Five Miles Out

Sing it with me, just for today

I know there have been too many posts about comics in a short time– it is just how the music, and what it reminds me of, come up.

When I was a comic loving child and teenager the idea of there being comic shops was almost as outlandish as costumer superheroes. The most famous was Forbidden Planet in London, originally on New Oxford Street (but not the posher bit, at least in those days, west of Tottenham Court Road) and now on Shaftesbury Avenue. Both versions of the store are largely underground – presumably the rent is cheaper. It is geek central – books, comics, toys. Doctor Who, Harry Potter , Twilight, Hunger Games, anything for the fanboy or fangirl.

My first purchases there were two issues of Love and Rockets in 1985. It was an independent comic I had heard of by reading fanzines. It was definitely an eye opener. Los Bros Hernandez shared the comic. Half were Jamie’s stories of the Hoppers Barrio and its inhabitants – primarily Maggie and Hopey, but a big cast including many more female characters.

Betos’s stories were based around the Central American village of Palomar. The lives and experiences of a kaleidoscope of people. Both strands have had characters age in real time, totally abnormal in comics. There were also definitely sexual relationships and LBGTQ+ relationships depicted – in 1985. After Alan Moore Beto and Jamie Hernandez are my favourite comic creators.

GOSH was originally opposite the British Museum, though it has now moved to Lisle Street in Soho. At the first site it became my shop of choice in Central London as I had to go to a lot of meetings near Russell Square. It was easy to pop in on the way to the tube. It does the best line in non-superhero comics in London, with a lot of autographed books. It was seen in the background of scenes of the recent stunning TV series I May Destroy You.

Until its sad demise Comics Showcase on Charing Cross Road was my favourite. Again, it was big on the non-superhero comics and the staff were really friendly. It was forced out by the rising shop rents that are driving all the traditional bookshops out of that area. It was also the celebrity’s choice of comic book shop. Despite living in London for 26 years I haven’t seen many famous people around – not even on one boring visit to Tiger Tiger in the 90s. One Sunday afternoon in Comics Showcase I met Paul Gambaccini in there. Now the great Gambo is someone who had a big influence on my teenage musical tastes and the fact that he admitted on air to being a comics fan only made me admire him more. Despite being in my late 30s I was rendered pretty incoherent until I remembered his love for Golden Age comics and I had a brief talk about the Justice Society of America with him.

There are other comic shops in London. Mega City Comics in Camden is really good – but I have no real reason to go to Camden. Orbital is near Leicester Square but does not seem to have a USP.

Comics were as misunderstood as rap music. I think times have changed for both. Eminem is wonderfully talented and you should really listen to Curtain Call if nothing else.

Sing for the Moment

I saw a welcoming light

How real is the world we see? I mean how much of it have we really experienced and how much have we experienced only via television or cinema? When I was a child the sight of Spider-man swinging past the Statue of Liberty was not incongruous. At ten years old New York City was just as fantastical as a man with the proportionate powers of a spider. I realised this a couple of years later when an Alan Moore story had Captain Britain fly past Big Ben. There was a thrill at seeing the fantastical juxtaposed with somewhere that I had actually been to.

I am not the biggest traveller – but then even if one travels to the USA how well can one know it? It is a traveller’s experience, not the experience of living there. It is the USA that is so important in the post 1990 world, not just because of its geopolitical power, but also its almost monolithic power over cinema and television.

Most entertainment requires some form of disbelief suspension. Indian cinema means you have to accept that people will burst into song occasionally. Watching Midsomer Murders means that you have to believe that all those murders happen in that small area.

When a series is set abroad how does one know what is fantastical and what is real? In Bones there is a murder each week where the corpse is decayed badly, or just a skeleton. How many of those really happen in the USA each year? And does the FBI really let an anthropologist partner one of their leading field agents. I doubt both but I do not know. At least in iZombie there is a reason for all the murders, a zombie outbreak, of course then you have to suspend a disbelief in zombies. It says something about me that I find that easier than the issues in Bones.

