Five Miles Out

Throw Your Safety Overboard

The summer term at Meridian in 1981 was almost the perfect summer. It had the spectre of our planned move away due to dad’s new job, but it was the best time if I put that to one side. In fact the occasional days off to go and look at houses in Essex was almost a bonus. We looked at quite a few, some in Colchester, but Brightlingsea was the choice – Dad and Mike had fallen in love with sailing and living on the coast (well the river estuary really) was the preferred choice.

In Royston we had discovered Dungeons and Dragons – which we played at every opportunity. Rarely played at mine due to the lack of space (I had to share a bedroom with Mike) – John and Paul both had huge spaces to play in – even Graham had a bigger bedroom than mine and he did not have to share it.

School was going well – the end of fourth form (year 10) is almost the last time that things are not serious. Our O levels were still a year away and we could happily ignore the seriousness of that until after the summer holiday. There were end of year exams, but I did not revise a huge amount and still did pretty well. I was annoyed that I did not score the top mark in any subject, but came second or third in everything apart from French and Geography. I have always been lucky with a good memory.

I had quit the scouts over the summer camp debacle of 1980 (more on that another time) which gave more time for things I enjoyed. The same with membership of the swimming club. I really was not an outdoorsy person.

We even went out to a concert at a country pub and started being interested in girls. After I left Royston some of them even played Dungeons and Dragons (they must have been some of the only female players in the world). I suspect many played because Graham was “admired” by many of them.

In English we were studying A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I read the part of Antonio in class. We went to see it in in London. The morning was a theatre workshop, which was pretty dull, though Chris Rolph got to throw spaghetti at cast members.

We were shocked at the prices of drinks in London newsagents at lunchtime – it was the closest we had got to the world of Grange Hill. Graham and I both managed to buy books – he got The Survivor and I bought Dorsai!. Shamefully my diary says I was bored by the play – live is the only way to experience Shakespeare. At least I did not fall asleep as I had when we had seen Hamlet the previous year – our teacher had not given us any background to it and the cast were all young – so it was hard to work out the relationships. Even if you count films made of plays I have seen no more than 7 or 8 Shakespeare plays – I am very deficient in this area of culture, though I can bullshit about some of them (like having seen the Moonlighting episode based on The Taming of the Shrew) and I know my Plantagenet history pretty well.

(I had the misfortune to return to the same place for a Henry IV part 1 theatre workshop after I got to Colne – this time there was a staged intervention with Lisa Roberts going up on stage to take part in a sword fight – obviously the audience intervention was standard part of the show, whatever the play. It made me appreciate A Midsummers’ Night Dream more – Henry IV part 1 is as dull as ditchwater, the best bits are in part 2).

Whether I would see this summer in the same light if I had not moved away is something I wonder about. My time at Meridian never had to go through real exams or proper stress.

The group of the moment was Adam and the Ants. They had shot to prominence in the winter and, If John Lennon had not died, would have already had numbers 1s with Ant Music and Kings of the Wild Frontier. They had a really distinctive sound with two drummers and a charismatic lead singer.

At the height of the boy band boom of the 90s some fan tried to say that boy bands were nothing new. After all what were the Beatles or Adam and the Ants or Duran Duran. The fact she was trying to equate groups who wrote their own material, played their own instruments and gigged for success with crap like A1 and Boyzone made me furious. No one on the documentary queried this piece of arrant bullshit.

This went straight in at number one and would be followed by another number one in the autumn, yet the group broke up by Christmas (the same December that saw the split of Japan and the Jam).

Stand and Deliver

It is no lie I see deeply into the future

Time travel into the past is impossible, at least under Einsteinian physics. It is strange that it is the only dimension where movement is only possible in one direction, though a Grand Unified Theory may explain it – it may be related to why there was a fraction more matter than anti-matter after the Big Bang (that difference is everything in the universe now).

