Simon Jacobs – Page 8 – Ian Louis Harris

A Week Of Serious Training For University Life Ahead Of Heading Up To Keele, 28 September To 4 October 1980

OK, so it seems that I somehow managed to blag my way in to Keele University…with a little help from my friends (in particular Simon Jacobs) and teachers (in particular Colin Page).

I returned alone from a week in Bournemouth with my parents (a one anecdote story about that trip will appear on Ogblog in the fullness of time), while my parents went on to explore the South-West of England for a week.

So, I had the run of Woodfield Avenue for my second and last week of holiday before steeling myself to the arduous task of student life.

I needed to do some training to get fit for the specific Herculean labours that the early part of my student life was likely to involve.

Fortunately I had plenty of friends to help me. Here, with just a little shame as well as pride, is my diary of that week.

Sunday 28 September. Left [Bournemouth] for London with [Dina? Nina?]. Advisors doobrie. Simon & Caroline came back. Went out for food. Drank.

Out for food in Streatham in those days probably meant Italian at Il Caretto or Chinese at the Blue Whatnot. I’ll guess Il Caretto.

29 September 1980. Simon & Caroline left. Went to Grandmas. Easy evening.

Not sure if there is an apostrophe catastrophe there, as it is quite possible…even likely…that I did a round trip of both Grandmas; Anne and Jenny.

Tuesday 30 September 1980. Went to office. Helped Jay [Marks]. Came home., read, slept.

A relatively gentle start to my training. One evening on, two evenings off. A bit feeble, actually. Then, mercifully, my friends rallied around and matters got serious.

Wednesday 1 October 1980. Easyish day. Simon came over early evening, stayed over, drank.

Thank you, Simon.

Thursday 2 October 1980. Simon left. Easy day. Lewis [Sykes, I assume] came over – stayed over, drank.

Picture “borrowed” from David Menashe. I’m sure David won’t mind, but if there is ever a blank space where the picture once lived, then you’ll know that David did mind..

Friday 3 October 1980. Lewis remained. Anil came over. Anil & Lewis stayed. Drank.

Saturday 4 October 1980. Anil & Lewis left. Simon, Caroline, Richard [Marks, I assume], A.N. Other [I can only apologise to this forgotten person], Melisa [yes, I remember Melisa, Hendon BBYO I think, but I shall need to do some more archaeology on my archive], came over, & Andrea & Wendy who stayed. Drank.

I am wondering what we drank. My dad usually had a handy stock of more than half-decent Bulgarian red wines in those days, as he was friendly with his importer neighbour near the shop on St John’s Hill, Battersea. I’m guessing that dad left me a case for that week with a nod and a wink. He was that kind of dad.

Forty years later, I’m still in touch with most of the people who helped me train that week. Thank you so much, folks, for helping me prepare for University. So kind and the kindness is not forgotten.

The Day I Left (Alleyn’s) School, 27 June 1980

Robert Cutts, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0

I am writing this up in January 2021, in part as a response to a couple of “exam questions” set by friends Nick Wahla & Rohan Candappa, ahead of a gathering of the Class of 1980 in the “Virtual Buttery”.

In Rohan’s words:

Nick Wahla’s suggested a question to ponder: “What advice would you give to someone about to leave Alleyn’s?”
It’s a good question, and one which I am obviously going to claim credit for. But I’d also like to twist it around a bit. My question is: “What advice would you give yourself if you could go back and talk to yourself on the day you left Alleyn’s?”

So, the day I left Alleyn’s was not, by my own account, a good day for me. That whole final week doesn’t read brilliantly in fact:

To transcribe that final day:

What a horrid day!!! Chem (I) -> In comm -> Econ II -> Fox after and got pissed.

I’m guessing that “in comm” means “held incommunicado”, presumably because I took the Chemistry exam before others had taken it…or others had taken the Economics exam before I took mine.

There are three mentions of going to “The Fox” that week, not just the “getting pissed” session after the exams.

Jwslubbock, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 g

The Fox On the Hill, Denmark Hill, was the hang out of choice for Alleyn’s boys like me and Anil Biltoo. I don’t think they had twigged that these fresh-faced besuited youngsters were often well below 18…or if they had twigged, at that time they didn’t care.

That “got pissed” session on my final day would doubtless have included Anil and I suspect a few others who finished their exams that day. Anyone out there remember?

The diary even for that final week of school is peppered with BBYO stuff. I was on a small National Executive with a large portfolio that year. A lot of difficult stuff had kicked off that spring, not least our sole full timer, Rebecca Lowi, was leaving on 30 June. I had agreed to run the office temporarily over the summer, while a successor was recruited, so started work on the Monday after leaving school to have a handover day with her.

It seems I spent the weekend in between leaving school and starting work with Ivor (Heller), Simon (Jacobs) and Caroline Freeman (now Curtis) on the Sunday.

But my ire that last week was mainly directed at the unreasonable requirement for me to do ‘A’ Levels while all of this other stuff was going on. Needless to say my A Levels did not go well and it was only the good offices of Keele University via Simon Jacobs that helped me dodge the bullet of my resulting dodgy A Levels.