In Britain there is a thoroughly distorted view of the USA. Prom nights and Halloween have invaded UK youth culture. Yet a huge number of American High School dramas were filmed in the same school on the West Coast (Buffy, Bring It On, Clueless all those late 90s films with Freddie Prinze junior). Usually they are full of rich, white students who have nice cars and plenty of money – like Beverley Hills 90210. Yet the problem presumably exists in reverse – all the USA knows about foreign countries are the distorted (and limited) experience they get from the media.

In middle school our library had a wonderful series of books about other countries. Tailored to tweens (not that the term existed then) it covered what school was like, what TV was popular, how their political systems worked, etc. Understanding other countries should be part of the curriculum at school. It might help stop some of the xenophobia that is growing in this country.

America is a deeply divided country between Republicans and Democrats. People usually refer to red or blue states. A former colleague of mine, Charles Bond, pointed out that this was actually a vast oversimplification. America is split between urban and rural. When you look at voting patterns the Democrats win urban areas, even in red states and the Republicans win rural ones in blue states. It is the proportion of rural and urban that gives the result. From Britain how well do most people really understand the USA?

(Charles is a fascinating man who knows the result of each constituency in General Elections going back years. He also has the weird distinction of his father being born in the 19^th century, he was born in the 20^th century and his sone was born in the 21^st).

Of course the reverse holds true. The USA is notoriously introspective – how many people in the USA still think Central America means Kansas? There are a huge number of Americans who have never gone abroad. Who think Socialism and Communism are the same thing. Their huge entertainment industry means that they have never been subject to that foreign cultural influence that Britain, or other countries, has been.

Yet there is hope. Netflix. Netflix buys up series from countries all over the world and subtitles them (a lot of people hate subtitles, but no one is going to bother subtitling crap, so you are likely to get something good). Series like Crash Landing on You or Money Heist are now on the streaming platform, providing a subverting influence. Now they may not be realistic views of South Korea or Spain, but they are views beyond CSI: whatever city and Law and Order. Maybe the USA will start showing empathy for other countries, well maybe when the Democrats are in charge

24 Hours From Tulsa

The City was sticky and cruel

I have been on both ends of redundancy. When I made people redundant while I was working in the insolvency team it seemed unreal – I was living a charmed life where my career was just on the rise. This came to a shuddering halt when Grant Thornton made me redundant. This despite a booming business and my contributions to audit and insolvency (see previous posts). I made two mistakes – misjudging a bad boss and not watching office politics. It was not enough to be doing good (or great as I was told) work you had to have the right people know that you were doing that work.

There are laws about redundancy – consultation is needed if a certain number of people are involved, how you should deal with people and how the process should work. Grant Thornton were good at not doing these. They used a combination of disciplinary dismissals, failed probations and judicious individual redundancies to slim the workforce. I am sure they thought they were being good to me as I got redundancy money and three months pay in lieu of notice, others were just kicked to the kerb. The thing you always have to remember about accountancy firms is that they are partnerships – everything you get is less money for the partners – this totally skews their view of the business.

I should have noticed the odd behaviour from a couple of people when I came back from holiday in 1992. The bad boss who did not want to discuss the big job I had done for her while she was on maternity leave. The partner who asked me a strange array of technical questions and the manager who was vague on my plans for jobs going forward.

They waited until 5.25pm on a Friday in late June and told me. No discussion, no warning. In – told – get your money Tuesday – get out. Unfortunately, all my family were uncontactable, but I went ahead with the standard Friday drinking with the lads – though no boose dulled the shock.

On the Tuesday I went and got my money and personal gear. I was polite, but terse. I had decided there was no point raging and I wanted a good reference. There was no point – when I got a job it took them over 6 months to bother sending a 2-line reference. Luckily, I was appreciated at NewVIc already so it did not have the effect that it could have done.

I was proud never to have made anyone redundant after that, especially when I joined senior management. Until 2016. At Monoux we had made some reorganisations where people had their jobs change – some had chosen redundancy, but we had not forced anyone out.

In 2016 we experienced a massive loss of student numbers and we had to make redundancies. The Principal took the opportunity to retool the College to better meet the needs of students. A new structure was drawn up and extra HR people got in place to manage the process and the impact.

Staff were told about the new structure and there was a consultation process. People had to compete to apply for jobs and again some chose to leave with enhanced redundancy.

