Five Miles Out

Words That Were Spoken In Anger

A band that I would have never considered until I was an adult. I first really picked up on the Hollies when they rereleased He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother in the late 80s. I got a best of the Hollies compilation in the 90s and they are seriously under rated. Beautiful vocal harmonies and well crafted pop songs.

I remember the first comic I got regularly was Pippin in Playland. It was more like an illustrated story book as there were no speech balloons. The only story I remember was Rupert the Bear.

One perk of being on holiday is we usually got an extra comic or two. We went caravanning in Wales in 1972 and I tried TV Comic as it had Doctor Who and Valiant which had Star Trek. A lot of Who fans have fond memories of the TV Comic strip but I did not like it. The other strips were unfunny comedy.

On the other hand Valiant had a couple of pages (though probably more in its original printing – it looks like it was several pages resized) of Star Trek in colour, the first story I saw had intelligent giant snails. It had comedy strips like the Swots and the Blots (a Bash Street Kids ripoff), the Nutts and Billy Bunter. There were also adventure strips like Janus Stark – a Houdini like escapologist; Kid Pharoah about a returned from the dead Pharoah who was a wrestling champion; The Wild Ones about two boys brought up in the wilderness who were peak physicals specimes. I caught the end of The Steel Claw and a run of Kelly’s Eye where he was exploring the universe with an old man in a grandfather clock (bigger on the inside than the outside), and Raven on the Wing about a Romany football player.

Star Trek soon disappeared from Valiant. In 1974 it merged with Lion (British Comics did this a lot to try and combine sales). It added other great new strips like Adam Eterno – plagued to travel through time until killed with a god weapon, and it added Robot Archie to my least favourite Valiant strip – Captain Hurricane, improving it greatly. I did not really like war comics – odd issues of Battle and Victor really did not interest me.

(Adam Eterno)

A lot of these characters would be seen (some under slightly different names for copyright reasons) in Alan Moore’s run on Captain Britain and in Grant Morrison’s Zenith.

(Kelly’s Eye)

Valiant obviously suffered a sales drop – Pat Mills had arrived with Action and the old-fashioned tales of derring-do were stale to some readers. It merged with Battle, some strips being wound up suddenly to end their storylines. The only Valiant strips to survive were the war stories.

I gave it up – a story that featured tortured prisoners in Burma were too much for 10-year-old me. I tried Tiger for a few months – but sports stories were not my thing either. Luckily 1977 would see me discover a whole new world of comics.

This track is one of the Hollies less well known, but it deserves to be better known.

The Baby

We Stood and Stared

Where did heavy metal start? Well for me it was with Clive Hook who was doing the music for Scott House assemblies at Meridian. In the fourth form Mr Newbury was our head of house and he wanted Clive to play some loud music for an assembly. Clive asked if I could help him and Mr Newbury agreed (I am not sure playing a record is a two man job, but it meant I could sit in the production gantry high above the hall rather than in full sight of the teachers). Clive brought in Deepest Purple, a compilation of Deep Purple’s greatest hits. He played on Smoke on the Water and it thumped away and as it was about to get going Mr Newbury waved to turn the volume down. He look like he was more of a Mantovani man than a metal fan.

Some people suggest that the Beatles invented heavy metal with the feedback on some songs in the mid-60s, but in reality it kind of emerged with various groups at the end of the decade. It is hard to say who invented it, as a group like Led Zeppelin was considered a metal band in 1980 but listening to their albums now very few of their songs would fall into their category.

In reality in the late 60s you have groups like Cream inching their way towards a heavier and heavier sound but I think it is Black Sabbath and Deep Purple are the first recognisably metal bands (though fans of Slayer and modern metal will find it very mild). Black Sabbath will be coming higher up the list but Deep Purple are probably the most important heavy metal band in that period, not just because of the sound but the influence that they had on the music.

The band went through multiple line ups, the most successful was Ian Gillan, Richie Blackmore, Jon Lord, Roger Glover and Ian Paice which produced classics like Child in Time, Black Night, Highway Star and Fireball.

