When Rohan Candappa circulated his very amusing and charming piece about his 17 year old’s party, I very much enjoyed the read and was thrilled when Rohan agreed to me posting it here on Ogblog as a guest piece.
You might have detected a theme here; school parties didn’t go so well for me back then. Conversely, the youth club ones rocked. That’s why I threw a couple of those myself. They were seminal moments for me, even if/when things did not go “entirely right”.
So Rohan’s wonderful piece induced me to write a trilogy of rite of passage club party pieces:
There are some pictures in the pieces, some unintentionally funny scribblings in my juvenile diaries (scanned and there to be seen in glorious technicolour) and also some of the best bits translated from scribble into English.
But one aspect of Rohan’s delightful piece is absent from those stories. The soundtrack of the events.
Rohan focuses on Mirror in the Bathroom by The Beat as the soundscape of his teenager’s party. Why his kid is playing music from our era rather than his is anyone’s guess.
But it got me thinking. Can I name one song that was stuck at the front of my head from each of the three parties I have just written up? Answer: yes.
Ivor’s May 1978 party – Because The Night by The Patti Smith Group;
My November 1978 party – Rat Trap by The Boomtown Rats got stuck in my head that night, although I didn’t much like the song. Down In the Tube Station At Midnight by The Jam was my soundtrack of choice during those weeks of my parent’s absence, so also deserves a mention;
My October 1979 party – Queen of Hearts by Dave Edmunds…no idea why, but that song was utterly stuck in my head that weekend. Fact. At least there’s one that I can play now on my baritone ukulele.
So here they are, for those who have got this far and want to hear/play any/all of those party tracks – five tracks below, they’re crackin’:
Janie is a very good-hearted sort, as evidenced by her diary entries for this afternoon – listing a whole load of stuff to take over to my mum’s house that afternoon for our “half-holiday” and evening with mum. A busman’s half-holiday in Janie’s case, with chiropody equipment and massage oils listed.
In short, Janie will have given a great deal of care and attention to mum’s feet and shanks when we visited her at Woodfield Avenue that afternoon, ahead of dinner at Newton’s in Clapham.
Newton’s had been recommended by John and Lily Hogan, who were keen on that place. To be fair, it had good reviews back then and writing more than 10 years later (January 2019), although renamed 33 Abbeville now, still seems to be well regarded by the locals.
We were also attracted to the place by the offering of slow-cooked lamb shanks; a dish we all like(d) and don’t often see on modern restaurant menus.
Unfortunately, the care and attention that Janie gave to my mother’s feet and shanks did not appear to be replicated in those served to us at Newton’s. Our guess is that the shanks we were served had not been cooked for anything like long enough, making the central purpose of our visit more than a little disappointing.
At that stage of her life, mum found it difficult to keep her disappointment to herself…
…and at that stage of long, hard-working weeks, Janie and I were not in the very best of moods for awkwardness either, so I don’t think the visit ended quite as well as it should have done.
We did not return to Newton’s to ascertain whether our poor meal there was a one-off problem – quite possibly it was but we were none of us “second chance” types for restaurants – especially mum.
This picture actually four year’s later at Noddyland, taken by Kim or Janie
Michael Mainelli’s Birthday Party Aboard Lady Daphne In St Katherine’s Dock, 19 December 1998
Fret not, we were below for this party
Quite a big do. This was Michael’s 40th. Live music if I remember correctly. All the usual suspects were there. And us.
In those days you didn’t take a gazillion pictures at parties. Perhaps someone did take pictures, but I don’t recall seeing any from this party. If Michael and Elisabeth have some and want to provide digital versions thereof, I’ll gladly put a few of them into this article.
We ate, we drank, we danced, we made merry. it was a party.
Christmas Lunch At My Parent’s Place, 25 December 1998
There’s little in the diary about this, other than a tell-tale note that the taxi would cost £32, which was almost certainly an Ealing to Streatham price in those days.
I suspect that Jacqueline, Len and Hils were there that year. I also suspect that this was one of the last times, if not the last time, that my mum did Christmas day at Woodfield Avenue.
It will have been turkey for main, I’m pretty sure.
A Wild Boar Dinner At Sandall Close, Sunday 27 December 1998
The tell-tale note in Janie’s diary is an order for a rack of wild boar from Harvey Nicholls “for next Sunday”. This was one of Janie’s specialities at that time and boy was it good. We have never since found a source of excellent wild boar rack since Harvey Nicks stopped doing it.