You can never make the process nice, but you can make it less nasty. We were not perfect, but we did the best that we could. If you have to make people redundant don’t be a bastard about it.

I Drove All Night

If you’re so anti-fashion why not wear flares, instead of dressing down all the same?

Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Their first album is a brass based extravaganza called Searching For The Young Soul Rebels. This was not my kind of music in 1980. Dexy’s reinvented themselves and their second album was much more violin based, its most well-known track is Come On Eileen (several people have asked me why it is always played at white weddings).

I was okay with violins and prefer The Celtic Soul Brothers to Come On Eileen. It confused the teenage me – I either liked a group or did not, but at the time I liked the second album but not the first. When I saw their debut album in a record shop in Newmarket I did really like the title. Once I got over my dislike of brass on pop music I bought Searching For the Young Soul Rebels. By this time Dexy’s had reinvented themselves again and lightning did not strike for a third time. It was a spectacular failure.

I reinvented myself in 1990. pictures before and after look really different.

I have had to wear glasses from a very early age and I was totally fed up with them. My Mum had contact lenses and I decided I wanted them. My glasses left permanent marks on my ears and nose (they lasted about a year after I got contact lenses). I went to the optician in Brightlingsea and they said that I had to do a trial. The trial was putting some in some lenses in for half an hour and then to see how I got on. They put them in and I spent half an hour stumbling around with my eyes streaming.

I went back to the opticians expecting to be told I had failed and I was shocked when they said I was a success. I nervously purchased a pair of lenses, though I was not sure how I would manage to live with eyes streaming like that.

After my final accountancy exams I took two weeks off work. I collected my lenses. It took me over 20 minutes to get them in using a mirror. It was wonderful though – no streaming eyes. I got my untidy mop of hair cut down and went and bought a nice double-breasted suit.

I had already been taking more exercise – playing tennis and I took up badminton and then squash to lose more weight.

When I returned to work the receptionist asked who I was there to visit. Total success.

The contact lenses were amazing and I got a second set so I could rotate them. I had opted to get them tinted blue (my eye colour) which made them a lot easier to find when you dropped them.

I was told to wear them no more than 12 hours a day and have at least one day a week without them in. I ignored that completely. First thing in the morning they went in and last thing at night they came out. I worked with a woman at NewVIc who waited for her husband to go to sleep so she could take off her makeup and would wake up an hour before him to put it on. That was me with lenses.

I never had a big issue with touching my eyes after I got them (and you do not need to touch them – you sort of drop them in) and never needed a mirror. I did fall asleep drunk with one in once. I woke up with a terrible hangover believing a miracle had happened (I am not unique in that). At least I have never swallowed one and then found it, and used it again, after excreting it as one of my friends have.

The worst thing is if they get torn in your eye when you try to get them out. It rarely happens but when it does you should go to the optician. I once spent two days walking around with part of one in my eye and another one in the right place – I actually blinked out the fragment at Lakeside.

If only all reinventions were as easy as haircut and a set of lenses.

There There My Dear

As the traffic’s slowing down

It is different driving in the country from driving in the city. I wonder if that is part of the reason that different music is preferred in rural and urban environments. Driving along in good weather on an open road maybe favours rock music?

That is not to say it is always easy outside London (or Cambridge, etc.). Commuting to Ipswich was fine until you reached the outskirts of the town. 25 minutes to drive 22 miles and then the same to do the last two and half miles. I took to going to the gym before work so I could drive straight in. Occasionally roadworks would be needed on the A12. No one seemed to think about what or when would minimise disruption. Short roadworks cause far less disruption in school holidays, obviously no local authority possessed a school calendar.

In London I have driven up and down the North Circular from Beckton to Walthamstow and back thousands of time. Over the last 13 years the traffic has got much, much heavier. Not just cars but a lot more lorries. What that has also done has increased the frequency of accidents, especially fatal accidents. A lot of these involve lorries and motorbikes. Now I have seen motorbikes weaving in and out in chaotic ways so I am not ascribing blame to the lorries necessarily, though if I was on a motorbike I would be bloody careful as I would be far more vulnerable than other vehicles.