(The Gillan line up)

After Gillan and Glover left they were replaced by David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes. This was primarily the influence of Richie Blackmore. It only lasted two albums before Blackmore left to form Rainbow (a pattern emerges with Richie Blackmore – gifted musician, difficult human being). Coverdale and Glover left too. There were a couple of great tracks like Stormbringer and Burn from this era, but it was not as good as the Gillan period.

(The Coverdale line up)

Deep Purple were over as a serious band, even though they struggled on with Tommy Brolin. Whitesnake, Rainbow and Gillan were spawned from the band. There have been multiple reunions and the band still exists, with drummer Ian Paice the only man to play on every album.

The Gillan line up is the best but my favourite track is from the Coverdale line up (though it only just beats Child in Time). So that is two appearances on the list for David Coverdale as a vocalist – here and with Whitesnake.

Burn

Playlist

Hush
Speed King
Child in Time
Black Night
Fireball
Demon’s Eye
Highway Star
Smoke on the Water
Space Truckin’
Woman From Tokyo
Burn
Stormbringer
Perfect Strangers

Take a Load For Free

Take a Load For Free

I went to the Doctor’s in 2014 and they told me that I was pre pre-diabetic (yes two pre) – or just a bit above average would be another way of putting it. They advised me to cut out drinking orange juice (which I had been doing to stay healthy but turned out that it is rammed full with sugar.

A couple of weeks later I drove to Colchester to go to a hospital appointment with Dad. When we got out of the appointment I really needed to get back to work and declined his offer of lunch, then changed my mind – it was the summer holiday and I was hungry. We just went to Frankie and Benny’s at Stanway a couple of miles away. On the way out the sore throat that I had been feeling for a few days felt noticeably worse. This was nothing to worry about as I have suffered from sore throats all my life – so much so that I had penicillin so often that I was allergic to it by the time I was seven years old (it was not fashionable to have your tonsils removed when I was that age, despite Dr Harper in Royston having a reputation as a butcher). Even now whenever I get a bug a sore throat is always the first symptom.

The sore throat did not go away, if anything it got worse. August is very busy at work with the year end and then enrolment later in August. I went to the Doctor and told him about it, as well as the fact that I was feeling very run down. He sent me for blood tests.

A week later with me feeling dreadful he called to say that I had the Epstein Barr virus – glandular fever to most people. I had seen this twice before in my life. My Mum had had it when I was a child and been very sick for months and Dave had had it after we had left school and he had been laid up with it for a couple of months. Despite this I decided that I was different and could soldier on.

Two days later I was sitting in a senior management on a hot summer day. Everyone else was in light summer wear. Me? Despite never normally feeling cold I had a hoodie, parka, hat and gloves on (the temperature was around 27 Centigrade at that point). I gave up and went home – called the Doctor and was signed off work.

I went to stay at Dad’s. He was going into hospital and I could be there and look after the dogs and be in a healthier environment. I was so ill I was not in contact with work for the first time since I had started there. When I tried to visit Dad in hospital I got lost on the journey home and had to pull over in a layby to put the satnav on – a journey that I must have done over 2,000 times.

Dad’s stay in hospital was longer than expected and in the end I had to really have a strong talk with the ward sister as he was not being given the after operation treatment the surgeon had told them to do. Even that left me exhausted.

I was keen to get back to work so went home hoping that I would be fit enough to return. After 2 months I persuaded the Doctor that I could go back 2 hours a day, a couple of days a week. It was not a good idea and I was not ready, I was weak and exhausted even with that low schedule.

I defied the Doctor’s advice increasing my hours before I was ready, but I hated being at home and letting people down. It is scary now as I really do not remember much about the 2014/15 academic year. I have hardly any photos of that period and the ones I have are taken by other people.

(Monoux – where I still work, winter 2014/15).

In retrospect it is obvious that I did not give myself the chance to get better. I hoped going to Italy in the summer of 2015 with Dad would help – more on Italy another time.

Stubborness can be helpful but in this case it was not a good thing at all.

I heard The Band on a compilation when I was at university. They were Bob Dylan’s backing group but went off on their own. Their soft country rock is soothing but this track, the first I heard by them, is their standout.

