Renée Harris – Page 4 – Ian Louis Harris

Mum’s Economy Meal Of The Week, 10 January 1978

I was dealt another food-induced involuntary memory at the time of writing. It comes hot on the heels of my bizarre “caviar on toast for breakfast” childhood memory, recovered on new year’s eve.

Strange Case Of Dr Green And Mr Knipe…And Beluga Caviar And Scotch Whisky And A Bust Of Hitler, c22 December 1981

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.

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.

Here’s a recipe for baked mackerel – this is a modern recipe from the Guardian, so it is a bit “sexed-up” compared with mum’s, but looks good.

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;
sauteed chicken livers. This one was an absolute favourite and became one of my student staples, once I discovered that by far the cheapest source of animal protein available in North Staffordshire at that time (early 1980s) was frozen chicken livers from Sainsbury’s. Here is a more than half-decent recipe, albeit a sexed-up one – there was no port in Ian’s Keele delicacy…nor was there orange juice.

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…

…Proust can keep his madeleines – pah!

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…

Time Traveller. Dad at the Greenwich prime meridian line, 31 August 1977

…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:

Technicolor-style diary solves temporal mystery

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.

Dad in the Trafalgar Tavern, 29 August 1977

The diary suggests that we very much enjoyed our lunch at the Trafalgar Tavern.

Me in the Trafalgar Tavern, 29 August 1977

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.

Old Royal Naval College – 29 August 1977 – seemingly taken from a boat – how many times did I see that glorious panorama from the deck of a boat in later years?

29 August 1977 was a beautiful sunny day by the looks of it

29 August 1977 – Old Royal Naval College in the sunshine

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:

Dad being blown around in Brighton, 30 August 1977

Dad blowing in the wind, Brighton, 30 August 1977 – I like this picture a lot.

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:

Dad and Mum, the latter looking wet and cold, in Greenwich, 31 August 1977

Major General James Wolfe looks hardier than my folks, 31 August 1977

The top of Greenwich Park had a truly grimy, industrial view back then

Time Traveller. Me at the Greenwich meridian line 31 August 1977

Execution Scenes, Coin Tossers And Miscellaneous Silliness Recorded With Paul Deacon, 12 April 1977

On this day in 1977, Paul Deacon and I recorded ourselves larking around, including, for some unknown reason, several takes of a scene emulating an execution at the time of the French Revolution.

I’ve no idea whether anyone other than me and Paul will find this four minute clip funny, but I laughed out loud many times on hearing it again.

I think my favourite bit is on take 4, when you hear my pseudo-Robespierre voice, once again, ask

“do you ‘ave anything to say?”

and you can hear my mother holler from the next room…

“yeh – shut up!”

…at which point Paul collapses in gales of laughter.

Some of the bits in several of the takes where Paul gets tongue-tied around his lines are pretty funny too.

I also laughed out loud at my third announcement of “take 5” – to announce two “take 5s” might be described as unfortunate, to announce three sounds like carelessness. The juvenilia of a numbers man.

Suffice it to say that the unintended humour works better than the rather mawkish intended humour.

The guillotine sound comes from an actual guillotine…

…no, really…

…a paper one, which looked more or less exactly like this picture, which I have borrowed from an ebay sale long since closed – I’m sure the anonymous photographer/seller won’t mind – fair use for educational purposes blah blah:

The sound of the drum roll was made on a genuine Southern African bongo drum, a gift from my mother’s dear school friend, “Auntie” Elsie Betts who lived (I believe still lives) in South Africa. For reasons unknown, I took a superb photograph of that majestic drum:

The sound of the aristocrat’s head landing was, if I recall correctly, achieved with a white cabbage being dropped into a wastepaper basket. My mother used to make her own coleslaw to my father’s specification – with a light vinaigrette sauce, no mayonnaise nonsense for my dad’s slaw – it was a sort-of cross between sauerkraut and coleslaw really.

But I digress.