These accidents make the traffic even worse as the English police have to make sure that they investigate properly. In Europe the priority is to reopen main routes as quickly as possible. I once took over two hours to do the nine-mile journey home. A flyover was closed due to an accident, so everyone was diverted underneath the flyover. No one (the Police) thought that, given the massively increased traffic across the roundabout under the flyover, that some form of revised priority control was needed there.

Traffic and road planners need to drive their routes. One smart person though that they would close the A13 completely in the holidays from 10am to 2pm. This resulted in gridlock across half of East London that lasted until 7pm in the evening. When I contacted Transport for London, I was just told that they had not though that it would be that bad and they had expected it to clear in less than an hour after reopening. They were going to leave it like that for two more weeks though so maybe I could work from home or find an alternative route? (No to both – I was duty senior manager at the College and an alternative route was impossible as the gridlock extended several miles from my home).

The problem is a much wider one though – given the current scandal about Robert Jenrick. Jenrick allegedly over ruled a planning decision so notorious pornographer Richard Desmond would not have to pay a community infrastructure levy on his housing development. The levy is to help with cost of medical, educational and transport facilities that the additional population will need.

Developments are springing up all over East London. At a meeting with The Department for Education four years ago I was told that they intended they intended to add the equivalent of the population of Birmingham to East London over ten years. They had no plans for hospitals, the shortage of Doctors or schools or improving transport infrastructure. Not surprising from a Government of no talents that has been in place for ten years.

This is a long-standing problem for Britain. The austerity agenda stopped investment in health and education. To be fair the Labour regime of Brown and Blair had only invested by using Public Private partnerships. These cost more, are less efficient and saddle us with debt for years. But they did not count towards government debt.

At least in London control of public transport has not been privatised, so we are a lot luckier than the rest of the country. Road expansion is a bad idea given we are burning the planet so what we need is more public transport. More and better bus routes. For instance (if there is no traffic) I could drive to work in 12 minutes. By public transport I need two buses and a tube. Minimum 90 minutes. Even in London north south links are lousy, unless you go through the centre of the city.

There needs to be a rolling program of investment in the UK – into health, education and public transport. It is what the North Sea oil money should have been used for – rather than funding unemployment under Thatcher.

This is a great driving song – if you are not in a jam.

Rush Hour

The spirit dance was unfolding

Who was the most talented Beatle? Received wisdom says that it was John Lennon, but Jim Smith (a very smart man I know from online fora) made an impassioned case for Paul McCartney in an internet group that I was part of. The easy answer is not Ringo. Famously when asked if Ringo was the best drummer in the world, John Lennon answered that he was not even the best drummer in the Beatles.

If their solo careers are anything to go by then it is between Harrison and Lennon. Harrison’s output was relatively low but includes some interesting music – including the lovely When We Were Fab and All Those Years Ago about his time in the Beatles. Harrison was only 27 when the Beatles split. Imagine knowing that you have been part of the biggest band ever and you have the rest of your life to live with it being over?

Lennon and McCartney spent their early solo careers sniping at each other. Probably McCartney’s best post Beatles track is Live and Let Die, though I like Jet too. A lot of it is pretty awful though. Some commentators will say that Lennon’s legacy is possibly helped by the fact that he produced no new material after the age of 40, so nothing like The Frog Chorus. Actually, Lennon has a pretty solid body of work after the Beatles and his 1980 comeback album, Double Fantasy is really good (well the Lennon part is, The Yoko One part is … interesting).

I remember where I was when I heard John Lennon had died. I was at Royston Town Hall. Anne and Dad were both involved in the Royston Amateur Dramatic Society and it was the rehearsals of the Christmas pantomime – Jack and the Beanstalk. The previous year I had been a call boy, that is not like a rent boy. The call boy goes to the dressing room to get the right actor on stage at the right time.

(Sleeping Beauty 1979. Middle row John Greening is second from the left and Gill Lynch is on the extreme right)

In 1980 I had been promoted to sound effects, working with Dad and Graham backstage. A more important role, but, as Mike says in his book, Undoing a Bra, access to the dressing room gave some great views for a teenage boy. Working on the shows meant we got to stay out late on every show night (8 of them) and moving backstage meant that there were lots of late rehearsals too. Plus, the end of show party to go to.