The Weight

We Build a Tower of Stone

I learnt about Rainbow backwards. The first songs I heard were singles in 1981 from Difficult to Cure like I Surrender. I earned income babysitting in that last year in Royston and one of my clients was the Greening family – John Greening had their previous album Down To Earth (most famously featuring Since You Been Gone) with Graham Bonnet on lead vocals. It was only after university that I got their first three albums, Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow (always modest Richie Blackmore), Rainbow Rising and Love Live Rock and Roll with vocals by the incomparable Ronnie James Dio (see post https://fivemilesout.home.blog/2020/09/05/just-like-somebody-slammed-the-door/). John’s wife Joan was a playwright and TV writer, and it was interesting to see her stuff and recognise the real life people. http://www.joangreening.com/ The Continental Quilt had its world premiere by the Royston Amateur Dramatic Society.

The acceptable face of comics in the late 70s and early 80s was 2000AD. I had chicken pox just after it launched – all my siblings had had it and I got it last and worst. Anne bought me issue 2 to cheer me up and it became my comic of choice for the first few months. But, but, but……

Even at the age of 10 I was not that impressed, at least not like my contemporaries were. It was science fiction but Invasion was a war story, MACH 1 was the Six Million Dollar Man, Harlem Heroes was a sport strip (Harlem Globetrotters mixed with Rollerball), Judge Dredd was Dirty Harry, Flesh was a cowboy strip with dinosaurs and there was a Dan Dare comeback. It was better than other British comics of the day, but that does not say a lot. Even worse Judge Dredd quickly become the most popular strip whereas I though Flesh (cowboys and dinosaurs was the best).

I discovered Marvel comics and after Flesh ended its first run, I dropped it.

Some Dredd stories were better than others – The Judge Child, The Cursed Earth and anything with Judge Death were good. I picked up loads of The Cursed Earth sequence in the half price bins at newsagents – Newmarket was particularly good for that. Part of my disaffection with Dredd is that I have never been a big fan of Mike McMahon’s art – Brian Bolland or Carlos Ezquerra? Definitely. I did try and go back to Dredd much later on in life to see if it was something I was missing but it wasn’t – it’s just not for me.

(The caption says it)

I also have a deep affection for Robo-Hunter – the Gibson art, the tongue in cheek storytelling and willingness to just be crazy makes it a fun strip.

I came back properly when Alan Moore got regular gigs (he had started doing Future Shocks with one offs like The Wages of Sin and They Sweep the Spaceways and a semi regular comedy series about Abelard Snazz – the man with the multi-story brain). Skizz was like a British ET, but way better than the saccharine film. It was set in Birmingham and has a lovely sequence – the human protagonist liked The Police and Madness and after an encounter with the boys in blue Skizz agreed that Madness were preferable to The Police.

(Skizz)

DR and Quinch was a comedy about two adolescent chancers, starting with an elaborate time travel scheme to destroy the Earth and going on from there. Moore is not remembered so much for his comedy (and he does not really rate this strip), but he is brilliant at it. Like Captain Britain and Marvelman Alan Davis did the art – sadly the two of them fell out (a post about that later on) which is a shame as they worked beautifully as a team.

(Right to left – Waldo “Diminished Responsibility” Dobbs & Ernest Quinch).

The best was Halo Jones – planned as seven series cycle it showcased a more realistic future world with a female lead. Most fans hated it as there was no action – the first series was really just looking at a future society and what life was like in it. Head and shoulders above anything else in the comic.

(Halo Jones – Ian Gibson art)

Issues over copyright meant that it only ran three series and Moore was gone. 2000AD were running a lot of inventory material at this time as there had been a failed attempt to launch a Judge Dredd comic that came to nothing (the Megazine would come later). There were also terrible strips like Ace Trucking Company (CB radio in space) and the dreary Rogue Trooper (another war comic with a few SF Trappings). There were some good strips like Nemesis the Warlock, Slaine and The ABC Warriors, all by Pat Mills.

I liked Grant Morrison’s Zenith – a typically British superhero who got drunk and was in it for the money, but after the first series bought the reprint collections (and after the mid 90s they got held up in copyright hell too).

(Zenith).

Since then I have ignored 2000AD apart from reprint collections, but then I am like that with all comics now. I haven’t bought a monthly comic book since the late 90s.

This song always reminds of Pat Mills’ Slaine strip in 2000AD – some desolate landscape with slaves building a tower out of flesh and bone. The second of three tracks on this list with vocals by Ronnie James Dio.