The cast for that evening (again made clear from Janie’s diary) was Kim & Micky, Anthea [Simms] & Mitchell [Sams], plus Rupert [Stubbs] & Ana. Janie rather impressively remembered that Ana was Ana Limbrick, who (as well as dating Rupert at that time) was, indeed still is, a physiotherapist to whom Janie occasionally refers clients.
It will have been a jolly evening, despite the fact that several of the guests no doubt said “what a boar” when praising the meal.
…yet still I cooked dinner that evening for six of us: me, Bobbie, Vivian Robinson, Andrew (her beau), Neil Infield and Michelle Epstein (soon to be Infield). All of those people were living in the vicinity of Woodfield Avenue at that time, so I guess it was a sort-of goodbye to friends in that neighbourhood.
No idea what I cooked – I hope for my own sake that I tried to keep it simple – I probably did. If anyone who was there can remember details of that particular evening, I’d love to hear about it from someone else’s perspective.
The Wednesday was also a pretty packed day. Here’s my page of notes for that day.
That page doesn’t even mention the two driving lessons – one at 9:00, the other at 11:00.
Nor does it mention the ordering of a washing machine (perhaps I had already done that the previous day, as Pratts (Streatham’s John Lewis store) was specifically mentioned that day. I wrote copious notes, too detailed even for me and Ogblog, listing various makes, specs and prices of washing machine. I settled on Zanussi and the thing was delivered to Clanricarde Gardens on the Saturday.
A weird quirk of that era; a purportedly fully-furnished flat did not come with a washing machine and I recall that Tony Shaw said at that time that he was happy for me to have one there but that I would have to pay for it and own it. These days, unfurnished flats are the thing but a washing machine is seen as a standard utility item in an unfurnished flat.
I have also retained my shopping list from that Wednesday, which reads like something The Flight Of The Conchords might include in one of their lyrics. Cereal, coffee and wine – what else does a bachelor flat need?:
That page of notes also includes a note of Jackie and Len’s address for that evening (redacted in green on the above picture) plus a note to remind myself to take my Newman Harris P45 with me for Binders the next morning – good thinking.
I know I also left a chirpy note for mum and dad to find when they returned from their holiday on 6th December. Words to the effect of:
Have moved out, as promised.
If you are lucky, I’ll call and let you know where I’ve gone. Hope you had a great holiday.
Lots of love
Sonny Boy.
So, then on to dinner at Jacquie and Len’s place, joined by Caroline Freeman. How can I be so sure? Here”s the diary page:
I wonder whether Caroline remembers this particular evening? I cannot remember what we had for dinner but I don’t think it would have been a herring fest. More likely poultry was involved – for sure it will have been a splendid meal whatever we ate. This much later picture does show the actual table, although not the precise contents:
One thing I do remember about that evening is that Len, on the matter of me having qualified as a Chartered Accountant and then immediately having moved away from that profession (his), seemed decidedly less perturbed than some. I remember him saying repeatedly:
The world is your lobster. Not just your oyster. Your lobster.
I was watching very little television by that time, so it was many years later that I discovered that this cute phrase was not Len’s own, but is an Arthur Daleyism. Not a very kosher metaphor, that oyster/lobster one. But “the world is your pickled herring” just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?:
..but the reality was, I had taken on rather too much. I had a swathe of driving lessons booked (five lessons in three days, to use up my purchased block of 10), had agreed to do several stacks of exam marking for Financial Training and had arranged activities on several evenings…
…and was due to start work at Binder Hamlyn on Thursday 1 December…before which I was determined to move my stuff from Woodfield Avenue to Clanricarde Gardens.
My friends at the Hiway Driving School suggested that their friend Larry, who was a drummer and who had a drum-kit-sized van and liked to make a bit of extra dosh during drumming down time, might be willing to help me with the move. Larry stopped by to meet me (I think one day the preceding week). I gave Larry an approximate size of load, Larry seemed confident that we could manage that much in one van journey, so we agreed a fee and that Tuesday afternoon was a suitable slot for both of us.
Here is my note book page for that Tuesday:
Ambitious.
1.15 Schlep
Returning ASAP
The imperative for returning was because I had arranged to cook dinner for several of my South London-based friends at Woodfield Avenue that evening. I must have been out of my mind.