Point is, there would always have been a white cabbage conveniently on hand whenever the need arose for a head removal sound effect. The cabbage will have looked like one of these:

Paul and I made quite a few silly recordings over the years, but I believe only the one tape survives. Most of our recordings were recorded on the trusty Sony TC377, which looked like this…

…the tape for which was expensive and in demand in the Harris household (mostly by me to be honest), so much of the silly stuff will have been wiped over with other silly stuff or, eventually, something someone wanted to keep.

I meticulously digitised all the reel to reel tapes that survived (a few batches of tape were deteriorating before digitisation, so those tapes couldn’t be saved) but, as far as I can tell, none of the survivors had larking about material on them. Sorry.

So how or why did the 12 April 1977 material survive?

The answer is straightforward and signalled in the following diary page.

The relevant passage is 2 January 1977 – Bank Holiday Monday:

Went to Comet cassette deck. Great.

On that day, our reel-to-reel family bowed to the inevitable and procured a cheap (this is the January sales, isn’t it?) “solid state” cassette deck. It was not a special one. I think it was one of the following or similar – I have borrowed the picture from an ebay sale long since closed – I’m sure the anonymous photographer/seller won’t mind – fair use for educational purposes blah blah:

While I think Paul and I probably recorded the coin tossers/execution scenes on the reel-to-reel (the clicks sound reel-to-reelish to me – Paul might know better), I at least made a copy or copies onto cassette following that 1977 reording session:

Below I have also embedded the 20 minutes or so of general larking around stuff that preceded the main takes. It’s not a particularly interesting listen; I think we must both have been in an especially silly mood that day. Paul might go through it and extract a few small snippets of value from it. I think there is a Cyril Vaughan impersonation on there somewhere and one or two other impersonations to boot.

The main “conceit” of the following preliminary piece is a spoof sports commentary on the world coin tossing competition. This appears to be a throw-back to an earlier, seminal event, in December 1974:

Breaking The World Record For Coin Catching With Paul Deacon, Woodfield Avenue, 30 December 1974

Anyway, here is twenty minutes of coin tossing, infantile giggling, some impersonations and some early attempts at the execution scenes. This recording is on the other side of the Execution Scenes cassette.

I have written all of this up in September 2018 at Paul Deacon’s request, as he is giving some sort of talk about careers to a women’s group in Canada, the country in which Paul and his family now reside.

Paul wondered if I had any relevant photos of us from that time, which I don’t really – sorry again. The only picture I can lay my hands on with both of us in it is the following, which Paul himself uploaded in our Alleyn’s alum group:

Paul on the right doing the bumping; me the recipient of the bumps. This might take some explaining to a genteel women’s group…

…but if they are instead a group of Canadian Women’s Ice Hockey players/supporters, the picture will look like childishly amateur violence, which it assuredly was.

While I denied all memory of this event when Paul first upped that picture, I have a vague recollection now of how those autumnal-looking bumps came about. I’ll Ogblog about that separately some other time.

This piece is about recordings of execution scenes and stuff. You haven’t yet listened to the four minute execution scenes clip? Here it is again for your convenience. Listen out for my mum as “best supporting actress” in take four.

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:

Visits To Greenwich and Brighton With Mum and Dad, 29 to 31 August 1977

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.

This blond girl features in the movie too. I wonder whether I had latched on to the blond girl or whether she had latched on to me. Rohan Candappa probably wants me to track her down and write a story about her.

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:

A Short Mediterranean Cruise, Stopping At Malta, Catania (Instead Of Tunis), Palermo & Naples/Pompeii, 24 to 31 August 1975

We’d done a serious (two week) cruising holiday in 1973:

A Two Week Mediterranean Cruise Ahead Of Starting At Alleyn’s School, late August 1973 – Context, Itinerary, Links & Day Zero: Porto di Rimini via Luton Airport

Clearly that experienced had pleased me/us sufficiently that dad snapped up a one week cruise as a second half to our holiday in 1975. Frankly, my memories of the 1975 one pale into insignificance next to the 1973 one.

