Tag: University of Keele

Guest Contribution: Mark Ellicott’s Response To His Summer 1982 Mix Tape

Mark Ellicott more recently (actually 2016)

In response to my “forty years on” piece about a mix tape Mark made for me in 1982…

Informal Contemporary Music Subsidiary Course At Keele In The Summer Of 1982, Tutor: Mark Ellicott

…which is probably worth reading before reading the following response…

…Mark responded with some fascinating reflections of his own about that music “forty years on”, along with his thoughts on what the follow-up mix tape should have been. I shall try to replicate that “thought-experiment mix tape” within this guest piece.

Ah Ian,

Every one of those tracks still gets a regular airing in my household! For me they have never aged because I’ve never gone through a prolonged period not listening to any of them. Anything by Grace Jones in that early eighties period always brings back memories of six in the morning in Freehold Street, Newcastle in the spring and summer of 1982 after a night at the 141 Club in Hanley  with the likes of Anna Summerskill, Mark Bartholomew, Vince Beasley and Jan Phillips, amongst others. Invariably all of us stoned / tripping and / or speeding. The ‘Nightclubbing’ album just tailor made for the wee small hours after a long night out just as everyone was coming down. It was THE album I most associate with that crazy summer term when I went through that cathartic metamorphosis!

The Grace Jones version of ‘She’s lost control’, originally by Joy Division, on that tape I made you was one of the more eccentric covers I’ve heard. Back in 1994 I had the good fortune to meet the great lady when she was booked to play at The Fridge in Brixton. It was touch and go whether she’d make it onto stage - she was several hours late I recall before the show eventually started - but I did ask what had prompted her to cover such a track by such a band. It transpired she knew nothing about the band, knew nothing about Ian Curtis’s suicide and had merely heard the original track before deciding there and then to do her own version. It ended up as the B side to her single ‘Private Life’. She was rather horrified when she found out about Curtis’s demise and that the song was about epilepsy - a condition he suffered from. 

The Roxy Music track ‘Both ends burning’ (from 1975) is etched into the memory because of their performance on Top of the Pops promoting it. Bryan Ferry dressed up as a GI with an eye patch dancing awkwardly as two heavily made up women, also dressed up in military garb, swung their hips behind him - looking vaguely glassy eyed in the eyeball department.

‘Violence Grows’ by the Fatal Microbes was always being played by John Peel. The singer was 15 year old Honey Bane, a schoolgirl who’d been signed up on the strength of her already provocative stage performances. This was a howl of rage from a time when there really didn’t seem much hope for young people as unemployment skyrocketed. Her indifferent tuneless vocal delivery for whatever reason just resonated. 

‘Atmosphere’ by Joy Division arguably my favourite track released just after Curtis’s death  a fitting tribute to the man’s genius. He was only 23 when he died - just imagine what might have come later on in his career had things been different. I wonder how ‘Blue Monday’ by New Order might have sounded had he gotten his teeth into it. I still recall John Peel announcing his death on air and playing ‘Atmosphere’ and being quite shocked. No one then could have imagined the cult status they would 40 plus years later enjoy. 

‘Typical Girls’ by the Slits just a wonderful piece of pop-punk-reggae by the original riot girls. Ari Up the singer (alas she died of cancer some years ago) was John Lydons (nee Rotten) stepdaughter. John married Ari’s mother Nora, a German heiress, back in the eighties. It’s a track that despite its 43 years of existence still sounds like it could have been recorded in 2022.

Mark then went on to suggest a follow-on mix tape:

Had I made a second tape for you that year it would have undoubtedly included the following. All from that 1982ish period. 

‘My face is on fire’ - Felt
‘Fireworks’ - Siouxsie & the Banshees
‘Temptation’ - New Order
‘How does it feel?’ - Crass
‘Torch’ - Soft Cell
‘The back of love’ - Echo & the Bunnymen 
‘Second skin’ - The Chameleons
‘Persons unknown’ - Poison Girls
‘Hand in glove’ - The Smiths
‘Treason’ - Teardrop Explodes
‘Requiem’ - Killing Joke
‘Dead Pop Stars’ - Altered Images
‘Alice’ - Sisters of Mercy
‘Eat y’self fitter’ - The Fall
‘Painted bird’ - Siouxsie & the Banshees
‘Let’s go to bed’ - The Cure
‘Capers’ - The Birthday Party
‘Nightclubbing’ - Grace Jones
‘The look of love’ - ABC
‘Being boiled’ - Human League
‘Pissing in the river’- Patti Smith
‘Walking on thin ice’ - Yoko Ono

OK, let’s give that mix tape a go. I have really enjoyed listening to these tracks and hope readers enjoy them too. Many thanks, Mark, for your kind note and further selections forty years on.

