Tag: Simon Ascough

The previous weekend, when I returned to London, not only did I bring back cassettes, including a mix tape of contemporary pop charts music…

Mix Tape Recorded In The Middle Of My Second Term At Keele, 7 February 1981

…I also came back with a large Judge enamel cooking pot, depicted above, together with a somewhat distressed-looking frying pan:

I really should point out that the above photographs were taken forty years later, in February 2021, in the kitchen of my Notting Hill Gate flat, where these artefacts still reside, a little incongruously amongst the granite and the fancy-schmancy cookware. I still use the enamel cooking pot occasionally; it’s in extraordinarily good nick. As the young folks might say, it is a remarkably peng pot.

I’m not sure I’ve used the frying pan for 25 years or more. In fact I was a little surprised to find it still there, at the back of a kitchen cupboard. But then it would be a wrench to throw it out after all these years.

I should also point out that the frying pan…Tower Brand, British made, patent number lost in the mists of time…already looked fairly distressed in 1981. In fact, it might look less distressed now than it did then; apart from the dent.

Dad had brought both the pot and the pan from the kitchenette at the back of his shop, where they had festered unused for many years. My guess is that they predate dad opening the shop even, in the mid 1950s, quite possibly hand-me-downs from dad’s parents.

We’ll return to the cooking later in this piece.

Here’s the diary extract for the first two weeks of February:

Music In The FY Lecture Theatre, Darts At The Mid-Term Ball & Late Nights, 11-12 February

I went to both of Professor Dickinson’s FY lectures that Wednesday morning; the first on British Music, the second on American Music. I seem to recall the focus being on late 19th and 20th century composers of the Elgar, Walton, Britten, Ives, Barber, Copeland variety.

The diary for that day (11 February) merely reads:

Did little – Ball in evening – Darts very good – very late night again!!!

Dave Lee’s book The Keele Gigs (due Summer 2021) will doubtless cover the topic of that Darts gig (and the support acts) well. I do remember Darts being a fun act to watch as an 18 year old. They looked a bit like this:

12 February 1981 – Up late – did little all day – very boozy evening & late night.

I’m just starting to spot a pattern here, dear reader.

A Trio Of Weekend Visitors & Some Rudimentary Cooking In The Communal Kitchen, 13 to 15 February 1981

13 February 1981 – Not bad day. Nick [Frankel,] Graham [Greenglass] & Rebecca [Segalov] came – went to bar -> Simons. Graham stayed here – talked music till late.

These three were BBYO friends, primarily of Simon’s (although I already knew Graham quite well) from Pinner.

It was not so easy to accommodate several guests at Keele. I know that Graham slept in a sleeping bag on the floor of my tiny study-bedroom. I think that Simon stayed with his then-boyfriend Roy, freeing up space in his study-bedroom for Nick & Rebecca. Or perhaps Simon’s next door neighbour, David Perrins, was away that weekend freeing up space there. Or both. Weekends at Keele were often a merry-go-round of room favours, long before Airbnb was invented.

I shall write separately on the wonderful mix tapes that Graham made for me back then. Suffice it to say that I think he brought two (or possibly even three) with him on that visit and I listened to those tapes a lot throughout my time at Keele.

14 February 1981 – Got up late – went in to Newcastle for lunch – went to lakes – cooked supper – S, G & I went to Lindsay disco – mine…

15 February 1981 – …for coffee, Anna [Summerskill] came, as did [Mad] Harry, Sim [on Ascough] & [Brummy] Paul – another latey.

So 14 February 1981 will have been the very first time I used my dad’s old cookware.

Freshers stayed in halls and dined in refectories Monday to Friday; the grub was part of the hall fees. But we had to fend for ourselves at the weekends on modest budgets and with limited facilities in halls. Most freshers, especially the male freshers, did not eat well at the weekends.

I was travelling up and down the country and therefore not around at Keele for many weekends in my first term. When I was around, I can tell from my diary, that I tended to eat in places such as The Sneyd Arms, The Golf Inn, The Student’s Union or in “town” – most probably Newcastle-Under-Lyme; mostly with Simon and his crowd.

So I’m pretty sure that this weekend will have been the first time I tried cooking at Keele.