Hypothetically, in time travel stories, different consequences of changing the past come up. Some postulate that time fights the change (Stephen King’s 11/22/63), others that other compensating changes will happen or that one event will change all of history (Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder)

On Saturday 11^th June 1977 I was staying in Newmarket. My grandfather took me to the newsagents at the end of the road, where he got his papers, and said that I could have a comic. It was a tiny shop and they did not have many comics, so I got this one.

It is certain that this comic changed my life. I had seen a couple of Marvel UK reprint comics before and was intrigued by the Avengers. The comic reprinted 64 pages of American comics across 32 pages, the size being reduced with two pages of each page (art lovers hated it but it was great value for money). I could have come to Marvel at any time but this issue contained the start of a famous Angers storyline, one of the earlier crossovers between two comics – The Avengers/ Defenders War.

The Avengers are well known now – at that time the line-up was Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, The Vision, The Scarlet Witch, Black Panther, Mantis and the Swordsman. The Defenders have somewhat faded into history, but at that point were Dr Strange, The Hulk, The Silver Surfer, The Sub-Mariner, the Valkyrie and Hawkeye.

The story was way ahead of its time – Steve Englehart was the best comics writer of the 1970s at Marvel and his run on the Avengers is awesome. I was hooked and wanted to keep buying it to see what would happen.

The comic also had Spider-man (never a big fan of his), Iron Man, Nick Fury, Captain America and Thor. Names now familiar to most of the world.

Tuesday 21^st June and my Great Great Aunt’s funeral in Sudbury. I was taken, as the oldest, to represent the four of the children. I was sent out for a while with some change – probably to buy sweets, instead I got this.

Captain Britain’s adventures were not reprints, they were new for the UK. The comic also featured another long-time favourite of mine – The Fantastic Four. I was good at the funeral but drank quite a bit of sherry at the wake and slept most of the way home.

I quickly found Mighty World of Marvel as well. I was totally hooked on this fantastic universe. Even though the reprints were from comics some years before they were already years into the Marvel Universe and it was fun working out the background and powers of all these people.

Captain Britain soon merged into Spider-man and it went back to a standard A4 format with only 32 pages of reprints. Any idea that I would drop the comic when the Avengers/ Defenders War was over were soon abandoned. New Titles like Rampage and the Complete Fantastic Four were added and I was so hooked. I have read every appearance of the Avengers ever made – the New Avengers, The Might Avengers, The Dark Avengers, The Young Avengers, The Savage Avengers, etc that have ever happened.

If I hadn’t bought that issue of Spider-man with a story that I particularly liked would I have become a fan? Which way would history change? Would I discover them later? I am not sure, probably I suppose. Given the joy they have brought me over the years I hope so.

Yes are the kings of progressive rock. I first heard of them when I read that the two members of the Buggles were joining them – which produced Drama, a very un-Yes album. Then they did their pop album 90210 (hit single Owner of A Lonely Heart). In one of the music magazines they said Tales From Topographical Oceans was of the 100 most important albums ever. I loved the Roger Dean art and tried to get it.

I could not find it anywhere in Ipswich. So I chose a different one – Relayer. It is not one of their best, but I still like the art. Roger Dean was the fantasy artist of the 1970s.

I am not sure about Yes – maybe ingesting vast amounts on non-prescription drugs are needed to love them (I don’t find that problem with Pink Floyd or early Genesis though).

By the late 80s there had been so much personnel turnover that one group was touring as Yes, another, with four core members, was touring as Anderson, Wakeman, Bruford and Howe. They got merged and there was the strange album Union – which was the literally the combination of the two albums the groups were making.

This song of their’s is not a 20 minute musical epic and the title reminds me of the early discovery of a world of wonders.

Wonderous Stories

We’re Living in a Powder Keg

Brightlingsea’s pubs had a famously relaxed attitude to underage drinking. The police had a minimal presence and as long as there was no trouble in the village they pretty much ignored us. It used to have 13 pubs, plus the Sailing Club, Yacht Club, British Legion, Community Centre and the Football Club – 18 places to drink amongst 7000 people is probably a bit excessive.