FoodCycle, GoodSAM, The Samaritans, 1981 Keele/BBYO Redux & Being Boilered, This Is Lockdown 3.0, 20 February 2021

With thanks to Rachelle Gryn Brettler for snapping us in Rossmore Road, preparing to do our FoodCycle run on a wet winter’s day

We don’t get out much in Lockdown 3.0, other than to buy food and do our charity work.

That is giving me a chance to crack on with my retro-blogging; I’m working through 1995 & 1996 to cover the Ged & Daisy (Ian & Janie) “25 years ago” story. I’m needing to give more thought, though, to the formerly less well-documented, “40 years on” story of my early days at Keele University.

Strangely, 1981 and 2021 seem to have collided, forty years on.

I wrote last summer about my joy at being asked to make our FoodCycle collections from St Paul’s in Rossmore Road…

FoodCycle’s Spiritual Home In Rossmore Road & Other Tales, 24 June 2020

…mentioning the superb tapes Graham Greenglass used to make for me, including quirky numbers such as Rossmore Road by Barry Andrews. I still hum it or sing it more often than not when Daisy and I do FoodCycle from there:

Dreamy use of sax and double bass on that track.

Last week, I wrote up the very weekend during which several visitors descended on Keele and Graham presented me with a few cassettes, including that very track. The piece below is a thumping good read, even if you weren’t there, including an excellent undergraduate recipe for spaghetti bollock-knees:

The Best Pot I Had In Five Years At Keele, i.e. The First Weekend I Tried Cooking In The F Block Lindsay Kitchen, 11 to 15 February 1981

On Wednesday, before Daisy and I did our FoodCycle run, I did an NHS Responder gig to collect a prescription. Strangely the prescription was to be collected at the Tesco Hoover Factory in Greenford. Strange, because also on that little collection of quirky recordings given to me in February 1981 was the song Hoover Factory by Elvis Costello:

So, by some strange quirk of fate, forty years after being given recordings of those two rather obscure (but wonderful) recordings about lesser-known places in West London, I found myself doing charity gigs from those two very places.

I have already written up the ear worm I got from Hoover Factory a few months after first hearing the song:

Uncle Manny’s Funeral & The Hoover Factory, 15 May 1981

But the early 1980s connection this week does not stop there.

While I have been cracking on with the NHS Responder/GoodSAM app as well as FoodCycle, Daisy has been training to become a Samaritan and this week moved on from being a course trainee to becoming a mentee (i.e. doing real sessions with real calls under the supervision of a mentor).

Towards the end of her course, Daisy had been waiting with a little trepidation to find out who her mentor might be. Mentors work closely with their mentees for a few weeks. She knew that it might be one of her course trainers or possibly someone she hadn’t encountered before.

A couple of weeks ago Janie announced that her mentoring instructions had come through and her mentor was a new name to her: Alison Shindler.

GED: Oh, yes, I know Alison Shindler.

DAISY: What do you mean?

GED: She was a leading light in BBYO towards the end of my time there.

DAISY: Might not be the same person…

GED: …Ealing BBYO – bet it is!

Of course it is.

What a pleasant surprise.

Less of a surprise though, after their first session together, is that Alison & Daisy seem to be getting along really well. I’m confident that the mentoring partnership should be a very good one.

Meanwhile Alison has furnished me with a photo from so far back in the day, the biggest surprise is that we were in colour back then:

With thanks to Alison Shindler for this photo

That’s a c17-year-old me turning around, next to me Simon Jacobs who was central to my “going to Keele” story and part of the “cooking weekend”. In the red scarf I thought was Jilly Black (who has remained friends with me, Daisy and Alison throughout those decades – in fact it is a little surprising we haven’t overlapped before now )…but it turns out to be Emma Cohen disguised as Jilly. Opposite Simon is Lauren Sterling plus, slightly upstaged by Simon’s head, Caroline Curtis (then Freeman) who visited me and Simon at Keele the February 1981 weekend following the “cooking” one.

A Short Visit From Caroline To See Me And Simon At Keele, 20 to 22 February 1981

It’s all too weird, in a good way.

But now, after all that excitement, Daisy and I are in temporary exile at the flat. The replacement of the Noddyland boiler has over-run by a day, making Daisy right and me wrong, as usual.

Stock boiler image: neither the actual old nor the actual new boiler

I’ve been grasping for a quirky early 1980s musical connection for a boiler replacement. So my earworm for the tail end of this tale is by that early 1980s mainstay, The Human League – Being Boiled:

God’s Gift, Pure Genius, Or Both? Annex To Alleyn’s School Class Of 1980 Virtual Buttery 3, 20 January 2021

When I reviewed last week’s virtual gathering, I forgot to mention Paul Driscoll’s anecdote about the optional “prefect’s blazer” available to those of us who attained such giddy heights at Alleyn’s School. The blazer was emblazoned (pun intended) with the school crest and motto.

That motto was God’s Gift. Edward Alleyn no doubt meant that motto to symbolise education. But the phrase has a sarcastic meaning in modern parlance; e.g. “he think’s he’s God’s gift.” And as Rohan Candappa so ably puts it, “We are Alleyn’s. If you cut us we bleed sarcasm.”

Unsurprisingly, very few of us took up the offer of this optional, distinguishing garment. Beyond the sarcasm, such an emblem had every chance to land us in a heap near North Dulwich railway station, where the Billy Biros (pupils from William Penn School) needed little excuse to isolate an outlier from the Alleyn’s herd, taking severe retribution for invented sleights and offenses.

The main senior school uniform was a two-piece or three-piece suit. I have only one picture of myself wearing mine:

Me And Wendy Robbins, Autumn 1979, Westminster Bridge

I was reminded of all of this by a posting on Facebook in the Keele University alums area.

In the late 1980s, just a few years after a left Keele, when Guinness had a particular advertising slogan on the go, some fine folk in the University of Keele Students’ Union produced the following tee-shirt.

It dawned on me that I am a very rare example of someone eligible to wear not only the Alleyn’s God’s Gift blazer but also the Keele Pure Genius tee-shirt underneath the blazer.

In the dying moments of the Trump US presidency, this suitably modest mental image should be shared with the world and saved for posterity.

It’s just a shame I was unable to model the two garments together back then. I would have looked magnificent; indeed it would have been the best look ever, anywhere, for anyone.

With all due modesty…

The Day I Saw Slade & The Smiths At Keele, 10 January 1995

With profound apologies to lovers of 1970s & 1980s popular music who clicked this page under false pretences; I just couldn’t resist the headline. But I am talking about the day I went to Keele and met Dr Eddie Slade while seeing Professor Mike Smith for the first time. Later, I had dinner and stayed over with Mike Smith and Marianna, at Mike’s house in Church Plantation.

Professor Mike Smith, who sadly died suddenly, 12 November 2020

It happened like this. My business partner, Michael Mainelli, had worked with Mike when Michael first came to The British Isles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Coincidentally, mostly while I was at Keele.

Michael and Mike had kept in touch. Mike Smith went on to become, in 1990, Professor of Health Informatics at Keele in the departments of Computer Science and Medicine. He concurrently held the position of Director of Information at North Staffordshire Health Authority.

Our business, The Z/Yen Group, was starting to thrive. I was looking after the civil society side of the practice and was starting to itch for bright resource, around the time that Mike was starting to look for opportunities to mix some fresh commercial activity in with his academic work.

Michael suggested that Mike and I meet. Knowing that Keele was my alma mater, Michael suspected that an excuse to stop off at Keele the next time I was heading north would be an attractive proposition for me.

So, between client appointments near Euston on the Tuesday morning and client appointments in Manchester on the Wednesday morning…

…Mike Smith said he would be delighted to see me on the Tuesday afternoon & evening, insisting that I should stay with him and Marianna at Church Plantation.

I think that first house might actually have been The Smiths’ house!

Mike also asked if there was anyone still at Keele that I would especially like to see, as he had time that afternoon to wander down memory lane with me.

I suggested Eddie Slade. I had seen most of the people who had taught me and were still active at Keele on earlier visits, but had not seen Eddie since my Education & Welfare sabbatical year, some 10 years earlier, when Eddie was Senior Tutor.

I recall that Mike didn’t rate our chances of getting in to see Eddie, commenting that he didn’t think he’d ever had an audience with the Director of Studies (as he was now titled).

But when I arrived at Keele, Mike told me that, to his surprise, Eddie had remembered me and said that he would like to have a meeting with both of us.

A recent (2020) picture of Eddie, borrowed from the Douglas MacMillan Hospice site, a wonderful cause

It was great swapping stories with Eddie from the distant past…9 to 10 years earlier. We’d not seen eye-to-eye over everything, but on the whole had got on very well and had worked together to resolve some “little difficulties”. Some of those tales might yet emerge in my write ups; some might best remain unwritten.

We also discussed how the Students’ Union had changed in those 10 years. I was delighted to learn that the Real Ale Bar was one of the union’s great commercial successes, as that had been one of our 1984/85 innovations.

I then asked what turned out to be a daft question about the television rooms. In our day, there had been three television rooms and the addition of a fourth TV channel (Channel 4) had caused some consternation. I asked Eddie how they regulate the television rooms now that there are multiple channels…

…Eddie laughed and explained to me that any student who wanted to watch television in the 1990s had their own TV. The former TV rooms had long since been repurposed.

With thanks to Mark Ellicott for this 2016 picture of the Students’ Union

After saying goodbye to Eddie, we had time for me to have a look around the Students’ Union, so I could see for myself the fate of the former TV rooms and far more besides.

This was also interesting for Mike, who confessed that he had never been in the Students’ Union building before, so it was my turn to give him a guided tour for the most part. It hadn’t changed all that much.

In 1995, there were still quite a few staff in the SU from my era. For sure Pat Borsky was there to be seen in the Print Room, for example; I think Barbara also.

Disappointingly, though, nobody said…

…”cards please”…

…as we entered the Union, although I did have my dog-eared life membership card with me, just in case.

Wally…where were you? Thanks to Mark Ellicott for this 1985 picture

Anyway, after having a good look around the union, we retreated to Church Plantation where I met Marianna for the first time, we three ate a hearty meal, enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation and the rest, as they say, is history. Mike and I worked together and became friends for 25 years, until his sudden death so sadly intervened.

I write this piece, the tale of how Mike and I first met, in late November 2020, just a couple of days before Mike’s funeral and just a couple of weeks since I wrote the personal tribute linked here and below.

A Personal Tribute To Professor Mike Smith, 12 November 2020

My First Visit To Keele As An Ex Keele Student, October 1985

“Artist’s Impression” of Keele Hall by Nano Banana 2 Lite

There’s something a bit “Hotel California” about Keele. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

On 15 July 1985 I wrote in my diary:

…left Keele forever at lunchtime…

…but of course that wasn’t true.

A sizeable piece of my heart never really left Keele – or possibly I should say that Keele never left a sizeable piece of my heart. Moreover, by October 1985, I was back again, albeit just for the first of many visits, especially in that first post-Keele year.

I had been at Keele for five years, which I have written up extensively in Ogblog, more than 200 articles, starting with…

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

…doing the Foundation Year 1980/81, Law & Economics 1981-1984, then an additional year as Education & Welfare (sabbatical) for the Students’ Union 1984/85.

During those first post Keele months – for most of the following year in fact – I visited Keele regularly. This October visit was the first of them, recorded in detail in my diary:

Friday, 18 October 1985 – rushed day at work – dashed off to Keele – had dinner at Petra [Wilson’s] – went over to Annalisa [de Mercur’s] and Kate [Fricker’s] flats – fairly late night.

Saturday, 19 October 1985 – got up late – did very little all day – went over to [Barnes] L49/L 54 – went to Pinocchio’s -> Ben’s [Benita Wishart’s] party / Union – another late night.

Sunday, 20 October 1985 – Got up very late again – left Keele. Got back to London tired and late.

From https://www.studentcrowd.com/hall-l1004515-s1043587-barnes-hall-keele_university-keele

In retrospect, I’m not convinced that those regular visits to Keele, at that time, were such a good idea. I wanted to maintain the relationship with Petra, although observation of others should have told me, and hindsight did tell me, that trying to keep that sort of Keele relationship going, with one of us being post-Keele in London, was not likely to last.

I also wanted to keep the many friendships going; in that regard I was far more successful. For many years, post Keele, most of the people I hung out with were my Keele friends. In several cases, the Keele friendships from 40-50 years ago are still the people I see socially today.

(He says, writing in Autumn 2026).

As I embark on writing up my diaries from those in-between years, late 1985 to late 1988, only a small number of the stories will have general appeal to Keele and former Keele folk.

I especially got into regular theatre and concert going during that late 1980s period. Some of my stories of that have appeal to the general public and the AI bots these days.

For example, the following article – a theatre visit with Annalisa in 1989 (I have already written up late 1988 through to late 2001), gets hits on Ogblog every day at the moment, and occasional real messages from real people with questions about it.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Olivier Theatre, 18 March 1989

But the Keele / recently ex Keele angle of this story from autumn 1985 will only occasionally be central to my 85-88 postings. When it is central, I shall share the pieces on Keelie socials, but otherwise leave it to retro-blog addicts, ex-Keele addicts and search bots to trawl Ogblog for the stories.

I plan to post articles from this 1985 to 1988 series over the next two-and-a-half to three years. Coincidentally, that is roughly the duration of a typical Keele undergraduate’s time at Keele these days.

“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.” Bard Harris image by Nano Banana on my instruction.

A Letter From Keele, Professor Les Fishman, 2 September 1985

I have no idea what must have gone wrong with the earlier correspondence, unless it turns up in a pile I have not yet excavated. I got on well with Les, both in my capacity as a student and as a students’ union officer. He was, in my experience, a wonderful lecturer and steward of his undergraduate students. So my comment about the long-forgotten faux pas would have been tongue-in-cheek on my part, as would Les’s rebuttal have been on his part.

Les Fishman Letter 2 September 1985

In 2008 I went to the memorial mini-conference Professor Peter Lawrence and others held in Les’s honour. I ended up meeting and hiring Les’s grand-daughter, Leo, who thus worked at Z/Yen for a few happy years.

 

Memorial Conference for Les Fishman, Management Centre, Keele University,15 October 2008

Petra’s First Year At Keele Concludes, While I Am To Persevere For A Few More Days, 9 to 12 July 1985

Photo: charles c / Sheet Anchor Baldwins Gate via Wikimedia Commons

Tuesday, 9 July 1985 – Petra’s last day – Rose late – went to Sheet Anchor for lunch – packed etc. went to hospital [to visit Ruth]– cooked Petra Chinese meal etc.

Petra Wilson by the Keele Lakes

Wednesday 10 July 1984 – Packed car – decided to go too –> hospital [to visit Ruth] –> drove down to London with Petra – arrived late – went to Il Carretto for meal (compliments of dad). Petra left late.

Thursday, 11 July 1985 – return to Keele in morning – saw Hayward [Burt] etc in afternoon – went to see Ruth early evening – stayed in after.

Hayward Burt in Barnes L54, occupying what used to be MY chair. Picture by Mark Ellicott

Friday, 12 July 1985 – spent day sorting things out and waiting for Kate [Fricker] – Late – had pleasant dinner etc.

Kate Fricker – picture extracted from Concourse

Kate and I had been invited to the Lichfield Festival by the Keele Court (Senate & Council) grandees. My next piece will set out my memories of that rather special and, at times, hilarious day.

We Interrupt The Process Of Me Saying Goodbye To Keele With A Two Day Interlude In The Lake District With Petra, 7 & 8 July 1985

Whose idea was this? Almost certainly Petra’s, not least because she had a car, making such an idea possible. She probably also sensed that mooching around Keele for too many days might not be as good an idea.

My diary recorded the trip and for once I took a few photos. Not too many, mind.

That reads:

Sunday, 7 July 1985 – Brekker [breakfast] – left for lakes – Kendal (jazz lunch). -> Windermere -> Bowness. Drove to Keswick – stayed in pub [The Pack Horse Inn] and went on to meal.

Abbot Hall Park, Kendal. Entrance above, Petra below.

Lake Windermere as seen from Bowness, above. Petra at Bowness below.

Monday, 8 July 1985 – breakfast -> town, Bowder Stone -> Honister Pass -> Cockermouth for German lunch -> back [to Keele] another way – got to hospital [to visit Petra’s best friend Ruth] late – returned home, cooked meal

Petra (above) and Me (below) at the Pack Horse Inn, Keswick

The Bowder Stone in the 1890s Public Domain image (colourised).

Honister Pass, Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0

I remember that short-but-sweet break fondly. It came as a surprise when I realised from the diary that we were only away for the one night. Kids, eh?

My Last Keele Sixties Soul Disco, My Last Visit To Barnes L54 & Other “End Of Keele” Memories, Late June & Early July 1985

Hayward Burt sitting in MY Barnes L54 chair

Having survived a visit to London with Petra in her car…

We Interrupt Keele Festival Week To Dice With Death On A Theatre Trip To London, 28 June 1985

…my diary for the next few days has an end of era tone to it.

Saturday, 29 June 1985 – returned through night – slept in – went to town late – cooked John [White] and Petra [Wilson] a meal – John and I did last Sixties [Soul] disco. Went down well.

Sunday 30th of June 1985 – Rose quite early – Ruth’s folks – Petra’s car – breakfast – visited Ruth – Pitty [Graham Pitt] came over for dinner.

John and I have very happy memories of doing those sixties soul discos. It was kind of Pady Jalali (Social Secretary) to award us the end of Festival Week slot as a last hurrah.

If you are wondering what one of our Sixties Soul Discos might have sounded like, please feel free to click the image above – or here – for a YouTube Music playlist curated by me and John in the style of those discos.

Some people described our discos as Northern Soul style, but in truth they were more mainstream than that, not least because Keele’s record collection at that time had few “rare grooves”. Our soul discos always went down well, as confirmed by my assessment in my diary.

Ruth’s Parents, Petra’s Car & Hospital Visits

I have already told the tale of Ruth, Petra’s close friend, having been hit by a car in the street, in a piece named “Something’s Wrong…”

“Something’s Wrong” In The Keele Hall Salvin Room & I Am Keele’s “Bamber Gascoigne”, 19 to 24 June 1985

I should hasten to add that Petra was not the errant driver in the Ruth incident, as evidenced by Petra being elsewhere (with me) at the time of the accident. More seriously, Petra proved to be a very constant friend to Ruth during her recovery, in hospital, as my late June/early July diary attests. We (or at least Petra) visited Ruth almost every day, except when we were out of town.

I also remember that Eddie Slade, the Senior Tutor, visited Ruth in hospital to see how she was and to inform her in person that she had won an academic prize that year. A lovely touch, I thought then and still think now.

Eddie Slade – what a good chap.

In truth I remember little about the visit from Ruth’s parents. The fact that I blurt the phrase “Petra’s car” between the phrase “Ruth’s folks” and “breakfast” suggests that something once again happened to (or in) Petra’s car, as part of that expedition. Lost in the mists of time from my memory, that one. It can’t have been as dramatic as our near death experience on the Marylebone Road.

Monday 1 July 1985 – lazyish day – signed on, shops, went to hospital., Cooked Petra meal.

Tuesday 2 July 1985 – easyish day – office briefly – Petra packed – I went to Kate’s [now Susan Fricker] for a while – hospital – cooked Petra a meal etc.

Wednesday, 3 July 1985 – sorted things out – went to hospital – then walk round lakes etc.

Thursday 4 July 1985 – easyish day – rose late – went to Trentham Gardens in afternoon – hospital – dinner etc.

Friday, 5 July 1985 – Easy day – office briefly etc – went to hospital – had dinner – went union and then onto L54 to see John, Hayward etc.

Saturday 6 July 1985 – Rose late – shopped – went to hospital – cooked nice meal etc.

I think Trentham was a bit of a crumbling old ruin back then, but I suppose it was one of the few vaguely local attractions near Keele.

I don’t remember John staying in Barnes L54 at that time, but he must have done. My guess is that John had already given up his flat (room) in town and wanted to stick around Keele a while longer. I’ll also guess that it was Alan Gorman who had departed early and therefore had left space for John to squat in L54 a while.

I had lived in Barnes L54 for two very happy years – Autumn 1982 to Summer 1984.