The Drama Society had hired a professional director for this pantomime and it was a great performance. The finale was everyone coming on to Abba’s Super Trooper. This was rehearsed so many times that I cannot bear to hear that song even after 40 years. Even worse on the second night the tape recorder would not work (I had warned Dad it was temperamental). The audience had a long wait until it suddenly worked. After that we always had a backup.

On the last Saturday of that show I persuaded Graham to come to the aftershow party with me, even though he was expected home and had not told his parents he would be out late. The party was near our old house in Poplar Drive and we stayed until nearly 2am before walking home together. We reached the end of Graham’s road and we saw that his house lights were on and suspected the worst. Even though it was not the way home for me I went with Graham to his door where his mother was (understandably) furious, his father was there too. It was at least two hours later than expected and neither of us thought to phone. I tried to tell her that it was my fault and I had forced him to come with me, which was at least partly true. I felt terrible walking home, where Anne looked up and said, “Hello.” Dad was still at the party though, so it was hardly the same situation. I was crapping myself next time I went to Graham’s house, but his Mum never mentioned it again.

I was sat on the backstairs at the Town Hall when someone told me Lennon had died. Even though I did not fully appreciate what he had done I could tell by the reaction of the adults this was a big deal.

Lennon will always be one of those figures like James Dean, Princess Diana or Marilyn Monroe who never got old. Lennon was an interesting man outside his music and there was certainly much more to come from him. George Harrison was taken with cancer at the age of just 58.

Both gone too soon. Half of the most important band in history and the best half.

The most talented Beatle? John Lennon every day of the week. Your mileage may vary😊

Rest in Paradise both of them.

No. 9 Dream

Will someone turn the light on

Insolvency work can have its scary moments. In January 1992 Grant Thornton were appointed as administrators of a group of companies that ran several amusement arcades in Clacton -on-Sea and Walton-on-Sea.

The companies were owned by an ex-Traveller family, whose patriarch treated it as an extension of his private bank account. The group comprised six companies, but had just one bank account (which was heavily overdrawn) and no one with any financial knowledge to handle the money. It was a cash business and the employees told us that the sons would frequently come in and take away bags of cash that was never declared.

The whole family and their spouses were employed in the business, even though half of them did not actually work (it saves on National Insurance to split the salary between two people) and all had private pensions, healthcare and high performance cars. The cars were impounded by us and taken to our “secure compound”. This was really an excuse for us to get to drive Mercs and BMW convertibles around Essex and Suffolk. We were only taking them to the site of another of our jobs in Frating, six or seven miles away from Clacton, but Melvin, team leader, was worried the families would follow us so they could steal the cars back. Well that was the story. We drove them at top speed to Ipswich and back.

In the end most were bought back by the family, except the patriarch’s car. This was sold quickly to a friend of the manager running the job. Even in that wild period this was shocking to everyone who found out.

This was the same job where there the most boozy, long lunches at the expense of the company. I felt embarrassed about doing this, but peer pressure compelled me to go along.

My part of the operation was to sort out all their arcade machines – of which there were over 600. In multiple arcades as well as in shops in the area. It had been started by one of my colleagues, Nick, but he was not the right person for the job and been sent back to the office for another assignment.

I sat down with his list and hundreds of finance agreements, then tried to match them up. The names on the machines and on the agreements did not match. The machines had been moved around sites so a machine may legally have been owned by one of the companies but be in the premises of another.

I had to undertake a second tour of all the sites as Nick’s information was not as accurate as it could have been and, having seen the agreements, I knew what information I needed to continue the unpicking of the mess. This meant crawling around the arcades that were closed for winter. At least the ones in Clacton were open.

The sons were still (allegedly) coming in taking money so we had to put our own staff in. I got Mike a job there (he had just moved back to Brightlingsea). It was not nice work for him – his car tyres were damaged and he suffered injuries as machines were dropped when his hands were underneath.