F Block Lindsay had one small kitchen which was shared, if I remember correctly, between all 20 to 25 students who lived in that block. Possibly it was just as well that most male students were uninterested in cooking. I think the blocks that housed female students tended to have fewer people and/or more plentiful kitchen facilities. I’m wondering whether it is too late for me to bring a discrimination claim against the University.

Anyway, from memory this early effort was Spaghetti Bolognese. I planned it the weekend before, when with my parents. I remember my father insisting on pronouncing the name of the dish “Spaghetti Bollock-knees”.

I think I only brought one secret ingredient to Keele with me, which served as my stock base (as well as a warm snack) throughout my time at Keele; Osem Chicken Soup. Much more tasty than chicken stock cubes and a base I could use when cooking for vegetarians.

In the Keele days, I needed to buy this Osem ingredient in London, whereas now you can get the product almost anywhere, e.g. Sainsbury’s.

The rest of the ingredients I will have bought in the Newcastle-Under-Lyme Sainsbury’s on the Saturday. Here is my recipe.

Ian's Keele Fresher Spaghetti Bollock-knees Recipe

Quite a lot of onions
A good few carrots
A large pack of mince - hopefully the large packs are available at a special low price
A large tin of tomatoes - ideally an Italian brand that looks the part
A couple of teaspoonsful of Osem Chicken Flavor Soup (a stock cube or two can be substituted)
A good squeeze of tomato puree from a tube (that tube will last a good few months)
A good squeeze of garlic puree (that tube will last even longer than the tomato puree tube)
A good pinch of table salt 
A good pinch of ground black pepper
Vegetable Oil (likely to be rape seed oil in those days)
A good fistful of spaghetti (circa 4 oz per hungry person)

Chop the onions into quite small pieces.  Ditto the carrots.  Brown these ingredients in vegetable oil within distressed-looking frying pan.  Add the mince once the onions and carrots are brown.  Thoroughly cook the mince. 

Dissolve the Osem soup...or stock cube(s)...in boiled water and add to the distressed pan. Also add the salt, pepper and tinned tomatoes.  Then add tomato puree and garlic puree to taste.  Reduce until a good texture and flavour of sauce..

While reducing the contents of the distressed pan, bring a large quantity of water to the boil in the peng enamel cooking pot, add a good pinch of salt and cook the spaghetti for about 10 minutes.

Drain the spaghetti and serve the sauce over the spaghetti.

This all looks a lot more complicated when written down than it actually is. I knew how to do this before I went off to University.

I remember that my cooking of this food for our guests caused a bit of a stir in F Block Lindsay. I’m not sure anything quite so cheffy had occurred in that kitchen during that academic year until my effort. Perhaps I am being unfair. Anyway, the smell attracted quite a few people into the kitchen and I received quite a few requests for future meals…some of which I found ways of meeting, as I’ll explain in a future piece.

I have a feeling that Simon will have gone back to join Roy before the “post Lindsay disco” gathering in my room. In truth I don’t really remember it and I’m trying to get my head around the incongruous gathering of Anna Summerskill and her (as I remember it) constant desire to talk left-wing politics, with a bunch of hopped-up, mostly apolitical 18-year-old fellas – Graham, Brummy Paul, Mad Harry, me & Sim.

Sunday 15 February 1981 (continued) – up late – went in direction of Mainwaring – ate at Services – they [must mean Graham, Nick & Rebecca] left – Simon & Malc [Cornelius] for supper – early night

I have a feeling that the five of us headed off in the direction of The Mainwaring Arms, but then realised that a quick nip into the Keele Services “around the back” would enable the Londoners a quick getaway, while Simon & I could easily walk back to Keele.

As for the supper that evening, I’m going to guess that I vastly over-catered for the previous evening and had loads of Bollock-knees left over to enable me, Simon and Malcolm Cornelius to enjoy a hearty meal the next day.

I have no pictures of either Rebecca or Nick from back then, but Rebecca ended up with another BBYO friend of Simon’s and mine, Alan Tucker (who I think visited us on a separate occasion, some months later). Simon is still in touch with Alan and Rebecca forty years on.

Nick Frankel was obviously so taken with academia after spending a weekend with us at Keele, that he decided to make it his lifetime vocation. Professor Nicholas Frankel can be found, forty years on, at Virginia Commonwealth University, in the English Faculty. Simon wondered whether Nick would welcome this account of his Keele visit being published here. I think Nick will be fine about it. After all, Nick is an Oscar Wilde specialist:

There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Oscar Wilde