Stargazer

Playlist

Man on the Silver Mountain
Catch the Rainbow
Starstruck
Stargazer
A Light in the Black
Gates of Babylon
Kill the King
All Night Long
Eyes of the World
Since You’ve Been Gone
I Surrender
Can’t Happen Here

Just This Once Twice Forever

Songs you would never have admitted to liking at the time. Wham! Were a band that girls liked, not for boys and proper music fans. Though they had started their career with Wham Rap!, which was played on evening radio shows their album Fantastic was stuffed full of hits like Bad Boys, Young Guns and Club Tropicana that are still staples of eighties nostalgia albums.

Their second and last studio album, Make It Big, is also stuffed with hits and was out when I went to university. It would have been social suicide to admit to liking Wham!, in my first week at St Catherines a group of us were out at a jazz club saying how awful they were (but inside I was thinking I would rather listen to Wham! than the jazz). There is a hidden gem that they never released called Heartbeat that you should listen to, but my favourite track is Freedom – absolutely joyous from first to last and perfect for driving in an open topped car on the open road.

My sister, Alison Church, was a Wham! fan. She went to work in Clacton as an apprentice veterinary nurse the same time as I started work. I had my first car and she had a moped to get to and from Clacton as it was a live in job. Luckily she proved far more adept at riding the moped (named Humphrey) than I did at driving.

After her training was completed she gave up the job and went off around the world with Wendy. She spent a lot of time in New Zealand (thanks again for the All Blacks shirt – you could not get them in the UK back then) and after that she went to the USA (a San Francisco 49ers T shirt with my name on!). I no longer have either due to wearing them so much (and it means I would not see how they no longer fit me). It was amazing to me that anyone would do that – this was in a world without mobiles or the internet and news would be infrequent.

When she returned to the UK she ended up in Southampton at Seadown, first as a veterinary nurse and then as the Head Nurse. She married John and had wonderful two daughters – Lucy and Rebecca. She also has her own horse and the dog Murphy, who has a great personality but less brains. Bex is a vet herself and spent many years trying to train Murphy – the dog did his best, but he was not up to Crufts standards.

(John and Alison)

(Murphy leads the way)

Alongside all this Alison completed a degree. Dad has a gallery of photos of family members in their degree outfits and it has helped some people persist with their studies. I think getting a degree as an adult is not easy, so kudos to Ali for that too.

Oh, and Alison must be a real life Dorian Gray – she ages at about one tenth of the normal rate.

It is not easy to see her as much as I would like these days, but I know she is there. She may not be my sister by blood, but that is not what matters we are all one family with a shared history, she is my sister in every way that matters.

Proud of you Als.

Freedom

Playlist

Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)
Young Guns (Go For It)!
Bad Boys
Club Tropicana
Heartbeat
Freedom
Careless Whisper
A Different Corner
Praying For Time
Cowboys and Angels
Outside
Fastlove
Jesus To A Child
Killer/ Papa Was A Rolling Stone

Why Go To Learn the Words of Fools?

I don’t know why, but when I was younger, I kept confusing the Kinks and the Small Faces. Both have an iconic song and are from the same period, but apart from that they really are not that similar.

The Small Faces were, in some ways, the first Britpop group. They were also a very important psychedelic band.

I am quite puritanical about most drugs. I have tried to smoke cigarettes just five times. The first was at a scout camp where I was made to do it so I could not grass on the others that were doing it. In the words of someone more famous, I did not inhale. The other times were when I was very drunk and trying to impress a woman who smoked, you will not be surprised that as a non-smoker I coughed like hell and was not remotely impressive.

I have indulged in alcohol and when I was younger we did that a lot and regularly. It was, and is, legal though. In the 1990s we had problems with students getting drunk at the College where I worked, that has long disappeared and the problems with young people across London are now illegal drugs.

I have never used any non-prescription drugs (though I was once actually given speed by a doctor on prescription, I never ended up using it). I do not want to alter the balance of my mind or take any risks with it.

I actually hate the smell of marijuana, I prefer cigarette smoke. However marijuana is so prevalent in the UK now it is ridiculous that it is illegal. I can smell it on the streets from morning to night. If people were drinking alcohol at these times they would be subject to massive peer pressure to keep their faculties normal and safe. I have seen cars driving around London before 8am with marijuana smoke coming out. Allowing people to break the law means that the law itself becomes open to question in other areas (known as the Cummings effect now).