My first experience of the pubs was as a sixth former, but Neil, Andy and I did a pint in each pub on New Year’s Eve 1992 (we did not manage the five bonus clubs).

Given that it involved about 3 miles of walking you had to plan the pub crawl. We would start at the far end of town, at the Rosebud. Not a pub we went to very often, though there was one drunk night there that led to a house party where people were drinking raw eggs.

The next would be the Swan in the centre of the village, after an 8-minute walk, where I had worked in the early 90s. Mike had worked there as a chef for a while too. It was where Brightlingsea Rotoract met and the owner’s daughter was a member of the club. It was our midweek drinking venue of choice in the early 1990s.

Almost opposite is the Brewers Arms. Neil and I watched the Nigel Benn v Gerald McLennan fight there. Benn appeared to be totally gone in the first round, but came back to win. McLennan was badly brain damaged and the referee should never have let it go the distance.

Finally, just a minute away further in the centre is the Kings Head, which now seems to be the most popular pub in the village. On the rare occasions we go out in Brightlingsea. Better transport links allowed Colchester to siphon off the trade and now there are few young people out. The great thing in the 80s/ 90s was that you would often catch up with people you had not seen for a while.

The Victoria was a nasty little pub, with a thoroughly unpleasant landlord while we are at school – another five minutes away. Its pool table was crap – the cue ball was too large, though it was where I got my first lessons. The only reason we frequented it in the sixth form was because it was the closest pub the teachers did not drink in. It has long gone now. One of the few pubs that deserved to go.

The Cherry Tree was probably the most sophisticated pub, serving good quality food. Andy the landlord in the 80s was a nice guy, but his clientele was a bit gentile for proper drinking – we only used it on pub crawls.

Another ten minute walk and there was the Railway Tavern. Brightlingsea lost its railway line in the Beeching cuts. In the 80s it was a big pub with a good pool table. Nowadays most of it is closed off and it is a real ale pub.

Our pub of choice for a long time was The Sun, another 7 or 8 minutes towards the seafront. I bought Dave a drink there one time we went out a lunch time in the sixth form, even though he had no money to buy it back. This was before we had money for rounds.

It was really busy most Fridays and Saturdays in the late 80s. One evening I saw Andrew Cruickshank in there and a had a quick word with him (our Dads were both flag officers at the sailing club). We weren’t close mates but he was in a good mood. He died overnight and it was ruled suicide as alcohol did not go with the medicine he was taking. He was in a good mood when I saw him and I still think it was an accident not suicide.

The Sun had an infamous pub sign with a topless female sunbather. It has now been replaced by a house.

Just a minute away is the Yachtsmans. It is very close to the seafront and the harbour. Still in existence, in the good weather it is best to sit at the front.

Another minute and you are right on the seafront at the Anchor hotel, having gone past the Sun Ho takeaway. A bit of Essex Boys was filmed there – I would love to have met Alex Kingston. Another one that has gone.

A few minutes up the road was the Hanging Baskets. It had been a biker pub called the Evening Star. A friend of ours from Rotoract called Heston tried to take it up market, but it never worked. It is now a house.

Finally, there was the Freemasons Arms, five minutes away and almost back in the centre. It looks odd as we rarely went in this way. The Freemasons was famous for afterhours drinking and we would get in through a passage and over the garden and in the backdoor. Frequently drinking would continue until 3 or 4am (not that we stayed that late) – this was when there was a strict 11pm cut off. It was a pretty rough pub.

On the New Year’s Eve in question we made it into the ‘Masons just before midnight and got the last pint in. We did not stay long – Neil and Andy both throwing up in the street. I made it home – though I hid in a hedge as I thought the Viet Cong were stalking me (we were in army fancy dress). When I finally made it home I lay down on the stone kitchen floor for an hour before finally making it to bed.