Transporting my stuff in Larry’s van proved to be a bigger logistical problem than either of us had bargained for. Specifically, once we started stacking boxes and crates of my worldly goods into the van, it became apparent very rapidly that it would be a snug fit to get the job done in two loads, let alone one.
I was convinced that we would need to do the second load on another day, as we both had evening engagements, but Larry was confident that we could do two circuits and still be back in good time. Larry was right.
One of the elements that made Larry right was his monumental strength and stamina at the schlepping element of the job. Especially at the Clanricarde Gardens end, where there are two flights of high-ceiling-house staircase to navigate. I lost count of the number of times Larry lapped me carrying stuff up the stairs. My guess is that he came close to managing two armfuls for every one I managed…and his tended to be heavier armfuls too.
Too big a job for Dumbo, even too big for his Chelsea Tractor friend in the street
He was a very nice, friendly fellow. Larry told me about his drumming during those few hours we spent together. I especially remember him saying that he had drummed with the Joe Jackson Band. So, on researching this piece, 30 years later, I surmise that Larry is most probably Larry Tolfree, who was the drummer with the band when I saw Joe Jackson at Keele in 1982:
Here is a track from Jumping Jive in which the drummer (whom I suspect is Larry Tolfree at that time) displays his considerable talents as a drummer:
I recall we did the full two rounds of removals in the space of four hours, allowing Larry plenty of time to get to his evening gig and me enough time to prepare dinner for six.
The other thing I recall was Larry’s extreme unwillingness to take more money than we had originally agreed. I wanted to give him double the money because it really had turned out to be double the job he originally bargained for. Larry insisted that it was his own fault that he had overestimated the size of his van. I insisted that it was my fault that I had underestimated (or not comprehensively stated) the size of the load. In the end, I think I persuaded him (reluctantly) to split the difference and take some extra money, but not double money.
Thirty years later, I’m finding it hard to imagine quite such a hyper-active day. I hope I had planned a relatively easy meal to cook…
…I’ll report on that and my actual transfer to Clanricarde Gardens in the next piece.
But I did find a copy of a tape which I made for Paul – a fiendish pop quiz named “Free Bonus Brainstrain”.
By all means give it a go. Music from the 1960s to the early 1980s – mostly mid 1960s through 1970s. It’s tough and in two chunks, c10’30” and then c7’30”:
I have the answers and will gladly mark attempts and/or send the answer sheets to anyone who dares to try the quiz and requests the materials.
Paul Deacon – I expect you at least to apply.
I recall that this epic effort was in response to a tape that Paul made for me, which he called “The Free Bonus LP”.
In 2018 I wrote, of that tape:
I recall that I had that tape – I think it was a 4″ spool – when I started my digitisation project but something disastrous happened to it. I think it was one of those (a minority, but a significant number of) tapes that had so denatured over time that the magnetic coating simply flaked off the tape making it inaudible and hazardous to the rather delicate reel-to-reel machinery I was trying to maintain for the purposes of digitising my collection.
I’m trying to recall what was on that tape. I think Paul might have cut some copies of our old silly stuff onto that spool, but it also included some comedy classics. The only one I remember for sure was on it was Bo Dudley, a piece that is so non-PC by today’s standards I almost blush to provide a link to a video of it:
The only other thing I recall about the Free Bonus LP was Paul doing a booming, echoing voice-over saying, “The Free Bonus LP” several times during the tape.
…I did manage to recover The Free Bonus LP. It was not a duff tape, but it was recorded at 7 1/2 ips and I now recall that the additional gear/belt that drives my Sony TC377 died before I had digitised that tape. Being 12 years wiser, I realised in 2020 that I could spool the tape into Audacity at 3 3/4 ips and simply tell Audacity to render the digital sound 100% faster when finalising. Result!
Anyway, my Free Bonus Brainstrain emulates the technique but it was not done anything like as well as Paul’s…Paul was becoming a vocal pro, whereas I…wasn’t.
In July 1983, I was doing my regular accountancy summer job at Newman Harris…
I got a job with Stanley, he said I’d come in handy.
…but on the Saturday:
went to Paul for afternoon
I’ll guess that he gave me the Free Bonus LP that day.
More interesting is the entry for 26 September 1983, by which time I had stopped work ahead of my return to Keele:
Lazy day – shopping – taping etc. Paul came over for dinner -> Radio Kings in eve
I think that was the day I gave Paul the Free Bonus Brainstrain.