One asset of the group was a holiday park, which seemed like it had most of the valuable assets in it. Two of us were told to secure it and make sure it was not being looted. We went there to find the whole family, plus some thuggish helpers blocking our way in. They were carrying baseball bats and chains. The rest of the team arrived which led to a standoff. In the end they occupied the site and we put security guards round the site to stop them getting anything out. It was one of two times that I felt really unsafe doing the work. It was the only time that I was genuinely unsafe – hiring security guards had never been done before.

Someone bought the companies. Amusement arcades in seaside resorts are easily profitable, as long as you are not stealing takings and paying salaries to people doing no work.

I was commended for sorting out the hire purchase nightmare. The only bad thing was that in conjunction with other jobs that I was doing the insolvency team were now looking at me as someone they wanted with them permanently to do all these kind of jobs. Whilst it had been an interesting exercise it is not a pleasant business to be in. Some companies were their own worst enemies (like this one) but others were soul destroying to shut down and force people out of work.

Can U Dig It?

Thank you for that almost heavenly time

My parents had Mike and me young. Mum was 20 and Dad 22 when I was born (22 and 24 for Mike). My parents were also born to young parents, though not quite as young as that due to the Second World War. This meant that my grandparents were relatively young when I was born (scarily youngerthan the age that I am now). I was particularly close to my Mum’s parents – John and Molly.

(Grandad and Nanna 1940)

We were actually between homes in Kent and Luton which is why I was born on Newmarket hospital – their house actually backed onto the hospital. They had only been able to have one child and I understand that Grandad had really wanted a son – not that he did not love Mum – which made my arrival a very happy event. They were always incredibly good to me – grandparents can be good, but they went so far beyond the norm.

(Nanna, Grandad and me in Luton)

My grandad worked for Boots on its farming side – driving all over East Anglia. This gave him an encyclopaedic knowledge of pubs in East Anglia. My Nanna had been a teacher but was now a librarian. She worked at the equine research centre in Newmarket. I loved going in with her – even though all the books were about horses. I actually did some of her indexing and she surreptitiously photocopied Doctor Who magazines that I had borrowed.

(Dad, Grandad, Mum, Nanna and Mike at Poplar Drive, Royston – I must have taken it, explaining the blur).

School holidays with them would always feature trips to Hunstanton and the fair on the seafront, via Sandringham. We went to places like Somerleyton Hall and the Anglo Saxon Village at West Stow.

We loved the electric boats in Lowestoft, they were like dodgems but on water and powered by static electricity.

One time we spent ages (probably an hour but when you are small it seems longer) driving what appeared randomly round Suffolk. Even Nanna was telling Grandad to give up and then in the middle of nowhere there was an enormous funfair. A great night.

A measure of the couple was that after my parents divorced my Dad still remained devoted to them. When he came to pick us up Grandad always had chocolate and pocket money – but not just for Mike and me, but also our stepsisters Alison and Frances. Incredibly generous.

Nanna would cook as much food as two hungry boys (or three hungry boys and one weight conscious girl, when my stepfather’s two children Tracy and Tony were there) could eat. Enormous rich stews. Newmarket sausages with chips and beans and carrots. The hugest roasts with all the trimmings. Multiple desserts – cheesecake, angel delight, blackcurrant pie and crumbles.

Before this Grandad would take us to British Legion for coke and crisps. Real coca-cola, not the awful rips offs that abounded like Panda cola. He would warn us not to spoil our lunches – we never did. It was at the same Legion that I first played Bar Billiards – a game rarely available anymore. They had a table aThe Sun in Brightlingsea for years and it requires a much surer touch that pool.

My Nanna used to search the Newmarket bookshops for new Doctor Who novelisations for me. (They were not sold in Royston until later). She had a written list from me of the ones I owned.

They let me down once. In 1977 I asked for The Avengers Annual as part of my Christmas present. They got me the New Avengers annual – which is about as different as you could get.

See the difference? 😊

And that is the only time they got something wrong and, given they were not geeks, I can understand it. Anyone who has that as their worst thing they have done must be wonderful human beings.

Thankyou

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM4Y6rjeNlE

We had joy, we had fun

Another embarrassing one about one of my friends. There are lots of tracks that remind me of John Hawkins, but they have other subjects to write about.