(Me, Andy & Neil between the Cherry Tree and the Railway on the pub crawl)

My hangover actually lasted 36 hours – I should have thrown up like the others.

We spent a lot of time in these pubs in the 80s and there was a real sense of community from them. Seems to have long gone now.

Like someone took a knife and drove it deep in my heart

I really like Cher. She has had a long career with a variety of music, starting with I Got You Babe, going through the Disco 70s, soft rock 80s and EDM 90s. She has survived an abusive husband, had a hugely successful TV career and a film career that includes an Oscar for Moonstruck. It is almost like she was Madonna, only better.

Probably her most famous video was found her dressed like this – bold.

In any pub that had a video jukebox this tended to get played a lot. There was one very near the first house I lived in when I moved to London. John Major’s government was privatising the railways and Stratford station was going to be closed for years while it was developed. This would add time to my journey as I would either have to change three times or go all the way into the city and back out to Plaistow (costing an extra £50 a month as well). I decided that I would be better off living in London at the week and going back to Brightlingsea at the weekend. One of the other staff at the college, Nikki, lived in a house of multiple occupancy and had a vacancy. I had no idea about the area and took the chance to move in.

The metal gate on the front door is an addition and the front door itself have changed since my time.

I chose the day to move down, the same day as my brother and his family moved house, so it was a low key departure, and it turned out to be the day of West Ham’s last home game of the season. I realised that on the days of home games it was impossible to park within a mile of the ground. I was horrified when I realised this as it was 3pm and, potentially ,what I would have to do is drive somewhere, park and wait with my car as it was patently full of stealable gear. Fortunately, one of the neighbours drove off and before his wife could block the space with bins I parked up. She looked at me like I was a major criminal.

West Ham games were a constant problem. I could not drive to work when there were weekday matches as I would not be able to park coming home. Saturday afternoons needed fine judgement. I was late leaving one day and it took me an hour to drive half a mile as the fans came out.

In the three years That I lived there there the house was burgled twice. The first time a couple of druggies took the microwave (far more expensive in those days). They were actually caught by the police and I had to go to court to testify. I sat around at Snaresbrook for a day and was then told that the case had been moved to the next day – I was unhappy as I had to take time off work. The police told me to say I would be there to the other side’s barrister – they entered a guilty plea.

The second time they smashed the windows by the front door – a massive security weakness, which is why they probably have a metal gate now. They took a few valuables and I learnt how slimy insurance companies could be. It really doesn’t matter what is stolen it is the invasion of privacy that freaks you out.

The landlord was renting the house out while he worked in Hong Kong. He left its care to a friend of his who lived in East London, no landlord services here. We had to pay bills for repairs and deduct them from the rent. He never queried any deductions. After I left I think he sold it.

I was not sorry to see the back of that house. Nikki moved to Leyton and then to Devon, where she seems incredibly happy.

If I Could Turn Back Time

Cosmos

Playing Role Playing Games (RPGs) was a totally geeky thing to do in the early 80s. Nowadays people play games like this online with virtual simulations and it is seen as pretty normal. In light of the fact that computers at home were in their infancy we used imagination. Our first game of choice was Dungeons and Dragons. This was in the day that only hippies and geeks read the Lord of the Rings – the geeks from my generation have conquered entertainment to such an extent that films series like Twilight and The Hunger Games are not even thought of as geek territory.

Science Fiction and Fantasy are thought of as the same thing by people who are not interested. Fans tend to have preferences, though some like both. It really is a spectrum from the goblin, vampire and magic end through to hard science fiction, where the plot really serves to explain a scientific principle. In the middle you have series like Darkover, where the two genres mix.