The fact that I have not, in 50+ years, returned to a cruise ship might give the reader a clue that ships and me don’t really get along. I marvelled at seeing lots of places in a short period of time, but I think the novelty wore off, for me, and my folks, once the second cruise was done.

My diary sets out the itinerary pretty well – almost legibly:

This is how I know that I shot some, sadly lost forever, cine film on that 1975 cruise. AI recognises this panorama as Malta.

I remember very little about the day in Malta.

I don’t remember much about the pal I made on this trip. This evening picture is a bit weird.

I do remember the disappointment at missing out on seeing Tunis, due to an outbreak of cholera there. All the more disappointing because we docked instead in Catania, on the eastern side of Sicily, near to Taormina, where we had holidayed the previous year.

As a result, I don’t think we did any touring that day, saving our energy for the next day’s scheduled stop in Palermo, on the other side of Sicily, which we had not explored the previous year.

I recall from our 1974 holiday in Taormina (which I shall Ogblog in the fulness of time), that a brace of young American women, who were staying in our hotel, ventured to Palermo one day and my dad asked them to report back to us, as he was considering booking a day trip for us. Their one line report was:

You can put Palermo in the trash can…

…which still sticks in my mind, albeit as an unfair assessment, but in 1975 I was possibly a little deflated to be visiting, on my birthday, a place that, by all accounts, belonged in the trash can.

Perhaps consequently, dad arranged for us to tour places near to Palermo but not Palermo itself, if the surviving photos are anything to go by.

Afficionados of mid 1970s fashion will surely dig the flared trousers I wore that day. Photos of all earlier days on that holiday had me in short trousers. I’m guessing that mum took no risks for a day in or near “trash can Palermo” and insisted that I wore longer trousers as a preventative measure against flea bites. More likely, the day of touring in Malta had probably highlighted that long trousers would make more sense than shorts when touring.

Give it up one more time for those flares of mine. Classic.

It looks as though we celebrated my birthday in style…with fizz for the grwon ups and cake for me and the grown ups.

Not sure about that short, tie and trousers combo. Mum – what were you thinking?

The final day of touring was the highlight – to see Pompeii. My parents had been before – dad’s 1961 sound film from that holiday being a classic of it’s kind. Pompeii is c3’10 to 5’25.

No film from our trip, sadly, just a handful of snaps:

Me, Live At The Apollo (Temple of Apollo)

My diary excitement the following day, which was all at sea, comes in the phrase

Captain’s Dinner Great.

I understand this to be a traditional thing on cruises and I obviously took great joy in the luxury of it and the fuss that was being made of me as a birthday boy at the Captain’s Table.

My 31 August diary entry simply reads:

Arrived home. Great!!!!!!

Glad to be on dry land, perhaps? Anyway, that was cruises out of my system for good. 50 years on, I still haven’t done another and don’t suppose I ever will.

Photos from this holiday can be found in two Flickr albums – this first one scans of prints – click here or below:

…or this one, which is still raw stereo images at this stage – click here or below:

A Week In Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, In The Hotel Argentina, Prior To A Short Mediterranean Cruise, 17 to 23 August 1975

Dad had almost certainly booked this holiday from a bucket shop using whatever paltry savings he had left after shelling out for my Bar Mitzvah. I suspect he got good bang for his bucks on this one, holding out until the price became too tempting for him.

The diary sheds little light…

…but we do have some photos and cine. Not much – I think dad (and mum)’s enthusiasm for holiday photos and the like had waned by 1975. Still, we have a few prints, a short snippet of cine and a box of stereo photographs, all of which I have digitised but I have not yet (end 2025) turned the individual images from the stereo box into digital stereo images.

Also, we have my memories of the place – assisted by the pictures.

I think this young man might have been East German. A lot of the people we met at that hotel were.

I communicated with a lot of the younger people (who were mostly East German, Yugoslavian or Russian) through chess and cards.