Getting In To & Starting At Keele University, 8 October 1980

But at the “day I left school” stage, that Keele element of my past was still in the future.

So, to answer Rohan’s question, “What advice would you give yourself if you could go back and talk to yourself on the day you left Alleyn’s?” I think the nub of my answer is that I would advise myself to be more reflective and thoughtful about the moment.

Yes, I had a lot going on at that time. Yes, I was psychologically in a rush to move on to fresh challenges. But I think I should have paid a little more heed at that time to the significance of the moment and reflected on that major, albeit natural, transition. And reflected on what those seven years at Alleyn’s had been about.

I have reflected on it since. Frankly, I’m not sure that reflection would have been all that profound at the time. I think it was much later that I started really to appreciate what that Alleyn’s education and those friendships, some enduring, others that resumed oh so easily, had done for me. Partly that appreciation came from growing up and partly from re-engaging with friends from school decades later. People like Rohan, Nick and many others.

But still I think that, at the time, I missed out on a “life moment” to which I can never return, by rushing away from the school that day and not looking back for years.

So, to answer Nick Wahla’s question, “What advice would you give to someone about to leave Alleyn’s?”, I’d simply say, “read this piece about the day I left Alleyn’s and try not to do it my way.”

BBYO National Convention & Aftermath, 30 December 1979 to 3 January 1980: Annex

My shout out in the previous piece…

BBYO National Convention & Aftermath, 30 December 1979 to 3 January 1980

…for further information and/or photos was answered in most impressive style by Jay Marks…or should I say Jay’s mum.

Please thank your mum for me, Jay. (How many times must I have said that during 1980?)

As Jay says to me in his covering note:

… my mum has outdone you…

…and who could disagree with that?

Point is, Jay’s mum had saved a magazine article from the Jewish Chronicle nearly 40 years ago (as I write in January 2020). The piece, by Barry Toberman, is a veritable treasure trove of pictures (some colour, nach) and information about BBYO at that time.

Jay remarks elsewhere about these articles:

Reading it made us sound like a trade union / political party
But some fabulous shots of very special people…

There’s no date on the pages, but I’m guessing it will have been published in the spring of 1980, after Rebecca Lowi’s resignation but before she left just ahead of that summer. More on that subject anon.

Meanwhile Jay cheekily also photographed a couple of the ads from that magazine, just to remind us all (in case we need reminding) that it was all a long time ago.

As Jay says:

But best of all in this mag were the ads… Aramis literally communicates success – assuming success is on the lounge floor in a sleeping bag 200 miles from home

…and then, Jay again commenting:

Tech ain’t what it used to be

This Hitachi ad makes a good point, Jay. Where’s your video footage from convention 1979/1980, eh? Now that can be your next challenge.

Seriously, many thanks again to Jay and Jay’s mum for providing this wonderful archive material.

A Somewhat Eventful Party At Woodfield Avenue, 6 to 7 October 1979

Somewhat eventful to say the least.

Another holiday without me for my parents…another opportunity for me to hold a house party.

I particularly like the way I describe this party, with all due modesty, in my diary entry for 6 October:

Party v good/described as best ever by some…despite disasters.

I’m not sure that my parents’ house has ever recovered from the “despite disasters” aspect of it.

The disasters were probably due to intense overcrowding. Not only had I been pretty open-ended with my invitations – BBYO club folk descended from the length and breadth of the country – but the party was also quite heavily gatecrashed.

This photo from Easter Weekend 1979 – several of the above were at the October party…none of these were the gatecrashers.

I shall seek counsel from others on some of the details. Also on the extent to which, for some aspects of the evening, names and details should ever find their way to as public a place as Ogblog.

But for the time being here are some fragmentary memories of mine.

It looks from the diary as though Fran helped me to set the party up but didn’t stick around for the party, which was jolly decent of her and/but she must have had something much, much better to do on the Saturday night. I have a feeling that she might have just started/been starting University around then. Fran might remember and chime in with a memory. Anyway, many thanks for the help that day, Fran.

Then the party itself.

For some reason (overcrowding alone shouldn’t have caused this) we had a power failure for a while. No lights, no music…just…whatever a party might be in the absence of those things.

Someone who knew what they were doing (at least to the extent needed to restore light and music to the party) sorted out the problem, but I do recall at one point several people going round with candles, not least Simon Jacobs rattling off quips at a rate of about 16 qpm.

Simon could rap at 20 quips per minute if he wanted to…he just didn’t want to.

One of the gatecrashers broke the frame of my father’s family mosaic piece – depicting us as clowns standing on each other’s shoulders. Mercifully it wasn’t beyond repair. I seem to recall that incident triggering some of the more protective (or perhaps I should say bellicose) guests to take matters into their hands and remove several gatecrashers.

Someone will no doubt be able to explain why the following picture of Jay, one of the welcome guests (like the Simon photo above, taken a few months earlier) popped into my head as I recalled the gatecrashers’ comeuppance.