I think that John is underestimated by a lot of people. John is quieter than the rest of our group (though that does not say much as the rest of us are so loud), but he thinks before he does things. Our Applied Maths teacher dubbed him a three toed sloth in the sixth form as he did things slowly. I realised much later that whereas some of us tend to act without thinking, John does think. Just to note I wrote this before his recent thoughtful comments on my posts (on Facebook).

I do not remember John being drunk very often and definitely not since he settled down. On several occasions (that I remember and ones I may have forgotten due to alcohol ingestion) he has saved me. One night in Brightlingsea at a Freemasons lock in some idiot was taunting me saying that I was gay (early 1990s when in rural Essex this was not an allegation you could let stand) and I wanted to confront him. John kept me from doing this as this man was looking for a fight as he had a lot of mates with him and it was just John and me. John kept me calm and saved me a lot of trouble.

John is very observant. On our second night in Kos 1991 we had got hammered in a heavy metal bar (Bar Galatea), then left for another bar (it was well after midnight). In the next bar I could not find the toilets so drunkenly decided to go back to Galatea as I knew where their toilets were (why I did not go in the street like other people I do not know). Galatea was packing up, but I ignored the shocked looks and used the toilets. On exiting I realised that I had no idea where the others were – there were a lot of bars and I had drunk a lot of lager. I saw John who had come to look for me (I think). He told me that he could guess the ethnicity of the Scandinavians that were the main partyers in that part of town. He proceeded to accurately identify a parade of blonde Scandinavians. I asked him the next day how he did this and he told me that he looked carefully. Damn good advice in life, not just for identifying Danes and Swedes but wherever you are.

John does not like garlic, and I think the tzatziki was one of the worst parts of any Greek holiday for him. In 1991 we went on a Greek night organised by the travel firm where everyone had it served as a starter. This was his reaction.

(1991, at the Greek Night when everyone was eating tzatziki)

John was born able to drive – at least that is what it seemed like. He could drive before the rest of us and he drives incredibly well. When we go Kart racing on holiday there is no point asking who will win, it is always John. In Rhodes 2016 he started from way behind the rest of us and was ahead within a couple of corners. In 2018, at a different track ,we fixed it with the owner for him to have an underpowered Kart. He was still competitive because of his skill on the corners, even though his kart a tortoise on the straights.

(The man you want driving when you take broken down jeeps off road to get to Cape Krikelos in Kos – Andy directs. 1991).

He has had plenty of jobs. He worked as a cab driver with his Dad. He was a jeweller. He worked in the Astralux factory in Brightlingsea. He was in credit control at BT then used their training scheme to get a degree and become a computer programmer. Doing this in his 30s, with a young family.

John, Neil and I come from large families, but John is the only one who has one of his own with four kids. He has been together with Tammy for nearly 30 years. His careful nature was highlighted to me on a night out in Brightlingsea. Tammy and one of her friends had been hanging out with us for ages and it was obvious that they were attracted to each other. While John was at the cash machine Tammy asked me if she was wasting her time and why wouldn’t he kiss her. I told her to be patient, that John makes careful decisions, but when he makes them he sticks to them. They are still together, but then Tammy is lovely and he is lucky to have her😊

(John and Tammy at the Chef Canton, Colchester, 2016, for Neil’s 50^th birthday)

John reads this blog – I don’t think Dave or Neil do – at least he is the only one who ever posts on Facebook about it. His opinions are always well thought out and logical (but then he is a self described logician).

(Summer 2018, John, me, Dave, Neil – still mates after 38 years since I met them. I reckon John looks like he has aged least.)

He is one of the deepest and most underestimated people I have ever met. And a true friend.

Seasons in the Sun

Blackness, blackness draggin’ me down

There was one other source of borrowing music at university besides the town library and the College record library. The Union Society record library. It was in a pretty sorry state, obviously money was not being spent on it and most of the stock was some fairly poor-quality cassettes. Still, Dave Carter and I found a few gems in there – this track being one of them.

Now the Union Society was not the Student Union. That was the Cambridge University Student Union (CUSU) that was always controlled by the University Left. This was not some Marxist-Leninist group, but an umbrella term for anyone who was not a raging Thatcherite. It spent most of its time lobbying for better rights for developing world coffee growers, against Barclays for its links to South Africa and getting annoyed with the Union Society for stealing its thunder.

The Union Society had been there first and had a very nice headquarters near the centre of Cambridge. It had a huge debating chamber, a nice restaurant, squash courts, billiard tables, a series of lectures from public figures as well as other rooms. Due to the status of the university a lot of famous figures spoke in the debates. In my three years every cabinet member came (with the exception of Thatcher) and the shadow front bench, including Neil Kinnock. Debates got a disproportionate amount of coverage due to these heavy hitters. The best speaker was Peter Bazalgette, a TV producer, who pretty accurately predicted the rise of reality TV in 1985.

My favourite event was the visit of Mary Whitehouse to speak on a debate about censorship. Whitehouse was the self-appointed guardian of the nation’s morals as leader of (her own) National Viewers and Listeners Association. She had spent a chunk of the 70s attacking Doctor Who, so I was no fan. She was religious and pretty much believed that TV should feature nothing controversial and, ideally, be religious programming and uplifting music. No sex, romance, violence or swearing – even for adult TV.

After she lost the debate (very heavily) I spoke to her (oiks like me did not get to speak in debates, that privilege was reserved for posh kids from the right schools) in the Society’s version of the Green Room. I made the case (politely) that adults should have the freedom to choose what they wanted to watch and those that did not want it could choose not to watch. I also asked why she chose to watch programs that had obscenity or sex scenes warnings on and then complain. At this she called me the spawn of the devil and walked away in a huff. Her disappearance from British public life was a good thing. I am inordinately proud that I made this self-appointed busybody confront the lack of rigor in her arguments. She was a hypocritical bitch.

(Part of the Lent term program 1986)

(Schools have three terms – Autumn, Spring and Easter, Cambridge is different – Michaelmas, Lent and then Easter is the last term of the year).

The Union Society was for the posh kids. As a debating society it suited the public-school kids who had practiced at school. The officers of the society usually came from the division 1 colleges – Trinity, St Johns, Gonville & Caius, Christs and Jesus. An occasional interloper would make it through – my friends and I helped Chris Steele from bottom of the league Girton ,and possessor of very left-wing views, get elected to the presidency in 1986. We were rewarded by attendance at the Society garden party that summer where we (and the rest of his distinctly plebby election team) got blasted on Pimms. Even so in my time there only one President was female and all were white. I had a life membership and still see the results which favour the Division 1 colleges to this day.

By that stage we had moved on to being on the Society’s film committee. This meant that we got to choose the sixteen films that were shown at the society each term. One on Saturday, early enough that you could party afterwards, and one midweek. As the committee was around 10 to 12 people, we each got to pick at least one film. It did mean that Commando and Blood Simple got shown every year for some reason. We also managed to show Flesh Gordon, to much horror from some of the audience – we had pitched it to the society steward as a cross between Flash Gordon and Ten, rather the softcore porn it actually was. The chair got a bollocking for that.

(By the last term I was at Cambridge there were actually people of colour and a woman on the committee – not amazing, but the progress from two years earlier was considerable).

In the second year we went for a committee dinner at the University Arms, one of the poshest places in town. Already drunk we went back to Saven’s (backrow on the left) huge rooms in Queens and played drinking games – specifically Fizz Buzz (any number divisible by 3 or with a three in it is replaced by fizz, any number divisible by 5 is replaced by buzz). Now this should have been a piece of cake for Alex, Dave Carter and me compared to the arts students, but we were drunk and if you got it wrong you had to drink a short. Dave Carter descended into a spiral of failure and ended up throwing up over his tuxedo. I took him to clean up and we had the bright idea that we could clean the tux too by him taking a shower fully dressed. One poor female resident of Queens was treated to a nasty shock at 2am as a soaked Dave C emerged from the women’s showers, with me shepherding him as he had no idea where he was. Dave lived about a mile away and ended up sleeping in our living room under a pile of towels. The tux was never the same again.

In the summer term the Union Society restaurant always did a seven-course meal for £15. Well worth it for celebrating the end of exams as it always included champagne too.

It is a bastion of elite privilege that should be destroyed or reformed, but I got more than enough out of it to justify my £32 lifetime membership.

This Flight Tonight