The 25 Hour News and the 40 Year Blues
Our previous Raccoon ‘golden hour’ outings took us back 25 years to 1990 and then 35 years to 1980. This time round, in order that I the author can actually continue to contribute, we’re going back just five further years to 1975 – the year of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, Rollermania, the EEC Referendum and the US Army’s final humiliating withdrawal from Vietnam.
I was seven-going on-eight and had just moved to my third home, the first brand-new house I’d lived in. The estate was less than half-finished when we arrived (only our side of the street had been built) and the overall effect was like living on a building site, which was a gift for a seven-year-old once the builders had gone home for the night. I remember busting my lip leaping onto a sandpit from some first-floor scaffolding and nicking floorboards with my dad from some of the half-built houses lower down the estate (playing dead when the night watchman strolled past); the floorboards were then used as shelves in the wardrobe my dad built in my bedroom, perfect wood for the weight of the comics I was collecting. As the portrait of the snazzy dresser on the left shows, I was spending my pocket-money at the newsagent’s.
Playing out, reading comics (and making my own), watching ‘Dr Who’, ‘The Tomorrow People’, ‘The Goodies’ and ‘Blue Peter’, and actually at a school that wasn’t too bad, low on bullies and possessing some decent teachers – not a pattern destined to last. Anyway, that was my ’75; how about you?
Petunia Winegum
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March 14, 2015 at 9:53 am -
Makes me laff, makes me cry.
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March 14, 2015 at 10:10 am -
My memories of 1975 are few and far between due to being just 14 months old at the start of 1975. It was the year I learned to walk, talk and use a potty – nevertheless though I have held on to the moments I could recall a year or two (don’t ask me how though, I just have!)
I always think of ’75 as being sepia-tinted – in fact when you get those ‘orange sky days’, I automatically think ‘1975’ and of all the things I associate with 1975 – though I concede that the Minnie Ripperton, Jim Gilstrap & Van McCoy hits will probably be due to subsequent association. The ‘sepia skies’ thing may possibly be because I had an eye operation in 75 to correct a post-injections squint (the next six years or so I wore glasses due to being long-sighted).
Because I’ve always had a fascination with those years of infant amnesia, the hazy moments I could recall later with my (advanced?) pre-frontal cortex I’ve managed to retain in the years since. I can remember being with my dad and going to get the car out of the garage, him holding my hand and asking me to stay still whilst he opened the garage door – and the white Hillman Hunter in the garage as those doors opened. We have no photographs of that car, but I can clearly remember the rear profile – and that the number plate had been shifted to above the rear bumper due to it being fitted with a towbar. It’s not a particularly memorable moment, but it’s just something I can recall. That Hunter (FAT 383L) was traded in for an orange (or rather, in British Leyland speak, ‘Bracken’) nearly-new Mini 1000 (JAT 691N) after my mother caught the metal gate-posts with the Hunter (but, no, I cannot recall the drama that erupted from that incident but I am told the subsequent reaction was the first appearance of my fathers Mr Hyde side) at the start of 1976, so my driveway memory must be from ’75.
Aside from that, I have vague recall of my Dad’s aviary (a short-lived phenomenon) and of toddling around the front garden excitedly waiting for my Grandad to arrive – I can remember much more from 1976, and some of the finer details of things from 1977 but my 1975 memories can be distilled down to the above.
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March 14, 2015 at 10:13 am -
“sepia” is possibly because of the developed photographs from that period which, as Petunia’s illustrates, frequently went a fashionable shade of orangey-beige after a few years. Thus are our memories coloured…
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March 14, 2015 at 2:11 pm -
““sepia” is possibly because of the developed photographs from that period which, as Petunia’s illustrates, frequently went a fashionable shade of orangey-beige ”
The one I posted has gone a worryingly violet shade…no doubt because it was taken in a very brief and extremely rare period of ‘Non-Grey’ on a Norfolk cliff top – that’s not a manic grin on my face but hypothermia causing muscular contractions btw- and Dad’s very dodgy Halina camera couldn’t cope with the sudden influx of lumens….or it might be from a reflection of the Northern Lights.
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March 14, 2015 at 7:24 pm -
Re. blueing
Yes, blueing was the result of a different processing lab. I’ve seen others that change to a reddened masque. I imagine a photographic film enthusiast could probably explain the chemistry of these alternative fading phenomena. Somwthing to do with the “fixing” process I would guess. Others in my old collections remain pin-sharp and true as the day they were printed so it was plainly somebody cutting corners in the Processing Labs.
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March 14, 2015 at 2:21 pm -
Can’t let a mention of orange skies go by without including the lovely song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fVehIM-iw8(Although it was still a few years away from happening, Petunia’s description of moving house mirrors my own to an astonishing degree. Only differences being it was into our second (and last) home & there was no night watchman. The rudimentary shelving in the garage looks suspiciously like it was made from ‘found’ floorboards, too! Ah, what freedom we had!)
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March 14, 2015 at 10:11 am -
Dug out my diary. 1975 was the year I entered the world of work.
Monday 7th July: Went to Labour Exchange. Got a part-time job at the [pub]. Evenings from Wed-Sun. £10 per week.