The government were very worried about the strength of weed being sold – especially Spice. Legalise it, tax it and control the strength. Not only will it raise tax for the state and reduce the level of intoxication it will also cut away a major strand of the funding of organised crime. All the problems with county lines drug dealing could be cut away too.

The same applies to other drugs. Deaths from ecstasy are due to the fact that it is cut with various dubious chemicals. Control it, tax it, have public information campaigns about it. Look at what Prohibition did in the USA – it set the Mafia up as organised crime syndicates for the rest of the 20^th century. Of course criminals may find new areas to expand into but why let them continue to profit so easily?

The only question is which drugs will be left as illegal. Where is the line drawn between the state controlling what people can choose to indulge in and there the individual can choose? Anyway we need tax revenue to replace that being lost as people give up smoking.

No law that cannot be enforced is worth having on the statute book.

Itchycoo Park

You’re Under the Gun

This where I sound like a grumpy old man, moaning about how the world today has changed for the worse. The supposedly inevitable time when a man’s broad mind and narrow waist change places. But I’m going to say it anyway.

I’m not a native Londoner, my formative years were in Royston and Brightlingsea, very different to Newham where I have lived for the last 25 years – maybe that is the difference. People, young and old, around here cross the road without looking.

No wonder the young people don’t care as parents step off the curb without checking either way. After a while you realise that you have to be aware of everyone on the pavement as well as the cars. If people are that stupid Darwinism suggests that rather than trying to save them we should eliminate them from the gene pool. I am not advocating Death Race 2000 here, but pedestrians do have responsibility when they walk across roads.

When I was 5 we had a lovely afternoon where some people came in and introduced us to the Tufty Club. Two hours on road safety but they made it fun. I loved the Tufty club, we had badges and puzzle books – it was great.

Later there was the Green Cross Code with Dave (Darth Vader) Prowse as the eponymous hero Green Cross Code Man.

It almost makes me want to see Jaywalking introduced as a crime. How mad are people who push prams/ push chairs out into busy traffic in front of them? Daring drivers to avoid a tiny child.

While I am on the subject I know that cycling is green and healthy. However I have seen so many accidents caused by cyclists who think that red lights do not apply to them or that when they see a red light they should just jump on a pavement and keep going. I saw one guy do this and knock over a schoolchild. He just got up and rode off.

If cyclists are to use the roads surely they should be required to wear appropriate safety gear and have insurance and a means of identifying them? I know my brother, who rides a lot, has proper insurance. It is not serious cyclists like him I am talking about, it is the ones who hit pedestrians and believe the laws of the road do not apply. London is not a good city for cyclists and it should be, but part of that is proper following of the rules.

As for people who ride electric scooters on the pavements… well there is a special corner of hell for them.

It burns me as a few years ago I was caught speeding. It was on the A13 near Dagenham where there is a 50mph average limit. I accelerated before the change to a 70mph limit and either had to pay a £60 fine or £97 to go on a speed awareness course and not get points. I opted for the latter. What was really interesting was on this AA course was that it showed that majority of accidents are caused by cyclists, pedestrians and lorries, however speed cameras can’t measure that, so they lecture and prosecute speeders. I’m not advocating speeding, but I don’t want to see dead children and most urban accidents are caused by children not using roads properly.

So why isn’t more emphasis put on this in school? Road safety is incredibly important, though the classes in London need to be attended by parents too as they are setting bad examples.

REO Speedwagon were an American soft rock band who were popular early in the 1980s. Really soft rock, but now I can admit my love of them.

Take It On the Run

Conversations With Dead People

This is another part of the explanation about why The Sopranos is not as innovative as people think it is, plus a recommendation of the TV work of Joss Whedon, another great of modern television.