Of course Paul was already doing DJ stuff by then as a volunteer at Kings College Hospital, the scene of my birth as it happens, on Radio Kings.
I’m sure Paul has many memories of Radio Kings but I wonder whether he remembers much about the evening he took me there and showed me the ropes. I remember being fascinated by it, but little of the detail.
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.
“…be off with you, fiends!…”
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.
8 November 1978 – Mum and Dad left first thing for Israel. School OK – cooked myself a delishous [sic] dinner.
Crumbs – my folks didn’t hang around – I had only turned 16 six weeks before they disappeared off on holiday and left me entirely on my tod.
9 November 1978 – School OK, played fives. Went next door for dinner. Linda came round later.
What a good sort Linda has always been. The diary shows many visits from Linda during those few weeks of parental absence. I’m sure Linda’s caring instincts were already in full force and she wanted to make sure I was OK on my own in that house.
10 November 1978 – School boring. Went to Auntie Pam’s for Indian dinner
11 November 1978 – Developed and printed in morning with Linda in morning. Got ready for party. Threw fantastic party…
…though I said so myself. The self-confidence, the certainty of opinion. Writing now (March 2017) I’d describe it as a positively Trumpian diary entry.
12 November 1978 It went on until approximately 6:15 in the morning…
…that’s a very specific, approximate timing from Ian Junior…
…went in evening to Stanmore installation (boring) and dance (great).
More certainty of opinion! I can only apologise to the Stanmore club members. In mitigation, I had discovered tonsil hockey earlier that year and was probably keen to try out my skills at the post installation party, hence my boredom during the official ceremony and my delight at the dance. Judging by the diary hieroglyphics and my memory this was a successful evening (indeed a very successful weekend) by my main criterion of success during that era.
13 November 1978 – Got home in the early hours to find an apple pie bed.
I have tried hard to extract confessions for this one; I have got precisely nowhere.
On this day in 1977, Paul Deacon and I recorded ourselves larking around, including, for some unknown reason, several takes of a scene emulating an execution at the time of the French Revolution.
I’ve no idea whether anyone other than me and Paul will find this four minute clip funny, but I laughed out loud many times on hearing it again.
I think my favourite bit is on take 4, when you hear my pseudo-Robespierre voice, once again, ask
“do you ‘ave anything to say?”
and you can hear my mother holler from the next room…
“yeh – shut up!”
…at which point Paul collapses in gales of laughter.
Some of the bits in several of the takes where Paul gets tongue-tied around his lines are pretty funny too.
I also laughed out loud at my third announcement of “take 5” – to announce two “take 5s” might be described as unfortunate, to announce three sounds like carelessness. The juvenilia of a numbers man.
Suffice it to say that the unintended humour works better than the rather mawkish intended humour.
The guillotine sound comes from an actual guillotine…
…no, really…
…a paper one, which looked more or less exactly like this picture, which I have borrowed from an ebay sale long since closed – I’m sure the anonymous photographer/seller won’t mind – fair use for educational purposes blah blah:
Madame la Guillotine
The sound of the drum roll was made on a genuine Southern African bongo drum, a gift from my mother’s dear school friend, “Auntie” Elsie Betts who lived (I believe still lives) in South Africa. For reasons unknown, I took a superb photograph of that majestic drum:
Monsieur Le Bongodrum
The sound of the aristocrat’s head landing was, if I recall correctly, achieved with a white cabbage being dropped into a wastepaper basket. My mother used to make her own coleslaw to my father’s specification – with a light vinaigrette sauce, no mayonnaise nonsense for my dad’s slaw – it was a sort-of cross between sauerkraut and coleslaw really.
But I digress.
Point is, there would always have been a white cabbage conveniently on hand whenever the need arose for a head removal sound effect. The cabbage will have looked like one of these:
Paul and I made quite a few silly recordings over the years, but I believe only the one tape survives. Most of our recordings were recorded on the trusty Sony TC377, which looked like this…
…the tape for which was expensive and in demand in the Harris household (mostly by me to be honest), so much of the silly stuff will have been wiped over with other silly stuff or, eventually, something someone wanted to keep.
I meticulously digitised all the reel to reel tapes that survived (a few batches of tape were deteriorating before digitisation, so those tapes couldn’t be saved) but, as far as I can tell, none of the survivors had larking about material on them. Sorry.