I’m pretty sure this patient gentleman is/was English – or at least spoke excellent English – my parents got pally with him and his wife.

Please note the writing pad with a posh-looking floral cover. Dad had bought up a job lot of those, which he thought might serve me well as a budding scribbler for quite some time.

31 December 2025 – the one I am looking at has family genealogy notes in it and is still in use with many pages left, as is/has the orange one behind, which contains some comedy and whimsy writing notes, with plenty of space still for more. Also to my right, the writing box, Bar Mitzvah gift mentioned in my article about the Bar Mitzvah itself – propped open with a bag of biros..

By this stage of my then short life (I was still not yet 13), I clearly fancied myself as a hand-held cinematographer, following in my father’s footsteps:

We have, from this holiday, four-and-a-half minutes of cine, all of which is either filmed in Dubrovnik itself (when we went there on the Wednesday) or in and around the hotel. It can be seen minutes 7’20 to 11’50 on this reel:

Confusingly, we had been to Dubrovnik at the end of our 1973 cruise, so you can also see Dubrovnik at the start of this reel.

Sadly, no film from the 1975 cruise survived. I know I shot some, but suspect that the film got spoilt by getting caught in the camera or inadvertently exposed to light prior to process. That used to happen sometimes.

I also have a few impressionistic memories from our week in the Hotel Argentina.

I really liked the place. It seemed really cool – especially the great big round leather chairs and ceiling lamps – that felt futuristic/Star Trek like to me at that time. It just looks quintessentially 1970s to me now.

There was a strange late middle-aged East German resident who used to walk around the hotel all day and would occasionally approach people who were talking, put his finger to his lips and say, with a thick German accent:

Shhhh – there is sickness here.

Dad thought he was probably on temporary respite release from a nut house. (Dad’s choice of phraseology – I am merely reporting it to you, dear reader, not approving my father’s choice of terms). I was fascinated by this bloke and used to look forward to his unexpected interventions.

For years afterwards, if I was making more noise than dad wanted to hear, he would put his finger to his lips and incant, “shhh, zer is sickness here” in his best mock-German accent.

You can see all of the scanned prints from this holiday through this Flickr link – here and below:

The unedited stereo slides (in their raw and multiple form) can be seen through the following Flickr link – here and below:

My Bar Mitzvah: The Party At The Peacock Club, 10 August 1975

So to the party to celebrate my Bar Mitzvah, the day after

My Bar Mitzvah: The Actual Bar Mitzvah Itself, 9 August 1975

Actually, I wrote up the centre piece of the party – the limbo dancing – some five years ago (he says, writing now in December 2025) – click here or below:

My Very Brief Junior Career As A Limbo Dancer, The Peacock Club, 10 August 1975

But there was more to this party than just the limbo dancing. Oh yes.

There was a meal, for a start. A meal that is bound to have been baked salmon, although I really don’t remember the meal. But in a non-kosher venue with some observant people present, fish would have been the order of the day for sure. Then you could also have some creamy deserts and stuff like that.

Then speeches. The camera only caught the important ones – me as the star of the show and Andy Levinson as my warm up or warm down act, I cannot remember which way round we spoke.

I certainly win the award for the more skew-iffy tie.

There was also regular dancing for regular people, as well as limbo dancing.

Mum with Norman Levinson – Dr Edwina Green looks disapproving, perhaps because mum’s new hip was only three months old at the time

Mum had put enormous effort into rehab after her hip replacement in May, motivated by a desire to dance at my Bar Mitzvah party, which she sure did. My perspective on this has shifted in the past year, having been through the hip replacement and hard yards for rapid rehab myself in 2025.

Mum, Denise Lytton and Rose Beech, as Marjorie and Fiona Levinson look on. Don’t overdo it, mum and whatever you do, don’t fall over…

…and don’t try to emulate cousin Colin Jacobs.

