I think Rumours was a Chinese restaurant in Newcastle [corrected – see postscript below]. This picture of me eating Chinese food is from Guilin in 1993.
The end of September and beginning of October at Keele was the lull before the approaching storm of the new academic year. Apart from some fallout from the resits and resulting appeals processes, we were getting ready for the sabbatical year proper with a lot of training and induction activity.
Sunday, 23 September 1984 Got up quite early – mooched around flat – mooched around union – went over to Kate [Fricker] evening.
Monday, 24 September 1984 – not so busy today. Slouched a bit – felt tired too – went to bed early.
Tuesday, 25 September 1984 – Busy day with training course etc. Appeals results came out late afternoon – worked late then went to Rumours with group [probably Kate Fricker, John White, Pady Jalali, Andy Crawford, Ali Dabbs and any other committee folk who were around]– back to Union and mine.
Wednesday, 26 September 1984 – busyish with training and appeals results. Cooked meal for Kate, John & Ali, and took an early night.
Thursday, 27th September 1984 – Busyish day, callers, meetings etc. Went on trip with Allied Breweries and drunk quite a bit.
Friday, 28 September 1984 – Extremely busy with belated appeals etc – got to London late – too tired to do anything.
Saturday, 29 September 1984 – Got up late – went to Brent Cross. In evening went to Rasa Sayang for nice meal.
Sunday, 30 September 1984 – Got up late. Went to Blooms for late lunch – then went drinking in Highgate.
The End Of Appeals
Mopping up after the appeals results came out was quite a busy period, but nowhere near as busy as the time between resit results coming in and lodging the appeals. We had been quite successful with appeals that year. Without going into too much detail, a serious botch up by the French department with one blameless student opened the door to pretty much any appeal by a student who had flunked that particular subject. To some extent that was gaming the system but Eddie Slade, the Senior Tutor, gave me encouragement to assist those modern language students in so gaming. Oliver Goulden, who headed that department at that time, never forgave me for “humiliating him”. I remember politely pointing out to Oliver, when he said that to me, that he had humiliated himself with the initiating botch.
A Trip To London – North Of The River This Time
I don’t think I visited my parents at all on that London visit – I think I just visited Bobbie, who had just started sharing a flat at the top of the Archway Road with several other recent law graduates who were about to start their law/bar exams and (in her case) pupillage.
Brent Cross was not my sort of place, but I think Bobbie needed to buy some stuff for her new digs. She had been kind enough to help me with my move from Barnes to Horwood when visiting Keele; it was the least I could do to traipse around Brent Blooming Cross with her (oh how I hate shopping) before an evening treat at the Rasa Sayang, a Malaysian Restaurant in Soho, which was one of my favourite haunts at that time.
I remember the visit Bobbie and I made to Bloom’s in Golders Green very well. Bobbie was keen to try the place as she had never been to an authentic Jewish restaurant. I gently cautioned against the idea but was persuaded that this was something that Bobbie wanted to do.
The rudeness of Bloom’s waiters was the subject of legend. Aficionados of rude waiter places in London might like to conjure up a Jewish version of Wong Kei (Chinese) or Khan’s (Indian) with the worst excesses of those places coming to the fore.
It is a minor miracle that Bloom’s survived another quarter of a century until closing in 2010. When it did close, a posse of celebrities wrote obituary vignettes about it for the Jewish Chronicle. (If anything ever becomes of that link, click here for the fine laugh out loud words).
But actually I think Bobbie’s and my experience is up there with any of the celebrity “endorsements” of the rudeness.
I had treated Bobbie to the Rasa Sayang the night before and she was to treat me to Bloom’s the next day. That’s how we rolled in those days.
Problem was, the waiter’s “sales technique” with a couple was to try to push the most expensive and/or extra dishes at the female, on the expectation that the male, keen to impress his date, would say yes to everything as soon as the female showed the slightest interest in the item being pushed. This technique was not going to work very well in our circumstances, not least because I knew all about the dishes that were being pushed and Bobbie was looking for my guidance.
Allow me to script one of several such attempts by the waiter.
WAITER (fawning, to Bobbie): I think maybe you would like to try the kishka, madam?
BOBBIE (to me): what’s kishka?
ME (yawning, to Bobbie): stuffed intestine – I don’t think you’ll like it. The helzel (stuffed chicken’s neck) is probably enough stuffed body parts for one meal.
WAITER (thinks): this guy is a pain in the kishkas. What’s the matter with him?
On the meal went, with the waiter fawning over Bobbie, while Bobbie gently but clearly signalled that she was the paying customer and I was the guest, even though I knew what we were ordering and she didn’t.
Eventually Bobbie called for the bill. The waiter brought the bill and went to hand the bill to me.
BOBBIE: No, no, please hand the bill to me.
The waiter looked at me strangely. Then he looked at Bobbie even more strangely. Eventually he handed the bill to Bobbie.
Bobbie settled the bill with notes. The waiter returned with the change, pointedly placing the saucer of change in front of me, not Bobbie.
Bobbie equally pointedly grabbed the saucer, asked the waiter to wait, retrieved some but not all of the change for herself and handed him back the saucer with his tip.
…said the waiter, which means “madness” in Yiddish.
Bloom’s.
Postscript: Jonathan Knight points out that Rumours was in fact a burger restaurant; the Chinese one was Peaches – still going in 2024.
Still, the 1993 tale of the Guilin snake, from which that picture is taken, is well worth a read although it is entirely unconnected with tales of Keele in 1984: