Tag: University of Keele

Friends, Films, Footie & Even A Climax: It Was All Happening At Keele, Late January 1982

The diary suggests that I was actually doing some work that term too. The choice of Economics & Law joint honours sort-of demanded that; especially law.

Still, I was also spending plenty of time doing the other stuff that students do.

Sunday 17 January 1982 – Rose rather late. Did quite a lot of work. Went over to K Block for a while (Mary [Keevil]’s birthday etc.) Worked on afterwards.

Monday 18 January 1982 – Not bad day – did quite a bit of work really. [A] Few people popped in etc – worked primarily in evening.

Tuesday 19 January 1982 – Lots of class today – did some work in the early evening. Tash. Went to see Ordinary People [movie] in the evening – didn’t like it too much really.

Wednesday 20 January 1982 – Quite a busy day. Work etc. – did a fair amount. Went to see Climax Blues Band in the evening (& The Look), Not too impressed.

Dave Lee’s excellent book, The Keele Gigs! reviews the 20 January 1982 gig well, as indeed it reviews most gigs from that era well.

Here’s what The Look looked like (did you see what I did there?):

Here’s The Climax Blues Band, who were sort-of Staffordshire local to Keele but played there very rarely:

Thursday 21 January 1982 – Worked quite hard today. Went to library and everything. Worked in the evening as well.

Friday 22 January 1982 – Busyish day – worked quite hard. Went to 2 parties in union in evening & went back to U117 [Barnes]till very late.

Saturday 23 January 1982 – Rose late – went to Newcastle late. Unindustrious day. Went to G3 [I’m 99% sure the flat in which I’d stayed over the winter break] party in evening – * quite enjoyable. Got quite drunk.

Sunday 24 January 1982 – Got up very late. Did quite a bit of work in the afternoon. Jewish Society meeting at Maurice’s in evening – quite entertaining.


Questions for advanced students:

  • who lived/partied in U117 at that time?
  • who was Maurice and how could such a meeting possibly be “entertaining”?

Monday 25 January 1982 – Work OK. Did quite a lot in the afternoon. UGM in the evening – sold Concourse. People came back for coffee afterwards.

Tuesday 26 January 1982 – Busy day as usual on Tuesday. Went to Tash. Went to film Chariots Of Fire in evening – very good film. Quite a late night.

Wednesday 27 January 1982 – Work Ok today. Worked quite hard. in fact. Andrea [Collins, now Woodhouse] came around in the evening – but mainly a day of industry.

Thursday 28 January 1982 – Busyish day. Went to buffet supper in evening – went back to David’s [Perrins?] after – chatted until quite late.

OK, I need to explain what “Tash” was – I mentioned it several times in my January 1982 diary. Several of the guys in my Lindsay F Block hall were members of a five-a-side football team named ‘Tempted ‘Tash, in honour of the (usually rather feeble) attempts on the part of 19/20 year-old students to grow and show adornments of facial hair, in particular wispy moustaches. Team members included, I’m pretty sure, Benedict Coldstream, Richard Van Baaren (ringleader/captain), Bob Schumacher and some others. I, along with one or two other non-playing hangers on – was Malcolm Cornelius there once or twice? Some of the Harrowby ”girls” (Sharon, Louise, Anjou) perhaps on one occasion? Simon Ascough was keen on footy, but I think he either played or had dropped out of Keele by then – would go along to chant and cheer…usually with limited success in the matter of coaxing winning performances from our team.

Frankly Tash was not as skilful as those shown in this picture by Chuckiefinster, CC BY-SA 3.0

Friday 28 January 1982 – Not too pleasant cold at the moment. Did some work this afternoon. Went to film in evening (Babylon – very good), Went for drink after – didn’t feel too good. Came home.

Saturday 29 January 1982 – Went to Newcastle reasonably early. Did little work. Went to Neil Turner’s party in evening. Got very drunk -> Y13 Hawthorns [Ashley, Mel, Louise & Boris’s place] afterwards where party continued.

Sunday 31 January 1982 – Recovering from last night – finished off questionnaire and did some work in the evening as well – quite creditable under the circumstances.

Monday 1 February 1982 – Work OK. Did quite a bit today & went to visit Andrea in evening. Had quite a late night.

If you cannot imagine the soundscape of that wonderful film Babylon, get the album or simply get yer lugholes around the following track which includes the film’s idée fixe – if a 1980s reggae theme might thus be described.

Questions for advanced students:

  • Can anyone remember exactly what that Neil party & then on to Y13 was? Ashley kindly chimed in an answer to that question on FB: “Ashley Mel Louise and Boris Lived at 13, it was Gaysoc anarcho-central. That evening I think Neil hosted a meet the new boyfriend party at the Hawthorns Bar. Can’t remember the new boyfriend’s name, but he was a lovely chap working and living on the top floor of Hanley hotel” Subsequent chimes (thanks, Sally Hyman) even uncovered an agreed name for the new boyfriend: Gareth. First class work from the team, there.
  • What was the “questionnaire”? I’m guessing that it was connected with the anti-cuts campaigning but I cannot remember in truth.

Andrea (Collins, now Woodhouse) gets a couple of mentions in the space of a week at that time. We stayed pals throughout our several years at Keele and I was really pleased to reconnect with her in Westminster relatively recently at a Keele alum gathering…I mean works meeting…I mean event…I mean party:

Keele Alumni Gathering At The Red Lion, Parliament Street, Then Dinner With Bobbie Scully At Roux, 7 March 2018

Many A Slip (On An Icy Keele Campus) Between Jazz & Lip: Ronnie Scott & Friends At Keele, 16 January 1982

Image from Wikipedia with same “fair use” rationale.

The especially cold and icy weather, which had plagued Keele before Christmas, persisted into the early days of the 1982 Spring Term.

Early that term, I recall taking a tumble on the slope that led to the Chancellor’s Building from the Lindsay Hall end, while rushing to get to a lecture or tutorial on time.

A little dazed, I soon realised that someone had hoicked me up and I was being stared at by none other than “ABC” Dick Hemsley, asking me if I was alright. “Yes, I’m fine”, I said, embarrassed to have found myself in such a vulnerable circumstance with one of the better-known right-wing villains of the campus. “No”, said Dick firmly, studying my reactions carefully, “I think you might have bumped your head. Really, are you OK?” Thankfully I hadn’t banged my head and most of the bruises were to my “left ego”. That incident stuck in my mind, because it made me realise that Dick, despite our opposing political views, when it came to the crunch, was instinctively concerned about my welfare.

I sense from my diaries that I was a bit irritable/tetchy after the historic, publicity-attracting protests outside the UGC offices on 6 January:

Protest Outside the UGC Offices Against Grant Cuts, University of Keele, 6 January 1982

Possibly term seemed like an anti-climax; possibly the weather got to me – I have never much liked icy-cold weather and this was a proper cold spell.

The diaries – which are shown at the bottom of this piece but upon which I shall not expand this time – suggest a relatively dull phase – at least in my mind…

…until the Ronnie Scott & Friends Jazz Night on 16 January, which was a hugely memorable event in all sorts of ways.

Ronnie Scott co-founded the legendary Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in the late 1950’s. It was already an institution by the early 1980s and we were truly blessed that Ronnie liked visiting student venues and especially liked the vibe in the University of Keele Students’ Union Ballroom. I saw him perform there several times while at Keele – this was the first of those times.

Dave Lee’s excellent book The Keele Gigs! has a fine account of this gig.

The following clip, from some time in the early 1980s, is pretty close to what the ensemble looked and sounded like at Keele that night:

For those who know little about Ronnie Scott/Ronnie Scott’s and would like to know more, the following hour-long Omnibus film from 1989 is quite comprehensive and almost of that time:

There is am even more comprehensive 2020 documentary movie, which I have seen and can confirm is a very interesting watch, which you can find out about on IMDb here.

My memories of this particular January 1982 evening at Keele are a strange mixture of clear and blurry. The diary entry only tells a small part of the story:

…went to Jazz Night in the evening. ** got pissed during and after!!

This suggests that only alcohol was imbibed at our table, although in my mind there was also whacky backy involved. Perhaps that was because Ronnie kept saying, “I must stop smoking this stuff” whenever he muffed his jokes/lines, which he did with charming frequency.

We sat at tables in the style of a jazz club like Ronnie Scott’s and I remember it all seeming very grown up and sophisticated at the outset. I think we drank wine and cocktails rather than beer at our table, which is probably why we got pissed unusually quickly.

I was at a table with, I am pretty sure (in reducing order of sureness): Miriam Morgan, Heather Jones, Ashley Fletcher, Helen Ross and one or two others. One person who was certainly at our table was a rather exotic-looking (to me) gay female with whom, for reasons I cannot with hindsight fathom, I started to dance. I’ll guess it was initially her idea, because dancing isn’t something I can imagine myself ever having spontaneously initiated.

Mercifully, this Jazz Night was long before the age of smart phones, pocket video cameras, TikTok and the like, so there are no moving pictures of our “performance” – indeed not even any stills to my knowledge.

It probably looked a little like the following clip at first, except that John Travolta is a very capable dancer trying to look awkward, whereas…

We danced in an increasingly frisky manner as time went on, until a pivotal moment when I suddenly felt drenched. Someone from a nearby “Tory Boy” table tipped a jug of water over us with the entreaty, “you two need to cool down”.

I’m not sure who did the tipping; it might have been Mark Ellicott (who still sat at Tory Boy tables back then) or it might even have been ABC Dick. Whoever it was, the gesture was done without menace and with a witticism thrown in, such that we and everyone at the tables around us found the joke funny, so we joined in the laughter and redoubled our frisky efforts.

Strangely, I ran this story by Simon Jacobs and Jon Gorvett just the other evening – forty years on. Both of them confirmed that they were not there on this evening.

Yet Simon, who usually claims not to be able to remember anything about our Keele days, immediately identified the young woman in question as “Nicola from Crewe and Alsager College”, which of course was the right answer. Respect, Simon, respect.

Nicola ended up going out with Miriam, which I think brought the Miriam and Heather era to a close, although I might be muddling the sequencing and/or duration of that episode. Others might well be able to put the record straight.

My diary states clearly that we all carried on drinking after the Ronnie Scott Jazz Night had concluded, but the frisky dancing with Nicola was definitely merely a “moment in time” thing during the jazz night.

Postscript – Remembering Nicola

Within minutes of me posting this piece, Ashley Fletcher commented on FB, reminding me that, a couple of years later, he shared a place in Newcastle with Miriam & Nicola, who became and were still very much an item after that January 1982 time.

Ashley also recalls that, ironically, Nicola looked like an androgynous new romantic performer named Ronny – indeed she did – click this link or the picture below to see pictures and even a vid of exotic-looking Ronny.

Borrowed from and linked to Lord Bassington-Bassington

The Rest Of the Diary

Diary pages for the week or so leading up to Ronnie’s below. For the completists. There’s a prize if anyone can work out who or what I went to see on Tuesday 12th!

Postscript – Remembering Nastassja

Following an entreaty from Kay Scorah that she wouldn’t sleep until the 12 January diary entry mystery was solved, I gave the matter some deeper thought. Then I looked at the Rosetta Stone for a while. Then I concluded that the pathetically scrawled four-letter word, which I had thought all along was probably the title of a film, given that Tuesday evening was film night…

…must have been “Tess”. No really.

The 1979 Roman Polanski marathon version of Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

My teenage hormonal head would have been full of Nastassja Kinski for a few days…until Nicola came along. Sorry Nastassja.

You can sleep now, Kay.

Postscript To The Above Postscript – Remembering Tash, Tess & Nastassja

The mention of Tess generated quite a postbag and I realise that I was mistaken in attributing the 12 January scribble to that film. John White writes:

 Don’t think that says Tess btw. The word begins with an s and ends with an h. Sure it wasn’t a person?

But I was buoyed by Jon Gorvett’s memory flash, inspired by my mention of Tess:

Anyway, also bizarre that you should mention Heather Jones, Tess, Nastassja Kinski and crushes all in the same post, Ian, as I recall both myself and Heather taking a sudden interest in Thomas Hardy around then, after Kinski had appeared on the cover of the version of Tess of the d’Urbervilles on sale in the Keele bookshop. Noticing this, we both later confessed to a massive crush on the said daughter of the great director (and massive child abuser, I see now), leading ultimately to enormous enthusiasm for Cat People, when that hit the screens later that year. 

…so I responded as follows:

100% sure it was Tess. Memory flash corroborated by Jon Gorvett, who said that note brought a flood of memories. Gilted Jon (by Truda) and gilted Heather (by Miriam) both salivated over Ms Kinski at that time. My handwriting was truly appalling at the best of times and I often wrote up diaries when pissed or stoned.

However, I now realise and am 100% sure that the pesky word on 12 January was Tash, not Tess. The Tash reference is explained in the subsequent “Forty Years On” piece.

But I did see Tess around that time – I’m guessing it must have been the film shown 15 January, which I don’t name – I simply describe it in my diary as “boring”. Frankly, I do recall finding the excruciatingly long Tess movie boring in every regard except for the visual charms of Ms Kinski.

Twixtmas, Seeing In The New Year & Making An Early Start To 1982 Back At Keele

A wonderful Wikimedia Commons Picture by Andreas Weith, CC BY-SA 4.0

Seeing in the new year at Keele was nothing like that.

Indeed, my diary tone is exceptionally flat and irritable-sounding for the period between Christmas and New Year and then the early days/weeks of 1982, apart from the 6 January protest in London…

Protest Outside the UGC Offices Against Grant Cuts, University of Keele, 6 January 1982

which gained us 15 minutes of fame in the Morning Star and The Evening Sentinel.

January 1982 Keele/UGC Protest Did Make The Papers, Jon Gorvett Uncovers The Evidence

Keen readers of this “forty years on” series might have noticed that that the protagonists in the grant protests overlapped quite heavily with the protagonists of the snowbound romance dramas in the run up to Christmas – not least Jon Gorvett, Truda Smith and Toby Bourgein:

Snow, White & The Seven Draughts: An Extra Ten Days Snowed In At Keele, 12 to 21 December 1981

I recall that Keele was still very cold and snowy on my return to Keele between Christmas and New Year, so the atmosphere was no doubt very frosty in more ways than one. But the cause prevailed and we worked in unison to implement the protest…

…it just probably didn’t need me to be around for 10 days before the big day. And when I don’t have enough to do, I tend to get a bit irritable.

Local hostelries seem to have done well out of me/us – mentions of the Golf Inn (I never much liked that place in truth), the Sneyd Arms (which I did like, but by gosh we went there a lot) and the Mainwaring Arms in Whitmore, which I really did like as a proper country pub for a change and which, I am delighted to see, forty years on, has recently been saved by a friendly takeover. The only problem with the Mainwaring was that it was too far sensibly to walk it, so someone in the crowd needed wheels and a willingness to drive.

Apologies to Maria, with whom I went to The Sneyd on the Saturday – I’m struggling to place you. I also couldn’t possibly identify “the crowd” that went to the Mainwaring on the Sunday – it might have been the protest plotters or it might have been the Barnes G Block crowd who had been my hosts in a flat over the Christmas holidays. Or both groups to make a crowd.

Image Borrowed from Parish Council document linked above and here.

I resolved two things after that interlude:

  • firstly, not to return to Keele twixt Christmas and New Year again – although I ended up needing to break that resolution Twixtmas 1984 for reasons I’ll explain when we get to that story;
  • secondly, that I really liked living in a student flat on-campus and really had grown out of halls life. I started the search for a flat, certainly for the next academic year, but actually managed to pull that off a switch reasonably quickly – but again that is a story for another day.

In Keele For A Penny, In Keele For A Pound: The “Other” 1981 Book

I cannot leave behind my first full calendar year at Keele, 1981, without talking a bit about money.

Students were always short of money back then, much as they are now.

For most of us, there was no “Bank of Mum and Dad” (BOMAD), but there was a student grant (and a strange “signing on the dole” rule for the non-term weeks, that meant an element of direct financial support from the state far greater than students enjoy today.

But no student loans from the state. If you couldn’t make the grant go far enough, you needed to be a rare BOMAD-ista, or find a source of income.

Bad Example: The Rise & Fall Of David Perrins

Actually It Was The Bank Manager Who Gave David “The Finger”

I remember David Perrins getting into financial difficulties quite early in our time at Keele (probably around the middle of the second term). He told me and Simon Jacobs that he was going to see the bank manager to explain that he needed a loan so that he could continue to live in the style to which he was accustomed.

I remember Simon and I doubting whether this approach would work.

David returned from his meeting looking a little crest-fallen. The bank manger had told him that he would have to become accustomed to a less salubrious style.

Better Example – Me

I just about managed to keep myself afloat financially, but this I did through the expedient of working during holidays. I had worked all summer, before starting at Keele:

Sorting Out A Problem Kibbutz, BBYO Hillel House, 21 to 24 July 1980

It was an unprecedented, interregnum arrangement. I asked for £30 per week, which had been my previous summer wage in 1978, but after a couple of weeks, my boss (Werner Lasch if I remember correctly) insisted on increasing my wage to £40 per week, which he considered fairer. Especially as the deal included board and lodgings in Hillel House’s student digs, that felt like a good rate back then, from which I was able to save.

But still, even with some savings and an absence of extravagance, I knew I would need to supplement my grant, hence my Easter…

Finishing Work, Easter Itself & Returning To Keele For The Summer Term Of My Foundation Year, 17 to 23 April 1981

...and then summer working arrangements in 1981.

The First Week Of A Working Summer: The Joys Of Braintree & Wimbledon, 29 June to 4 July 1981

In short, I “washed my face” financially by dint of holiday working and limiting my spending (once Halls fees had been paid) to essentials – drugs (mostly legal ones), rock ‘n’ roll (gigs and discos), and a few other small matters such as food, transport and books.

Two Sets Of Accounting Books

There is an adage in forensic accounting, which is to search for the “other” set of books of account whenever dodgy accounting is suspected yet absent from the visible books of account.

In my Ogblogging of old diaries, I can assure you that there is no intention to conceal, but I have recently, forty years on (Autumn 2021) discovered a second diary in which I kept financial records.

First, have a look at the main diary from which my forty years on ramblings about 1981 have been derived:

TOE was Technical & Optical Equipment – the only authorised importers of Soviet photographic equipment – if that link fails, click here for a scrape of the text instead.

For those Keele students “of the right” who were convinced that I must be a Soviet Commie spy, the above image must be gold dust. But in truth my father, who was no Soviet and no Commie, had simply made a commercial decision in the 1960s that his shop in working-class Battersea near Clapham Junction (yes, really, back then) should specialise in cheap, sturdy, reliable, well-serviced equipment, which happened to come from the Soviet Union.

How or why I got a TOE diary that year, I cannot remember. Until then I had always received a Letts Schoolboy diary at Christmas (who didn’t?). Dad might have been sent two that year and handed down his second, as he always used one of those TOE diaries.

But it seems I did also receive a Christmas gift diary – a rather inadequate little Collins thing…

…in which I kept accounts of sorts for the whole year. Here is a link to all of the accounts pages from that little book.

I have just a few additional observations about the money aspect of being a Keele undergraduate in 1981:

  • I had forgotten about the existence of the £1 note and the fact that you could configure your drawings from a campus ATM to a specific number of individual £1s in those days;
  • Even with my savings trove, I sailed close to the wind in my second term, with the little book stating “balance at 19-3-81 £10.52” just before I started my Easter holiday job…
  • …but the next entry reads “balance at 10-4-81 £189.32“. I was only keeping notes of the detailed drawings and occasional top-ups when the dosh was running low.
  • To that end, I didn’t keep records at all during the summer term of 1981 – I presumably knew that I’d be alright and started keeping records again during the summer to keep tabs on that top-up;
  • No sign of drawing to the individual £1 in the autumn of 1981 – possibly I had simply got into the habit of drawing money from the ATM to the nearest £5 or possibly the campus machines were reset at that time;
  • I drew out £65 in the first week of October 1981 – a princely sum back then – it was a long time ago. That will have been for textbooks no doubt – mostly law ones.
OK, it wasn’t THAT long ago.

Snow, White & The Seven Draughts: An Extra Ten Days Snowed In At Keele, 12 to 21 December 1981

With many thanks to Dave Lee for the “loan” of this snow picture from 1981.

Even before the extreme weather set in, I had pre-arranged to return to Keele immediately after the Christmas Bank Holiday, during the period that we now call Twixtmas. I was to stay in Rana Sen’s flat, which I think was G Block Barnes, until the halls of residence reopened. I’ll write up that fag end of 1981 and start of 1982 soon enough.

So when the snow made it very difficult to travel, with The Beat concert cancelled for weather reasons on 11 December, I decided, on 12 December…

Neil Innes, Heavy Snow, Heavy Parties (Allegedly) But Certainly No Beat At Keele, Mid December 1981

…to move into that same Barnes flat and await better weather before travelling. I think Rana had already gone and I stayed in his room pre Christmas. I ended up staying at Keele for an extra 10 days and only going to my parent’s place for a week at Christmas.

Sunday 13 December 1981 – Blizzards – stayed in all day in flat – amused ourselves. Stayed in for evening then…

Monday 14 December 1981 – …saw off Jenny. Went to Newcastle shopping – cooked. Went to Union in evening – Neil White’s for some home brew. Up late.

I’m starting to smell a rat here. It seems to me that, with Jenny able to travel, me able to go to Newcastle shopping and the Union boozing, that my “snowed in” excuse had run out of steam by the Monday.

It seems to me that I was now simply enjoying some extra Keele lifestyle outside term time. This might have been the first time I did that, but certainly it wasn’t the last.

Snow Black & White – thanks again to Dave Lee for the “loan” of this picture

At this point I also want to eulogise Neil White, who died in 2005 after spending 30 years at Keele. There is a wonderful tribute to him on the University website – click here. I cannot better those tributes, but I can add a personal note of fond memory and thanks.

Neil was a junior lecturer in those days – he had just completed his doctorate and started teaching full time when I arrived at Keele in 1980. Computer Science was not my thing back then, but he was a friendly fellow with many interests. He would quite often invite the several stragglers in the bar back to his campus pad for some after hours drinking and deep conversation about life, the universe & everything. His home brew, as mentioned in my diary for that December 1981 visit, was legendary.

There will be further mentions of Neil in my diaries I’m sure and I’ll report further memories as those mentions arise. The story of the night that Neil and Toby Bourgein kidnapped me in 1984 will make for an interesting conversation piece when my forty years on series gets that far.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It seems I had a couple of quiet days on the Tuesday and Wednesday – perhaps I needed them after the night of Neil’s home brew – but I did enjoy “Tony’s party in evening” on the Wednesday night.

Making students sign on the dole even for short holidays was one of the dafter ideas back then!

I have written before about the ludicrous bureaucracy back then, which required students to sign on and off the dole even for the short holidays in order to claim a pittance of additional money, because the grant only covered certain weeks.

What a waste of paper – what a waste of time. Mind you, the unemployment rate was so bad back then, I suppose it at least provided some honest work – even if such employment was merely bullshit jobs – for many people who would otherwise have been signing on along with us students.

Thursday 17 December 1981 – Signed on today – shopped for this evening – dinner – food good – but Jon & Tru did not get on too well.

I mentioned Jon [Gorvett] & Truda [Smith] traumas the previous week. I have now had an exchange of correspondence with Jon about this and his own recollections are expressed below:

Seems rather ridiculous now, but I recall that her dumping me for Toby B [Bourgein] was quite traumatic, with the backdrop of snowy wastes and blocked roads that it took place against a rather excessive use of metaphor, I now feel. I do recall that both you and Simon [Jacobs] were brilliant company at the time, though – many thanks for pulling me through. First serious girlfriend I’d ever had, and so I think it was the hardest knock (‘first cut is the deepest’, I recall, was a line repeated at the time, ad nauseam..)

I believe that my “dinner party” on 17 December was a futile attempt on my part to help Jon and Truda rekindle their romance. I don’t think I ever again made the mistake of trying to help friends that way. I learnt a lot and quickly from my experiences age 19 at Keele.

Simon Jacobs, who was absent “without leave” for much of the intense part of this unfolding, says the following, forty years on:

And of course, I remember the drama of Jon’s relationship break-up that happened during that winter term before I stomped back down to London to be present (if not correct) at a very annoying family moment.

So it was 1981 and I knew remarkably little about relationships and how they’re supposed to work. So for Jon this was clearly very traumatic. Even for me, one place removed, I remember being quite shocked at Truda’s behaviour. I think I’m right in saying that her dumping of Jon was somehow inextricably linked to her ambition to be President (or at the very least, someone important). I don’t think I’d ever come across this type of ruthless ambition close up before and I suspect it had quite a profound effect on me. I think I learned how not to be. It was pretty unforgivable. And of course, it was all set against a backdrop – as Jon points out – taken straight from Ken Russell’s ‘Women in Love’, which you’ll both recall ends with a dead body in the snow.

Oh dear! They look like a right poncy bunch of students – not like Keele folk at all

I’m pleased to report that the Keele mini-drama did not result in any dead bodies in the snow. Indeed, all of us protagonists found ourselves campaigning against the cuts at the UGC in London three weeks later. I have a feeling that my planned early return to Keele during Twixtmas was primarily to help plan that 6 January 1982 protest.

Photo from the Evening Sentinel l to r: Toby Bourgein (kneeling), Jon Gorvett, Jon Rees, Mark Thomas, Simon Jacobs, Heather [Morgan?] (kneeling), Me (also kneeling), Lovely Lass Whose Name Escapes Me, Truda Smith

But I’m getting ahead of myself again – let us move on.

It seems as though I mostly took it easy for the last three days of that extended stay at Keele, spending Friday evening in the Sneyd, Saturday evening in the Union, having undertaken a rather ominous sounding:

Jon search in afternoon…

…I don’t think we were searching for his body in the snow.

Sunday 20 December 1981 – Lazyish day. Did some work. Justin came over in evening.

Monday 21 December 1981- Left Keele – fortunately got lift home. Lazy evening.

With apologies to Justin – I cannot place you just now but by all means get in touch and trigger my memory. Also apologies to the unnamed driver who sponsored my journey from Keele to South London.

For those who have a strong stomach, the next story in date sequence, which I wrote up three years before this “forty years on” series, requires a trigger warning about Hitler and the National Front. It’s strange but completely true:

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

Neil Innes, Heavy Snow, Heavy Parties (Allegedly) But Certainly No Beat At Keele, Mid December 1981

Neil Innes by Unknown photographer, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL

The end of that Autumn 1981 term weirded out…or rather, was a bit of a white-out.

The diary suggests that I had exhausted myself putting in a bit of academic effort for once; it also suggests that I got reasonable results by so doing:

I went to see the movie 10 on the Tuesday evening, which I remember enjoying.

The following evening I went to see Neil Innes perform and rated it “v good”. I do remember it being a very enjoyable concert/evening.

The gig is well reviewed in Dave Lee’s fab book, The Keele Gigs!

For those who cannot imagine what Neil Innes might have been like live, here are a couple of vids – the Catchphrase one resembling more the concert as I remember it:

Thursday 10 December …went to K Block party in evening – bit heavy.

The mists of time have, perhaps mercifully, entirely extinguished from my memory, forty years on, whatever it was that made the K Block party heavy. Indeed, forty years on I might choose to assert that no such party occurred.

We should all move on.

I love my diary description of 11 December:

11 December 1981 – last day of term – uneventful. The Beat snowed off – went to union and got pissed instead – K Block & Jon’s for [traumas?]

Forty years on, that sounds quite eventful, although I would have been very disappointed to miss The Beat. I’ve made myself feel a bit better after all this time by watching a couple of The Beat live vids from that era:

I feel that I did see The Beat at Keele in the end – perhaps they came in a subsequent academic year during my Keele time…or perhaps that is a false memory based on my wanting to have seen them. Someone out there should remember.

Someone might also remember what Jon’s for traumas might mean – I think it might be to do with Jon Gorvett and Truda Smith reaching the end of their road, which is mentioned more specifically a few days later.

Thursday 12 December – Planned to go home but snowed in – moved into flat – lazyish evening in

The flat in question was in Barnes, G Block I’m pretty sure. It was normally the home of Rana Sen and his flatmates, one of whom was named Tony and I think one was named Jenny. I think I had always planned to return to Keele early and had arranged to stay there

The next exciting episode of this 40 years on series will describe goings on during my unexpected extra week at Keele in December; snowed in.

The Business End Of My Autumn P1 Term At Keele, 22 November to 5 December 1981

Photo by Jonathan Hutchins / Keele University Library

I needed to get some work done towards the end of my first term of P1, studying Law & Economics, with subsidiaries in Psychology and Applied Statistics/Operational Research.

The words and symbols in my diary suggest that I did indeed get my head down during that period, while still finding time for some fun.

I’d better translate some of that:

Sunday 22 November 1981…went to Alexander’s. Did some work. Asian supper & disco in evening.

I think Alexander was one of my law friends from the Chinese-Malaysian community, as was the lovely Tina, who gets a mention on the Thursday. I’d started to get involved in some of the cultural societies around Keele; keen for combining forces as most were really very small groups when standing alone.

Justice for all?

It will be difficult for modern students to get their heads around this, but, back then, some of the published resources we wanted (or even needed) to prepare our tutorials and write our essays were rare and in very short supply. We were expected to buy our law textbooks of course (quite a large chunk of the grant went on those) but there was also material – such as the detailed law reports on cases or journal articles on specific topics, that we had to borrow from the library’s tiny stock of copies and share amongst our friends who all needed to see the same stuff around the same time of year.

Forty years on, I simply Google the names of key cases I learnt about then and can read the full law report of “slug in the ginger beer” Donoghue v Stevenson, finding it in 10 seconds. Even without fully remembering the case names, forty years on, it took me 30 seconds to lay my hands on detailed accounts of Candler v Crane Christmas and Hedley Byrne v Heller.

No doubt I could also find on-line the old journal articles that tutors such as Michael Whincup, Philip Rose and Mike Haley were so keen for us to read to enhance our understanding. I especially remember hunting around for a journal article that supposedly would contextualise the High Trees House case for us P1 students -there were three library copies for the whole year to share.

Philcrbk at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 My Uncle Harry lived in that very block.

No wonder, forty years on, Mike Haley, who is still at Keele, is beaming in his Keele mugshot:

“Just log on and read up about it all, nowadays”

Monday 23 November 1981 – …went to Int Aff meeting -> Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I think “Int Aff” stood for International Affairs and that was the group that had been established to oversee the Anti-Fascist day and follow up on it’s activities. Joe Andrew was the lead protagonist on the academic side and very good at that he was too.

Joe Andrew – also still at Keele forty years on, also now beaming

I do remember those early meetings concerning themselves rather too much on “assumed” rather than actual problems. In particular, I remember the chaplains worrying about possible strife between Chinese-Malaysian and Malay students, and/or between Jewish and Muslim students, whereas the reality “on the ground” was that those groups tended to get along just fine.

A major upshot of that focus group, once it focussed on accentuating the positive, was the hugely popular Keele International Fairs, which became a twice-yearly feature of Keele campus activity and I believe still features on the calendar today. One of my proudest, lasting achievements; just being involved with the early stages of that development.

Thursday 26 November 1981 – Usual busy Thursday. Went over to Tina’s in evening till late

Friday 27 November 1981 – Work OK – did Economics essay afternoon & eve – went to Simon’s party later ***

Saturday 28 November 1981 – up late – went to town – wrote law essay all evening

Sunday 29 November – latish start – wrote Psychology essay today lazy evening

That’s a lot of essays in a short period of time. No wonder I tailed off for a couple of days, then:

Wednesday 2 December 1981 – Worked quite hard during day. Went to Alexander’s for dinner -> UGM

Thursday 3 December – Busy day – doing odds and ends, meetings etc. Lazy evening in

Friday 4 December – Worked reasonably hard today. Went * to * Lindsay * Party ** in evening – late night.

I don’t remember UGMs being any day other than a Monday, but perhaps some strange circumstance had led to that particular UGM being unusually scheduled for a Wednesday.

I can’t remember or recognise what the symbols in my diary entry for the Lindsay party might mean, so I suspect that the girl or girls in question similarly remember little or nothing about it forty years later.

Saturday 5 December 1981 – up late – went into Newcastle – lazy day – played cards in evening.

I remember playing cards with some of the guys on my block (F Block Lindsay), including Richard van Baaren, Bob Schumacher, Simon Ascough, Malcolm Cornelius and especially Benedict Coldstream.

Never gambling, although I think we might have played some poker and never bridge, although I think we sometimes played whist-based games.

The game I especially remember learning from Ben Coldstream was piquet, which I found fascinating and which we played quite a few times, especially at that tail-end of the autumn term in 1981.

I am fascinated now to look at the game of piquet again, learning that it is a very old game, dating back to the Renaissance or earlier. This sits neatly with my more recent interests in real tennis and Renaissance music:

Horrible Histories: The Primordial, Honourable & Ignoble Arts Of Tennis Handicapping, Part Two Of Four Pieces On Tennis History

Quite a complex game with some byzantine scoring rules and asymmetry to the playing, is piquet – again, reminding me of real tennis in those regards.

It is even reminiscent of my own (rather unusual) real tennis serve which is, coincidentally, called the piquet – (in truth normally spelled piqué or pique for tennis).

Returning to playing the card game piquet – unfortunately we have so few photos from our time at Keele, but I have managed to find an artist’s impression of F Block Lindsay folk “at piquet”, supervised by appropriate academics – I’m sure I have identified each of the characters correctly:

Seated left to right: Malcolm Cornelius, Bob Schumacher, Ian Harris (at cards), Simon Ascough, Benedict Coldstream (at cards). Standing left: Mike Haley & Philip Rose adjudicating. Crouching centre: Joe Andrew. Standing right (sword in hand): Richard van Baaren.

I’d love to give piquet another try some time. Anyone out there up for it?

Mark Ellicott Guest Piece: A Right Royal Keele Ball, Starring Princess Margaret, But At What Price?, 3 December 1981

Mark Ellicott has managed several of London's iconic venues, including Dingwalls, The London Astoria and more recently Heaven.  He cut his teeth as Keele Students' Union Social Secretary in the mid 1980s. But Mark arrived at Keele as a clean-cut, Tory-boy. The Royal Ball in December 1981, Mark's first term at Keele, might have seeded Mark's dramatic transformation. I am thrilled to host Mark's guest piece, in which he reflects on that starry night, forty years on.

The naiveté of youth!

As a Fresher in my first term at Keele, in the autumn of 1981, I was weirdly excited, as were many others, about the prospect of the Royal Ball in the Students Union almost exactly 40 years ago to the day.

At the time Princess Margaret was Keele’s Chancellor and she had periodically in the past ‘graced’ the Union with an attendance at one of its events. I wasn’t particularly pro or anti monarchy at the time, but as an eighteen year old still adjusting to an independent life it did appear to be a vaguely thrilling thing to be a part of. So I eagerly bought my ticket and a day or two before the event headed into Newcastle to hire an evening outfit.

Ticket holders – the cost was £8- were advised to arrive before HRH at a certain time – ostensibly for security reasons but I suppose also because it would have looked a bit weird if Mags had had to jostle her way into the Union building competing with hundreds of students and getting asked by the SU porters for some photo ID in order to gain admission. 

Everyone was  dressed in outfits that veered from the completely over the top to the over formalised absurd.  I count myself in the latter category. Sort of Primark meets Brideshead Revisited meets a downmarket magician about to perform in a provincial working mans club.

Some unsavoury looking guests at the ball

HRH arrived resplendent in pink at eight and the then Social Secretary Eric Rose, dressed in a natty black and white suit, introduced her to the Union Committee.

Margaret Rose & Eric Rose

Some members of the Committee, like Treasurer Steve Townsley, took a stand objecting to the whole circus and stayed away boycotting what they and many others felt to be shameless kowtowing to a discredited person of enormous privilege. That was not my view at the time but it was a view that I came to share.

Margaret, once she had worked out who the VP Internal and NUS Secretary and the Chair of Constitutional Committee etc. all were, was then led onto the dance floor by SU President Mark Thomas for an awkward ‘dance’. Mark, a genial Welshman who it was impossible to dislike, looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up whilst HRH just looked indifferent and blandly into the distance with a thousand yard stare etched into her face no doubt having had much experience of similar situations. She shimmied around the floor quite fluently but would periodically flap her arms  so that she semi resembled a goose or a swan  preparing for flight.

Mark & Marge – Mark wasn’t normally the clenched fist type

I’m not sure she was entirely aware she was doing it but it did look quite funny.  I tried to get close to the couple but I got too close and  a burly looking security man intervened  and shot the sort of look at me that you would normally reserve for those things you see laying on their back at the bottom of a pond.

The intention was I suspect for the look to reduce transgressors to a pile of smouldering ash and to think twice about any possible future  spatial intrusion. My friend Paul, a Wolverhampton lad, and already drunk intimated to me he was going to try and ‘get off’ with her. He was optimistic about his chances following her recent fling with a twenty something young man called Roddy Llewelyn. Naturally I encouraged Paul to pursue his dream but I was not confident of his success given the goons around her.

Once five or ten minutes of this nonsense was concluded Margaret was led upstairs to meet the star performer for the event, Newcastle born Alan Price.

Alan Price a few years earlier

Price sang sort of music hall stomping pop anthems that in the 60s were inexplicably  popular and who retained for whatever reason some popularity on the student circuit long after his heyday had come to an end. Rather like Gary Glitter and Edwin Starr  in that respect. Although I obviously was not invited myself to join Mags and Pricey in their enclave away from the masses downstairs, I was a witness to her much later emerging onto the balcony to watch his performance wobbling unsteadily and needing to be supported by one of the security men, who had shot me the filthy look a while earlier. I’m told she and Mr P indulged in a vast quantity of whisky and that she was flirtatious to the point of nigh on asking him to unzip her dress at one point. That I would have paid extra to see.

Alan Price’s performance was immediately forgettable. Just turgid tuneless fairground ditties that like those bubbles kids make with those bubbles machines which  are there one minute and then……pah…just disappear the next. Five minutes after he had finished his entire show had been forgotten.

HRH was supported out of the building looking a little bit like she found something hilariously amusing. It was very apparent that she was pissed out of her head. She seemed to be cackling at one of the bins at one point. This sort of thing happens when you are drunk. I have been there myself. For some reason when off your nut a banal everyday inanimate object can suddenly appear like the most amusing, laugh out loud, clutching your stomach thing ever.

She dropped her cigarette holder as she left. The holder was about a foot long and looked like the sort of thing Noel Coward would have used. One of her flunkies picked it up for her and as he got up he lightly banged his head on her chin. She was peering down at him watching him retrieve it and stood just a little too closely. She smiled at the collision, although again this would have been because she was soused. Had she been sober he would no doubt have been whipped and beaten and made to crawl around on all fours for a month or two.

The Ball continued without her but it was by now a rather dull anti-climax. I went home whenever it finished feeling vaguely deflated.

It wasn’t my last interaction with our Chancellor.

Barely six months later as an indirect consequence of me and a friend trying to sack her from this titular position I got myself suspended for a year from the University.

But that is a different story. For another time.

Ellicott transforming…

…Ellicott transformed.

Ellicott, the hair presumptive

Not A Very Good UGM, Several Weekend Visitors, Work, Convalesce & Play, A Keele Fortnight During November 1981

Ballroom Image Borrowed From Keele Oral History Project – John Samuel

This was the business end of my P1 (first year of actual degree) initial term. It seems I did some work.

But that didn’t stop me from having weekend visitors aplenty – Caroline Freeman (Now Curtis) and Alan Tucker braved the journey to Keele on Friday 13 November 1981.

Caroline
Alan

But before that, on Monday 9 November:

Not a bad day – UGM in eve – not a very good one

UGMs tended to be quite argumentative affairs as I remember them, although (by many accounts) relatively peaceable compared with the political bun-fights at some of the larger University’s Students’ Union meetings.