So how or why did the 12 April 1977 material survive?
The answer is straightforward and signalled in the following diary page.
The relevant passage is 2 January 1977 – Bank Holiday Monday:
Went to Comet cassette deck. Great.
On that day, our reel-to-reel family bowed to the inevitable and procured a cheap (this is the January sales, isn’t it?) “solid state” cassette deck. It was not a special one. I think it was one of the following or similar – I have borrowed the picture from an ebay sale long since closed – I’m sure the anonymous photographer/seller won’t mind – fair use for educational purposes blah blah:
While I think Paul and I probably recorded the coin tossers/execution scenes on the reel-to-reel (the clicks sound reel-to-reelish to me – Paul might know better), I at least made a copy or copies onto cassette following that 1977 reording session:
Below I have also embedded the 20 minutes or so of general larking around stuff that preceded the main takes. It’s not a particularly interesting listen; I think we must both have been in an especially silly mood that day. Paul might go through it and extract a few small snippets of value from it. I think there is a Cyril Vaughan impersonation on there somewhere and one or two other impersonations to boot.
The main “conceit” of the following preliminary piece is a spoof sports commentary on the world coin tossing competition. This appears to be a throw-back to an earlier, seminal event, in December 1974:
Anyway, here is twenty minutes of coin tossing, infantile giggling, some impersonations and some early attempts at the execution scenes. This recording is on the other side of the Execution Scenes cassette.
I have written all of this up in September 2018 at Paul Deacon’s request, as he is giving some sort of talk about careers to a women’s group in Canada, the country in which Paul and his family now reside.
Paul wondered if I had any relevant photos of us from that time, which I don’t really – sorry again. The only picture I can lay my hands on with both of us in it is the following, which Paul himself uploaded in our Alleyn’s alum group:
Paul on the right doing the bumping; me the recipient of the bumps. This might take some explaining to a genteel women’s group…
…but if they are instead a group of Canadian Women’s Ice Hockey players/supporters, the picture will look like childishly amateur violence, which it assuredly was.
While I denied all memory of this event when Paul first upped that picture, I have a vague recollection now of how those autumnal-looking bumps came about. I’ll Ogblog about that separately some other time.
This piece is about recordings of execution scenes and stuff. You haven’t yet listened to the four minute execution scenes clip? Here it is again for your convenience. Listen out for my mum as “best supporting actress” in take four.
I made three mentions of the very first cricket world cup (which was billed as the Prudential Cup) in my 1975 diary. I have already Ogblogged the very first match…
Even I have had to do some Photoshop forensics on that 21 June entry:
West Indies won first P Cup by 17 runs. Had a day off school for founders day. TV: Cannon, That’s Life. Still swotting.
I’m not sure why I got a Saturday off on Alleyn’s School Founders Day. Perhaps it was because my year was still swatting for exams so we were exempted. Perhaps I was exempted on religious grounds, as that Saturday was just a few weeks before my barmitzvah.
In any case, I can’t imagine when I did the swotting boasted in the diary entry. I don’t have any recollection of swotting that day. I only recall being glued to the telly, not least for most if not all of that cricket match.
I certainly recall seeing Roy Fredericks getting out hit wicket, which was very early in the match…and seeing that partnership between Clive Lloyd and Rohan Kanhai…and seeing the Aussies struggle against that West indies bowling attack…
I do also recall the match going on late…indeed past the time that dinner was normally served in the Harris household. There was a golden rule that meal times took precedence over ANYTHING on television.
I remember arguing my corner. This was the first ever cricket world cup final and there would never, ever be another “first ever” and it was building up to a really exciting ending.
I managed to get a temporary stay of execution for the family dinner, much against my mother’s better judgement.
Below is a highlights package of the match – I especially dig the floppy hats donned by Fredericks and Greenidge at the start of the innings:
Beyond the final, I know that first cricket world cup had a profound effect on me.
I saved newspaper clippings of the scorecards from the various matches and I remember replaying the world cup with my friends (and on my own) in various formats over the summer:
I especially remember looking at the names of players and trying to understand what the different types of names meant for those different places. The mixture of Portuguese and Southern Asian names from Sri Lanka especially sparked my interest.
I wondered whether I would visit some of those exotic-seeming (judging by the cricketers’ names) places. I have now visited most.
Writing this article on the eve of the 2019 Cricket World Cup Final, I am still wondering when England will win the tournament.