Dungeons and Dragons was fantasy. There was a game called Traveller, which was science fiction. It was based in a universe that had elements of the work of Poul Anderson and EC Tubb, amongst others. Graham bought Traveller and one fateful Saturday in 1981 (27^th June) after an afternoon playing AD&D he suggested that we try Traveller.

https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Classic_Traveller

We created some characters – it was horrifying – you had to serve military terms to get skills so the characters would be a t least 40 by the time they went into action. At 14 it seemed way too old (I still think the 4 years terms of service should have been reduced to 2 years).

After all going home to eat dinner in the evening we started. Traveller was meant to be a game to use other skills- such as negotiation – rather than the constant fighting that characterised AD&D (Traveller characters died much more easily than experienced AD&D characters – by that stage our characters were killing minor gods). Graham had chosen John Bonney, Paul Ashby and me to try this out as he thought we would be sympatico.

I regret to say that we were not. We played a module that was called The Sable Rose Affair. It started off ok with us trying to negotiate and act as undercover agents. Paul and John got trapped by the bad guys in the building and it was up to me to get them out. In my defence I would say that the game designers would not have given us laser cannons and grenades if we were not meant to use them.

John, Paul and I were, perhaps, not taking things quite as seriously as we should. When I took the grenades to blow up parts of the building we did not allow Graham a chance to study the game guide to see whether we could do that (actually they could only be fired from a launcher attached to a vehicle) – you have to remember Graham had never run a Traveller game before.

Total mayhem ensued as I merrily let off grenades and blew up half the building. Paul’s character was already dead and the bad guys emerged with John’s as a prisoner. I gunned them all down with the laser cannon. Paul, John and I were in fits of laughter. Graham was definitely not.

None of us were totally innocent, but the biggest culprit was me and I knew it at the time. It was almost like when you get drunk and find the wrong things very funny. Anyway, it is 39 years later and I freely acknowledge that I behaved in a shitty way when Graham had spent (what for us all) was a considerable sum of money buying a new game and ruining it.

I’m sorry Graham. At least we tried harder with the Call of the Cthulhu game.

Vangelis’s music always sounded cosmic. He did the theme to Carl Sagan’s stunning early 80s show Cosmos. I prefer this track – slightly. The film it is from is not science fiction, it is about the 1924 Olympics and deserved its Oscar.

Chariots of Fire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSav51fVlKU

Do You Ever Wonder Why?

This blog is meant to be a positive thing, not harping on about negative things in life. This will be one of the exceptions. I have already done several posts about people who I worked for that were brilliant, it would be very false if I did not talk about the two who were very definitely not brilliant. One at Grant Thornton and one at NewVIc. In 36 years of working life they were the only bad bosses and I only endured them for about six years – luckier than most people I would imagine.

I treat everything in life as a learning experience and you can learn just as much by seeing what goes wrong as you can by learning to emulate good things.

So what makes a bad boss?

Taking credit for the good work people do for you and not blaming them for everything that goes wrong. With one of them this happened in a big way when I was away on holiday in 1992. I had done all the work on a huge audit (of our biggest client). I came back and my boss had two questions. There was nothing else written on the file. I was told when I was made redundant that my boss had completely rewritten the file and that my work was not good enough. A friend of mine checked after I left and said that my boss had written two lines in the file.

This tied in with ambition. I had been warned about her by other staff – that she had no loyalty and no gratitude and that her whole aim was to be a partner. These other staff had been women and I had assumed that they disapproved of her flirty attitude with older men (partners or client Finance Directors, to the extent that for one she wore a crocheted dress that was see through with just underwear beneath). I was wrong.

When my boss left NewVIc, his PA made an IT mistake and shared a huge number of e-mails with me. She asked me to delete them, but I did not – how dumb would you have to be to do that. In the e-mails, he took credit for everything and blamed me (and others) for everything that had gone wrong. When he took a year’s sabbatical suddenly Sid saw that my work was impeccable without his “guidance”. He did not stay long when he returned from the sabbatical

Not knowing what you want. He was really bad with this. Every month there would be a new target. An intranet page; performance standards; meetings with curriculum managers, etc. A month later each one would be forgotten and ignored. Our Estates Manager laughed at me for trying to do these – she totally ignored them all and had a far more relaxed life

Playing favourites. Another thing he did. He had ongoing favourites who could do no wrong, whatever disasters happened or mistakes they made. The rest of the time he would have a random favourite as well – it was incredibly disconcerting to be praised when you were doing badly and bollocked when doing well.