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March 14, 2015 at 10:59 am -
1975. Bought my first house, with some difficulty. Although the house was a modest semi in a provincial town, and my wife and I had “good” jobs and a 25% deposit, our mortgage application was turned down because the building society had run out of funds, and had applied a maximum cap of £6000 on loans.
Contrast that with today’s if you can fog a mirror you can borrow all you wish.
Once in the house, I had the extremely good fortune to wind up with a job that required 12 hour/7 days a week shifts with commensurate double/triple time pay for a few months, which restored the household expenses double quick. Went from a clapped out minivan to a 4 year old Lotus Elan.
Again, contrast this with today’s zero-hours contracts.
No TV, no internet of course, few restaurants or night spots to go out to. Large roomy cinemas being turned into multi-complexes with dwarf screens. Only men went to pubs and you never had to step over drunk girls retching on the pavement. It cost £600 for a return flight to the far east, it still does. £5 for a three minute international phone call, how much now on Skype? Pence.
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March 14, 2015 at 11:35 am -
After getting that first job in a pub my progress was rapid. I soon landed a job in the local factory.
July 24th: Pay-day! Gross £43.50 Net £30.10
I find id fascinating that I was pre-disposed to record my state deductions at such a tender time…
… I recall that having £30 in my fist made me richer than Croesus in my own mind. It was only a” summer job”… Holiday cover. My diary records an appointment I had to keep.
October 8th: Dole. 10.15am
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March 14, 2015 at 11:10 am -
I remember this as a mixed decade. In 1975 I was 40. Still plodding through studies with OU and working as well as running house and family. What we women were liberated to do!! Lots of strikes. Gathering inflation. Wondrous fashions, flares, long hair, long skirts, a crazy pop scene. My mum died of motor neurone disease to kick off this decade. Dad did likewise at the end of the decade. By the end of it 25% inflation. One price ticket on top of another in Iceland supermarket. Tills worked with handles during the electricity outages. My mum thought a thousand quid was megabucks….not at the end of this decade it wasn’t. Just as well she went when she did I suppose. Well cared for kids enjoy their childhoods. We adults have to struggle through and let them enjoy, while they can. Once an adult, that carefree time has flown by. Now kids don’t have a chance. They know in detail about some adult activities to soon. Tempted to taunt or copy iffy activities…all very sad.
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March 14, 2015 at 12:00 pm -
http://i60.tinypic.com/2rxgn47.jpg (actually a taken a couple of years after as I couldn’t find any from ’75 and there are only nakedish ones of me from ’74…and we all know what happens to people who post ‘the Kids on the beach’ photos online.)
On this day in 1975 I turned 7 (yes it is my Birthdaze today, thank you for NOT reminding me that I am now 47 “stony gray steps nearer to the box-which-awaits-its-grisly-load”).
1975 my parents TORE me out of my idyllic, eternally sunny, Buckinghamshire new estate childhood and TRANSPORTED me across international borders out of England and into Mordor…or ‘Norfolk’ as I suppose I should call it to save on confusion for any marauding Orcs (or ‘Geordies’ as I suppose I should refer to them). My mother can trace her Norfolk , unbroken, ancestry back to about 1575 and she tells me they moved us back to norfolk to save me from a childhood of riding my Raleigh Chopper around a godless wifeswapping-cheese fondue-soiree estate (thanks a bunch, Mom).
I was sent to a little village ‘CoE’ school , with I think about 40 pupils, most of whom were able to answer ‘hair Sur’ when the Headmaster once read out the Register from 1870-something to celebrate a hundred years of missionary work among the heathens, sorry I mean of course of the school first opening it’s doors.
That first morning I was barely able to enter the school building , the corpses of all the poor little asthmatic dears who had fled, coughing and choking,out of the school room where the teacher smoked his meerschaum pipe from after reading Morning Prayers ‘Who hath safely brought us to the beginning of a new day” until the office of evening prayers and ‘lighten our darkness we beseech Thee O Lord’ intoned across the rows of upended chairs on their desks. Ok, I put that about the wheezing kids and their corpses in for the non-smokers among us but the fact I could even spell ‘Meerschaum’ at age 7 tells you something about our teacher (how a Welshman came to be stranded in Norfolk….?).
Seriously though, I was greeted that first morning at the school door by a boy my age who waved something metallic in my face and said “hev a smell f ‘his lid , tha’ s’inks f faar’”. I asked him to repeat himself for the those who didn’t speak ‘shit-kicker’ and after about 3 attempts I finally understood what he was trying to say (“have a smell of this lid , it stinks of fart”).
Even now, 40 years after I can still recall my feeling of total despair at discovering there were places where RP’s writ did not reach and I never did acquire a norfolk accent, not even the milder variant which gradually replaced the older village one as more ‘new blood’ moved into the village.
The school was just below the heath. A heath so remote from the outside world that Albert Einstein was hidden away there after he fled Germany! Ponder that fact. Churchill personally could think of no safer place to hid the most brilliant mind of the 20th Century, no place more remote and secluded….a place safe from SS Kommando snatch squads and any contact with the modern world! A village as many centuries off the beaten track as it was miles. Probably explains how come I got to learn to use a scythe at age 7.
https://eastofelveden.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/u237135acme1.jpgI have written before about the “doc’ors and noorses pre’end rape gairms” and The Landlady probably wouldn’t want me to go into greater detail. Suffice to say it is a little unnerving to go into a government office and by dealt with by a woman whose vagina you saw at age 8 and who encouraged you to watch her win the ‘which mawther could pee thur foor’hest’ (“which girl could piss the furthest”) game. Nor is it comforting to read of marriage of Miss XYZ of the Parish and recall how she dropped her jeans and knickers in the shed on the ‘top field’ and showed you the “YUCKKY SLIME” she was secreting.
