have been – any confessions?) it was an ironic, rather funny matter. Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, my casting in the role of the Innkeeper might well have been based more on my physiognomy than my stagecraft. In any case, we cast had all had a bit of a laugh about the irony of me yelling “I’m not a Jew” during rehearsals and I saw little malice in the remarks as reported by my mum.
But to be fair on my mum, although I did get some serious ribbing on the Monday (as recorded in my diary), it was not at all to do with my mother’s intervention. Indeed the poor boys who got my mother’s tongue-lashing were probably more embarrassed than I was about that matter.
No-one would relish a tongue lashing from my mum. Cruel spectacles and cut glass voice to go with them.
No, the ribbing I received resulted from reports of my drunkenness at the after show party on the Saturday.
As to the exact details of my ribbing-inducing party antics, I recall very little. I do remember drinking far too much cheap party cider – a once-in-a-lifetime mistake (drinking cheap cider, not the occasional over-drinking). I think the party was at Tiggy’s house, mostly in a rather large garage/out-house. Or am I am confusing the Andorra party with the Twelfth Night party?…
Others who were a bit older (I was only 15-and-a-half) and a bit wiser (almost everyone else who was there) might recall the Andorra after show party better.
Still, my mother’s parental intervention was a pretty cringe-making one.
Anyway, the lunchtime special of the day (10 January 2018) in my client’s staff canteen was baked mackerel with onions. Very tasty it was too.
I remembered, so clearly, that my mother’s baked mackerel with onions was one of my favourite dishes.
Awaiting onions
I also remembered that it was one of mum’s “economy meals”. Times were hard in the mid to late 1970s. Mum shopped very carefully to help make ends meet. In addition, she had a routine which was to include one meal per week described as the “economy meal”.
Sometimes it would be a fish economy meal on a Tuesday. Sometimes it would be a meat economy meal on a Wednesday. Monday was leftovers from weekend roast day. Thursday was always fish day. Friday night was friday night. That’s how it worked.
Mum was almost apologetic about the economy meal, but the strange thing is, I used to look forward to them, because the economy meal was often, e.g. the baked mackerel dish, a real favourite of mine.
Thoughts of other “economy meal of the week” dishes started to flood into my head:
stuffed lamb’s hearts – might sound disgusting to those who hate offal or who can only contemplate liver from the offal department, but believe me, after slow braising, stuffed lamb’s hearts are unbelievably tasty. Here is a recipe not dissimilar to mum’s;
baked klops – or meatloaf. Economy in mum’s case because she would basically pad out cheap mince with egg and cereal. There are gazillions of recipes for meatloaf on line, but this “posh klops” recipe – click here – miles away from mum’s economy principles (veal mince…Balsamic vinegar!!) – sounds so very yummy I might give it a try;
salmon rissoles. Now this was an oddity in the economy meal department. Salmon rissoles with tinned red salmon were already occasionally on the agenda for the “regular fish meal” on Thursdays. Tinned pink salmon was much cheaper in those days (if you shop around possibly still is), so mum would sometimes make an economy meal of pink salmon rissoles. I’m not sure I could tell much difference – perhaps a bit more “meaty texture” to the red (Oncorhynchus nerka) species although surely the texture is lost in the tinning and rissoling. Little did I know then that, ironically, I would subsequently do deep, seminal economic research into the Alaskan salmon industry – click here for link to The Economist piece on the subject, although strangely, the pink species, Oncorhynchus gorbuscha, received less scrutiny than the red (sockeye), for reasons far too dull to explain.Here’s a link to a pinko recipe anyway;
When I got home from my meetings, I wondered whether I might have eaten that very baked mackerel dish exactly forty years ago to the day and looked at my old diary. Turns out that 10 January 1978 was a Tuesday, so I might very well have done.
I also realised that Tuesday 10 January would almost certainly have been a “caviar on toast for breakfast…economy meal for dinner” day. Bizarre, but that’s how it was.
What I also learned about that evening, after the second day of the school term, was the following:
gave talk at BBYO with Graham [Majin] on the cartoon. Went down well.
Ah yes, the cartoon. I really need to try to patch that thing together digitally. Graham’s attempt, a few years ago, to get the BBC properly to copy the 8mm film itself shredded the celluloid. Another Ogblog project to add to the list. Watch this space.
Anyway, all that foodie memory came flooding back simply as a result of tasting baked mackerel again in a style so similar to my mum’s…
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