The other thing he did was to favour friends who he did not manage. One teacher did the following three things. They took 100 students to the Millennium Dome and told them to buy lunch at McDonalds, then collected their receipts. The teacher tried to claim a reimbursement of nearly £500 – it was discovered as one of the team knew a student on the trip.

On a trip abroad a student fell ill and the same teacher had to pay for medical care. On his return we reimbursed the teacher. The insurance company contacted us several weeks later as the teacher had called them and said the claim cheque should be made out and sent to him not the College.

Finally the same teacher spent one day each week for an entire year working on a new curriculum course. At the end of the year he had one A4 page produced. My boss insisted that none of these required any follow up or discipline.

Both of them liked to sow an atmosphere of distrust between the people that they managed.

If you are being promoted to management ask for management training. Treat the people who work for you well. Recruit well and use your probation policy. If you have the right team you can focus on getting things done and everyone succeeds.

If you work for a crap manager – leave. I should have done.

Castles in the Sky

You used and made my life so sweet

You used and made my life so sweet

Moving to Brightlingsea did help with buying American comics. When I first started buying them I could only get them on my visits to Newmarket. Slowly Royston newsagents started stocking them. They were in the shops three months after their US release date (confusingly US comics cover dates were three weeks in advance of the date of release so were actually correct for the UK time on the shelf). You never knew when they would come in, sometimes in the week, sometimes Saturdays – at times 6 or 7 weeks would go by with nothing and then two months releases would turn up at once.

Another annoying thing is that occasionally special issues (like number 1 or number 100) would be double sized issues. This would be annoying as they were always landmark issues. I was horrified when the climax of the Dark Phoenix storyline – that had run 8 issues, but had really been set in motion over 4 years earlier, was in a double issue and I did not read it for years. Marvel got worse by starting new comics in special issues only available in comic shops.

Not only did Colchester have lots of newsagents by 1983 both of Brightlingsea’s newsagents, Maskells and Houses, were stocking them.

American comics were primarily split between Marvel and DC. I had started off with Marvel as they did a line of British reprints and then found DC. DC were still cleaner cut heroes than Marvel and my favourite books were mostly Marvel’s. One exception was Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes, set in the 30^th century with a mammoth roster of characters.

(Jim Starlin’s wrapround cover for the reprint in issue 238).

It was written by Paul Levitz, who gave up the title a few issues later when he was made editor in chief. I stuck with buying it when I could find copies, but the quality declined and I gave it up in the end (not a surprise as Gerry Conway took over as writer and, despite his good reputation in the 70s, I have found him one of the dullest and most derivative writes in comics).

This started changing in the early 1980s as Marvel were taken over by Jim Shooter and started a dumbing down of the line. A lot of their best creators, like Marv Wolfman and George Perez, left for DC. One afternoon in Maskells I saw a very unusual cover with Dream Girl in the front with a baby, while the action was in the background. I did not buy it. A couple of weeks later it was still there, and Steve Doubtfire had shown me an earlier issue, I took the plunge.

This was the middle part of a story where one of DC’s baddest and most powerful villains, Darkseid, created an army of 4 billion Daxamites (each as strong as Superman) to attack the Legion, whilst basing himself on a planet under a red sun where Superboy and Supergirl would be powerless.

DC were on a roll. Marvel’s best writers from the 1970s had come over and they had an X-Men style comic – the New Teen Titans –, which surpassed the X-Men when John Byrne left the book. The superlative George Perez was the artist.