Of course, these events are family affairs and most of the family was there:

Grandma Jenny & Me above, Me & Grandma Anne below

Pam & Michael front, Auntie Francis standing, flanked I think by Lieba and Sam Aarons…

You can see all of the photos from both days of the Bar Mitzvah weekend through this Flickr link, here or below:

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.]

Dorothy [Thinks]: What a funny little boy he is.
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.

My Bar Mitzvah: The Actual Bar Mitzvah Itself, 9 August 1975

Truth to be told, dear readers, most people who, like me, were brought up in non-religious, or, at the most, quasi-religious households, thought of the Bar Mitzvah as an event which would result in lots of super presents and a big party in your honour…

…with a religious ceremony inconveniently taking place between the presents and the party.

Hence, I felt the need to separate out the Bar Mitzvah itself for an Ogblog page, because I did put in the effort to do the thing properly. My parents would have expected nothing less.

I have written before about my Hebrew classes (cheder) experience, including my failed attempt to recuse myself from the Bar Mitzvah on the grounds of atheism, which Rabbi Ginsbury nipped in the bud – click here or below for that story:

“Freed At Last, Freed At Last…”: Brixton Cheder In Early 1974

Had I succeeded in recusing myself eighteen months or so earlier, I don’t suppose the presents and the party would have been forthcoming, so…thank you, Rabbi Ginsbury.

I still have a handful of the presents, in particular the gramophone records and books (things I never throw away), a letter writing box/set from Jacqueline and Maurice Swain (still with me but rather fershimmeled to be truthful), a rather splendid onyx chess set in Aztec style (from Monty & Vivienne Phillips, I’m pretty sure)…plus money, of course – I still have some of that – not the actual cash or cheques tendered at that time of course, although several people insisted on their money being converted into premium bonds and I will still have those actual bonds as I have never sold a premium bond.

I digress. Anyway, it wasn’t just me who thought the eating, drinking and making merry was the bigger part of the process. The invitation below, which stretches to ten lines, uses four of them to cover the religious service, then six lines to describe the ensuing libations, feasting and terpsichorean celebrations.

To an even greater extent, the surviving photographs are heavily oriented towards the celebratory events the following day, although this can in part be explained by the prohibition of photography in shule and indeed anywhere on the sabbath.

Dad was no doubt breaking multiple rules when he snapped me in my state of readiness on the morning of my Bar Mitzvah before we set off for shule.

I’m pretty sure I still have that yarmulke and it looks suspiciously un-fershimmeled given its vintage, unlike my writing case. I have clearly spent more time writing than praying in the intervening 50 years. Who knew?

Another breach of protocol, although this breach will not have been made on that Saturday, but some days earlier, was a recording of the passages I was to read and sing for my Bar Mitzvah.

The Bar Mitzvah is, in a religious sense, a coming of age ceremony, around the age of 13, when the initiate reads the weekly passage from the Torah (in my case a dollop of Deuteronomy) and that week’s chunk of additional Old Testament material (in my case an iota of Isaiah), along with some ceremonial prayers. All sung in Hebrew using some of the oldest musical notation known to man.

Having done that, the initiate is a fully fledged “man”, in the sense that their presence in the synagogue now counts towards the minyan – i.e. the quorum of ten adult males required for certain prayers.

The idea of a minyan is not to be confused with cute but despicable creatures, minions, who appear in several of my favourite movies. (I never did grow out of loving animated films).

Anyway, with the trigger warning that this sound file is less than special aesthetically, here is the recording of me singing my passages and prayers:

Ten minutes of unimaginable sound.

Had you asked me ten minutes ago what those passages were and what they were about, I’d have shrugged, other than the “dollop of Deuteronomy & iota of Isaiah” line.

But thanks to Mr Google (other AI-enabled searches are available), I can be far more specific:

On August 9, 1975, which was a Saturday (Shabbat), the weekly Torah portion read was Parashat Shoftim.

This Torah portion is the 48th in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and is found in the book of Deuteronomy, specifically Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9.