Like I said before, a childhood of “Top Deck (remember them?) Cider Flavour With Janet”
Aside from that I think I was reading ‘Buster/Monster Fun’, playing ’40-40′ and wishing with all my 7 year old heart I could run away back to England.
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March 14, 2015 at 1:58 pm -
http://tinypic.com/r/2rxgn47/8
Posted the wrong photo linky at the start of my comment. Sorry to all those who were desperate to see a fat kid in flairs grinning manically.
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March 14, 2015 at 12:09 pm -
Pet, why is my comment ‘awaiting moderation’? Did I somehow trigger the I-Imprimatur?
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March 14, 2015 at 1:17 pm -
Yes – more than one link!!!
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March 14, 2015 at 1:53 pm -
“Yes – more than one link!!!”
Ahh that explains it…and there was me thinking your robotic CHILD SAFE filters had picked up on some of the banned words I used-like ‘Welshman’. I do try and keep my comments ‘Family Friendly’ (just bear in mind that MY family is from Norfolk….).
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March 14, 2015 at 2:50 pm -
March 14, 2015 at 3:07 pm -
A lot of anti-Norfolk stuff, Dwarf.
Back in the ’60’s with waves of Londoners smothering my home county Berkshire under a rolling wave of new homes & concrete, I got the distinct impression of us ‘Berkshire born & Berkshire bred, strong in the arm & weak in the head’ locals being similarly viewed as turnips.
Back to Norfolk; the most unhappy & unsatisfying of my wanderings in work. I never quite got round to buying a home there thank God. Mostly not the fault of the locals, but to sum up in the words of one resolutely resistant & quite senior obstacle to change: ‘..in Naaarich we believe in progress without change.’-
March 14, 2015 at 3:25 pm -
“Berkshire born & Berkshire bred, strong in the arm & weak in the head’”
I’m from Norfook
and I’m alroigh’
OI can” read
and OI can” wri’e
Bu’ OI ken drive a ‘ractor[I’m from Norfolk
and I’m alright
I can’t read
and I can’t write
But I can drive a tractor (slowly down the A11 for favourite)]-
March 14, 2015 at 4:09 pm -
I used to hear a variation on that ditty at Elland Road thirty-odd years ago…
‘Yorkshire-born
Yorkshire-bred
Strong in arm
and THICK in head’
It was sung with pride, naturally…-
March 14, 2015 at 6:27 pm -
None of which is as offensive as the chant reputedly once heard from away fans at Norwich, sung to The Munsters theme…
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March 14, 2015 at 12:33 pm -
’75 was my Glasgow phase, three years hard in Springburn. We tried so hard. I went back a few years later to move some of the plant to a more promising location.
Catastrophic self inflicted personal events that were to led to decades of happiness & contentment marred by permanent guilt.
Glasgow then was liberally adorned with FKP, FKB and the strange SNP logo. It all had to be explained to me, as a soft southerner I had no real idea about these issues or the depth of feeling. I was shocked by a march of what looked like an occupying army of thugs through the small town I moved to. And although I had no personal difficulties, the seething hatred of the English was there, just below the surface. Not helped by the propensity of English (well it would be) management to refer disparagingly of the locals as ‘neds’.
Strikes & blacking of production lines. I can’t forget the following during a heated exchange:
Union rep: ‘You English should mind some respect. Scots engineers are respected & work all over the world!’.
Dour English Site Engineer: ‘That’s why there’s none left here!’.
Long summer evenings with walks in the Campsies hurriedly curtailed by biting insects. Drear rain in the winter, dark going to work, dark going home, relived only by a visit to Agnews* for anaesthetic. *An offie with shuttered front, stock inside secured behind chain link, service at a small window, but cheap. Not being allowed to drink at the bar in pubs. Poster ads for fortified wine.
Fresh rolls in the morning from the paper shop; fried haggis & eggs for a late breakfast on winter Sundays.
I travelled to London often weekly, a day trip on the Shuttle. No ticket, no booking, just turn up, pay in flight, if the plane’s full there’ll be another in 10 minutes. Brilliant & reliable service, Tridents. In that hot summer of ’76 the parched fields of England were striking.
Finally, a 1.8 off white Morris Marina 4 door, rusting rapidly, unreliable- I rebuilt the gearbox twice, but so cheap to run and easy to fix. Like a big fast Morris Minor. Whatever was I doing when I bought it, a ’73 I think. -
March 14, 2015 at 12:46 pm -
relieved, not relived
And I forgot the flares, the wide lapels, the extraordinary ties, and my almost shoulder length long very blond hair. Where did it go?-
March 14, 2015 at 9:37 pm -
I remember at a New Year dance in Glasgow in 1974 when my husband turned round to kiss me and knocked out my contact lens with his lapel ! spent most of the night looking for it.
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March 14, 2015 at 9:57 pm -
STOP PRESS – BBC possibly in meltdown mode….
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March 14, 2015 at 10:06 pm -
!