There Was also Night Force – by the same team who had produced Marvel’s amazing Tomb of Dracula in the 1970s – Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan.

DC went on to even greater heights with direct sales only comics.

This was at a time when every superhero team book wanted to emulate the success of the X-Men. The Legion were better than the Titans in my opinion. It required more work – Giffen’s art included lot of visual references, as well as signs in a constructed fictional language. They were both better than the lacklustre Batman and the Outsiders (which debuted an appalling superhero called Looker, whose power was to make men obey her after she turns from her mousey secret identity into her superhero body). Even that was better than Gerry Conway’s laughable Justice League Detroit. DC’s premier superhero group was reduced to character’s like Aquaman, Steel, Gypsy as well as the horribly racist Vibe.

(not at all racist Vibe).

(Not all sexist Looker).

The Legion were my favourite DC heroes. A couple of years later Keith Giffen left the book during a story where a Legionnaire died and his wife executed the murderer. Paul Levitz stayed on the book for another 5 years.

It became increasingly grim, reflecting comics at the time. This was the final death knell of the classic (silver age) version of Superman. History had been rewritten already so Superman debuted as an adult but the Legion was inspired by Superboy. Levitz got round this with a story about pocket realities and their long time foe the Time Trapper.

After further deaths and incapacitations the book went on hiatus. Keith Giffen returned with a story called 5 Years Later, where the Universe was changed significantly and there was no more Legion. Due to continuity changes relating to Superman (again) the whole history of Earth was rewritten early on. Twice in one issue.

The Moon was destroyed. It turned out Garth Ranzz had actually been dead for years and Shvaugh Erin was a man. The Earth was destroyed and then finally all of reality was wiped out in Zero Hour. As they discovered that their greatest enemy, the Time Trapper was actually founder member Rokk Krinn.

The series has been rebooted several times, including a version that started not long after the end of Keith Giffen’s run, but in the 90s they had wiped out the Legion. Not only were the characters gone, they had never existed. I was not mad (like some fans – like Alan Moore said they are all imaginary stories), but I had no emotional investment in following it again.

Richard Wigley was a big fan of Culture Club (he and Neil are definitely fraternal not identical twins, one has the body of their Dad, the other their Mum). This was despite him saying how much he fancied Boy George (who he assumed was female) after the first time Culture Club were on Top of the Pops. Everyone remembers Karma Chameleon, which was number one for six weeks. I prefer this, first, single from their second album. Hugely influenced by Tamla Motown, it started me towards that listening to that classic material.

Church of the Poison Mind

Well, Another Crazy Day

When I left Icknield Walk I moved onto Greneway Middle School. There were many primary schools in Royston but only two middle schools. I was lucky it was only about seven minutes from our house – until we moved after my first year.

Our first year we had Miss Sage as a teacher, though she went on maternity leave halfway through the year. She was replaced by Mrs Brown who had an accident infamous at the school in the summer of 1976. That summer was so hot we were allowed to stand in the outdoor pool at the end of PE lessons. Mrs Brown was wearing a bikini under her jumper. When she pulled off the jumper the bikini top went too.

(year 1

Back row: ?, Simon Phillips, Diane Burgess, ?, ?, John Bonney

Second from back: Stacy Beamon, ?,?,?,?, Simon Coleman, James Auty, Martin Beale, Steve Anderson

Second from front: ?, Mick Burfitt, Simon Annis, Stuart Moulding?, Ian Anderson, ?,?, Chloe Bowerman, Liane Chapman (I think)

Front: ?,?, Susan Baldwin, ?, Mrs Sage, Paul Ashby, Me, ? , Sean Clarke)

Greneway was definitely a progressive school. Meaning that discipline was pretty lacking. Playground time was a constant source of potential bullying. In the first two years classes were all in your form group. You will note that everyone in the photograph has surnames early in the alphabet – classes had been split purely based on surname.