After the Stephen Bochco series on network TV JM Straczynski created Babylon 5 – a series that ran for five seasons with an overarching storyline.. Straczynski was clever in that he had “trapdoors” set up for any cast member who left and he was only let down by rushing the end when the network would not confirm a fifth season, then having to make the fifth season with extra story. The first season is pretty grim though and could easily be slimmed down to about half a dozen episodes

I was on my own on a dull Saturday night in the late 90s and came across Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Sky. I had seen the movie years earlier and had seen they were making a TV series and was not sure why. The film was a one note joke. The episode I saw was Innocence, not a good place to start as it was the aftermath culmination of Buffy and Angels’ relationship. They sleep together and Angel reverts to his evil self – Angelus. A metaphor for how some men turn distant after they have slept with a woman. (And Twilight fans this is where the whole series was ripped off from).

There were a couple more episodes on Sky and then it went on hiatus.

(Back row: Giles, Angel, Oz – Front row: Xander, Cordelia, Buffy and Willow).

The BBC started showing it from the start, but for some reason stopped 5 episodes into Season 2. Sky started again from episode 9 of season 2.

Season 1 is good and confounds expectations. The “Big Bad” (a term coined by fans of the show) was The Master and the expectation was that he would be the ongoing villain, but Buffy kills him at the end of season 1. The villains in season 2 are the amazing Spike and Drusilla (later joined by Angelus). Spike was so popular he eventually became a good guy, luckily the insane Drusilla stayed evil and had lots of great moments. Her killing of the new slayer, Kendra, was absolutely chilling, as was Angelus pursuit and murder of Giles’ lover, Jenny Calendar.

The seasons ends with Buffy sending Angel to hell. The season structure was still a bit lumpy. There were “arc” episodes and then there were standalone stories. Though by the end of it they were trying to fill in this with Angelus cameoing in Killed By Death.

(Spike, Angelus and Drusilla)

Season 3 kills it. Out of 22 episodes two are ok and 20 are either very good or great (Anne and Amends if you must know). The cast have meshed together and have their characters nailed. The overarching story is integrated with villain of the week threats. I am also biased as it introduces my favourite slayer – Faith, played by someone who would crop up again in Whedon series – Eliza Dushku (formerly one of the small children in True Lies, that was disturbing as it was only five years earlier).

(Buffy with the best vampire slayer – Faith).

Success meant doubling down and Angel and Cordelia left the cast so that Angel could have his own show. I think the need to produce 44 episodes a year shows the strain. Season 4 of Buffy and season 1 of Angel are weaker again (and Angel “inspired” loads of moody scenes in Torchwood, that are not a patch on the original).

Season 5 changes things up with the introduction of Dawn and Angel improves a lot over the first season. Buffy’s death at the end of season 5 should have ended the series, but the shows continued with Angel on another network (though they still managed a crossover). Finishing Buffy would have denied us the musical episode Once More With Feeling, that other shows now feel the need to emulate.

Whedon went onto create Firefly. It may be that being cancelled after 13 episodes meant that it never had the chance to go bad, it is a series with no episode less than very good. Fox cancelled it – just another reason to be mad at them and Murdoch.

Dollhouse raises interesting questions about ethics of personality transplants and using people’s bodies (it is interesting to watch this and then Altered Carbon with a different take on bodies and minds). Too much of Dollhouse was people hiring the staff of the Dollhouse for sex. Whedon had left the series in the hands of his brother and his sister in law who were not as talented as him.

Whedon went onto feature films, though his behaviour on set has raised questions, particularly on Justice League.

Still Buffy was trailblazing in its structure and the fact that it had so many strong female characters. Let’s remember that. I think that it is genre prejudice that means that is not held in higher general regard – in the same way that sexism means The Sopranos is seen as more important and influential than Sex and the City.

Robert Miles cool down rave album was The chill out of the mid to late 90s.

Children

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwqmJilXxJY

Before the Thud of the Future

Steven Doubtfire recommended this album to me. We both like Led Zeppelin and he persuaded me to listen to Roy Harper’s Whatever Happened to Jugula? as Jimmy Page was playing guitar on it. It is nothing like Led Zeppelin, but I am glad that he persuaded me.

Why the hell do we teach Orwell to school children? Don’t get me wrong he is an amazing writer. In 2008 I decided to read Animal Farm and 1984 as I had never read them. I enjoyed both, a lot. However, my enjoyment was in a large part due to my understanding of what these books meant. I was able to see the historical parallels of Animal Farm and also understand that it was in the context of 1948 that 1984 was written and it was not really science fiction at all but political commentary.