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March 14, 2015 at 10:08 pm -
Oh good, I thought they might actually have to use next year’s licence fees to make programmes after all. The Organic, Fair trade champagne corks will be popping in Islington tonight, ok ya!
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March 14, 2015 at 10:10 pm -
Just wait til you see the headlines…..the defamation suit is going to be unbelievable…..
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March 14, 2015 at 10:54 pm -
Lawyers in reasonably priced suits getting stigged.
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March 14, 2015 at 10:54 pm -
I should think they’ve broken out their best champagne in anticipation!
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March 15, 2015 at 12:03 pm -
That’s really nasty.
By all accounts JC just got angry and hit someone, many people have lost it at some stage in their lives and nothing like what Saville is alleged to have done, although I do note this blog has shed some very interesting light on this
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March 14, 2015 at 11:25 pm
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March 14, 2015 at 1:38 pm -
1975? I changed schools. I started at Wellingborough, a private school in the junior (“prep”) part. It was destined to last only two years before becoming finally unaffordable and I found myself at a very different Comprehensive middle school.
Being not in Northampton, I had to get myself there every morning on a bus (the 401). Various other schoolmates got on the bus at various villages before arriving in Wellingborough. Those were the days when a 9 year old was expect to be able to navigate the world on their own; nowadays it would be considered neglectful by most people to have 9 year old schoolboys travelling alone. We had to attend school on Saturday mornings, and it was a different bus, the 404. The first time I had to take the bus, I realised with horror that it was arriving in Wellingborough in an entirely different direction and I had no idea where I was (exacerbated by steamed up windows restricting outside vision) so I just got off and asked adults for directions until somebody told me how to get to the school.
My memory of anything else I can specifically tie to 1975 is rather blank, though I remember Bohemian Rhapsody etc. And the bloody Bay City Rollers of whom my sister was a hysterical fan.
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March 14, 2015 at 3:05 pm -
1975- at college, riding a yamaha rd250, long hair,spent time fishing listening to led Zeppelin , black sabbath , deep purple, atomic rooster and jethro Tull.
Coming from an all boys school, girls very much a mystery but nice to dance with at the college disco -
March 14, 2015 at 3:38 pm -
1975 – A year of some major changes for me.
Started the year with a white Triumph Spitfire Mk3 (with hard-top) – half-way through the year, I had it resprayed black, a dramatic change and, at the time, a unique shade – it looked gleamingly wonderful, bearing as it did my first set of personalised silver-on-black number-plates.
Approaching my mid-20s, I was working as a Work Study man, you know, one of those evil types with a stop-watch and clip-board who seeemed to think they could do your job far better, and far quicker, than you ever could. It was fashionable at the time, paid well and got me out of the office – I enjoyed it too. But technology was beckoning and around that time I made the first forays into IT, which was soon to prove far more lucrative.
In the spring of 1975 I bought my first house, a regular suburban semi amongst hundreds of others, then spent most of the hot summer decorating it from top to bottom, learning on-the-job about house maintenance issues from my experienced assistant (dad).
In early autumn a work-mate with whom I’d become quite friendly died suddenly – it turned out he’d left me £1,000 in his will, I was staggered. OK, that amount itself was quite significant at the time but the fact that he had valued my friendship so much that he had written me into his will (with no indication of his impending death) really hit me again.
Oh, nearly forgot, that autumn I got married for the first and last time – strangely, Mrs Mudplugger says the same thing. Might get her a ‘Ruby Murray’ takeaway come this October……
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March 14, 2015 at 4:18 pm -
P.S. I voted ‘NO’ in the 1975 EEC Referendum and will do the same again if we ever get the chance – I was right then and the past 40 years have proved it.
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March 14, 2015 at 6:27 pm -
Me, too, but the drones got their way and our politicos have been kowtowing to th Eurograts since.
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March 14, 2015 at 6:28 pm -
Damn! Fat fingers and skinny keyboard again.
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March 15, 2015 at 12:07 pm -
Spitfires lovely little car, my brother had one and we used to go every where in it with the roof down
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March 14, 2015 at 4:11 pm -
We went to St. Tropez for our holidays, terrible, no real ale to be found.
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March 14, 2015 at 4:15 pm -
A Blackpool caravan for us that year, though there was the added addition of seeing a lion aim a jet of piss directly in the face of a brat on the other side of the fence at Blackpool Zoo!
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March 14, 2015 at 6:08 pm -
“A Blackpool caravan for us that year, though there was the added addition of seeing a lion aim a jet of piss directly in the face of a brat on the other side of the fence at Blackpool Zoo!”
One of the many downsides of being deported, cruelly deported, to the Norfolk Sea-Cide was of course having to spend EVERY day of the entire summer holiday on the Communal Dog Toilet amid the Oil slicks, the used condoms and broken bottles. “We moved up here so you could spend your holidays at the seaside ALL THE TIME, DEAR!” (yet another thing my parents will be called to account for whence they stand before the throne of Judgement on that Last Day). Added to which we HAD to attend the Scripture Union Beach Mission everyday and after that the Carni-fool week. KumByfuckingYah and roar of the Hawker-Siddeley engined Mega Death of the Red Arrows being the theme to my childhood summer holidaze.