Was this one “not very good” because it was insufficiently pugnacious for my taste at that time, or because it was too pugnacious. In truth I don’t remember, but with Mark Thomas as President at that time, I suspect it was too tranquil by my taste.

Some of us were “cruising for a bruising” over the painful grant cuts being imposed by the UGC at that time and I suspect that, in November anyway, some of us felt that the Union wasn’t doing enough.

On the Tuesday evening I went to see the movie Brubaker. I must admit to little recall of this movie. Whereas the film I went to see the following Tuesday, Bad Timing, really stuck in my mind as a shocking story about sexual violence.

Simon Jacobs was clearly very much involved in the Caroline and Alan visit; not least because they were very much his “friends from home” as much, or in many ways more, than mine.

We went to a disco in the Union on the Friday evening, to Simons, then the Union, then a “party thing” on the Saturday evening. Then, on the Sunday:

Simon, Heather Caroline & Alan came for lunch.

How I catered for five of us in the tiny kitchen in F Block Lindsay I have no idea. I have even less idea how (or where) we all ate lunch in my study bedroom. Not all at the same time, perhaps.

I have written up a similar, early visit from earlier that calendar year; some of those memories might actually relate to the November 1981 adventure in catering:

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

Then, after Caroline and Alan had gone home, I went down with a rotten cold. It seems I had intended to go to London for a couple of days 18/19 November but didn’t go because of the cold.

The diary says I “watched football” on the Wednesday evening – a World Cup qualifier match – they might have put up a big screen in Lindsay Bar for that. Of course, the sort of screen that qualified as a big screen in those days is the size that many people today would turn their noses up at if proposed for their home. But I digress.

Wendy Robbins arrived for a visit on Friday 20 November.

We “did little” on the Friday night but then made up for it on the Saturday:

Went on cuts march – did work in afternoon, went to two parties in evening – up till late.

Sunday 22 November – Wendy left…

That sounds more like it. A proper Keele weekend day. Guess I must have recovered from that Keele autumn cold quite quickly.

Memories, Angels, Wizards & Plesches, Keele University, 1 to 7 November 1981

I had a lot going on in that first week of November. It was my P1 year, which meant getting down to business a fair bit more than FY.

I have already written at length about planning for the 1 November Anti-Fascist day…

Live Bands, Movies, Mystery Girls, Campaigning Against Cuts & Fascism…Even Some Studying, Keele, Late October 1981

…so all that remains to say is that I considered the event to have been a great success, judging by my diary:

My diary for that week shows signs of industry…even to the point of using the word “industrious” on 7 November – not a word often found in my youthful diaries.

Still, I found time to see movies, go to the union several times, see a gig and at least one party. Not bad.

I vividly remember seeing Stardust Memories that week, a movie I loved at that time.

The next night, I went to see The Comsat Angels in the evening. Dave Lee, in his wonderful book The Keele Gigs!, reminds me that the support act was Victorian Parents and that The Comsat Angels were, in his opinion,

“The-Cure-meets-Joy-Division (in a dark alley!)”

It took me quite a while to unpick the Thursday scribble:

Thursday 5 November 1981 – Busyish day – warden, diary, Wizzards [sic], went over to Anjou’s [sic] in evening – quite a few people there.

“Warden” would have meant a visit to the Lindsay Hall warden, J P de C Day. Mr Day, as we all knew him, was somewhat of a walking miracle. Apparently he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, with months rather than years to live, a few years before I arrived at Keele (1980). Mr Day by all accounts refused to accept the diagnosis and simply kept calm, kept fit and carried on…for more than a quarter of a century.

I don’t remember much about this “visit to the warden” but I think it was part of his campaign of pastoral care, inviting small groups of Lindsay students to his home for tea. I remember him mumbling a fair bit but seeming ever so decent and nice.

“Diary” is a rare post-modern reference in my diaries to the process of writing in my little book. My guess is that I had got a few weeks behind, so had devoted some significant effort to writing up.

“Wizzards”, by which I am sure I meant “Wizards”, was a strange animated movie, which I think Film Soc showed as a nod to the Anti-Fascist Day earlier that week:

I’d like to see that movie again now, as I suspect I’d get far more out of it now than I did then.

“Anjous” will have meant Anju Sanehi’s place, in Harrowby House, which must have been a small party-type gathering. I recall thinking of Harrowby House as a rather privileged residence, with larger, seemingly superior rooms to the rest of Lindsay Hall. Yet one early Keele pioneer in the Keele Oral History Project Hut Life piece describes the old Nissen huts as superior accommodation to Harrowby House. Perhaps the latter was renovated/improved in the intervening years. Or perhaps the Nissen Huts were super-luxurious.

Friday 6 November 1981 – did quite a bit of work today. Went to Plesches in evening. Union after.

Traudi & Peter Plesch – picture borrowed from the tribute linked here.

Peter and Traudi Plesch acted as mentors to the tiny community of Jewish students at Keele. This gathering would have been a traditional (although not religious) Friday night meal at their home; something they did occasionally. Professor Peter Plesch was a chemistry professor, who had joined the teaching staff in the very earliest Keele days. Traudi Plesch was a force of nature on the campus – a relentless fundraiser for multiple good causes and part of that social weave that made the rich and wonderful fabric that was Keele life.

I’m sure I didn’t think about the connection at the time, but given that both Peter and Traudi Plesch were escapees from Nazi Europe in the 1930s, that evening was a fitting end to the week that had started with Anti-Fascist Day.

Peter Plesch – this picture borrowed from the RSC tribute linked here.

An evening at the Plesch House was always a treat, but to some extent a daunting treat. Peter Plesch was a polymath and would usually seek a seemingly arcane topic of conversation, which sometimes felt more like a tutorial than an evening of chat. I remember him waxing lyrical about Chinese ceramics on one occasion – it might even have been this occasion – which morphed into a lesson on Chinese history and the science behind ceramics.

Going For a Song – PericlesofAthens at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0