So we teach these books to children in English classes where we have to explain the meaning behind them and they are bored and learn to hate them. Integrated teaching with a history curriculum might help, maybe even make it more exciting. More importantly we need to teach literature in a way that does not alienate people for the rest of their lives.

I hated how “classic” literature was taught in school. I admit to a bias I find most pre 20^th century literature almost unreadable with the exception of Conan Doyle or Wells. I have tried Dickens, Austen and the Brontes and just do not like it. It would be far better to encourage children to read at school rather than put them off by reading these books (and do not even start me on Shakespeare – they are plays, not books, they should be taught as part of drama). The number of people who leave school resolving never to read again shows that something is very wrong. Young people will read literature – but give them some choice. When students at our College were able to choose they picked The Kite Runner and really loved it.

I also read One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich as part of my literary catch up (and one day I will read The Gulag Archipelago) and it is shocking and a real insight into what life in Stalin’s gulags was like. I cannot recommend it too highly. All these books are relatively short, eminently readable and I think important. Mass reading of 1984 would surely help with people dealing this current government of liars and U turners.

This is the best track from Jugula.

Nineteen Forty Eightish

You’re a Pageant

Changing schools is traumatic and under the three-tier system (primary, middle and upper) you have to do it once more than in the two tier system (or two times extra when you move like I did).

Meridian Upper School, in Royston, is actually right next door to Greneway Middle School – the boundary between the two was quite amorphous as there was some sharing of a farm on the site. It was a very different school though – Meridian’s headteacher, Mr Stone, had a very low profile and the school was ruled with a rod of iron by Mr Dove, the deputy head. He stalked the corridors during lessons and woe betide anyone who had been sent out for misbehaviour by their teacher. Meridian still had the slipper in 1981.

In the third form, apart from maths, lessons were in one group. It was assumed that all the smartest students would opt to do German and go in a special tutor group. Given my lack of love for French I chose not to – I regret that because a knowledge of German would be useful and that group was well behaved, but on the other hand I would never have had the chance to get to know Graham Wright the way I did. That counts for far more.

Up until then John Bonney was the only person I knew who shared any of my interests, but Graham and I had loads in common, not least Dr Who, Science Fiction and comics. Our teaching group actually had a really good time.

We had lots of great teachers – Mrs Alderton for English who got fed up with the amount of science fiction some of us wrote in essays. We were told to cut it out and then I did it in my end of year exam – but what do you expect when one of the title choices was “The Dark Side of the Moon”. I got good marks for that one.

For geography we had Mr Firth straight out of teacher training. He lasted 38 years at Meridian and was the head teacher for a good part of it.

The only D grade I got was in achievement for art. It was a generous grade as in no way did I deserve that.

We had the feared Mr Dove for Religious Education, the school cheated by having several groups together and Mr Dove just talking to us, seemingly about anything he wanted. He told us that he had deliberately burnt his children to make them scared of fire – we had a long conversation in English class about that as we were worried about it. Towards the end of the year we were shown a video of a Scottish couple breaking up (the Meridian view of RE was very accommodating – more like PSHE). At the end they are talking to each other but separated. Mr Dove asked who thought that would get back together – most people said yes – the noes come from children whose parents were divorced. Mr Dove thought that we were the only ones who understood.

The best teacher was Mr James. He was our PE teacher but also taught our group science. He was fantastically fun and even got the naughty kids on board in our group. He ate daffodils and his desk top volcano went very wrong. He was tough in PE but we were his group and he treated us very differently – we were devoted to him. He took us for a day out at Whipsnade Zoo at the end of the year, which was great. When he said that he was leaving several of the girls cried and bought him a present. My respect for him was so high that I actually tried in Physical Education. He still never gave me a higher grade than C though.

They transferred a very badly behaved pupil called David something into the group part way through the year. He was a royal pain in the arse and disrupted our work ethic. He was a violent idiot.

At the end of the year we chose our O level options, had a complete suite of exams so they could put us in O level or CSE groups, and that group was split up. That was the last school year without pressure, really the last golden year of childhood.

Split Enz are another group where I only know a couple of tracks – this one and Six Months in a Leaky Boat.

I Got You