There was however a Zoo, of the sort that would now get the owner jail time. Big animals in victorian style wrought iron cages…big animals in what looked like bird cages. Mind you, “Billy The Smoking Chimp” was a laugh, cadging smokes off all the Dads…however he wasn’t so keen on them new fangled ‘filtered’ cigarettes, prefering Weights and Capstan.
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March 14, 2015 at 6:29 pm -
Come on Dwarf, at least Cromer crabs were good; the ones you eat that is.
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March 14, 2015 at 6:38 pm -
“Come on Dwarf, at least Cromer crabs were good; the ones you eat that is.”
Trust me on this, for once I mean it in all seriousness: only A FUCKING SUICIDAL IDIOT would eat anything that came out of the sea around North Norfolk. (Check the surfing forums if you don’t believe me, surfacing wearing a shit and condoms hair do is the least of a surfer’s worries. There are bacteria in there that defy any attempt at scientific classification having walked across land on their 3 glowing little legs a piece from Windscale).
To make matters worse, I had to walk pass the crab kettles everyday as a child and the sounds still haunt me. I never eat fish or seafood.
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March 14, 2015 at 7:40 pm -
I’ll go round to Tribes our friendly local undertaker & be measured for a chipboard jacket, Dwarf. Already got a parking spot as couldn’t desert dearest late beloved.
However, it’s 20+ years since I was invalided out of wazzock world. I reckon I’m safe now
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March 14, 2015 at 7:43 pm -
To be honest, my abiding memory of Blackpool Zoo was actually the poor puma I saw on the way out, pacing around his tiny cage. Those small provincial zoos are, I suppose, all gone now; and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. Ditto the less ‘glamorous’ circuses and their wild animals, several of which I attended as a child.
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March 14, 2015 at 7:49 pm -
I hated circuses. Bored me stiff. That dreadful, “we’ve got tickets for the circus!” from our parents, and pretending to be pleased. Brrr.
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March 14, 2015 at 8:00 pm -
” I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.”
Neither do I…but I just like to imagine the faces of *modern* parents when confronted by a chimp demanding 20 Senior Service. I dare say smoking is already verboten at most zoos anyways…and that’s just the visitors.
You got to admit, a chain smoking chimp is the almost perfect antidote to the Victory Packs Generation of sour puss Health fASHistos.
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March 14, 2015 at 8:19 pm -
You’ve just reminded me of a toy I had around the age of six, bought at a local newsagent’s – a smoking monkey. You stuck a cig in its mouth and it appeared to smoke it! Can you imagine an enterprising toy company marketing that today?
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March 14, 2015 at 9:10 pm -
“Can you imagine an enterprising toy company marketing that today?”
Only if it was a black, girl, monkey…..tick ALL the boxes….
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March 15, 2015 at 12:38 am -
amazing what a quick google will turn up.
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March 14, 2015 at 4:24 pm -
Nineteen seventy-five: The year of a bittersweet romance where the young woman in question gave me the old “I think you’re more serious than I am about this relationship, which isn’t really a RELATIONSHIP-relationship yet and may never be” let’s-just-go-slow-and-NOT-shag sort of speech, which, because I harboured what may have ultimately been delusions, I continued in for a while thereafter. Nineteen seventy-nine, well after the relationship (such as it was) ended, after we had both been seeing others, the Doobie Brothers release What A Fool Believes. Talk about a song being the story of your life.
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March 14, 2015 at 4:43 pm -
Awww….feck!
So, I’m sitting here listening to some hits from 1975, being SO old now that I can’t *exactly* recall what I was doing in my life back then and now, my head is filled with memories and beautiful songs…and all my wrinkles have disappeared and my eyes are glittering, without me need to put glitter on them as I normally do each day….
I’ll write more a bit later, when I’ve let the music take me……………
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March 14, 2015 at 4:46 pm -
Oh feckityfeckfeck! FERNANDO!! I’ve just remember where I was in 1975 and what I was doing!
Back later……. :0)
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March 14, 2015 at 6:12 pm -
March 14, 2015 at 7:47 pm -
Come on, you can’t leave it there!
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March 14, 2015 at 5:20 pm -
I don’t like to think…
I was at boarding school. It was a “prep” school and I was 12-13. It was a good school, and there was no bullying, but I was homesick. Despite that, I “prospered”, They had a meritocratic system where you could move “up” a class every term, not simply up every year. I can’t remember now where I started, having come from an incompetent state run primary where the headmaster hated aspiration and me – particularly after he introduced a “chess afternoon” to improve the minds of the local peasants, and I beat him hands down – but by 75 I was rising inexorably up the “league table”, eventually to be joint first in what we called “Form 1”, the Scholarship Set, by 76.My headmaster was a good man, and he later told my parents that I had had almost no education, but he saw something in me. He asked me to play chess with him too. I did. I beat him, and he asked for more. Sometimes he would beat me, and sometimes I would beat him.
Mr Mason came on Thursdays. A kind old man on an old fashioned pushbike. Thursday afternoon was “free” games day. I chose chess. Mr Mason would bring a huge pack of marshmallows, and we would engage in silent combat. Note to operation Yewtree! He never touched me, he never leered at me. He was a kind, elderly gent who doubtless enjoyed the company of youth, chess, and help to develop the talents of a young person.