I think there were times during the party when I needed some consoling. I realised what a mess the place was in. But this was not a good party for host romance, although I’m sure it worked well for many guests; not least during the blackout.

One consolation in the damage aspect was the fact that the house had been burgled the day after my parents went away, so it was going to be difficult for them to distinguish burglar damage from party damage.

7 October 1979

…well of course several of the events mentioned/alluded to above might well have been the early hours of 7th…

many stayed, helped clear up. I finished the job…

I’m not sure who Paul S was that Sunday evening (apologies, Paul, if/when your identity comes to light), but the Jeff S who stayed at the house after the meeting was the late lamented Jeff Spector. No doubt he was able to advise me well on dealing with the aftermath of crowded house parties – they had quite a few of those at the Spector house over the years. But those are other memories for other pieces.

Drewy’s Party and Subsequent Matzo Ramble, 14 and 15 April 1979

I have been reminded of this weekend by several coincidences in the past few days/weeks.

Firstly, I used the following photograph to illustrate one of my party pieces from 1979 (no photos from the event itself) only for it to dawn on me and other commentators what the origins of the following photo must be.

Also, as part of my Ogblogging, I uploaded one of my old NewsRevue songs, Privatise, which is sung to the tune of Bright Eyes. It’s a real good one, though I say so myself – click here.

I played Bright Eyes while working on the Privatise/NewsRevue piece and it brought on a solid wave of memory from that April 1979 weekend. You couldn’t get away from Bright Eyes that spring; it was the Easter Number One, it was everywhere. I’ll insert a link at the end of this piece as a reward for those who…scroll all the way down there…I mean read this fine piece of mine in its entirety.

Drewy’s Party 14 April 1979

I don’t remember ever decorating at Anil’s house, but that’s what the diary says I did, before going on to Drewy’s place in Harrow-On-The -Hill for the party.

There was a group of visiting BBYOniks from the USA (New Jersey I believe) in town – earlier diary references cover earlier sessions with them. That is probably why I took my camera. Indeed, the photos of Drewy’s party are the only party photos I took throughout those years (unless you consider the conventions to have been several-days-long parties, which is not a ridiculous contention).

The stack of pictures from the party itself, all 31 of them, can be viewed here. A few good examples follow.

A few familiar faces (and some unfamiliar ones) in the above picture. All familiar faces in the picture below.

Simon Jacobs showed off his cigarette party trick for the camera:

I’ll need to do some work in Photoshop to enable people to see Simon’s smoke well – but I’m sure you all get the idea.

Drewy could do a perplexed expression for the camera in those days, so he did that.

It was a big house, the Drewy house. Many of us stayed. Frankly, that number of people often found ways of squeezing into smaller houses – this Ivor Heller Party piece from the previous spring (1978) refers.

Aftermath and Ramble, 15 April 1979

So how have I managed to find solid evidence that my unidentified fragments of negative, including the above “trews-free in the park” picture come from the same weekend?

Not so easy.

The main suspect in “the mysterious case of the trews-free gentleman” (see the first photo of this piece, above) now lives in the USA himself. When approached, he immediately started pleading the fifth amendment, which I think has something to do with bearing arms – I really should have made more attention when I did that comparative law module…whatever, I knew I’d need to handle this character very carefully indeed.

Still, once the gentleman had been offered immunity (which is apparently what you do with guilty folk in America to get them to sing), he sang like a canary.

More conclusively, now that I have gone back to the original negatives and looked at the whole fragment, I have also found the following picture on the same strip:

Clearing up the Drewy house carpet; see the Simon photo above – case proven

Also on the same strip, a couple of nice pictures of Linda, so she must have been there too. Perhaps she has some memories of this weekend to add:

Given the negative numbers and the fragmentary nature of the negatives, I am vaguely recalling that this roll of film was not finding its way happily into and through my camera. Indeed, from the depths of my memory, I think the camera jammed on the ramble, hence the shortage of pictures on that stack.

Nevertheless, there are a few pictures from the ramble – including a couple of rare pictures from that era with me in them – all of which can be examined by clicking here.

My diary is clear that we went on from Drewy’s place to a ramble:

Case proven.

As I write (14 April 2017) it is the 38th anniversary of the Drewy Party and Matzo Ramble weekend. An auspicious anniversary, as it happens, because this is Easter weekend and also the middle days (Chol Hamoed as they are known) of Passover, an unusual coincidence of festivals, just as it was in 1979.

In the run up to this Easter, there has been a storm in a teacup in the UK about Easter Egg Hunts being renamed as Cadbury Egg Hunts – click here. Whether this was done for marketing purposes or was, as some have suggested, “political correctness gone mad” to remove the specific reference to “Easter” I neither know nor care…

…but in the spirit of the modern era, perhaps we should rename the Matzo Ramble as a Rakusen’s Ramble. Or, in honour of our recently departed visitors from New Jersey, a Manischewitz Meander…

…now I’m rambling. Have a look at the Bright Eyes vid below. Those with memories that go back that far, might just get a little memory flash of that 1979 spring. If so, I’d love to learn about your memories too.

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