The main themes of Parashat Shoftim include:

Guidelines for leadership and the appointment of judges, officers, priests, and a king.

Laws concerning the integrity of the judicial system.

Rules regarding prophets, cities of refuge for accidental killers, and false witnesses.

Specific laws for warfare and the procedure for an unsolved murder case.

Reading about that, fifty years later, I sense that “my” portion could come in handy given the conduct of many notable and notorious world leaders, and their hench-folk, in the modern era.

My Isaiah passage covers the late, prophetic stage of the “twixt the temples” exile:

Isaiah 51:12-52:12 is a powerful prophetic passage where God comforts His fearful people, reminding them He is their sole protector, not mere mortals (grass) or oppressors; He calls Jerusalem (Zion) to “Awake, awake!” to cast off shame and put on strength, promising redemption from exile (“sold for nothing”) and the beautiful arrival of good news of peace and salvation from the Lord, telling them to leave Babylon and be purified.

Peace, salvation and purification sound like good ideas, as long as they apply even-handedly to all concerned.

Only mum could have taken photos that were THAT skew-iffy, so my guess is that dad couldn’t be bothered when we got home but mum wanted some more pics from the day.

Worse yet, on the “dad couldn’t be bothered” front, is that the negatives from the events of both days have all been lost. Given that dad was in the photographic business, that is bizarre. The negatives from several holidays around that time are also lost. My guess is that he lost a whole batch together – probably those he had taken to the shop in order to obtain extra prints for sending around to friends and family.

Talk about the cobbler’s children.

Anyway, scans of all 50-or so surviving prints from the Saturday & Sunday can be seen through this Flickr link, here and below:

Creative Avoidance During The School Holidays, With Alan Cooke, William Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan & The Telly, Not Least The Ashes: Last Two Weeks Of July 1975

Shouldn’t you be doing…something else, Harris?

This period of the summer of 1975 is the first documented example of my unquestionably masterful deployment of creative avoidance…that thing otherwise known as procrastination.

My Bar Mitzvah (the Jewish coming of age ritual) was coming up on 9 August. I was all-but grounded by my mum – I should imagine in part to focus on my preparation and in part for fear of misfortune befalling me ahead of the big day.

This is how I occupied myself:

I know you need a transcript with explanations, dear, reader, just give me a moment…

Sunday, 20 July 1975 – [Hebrew classes] prize day. Got best pupil cup! I am the greatest. Went to Makro. Two hour wait.

It was quite a surprise to win a star pupil prize at Brixton cheder. More than a year earlier, I had confessed to the Rabbi that I didn’t believe in God and wondered whether, in those circumstances, it was appropriate for me to progress with my Bar Mitzvah. Rabbi Ginsbury “explained” that it was. That story is told in this linked piece – here and below:

“Freed At Last, Freed At Last…”: Brixton Cheder In Early 1974

Monday 21 July 1975 – uneventful. Did some recording etc. TV Star Trek, My Honourable Mrs.

Tuesday 22 July 1975 – more recording. Uneventful.

Wednesday 23 July 1975 – Alan [Cooke] came. Lovely day. TV BA and LC [Bud Abbot & Lou Costello] in The Noose Hangs High

Well done, Cookie. You were clearly deemed to be safe enough company, at least if you came over to our place, for me to have some respite from my Bar Mitzvah preparations…not that I see any sign of preparations in the diary.

The phrase “lovely day” tells me that this must have been a real highlight for me during that period. I suspect that we spent some of the time playing that makeshift game of ours, where we set up Hot Wheels tracks and flat pack cowboy town houses, using the hot wheels cars to demolish the houses. We brought new meaning to the term “creative destruction”. Such a shame we couldn’t video our activities on smart phones in those days – those Hot Wheels demolition runs must have looked so cool…

…which is more than can be said, most likely, for the Abbot and Costello film. That pairing never did, for me, what Laurel & Hardy and/or The Marx Brothers could do.