I was a loner who cried myself to sleep at night because I was homesick. In the summer evenings, I used to amuse myself by bowling a cricket ball at a chair on the back field. No one bothered me, and no one coached me. So I taught myself to bowl. I discovered I could make the ball spin wildly with a flick of the risk and letting it come out of the back of my hand. I made the pitch longer and longer.
The next year was the long hot summer of 76. One evening I joined in bowling in the nets, and bowled out our captain of cricket (Sam) with my first ball. Our headmaster gave me a quizzical look. “Do that again,” he said. So I did. Because no one had trained me, I had developed the talent of a young Shane Warne leg spinner.
The next week I was in the cricket team. I took 7 for 25 in my first match. I couldn’t bat – I had never had any training – but I became an accomplished slip catcher and fielder. I also won the fencing cup and the sabre cup.
But as for our “God like” (his view) games coach, who ignored me before that, I would like to say these warm words of affection and forgiveness, learned after years of spiritual discipline.
Fuck you, you twat.
You were and always will be
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March 14, 2015 at 6:26 pm -
” He never touched me, he never leered at me. He was a kind, elderly gent ”
I don’t see you guys rating
The kind of mate I’m contemplating
I’d let you watch, I would invite you
But the queens we use would not excite youMurray Head-One Night In Bangkok
I was taught Chess by my Dad and then by a Master/Grandmaster. I was crap, don’t have the ‘thinking tackle’ for it. …I then taught my ten year old younger brother to play and within a day he was not just beating me but ‘annihilating’ me. He went on to win all the tournaments at his age range before deciding that Chess wasn’t challenging enough and started watching OU programmes on Nuclear Physics. BASTARD! Nothing worse than having a younger sibling whose IQ is genius squared level, nothing worse except maybe a genius squared younger Brother who also happens to have an “Aw Shucks,it’s nothing” photographic memory. BASTARD SQUARED!
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March 14, 2015 at 6:31 pm -
“I then taught my ten year old younger brother ”
that should have read ‘ten years younger brother ‘
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March 14, 2015 at 7:12 pm -
Maybe it’s a genetic thing. I can’t remember ever learning to play chess. My much older brothers seem to have taught me when I was a toddler, so I didn’t learn – it was something I just did. So when my ghastly Primary School Headmaster introduced his novel and progressive “chess day”, I didn’t have much competition. So he graciously agreed to play me. How old was I? 10? He lost, and I still remember his ungenerous, forced smile. Nasty piece of shit, he was. I later learned he spiked my references to the local Grammar School. Which is why I had to go boarding.
I hope the fucker died in agony.-
March 14, 2015 at 7:53 pm -
“I would like to say these warm words of affection and forgiveness, learned after years of spiritual discipline.”
Ahh I see thou too art a follower of the Great Teacher who bade us forgive our brother until seventy times seven…
…the 491th time we are, of course, free to smack him up side his stupid head.
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March 14, 2015 at 8:58 pm -
“Sometimes he would beat me, and sometimes I would beat him.” Some school-masters of my knowledge would pay good money for that. Or maybe you meant chess ……
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March 14, 2015 at 5:31 pm -
Your father taught you to be a thief? Fascinating. Have you taught your children to steal too?
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March 14, 2015 at 5:48 pm -
March 14, 2015 at 7:16 pm -
I think nicking off the council was just seen as repatriation of funds rather than stealing…
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March 14, 2015 at 6:54 pm -
On a ’75 theme I think “Bratislavan Rancidly” or whatever it’s called is absolutely 4king awful. Whoever decided that it was their greatest achievement needs to see a 4king doctor.
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March 14, 2015 at 8:00 pm -
1975. Just finishing off at Sandhurst. Then Buck House Guard. Then across the water to discover the odd disemboweled body on the Ardoyne interface during the long hot summer of ’76.
Tell that to the kids of today and they don’t believe you.
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March 14, 2015 at 9:01 pm -
I had reason to spend some time in Belfast around ’81 – a scary experience as a civilian, must have been pretty grim in uniform.
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March 14, 2015 at 9:24 pm -
The long interview with Tonya Lee has now been blocked in the UK due to a legal complaint. If anyone hasn’t seen it and wants to, here it is:
https://www.sendspace.com/file/ewq3oc
And here is my take on the Cosby affair in the US:
http://www.thelatestnews.com/gloria-allred-attacks-the-statute-of-limitations/
the parallels with Savile are striking; the few allegations for which there are specifics are easily refuted, plus most of the accusers are either demented, not the sort of girl you’d take home to meet mother, or just plain liars seeking their 15 minutes of fame.
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March 14, 2015 at 10:17 pm -
1975. I finished off my 6th year at high school and then got a student job at Calori Gas for six weeks prior to starting work with a bank. My parents thought this was a splendid idea. When I wasn’t banking I played in a rock band, sometimes 4 to 5 gigs a week. We played Free, Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, Yes, etc. etc. Great days. We played at the prize giving at the school we all left in June 1975. We were the first rock band to be allowed to play in the school.
I had long hair which was in issue for the banks Head Offuce. The manager at the bank I worked in was sympathetic and has me pin my hair back and up so when I had my photo taken for bank records it looked like my hair was okay. I used to wear a three pice suit and almost always with Doc Martins.