Keele Action Group Springs Forth Campus-Wide, Constitutional Matters Mingle With A Crucial Culinary Debate In My Barnes L54 Flat, 8 to 11 October 1982

It was strange visiting that place for the last time – especially with Hayward Burt sitting in MY chair and all – have I mentioned that bit before?

Hayward: yes you have, Ian. Just hand over the keys…

Postscript – Actually my very last visit to L54 was the following week, where I saw Kate, Pady, Hayward and [Chris Spencer] Farm. That evening will have been my last visit:

More Festival Week Stuff Including My Last Keele Students’ Union Ball, 25 to 27 June 1985

1985 Summer Ball image with grateful thanks to Andrew Macmillan

In many ways the things unsaid in my personal diary entries for that Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday are more interesting than the things said.

Allow me to transliterate those three days for you:

Tuesday 25 June 1985 – busy day – shopped – Ringroad rehearsal – popped over to Kate’s – had dinner – went to Pop Quiz – got drunk – Petra came over.

Wednesday 26th June 1985 – meetings etc – quite busy – dinner – Ball (including weak Ringroad!) – left about 2:30 am.

Thursday 27 June 1985 – meetings etc went to WPAR [if someone remembers what that was, please let me know] – hospital – cooked dinner – Ring wrote summer review – went down very well.

My appointments diary for the Tuesday shows that I had fully intended to play the festival week cricket match for the fourth year running, but became quite inundated with requests for meetings and gave up on the idea of one last go at the cricket.

Those readers who missed out on my Keele cricket (so-called) career can catch up with it through this King Cricket piece authored by Herbert Ackgrass with me appearing pseudonymously as Ged Ladd. It takes some gall to have one of your noms de plume write about another of your noms de plume, so clearly I have some gall:

Players (of the left) v Gentlemen (of the right) – match report + wagon wheel

But I digress.

The fact that we had a last-minute rescheduled Ringroad rehearsal suggest to me that the Ringroad show we performed at the Ball, which I described as weak, was a last minute idea, perhaps to fill a gap in the Ball schedule. We had a long-planned Summer Revue the next day and I think we needed to dredge the bottom of the Ringroad cornflake box of scripts to come up with a second show in as many days that wasn’t going to overlap.

I don’t remember much about the pop quiz on the Tuesday, but as I state that I “got drunk” rather than “won”, or “did well”, I think you can draw your own conclusions.

Frankly, I remembered little about the Summer Ball too. It is only fair to say that John White’s memory did no better. Interesting also that I didn’t note the names of the bands we saw – not even the headliners (Darts).

So I am truly grateful to Andrew Macmillan for supplying the headline image which helped bring back the memories.

One reason that I would not have thought Darts that exciting a pick is that I had seen them at an SU ball early in my Keele career. No doubt Pady chose them precisely because only a handful of us would have seen them at the Valentines Ball in 1981 – written up in this piece:

The Best Pot I Had In Five Years At Keele, i.e. The First Weekend I Tried Cooking In The F Block Lindsay Kitchen, 11 to 15 February 1981

You can hear/see some Darts in the above 1981 write up, but if that’s not enough for you, here’s another embedded video of that retro group. They were seriously retro, even when at their peak in the 1970s:

More interesting perhaps were the support acts. I remember being less impressed by The Higsons than I was by The Untouchables, but enjoying the sound of both.

The Untouchables were very much “John’s and my sort of thing”, with their Mod/Ska revival sound. I wonder whether Pady [Jalali] chose them for our last hurrah deliberately to please us. Forty years on, John [White] and I can ask Pady that question when we all meet up in late July.

I particularly remember liking The Untouchables version of a Northern Soul classic, I Spy For The FBI:

I love the parting remark in my diary, “left about 2:30 a.m.”.

And I had SO many meetings the next day, and THE Ringroad Summer Revue to perform. Did I make it?

Of course I did.

Perhaps WPAR is something to do with “womens group”, but I’m still none the wiser

Not only did I do all of that on the Thursday, but my diary reports that Petra and I visited recently run-over Ruth in hospital in amongst all of that too. I’m getting hot and bothered just thinking about it.

Some years ago I wrote up that Summer Ringroad Revue, my final Ringroad performance, including an audio recording of that show – here’s that write up:

Ringroad Finalists Revue, Keele University Students’ Union (KUSU), 27 June 1985