Thursday, 24 July 1975 – went to Brixton. Had haircut. Saw Grandma Jenny.

Friday 25 July 1975 – uneventful day. More recording. TV Mahler’s 8th and Ten from the Twenties.

That broadcast of Mahler’s 8th, which was the first night of the Proms that year, was a memorably big deal in our household. It was a simultaneous broadcast on TV and stereo radio, which dad was very keen to experience to the full. I do recall my mother’s verdict on Mahler – I paraphrase:

not for me – too much going on. Mahler is music for culture vultures.

You can judge for yourselves, as the recording of that very concert is available on YouTube:

Saturday 26 July 1975 – shule in morning. Shopping afternoon. TV Crown Court.

Sunday, 27 July 1975 – went to Makro. Got typewriter and paper. TV Italians, Robin Hood.

That very first typewriter of mine, which was not of the highest quality, played an essential role in my clandestine “career” as a gossip columnist at Keele several years later:

The Immaculate Conception Of H. Ackgrass: At Keele With Pete Wild & On Merseyside With Bobbie Scully, Early January 1984

Monday 28 July 1975 – cleared out room. TV Star Trek, My Honourable Mrs, The Happy Catastrophe.

Tuesday 29 July 1975 – went shopping in morning, got more WSG and ASS [William S Gilbert & Arthur S Sullivan] records. TV Time Detective, Al Jolsen.

Wednesday, 30 July 1975 – had haircut, more WSG and ASS. Two presents, all okay.

I had almost forgotten about my obsession with Gilbert & Sullivan that summer. I am sure that it was partly distraction activity from what must have felt like a trial by July, i.e. the impending “trial by ordeal” of my Bar Mitzvah, but also because I had enjoyed school productions such as Trial By Jury and knew that my parents were warm to the material too.

I wasn’t buying the records – heaven forbid – I was borrowing them from the library and scraping them onto tape. I was also reading about the Gilbert & Sullivan genre and memorising some of the patter songs. The evolution of my taping habit can be seen on the following sheet. The labours of that fortnight being tapes 8 to 14:

Thursday, 31 July 1975 watched cricket – England collapse and come back. WSG & ASS. Routine.

Did I mean that England’s batting collapse was routine? Or that England’s batting collapsing and then coming back was routine? Or that me doing more taping and memorising of Gilbert & Sullivan material was now routine?

Actually there was nothing routine about that second Ashes Test, which was at Lord’s.

I wouldn’t have realised it at the time, but the unusually long time it took for debutant David Steele to appear at the crease when the first wicket fell, was due to his getting lost in the pavilion, on his way from the home dressing room to the Long Room, by descending further than he should have done into the basement.

That is one of my favourite Lord’s stories – a location/anecdote that I point out as a matter of course to any guest that I am showing around the Lord’s pavilion. Which is something I do with some regularity these days. Routine in fact.

Friday, 1 August 1975 – watched cricket – England OK. WSG & ASS of course.

Saturday 2 August 1975 – went to shule. Found dad’s watch. Heatwave.

Dad was good at mislaying watches. The 1975 “reported incident” will have been his beloved Omega watch. But I remember he had a “scientific” watch that he hid before going on holiday in the mid 1970s (perhaps 1975 or 1976) and never found again. Janie and I discovered it in his “muck room” (workshop) when clearing the house in 2012!

I have asked Gemini what the weather was like in London on 2 August 1975. It replied:

On 2 August 1975, London was at the beginning of a significant heatwave, with temperatures widely reaching around 32°C (89.6°F) by that date or shortly after.

Things were certainly hotting-up a week before my Bar Mitzvah.

But where in my diary is any mention of me preparing, other than going to shule on the Saturday mornings leading up to the big day? Presumably, in my 12-and-a bit year-old, secular mind, the words and music of WS Gilbert and Arthur S Sullivan were ample preparation for Hebrew recitative from the testaments.

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Update/Footnote Post Publication

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