Before I join the bank my last pay with Calor Gas was £86.00 for my last week which included holiday pay. I bought a shiny green suit, a dart board and an EKO 12 string guitar and had £20 left. My first months pay from the bank was £63.00
We got a manager for the band and we were unofficially signed to a label that included a huge Scottish band. We had a lot of gear and it was always a problem to get it to the gigs. On some occassions we used the local fishmongers van and we got fish scales on the gear. Great days really. My girlfriend at the time was from a pretty well off family and I used to meet the guys at lunchtime in Cockburn a Street in Edinburgh and we’d tour the local denim shops etc who mainly played Dark Side of the Moon and then visit the music shops and tried out new gear or the stuff we couldn’t afford yet,
After that I’d head to one of the big posh hotels and take afternoon tea with my girlfriend and her parents. Then they’d take us both home and the guys would collect us and we’d head of to that nights gig. We also played at the local church! A Wee Free Church. The minister had let us use the church hall for practicing and we played in the church if he felt it would be good. We didn’t rock as it were we played light stuff.
Great days. I’d love to go back and do it all over again but with more sense and appreciation.
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March 14, 2015 at 11:22 pm -
1975 – Lived in Leek, Staffs, had 4 year old and 3 year old boys. I did some part-time work in the evenings at a Care home and also at a Slimma Slacks factory to help bring in some money. My most important work was the home, husband and children. Husband came home for dinner (that’s lunch for the posh folks) each working day and we liked to listen to William Hardcastle on World at One and when husband went back to work we had Listen with Mother and then walking in the unspoilt countryside nearby. Late summer – Picking bilberries – apple and bilberry pie anyone? Luncheon Vouchers from his work were very helpful in keeping us going – 1 wage, buying house, running car, two children and wife in very badly paid part-time work – and I have to mention the time the children were influenced by an older boy to eat Laburnum Seeds and they ended up in hospital. They thought it was fantastic – after the ipecacuanha turned them green and made them vomit – a goods night sleep and a three course breakfast which they never got at home- oh happy days….
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March 14, 2015 at 11:46 pm -
1975 must have been the year when I was sitting on the loo practising the letter “r” and finally getting rid of the rattle, playing tug of war with my cousin over control of the cat (he had the head, I had the tail) and losing the crown of a blue straw hat to vengeful Tom!
By the way, there’s some astounding stuff out there about your Marcia N. Google name with “untouchables” for 2006 article. Her name and/or the name of her organisation comes up in relation to both RH cases [sic]. The Mirror implies her organisation was contacted by the main accuser in the Yewtree one.
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March 15, 2015 at 2:01 am -
1975 was a good year to be an 7 come 8 year old, the weather was mild (not like the endless summer of ’76) and school was a mild distraction with pleasant teachers rather than the torturous PC boredom of the modern era.
I had my bike and was free to go where I wanted when I wanted as long as I was back by sunset of 7PM, whichever was the earliest.
Cub Scouts was camping in the grounds of the local Sunday school and barbecue was cooking sausages over a fire made of a dozen cast-off bricks and part of a disused fire guard. Add some ketchup and they were the very nectar of the gods.
Akela was a rather gruff old bloke was a former WW2 soldier who chain smoked some dreadful cigarettes (Senior Service I think – they were the long thin packets with a sailor on them), for the benefit of Yewtree officers, I can confirm that I was never molested once at either school or cubs, but was called a “bloody idiot boy” more than once. Quite rightly in my opinion.
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March 15, 2015 at 9:19 am -
I know it’s bad form to get pedantically classical here, but ‘ambrosia’ was the food of the Gods, ‘nectar’ was what they drank (unless, of course, the sheer volume of acidic ketchup had dissolved the aforementioned, probably incinerated, sausages into a composite drink, in which case the term ‘nectar’ may enjoy some functional validity).
I’ve already got my coat …..
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March 15, 2015 at 4:07 am -
’75. Went on the NATO Psy Warfare course at Old Sarum. Can’t tell you about it without killing you all with psychowaves after.
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March 15, 2015 at 4:10 am -
I lied. It was 76′ but that’s psywar for you. Of course, it could have been ’77. Maybe.
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March 15, 2015 at 9:04 am -
It’s all in your mind… all in your mind…. all in your mind….
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March 15, 2015 at 9:58 am -
I passed my Chief Mate Certificate in Liverpool at the end of 1974 and joined a bulk carrier (Achilles) in Chiba, Japan on 10th January 1975. Spent the next 8 months sailing between Japan, Australia, the USA and Vancouver. Timber from Vancouver to Tokyo, Melbourne and Sidney and alumina from Gladstone in Queensland to Everett in Washington. The alumina became aluminium used to manufacture Boeings. Then back to Vancouver to do it all again. Happy days. 4 months leave at the end of it with no memory at all – alcohol does that to the brain cells I understand!
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March 16, 2015 at 3:33 pm -
War. Parents told me to pay rent if I wanted to stay at school post ‘O’ Level. I did. I got a job Thursday evenings, Friday evenings and all day Saturdays and all week in school holidays on the provisions counter (they’d call it a “deli counter” these days) of a local supermarket. The pay was not bad. But I figured – if I’m paying rent, I’m no longer your child, I am your lodger and I claim lodger’s rights. Didn’t get them. Never got a key to the front door, never had a choice of what or when to eat, had to buy all my own clothes (of course, designed to piss off my oh so controlling mum who, by now, realised that she had given much of that control away), used to come home all hours and row if I was in later than 10 p.m. I was 17. War was bloody, psychological and brutal. It went on until I moved out and didn’t end until after my father died in 1982….we hadn’t spoken for some time after a row about me dying my hair blue (which was ironic because when I was needed to take him to hospital after his first heart attack six months earlier and my hair was pink, there was no comment at all), but of course, by then I wasn’t needed any more.The truce after he died was always tense until mum offed it in 1999.
Funny thing though, I still (in my late 50s) dream about them quite often.
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March 19, 2015 at 8:20 pm -
Thought I had better add some of the Teheran tales, CRs death depressed me so didn’t feel much like writing. After the idyllic summer in 1978 the first sign that it might be serious was the bomb scare in the restuarant below our apt. for supposedly selling alcohol but most did. Next came a curfew, that was when we were late and got stopped at the Egyptian Embassy at machine gun point, having had a few drinks I can’t say I was worried so they let us go. Still wasn’t affecting us much at that stage since most of the trouble was in downtown Teheran. I was so unconcerned that I went for an interview at the British Embassy and got caught up in a demonstration, not much fun with high heels and a load of shopping. One of the shops pulled us in and put the grill down until it passed then an Iranian girl told me to stay with her and let her to the talking. We managed to get into an orange taxi with a few other Iranians as we came to the Shahs monument, can’t remember the name now, they were burning a huge picture of the Shah and the passengers were all cheering and chanting death to the Shah, no choice but to join in! Finally made it home to frantic calls from my husband who had heard about the riot and knew I was in the area, things started moving fast soon after, shops were closing and there was some hostility but my Iranian friend took me shopping and did all the talking, I just wore a headscarf . Then came the night when we stood on the roof and watched mortars being lobbed downtown, pictures of Khomeni started to appear openly and more women started to wear Chadors. It was frightening but we all still thought it would be resolved as the army was standing firm. There were some very funny moments though, the time we got I to an orange taxi with some Chador clad women, the driver asked if we were American? Told him we were Scottish, he spoke to the three women and then said that was ok, they liked the Scots as they were fighting the English for independence! Bit premature there. Often went out with Shaheen a Saudi niece of Sheik Yamani, she drove like a maniac and drove the Iranian drivers mad but she could curse fluently in five languages including Farsi which usually stunned them. It was pretty boring most of the time as we couldn’t really go out at night, playing cards and having a drink mostly while trying to get some news on the world service. Friday’s were a bit fraught as that was when they poured out of the Mosques in white sheets, signifying ready to die. The chants were beginning to worry us. Fed up we decided to go to Istanbul for a break, they were having trouble too! It was freezing, the power kept going off and I couldn’t eat most of the food. Then one night we passed a little cafe selling chips so went in. Slowly it dawned on us that there were a few woman but men kept coming and going and that it was some sort of brothel, not that I cared as long as I got the chips. When we went for our return flight the Turkish staff said we were insane going back. By January the company was offering to let wives and children go home and staff they could do without, my husband was on their last to go list and I wasn’t going without him and my cat. Khomeni came back to a rapturous reception and the soldiers refused to fire on the people giving them flowers and that was really the end. I’ve got to hand it to the Americans, they were really well organised, moved us to the Hilton, with pets, we were only told the night before when we were going out as the military planes came in. I think when we were escorted by the Iranian military to the airfield was the only time I was really scared, they deserted us halfway and our coach was surrounded, it would only have taken one to start throwing stones but we made it in the end. Took ages to take off as a dog escaped on the runway, it was a most uncomfortable trip, cold, noisy and only coffee. The pilot assured us he had evacuated Vietnam and Lebanon and would get us out, big cheer when we cleared Iranian air space! Everything was organised in Greece for us, hotels, money and,when we were ready to leave a flight to wherever we wanted to go. Ran around trying to get all the papers for Suzy to get her into Brussels only to land at a very quiet time and no one even looked at us let alone the cat. We were lucky, two days after we left all the news of incoming flights stopped and everything fell apart. The few friends who were still in Teheran were forced to leave with what they stood up in when they were free to go. Life has been fairly peaceful since. I am sure I missed out loads but it is long enough for now.
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March 20, 2015 at 12:08 am -
Phew! It does remind me a great deal of what I’ve read and seen of the evacuation of Saigon in 1975. Remarkable ‘adventure’, if you don’t mind it being called that. Thanks for sharing it.
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March 20, 2015 at 12:26 am -
Thanks, a funny thing was we had been encouraged to send large trunks home and we sent two. The one with a Persian carpet and a few copper souvenirs eventually turned up in Germany, can’t even remember how we got it. The other one which had a dozen full length dresses including my wedding dress and a lovely medieval style gown my aunt had made me, never did turn up! I was sorry to lose them.. It was a very strong trunk and I heard that if they could open a trunk they just blew it open. Shame these dresses had a lot of memories for me.
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March 20, 2015 at 12:30 am -
Meant to make it clearer, we got the second last flight out of Teheran, we used to wait in Greece for news of the next one due in but there was only one more. My previous post looked like it was after we left for Brussels but that was a week later.
… I recall that having £30 in my fist made me richer than Croesus in my own mind. It was only a” summer job”… Holiday cover. My diary records an appointment I had to keep.
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