Greneway also had an obsession with basketball, at the behest of Mr Charles, the headmaster. I was short for my age and totally unathletic and I hate basketball to this day. There were also psychopathic games of shinty or athletics doing high jumps into shallow sand pits.

Our second year class photo is missing. We had Mr Jacobs as a form tutor, his speciality was music and he played organ at different churches in Royston. My best friend that year was James Auty – until his parents moved.

One day Mr Crawford – who taught maths to year three and four – came to give us a mental arithmetic test. Stuart and I got top marks. The following week we were pulled out of class to do a test with the year fours. We both did pretty well and scored in the top quartiles. Unfortunately he then used this to criticise the members of year four that we beat. Beat was an apposite word because that was what the I got later.

In the third year the five forms were turned into four with two tutors – the class initials were the teacher with the longest service, so ours was named after Miss Bourne, our other teacher was Mr McDaniel. They taught French and Science. Poor Mr McDaniel was a very new to reaching and doing sex education for us that year was not easy for him.

Unlike the first two years we had classes in different specialist rooms. Our form room was in yet another temporary classroom – the specialist French rooms (no language labs for us).

(Year 3

Back: Mr McDaniel, ?, Steve Anderson, Simon Coleman, ?, Mark Terry, Ian Anderson, ?,?,?, Me, Darren something, Mike Meitener, Mrs Bourne

Second from back: ?, ?, Annabel Perrott, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, Diane Burgess, Stacy Beamon, ? , ?

Second from front: ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, Ruth Fisher, ?

Front: Matthew Moorhouse, Paul Ashby, Sean Kenny, Sean Clarke, Martin Beale, Alex Perrott)

I went on a trip to France that year. It was at Easter and I was most worried about missing a week of the Marvel UK comics that would come out the day we left and would be removed from the shelves the day before we got back (the number of comics I bought was far more than approved of so asking for parental help was out of the question). The trip across the channel to Brittany was horrible. I had always been a touch travel sick anyway, the choppy seas meant I spent six hours freezing on deck. Thank heavens for John Bonney who was on the trip too.

The hotel was not all that. We had to share double beds, in rooms that slept four. Each room had a closet with a bidet and sink but no toilet. No one explained the bidets to us and at least one person on the trip tried to defecate in one. We were bemused by the French – there were open pissoirs for men in some streets and other toilets were unisex – we were using the urinals when girls from our group walked in to use the stalls.

Every night there was soup – potage, a grey mess of leftovers. In typical school trip style we trolled around filling in worksheets and generally not having much fun. We did go to the Mont St Michel, which was somewhere I would have happily spent far more time.

There were an interesting collection of teachers.

Mr Brand who taught geography. He had spent years working in Papua New Guinea and had an Australian accent. He enjoyed telling us that the social order in Papua New Guinea was men, boys, pigs, women and then girls. He was also scathing bout the lack of cleanliness people in Britain had.

Mrs Beeson who was – let’s not fat shame – a large lady. One time she actually sat down on a chair in the first-year classroom and the shattered the chair to matchwood. Obviously the class disintegrated in laughter.

Mr Dent was one of the science teachers who had a fearsome reputation. I was only taught by him for one term and he was hilarious. Digging on the school farm with one boy working while four of us were watching he told us that we were a microcosm of British working practices. I was the only one who got the joke (I was already reading a daily broadsheet newspaper)and after that he took a special interest in me (not in any sinister way) but gave me extra work to stretch me, not something the school really approved of.

(Year 4

Back: ?,?, Diane Burgess, ?, ?,?, Mark Terry, ?,?, Stacy Beamon, ?,?, Simon Coleman, ?

Middle: Sean Kenny, Sean Clarke, Michael Meitener, Me, ?, ?, ?, Marin Beale, ?, Steve Anderson, ?, ? , ?, ?

Front: Alex Perrott, ?, ? , Ruth Fisher, Mrs Rogers, Mr McDaniel, Julie Bird, ?, ?, Paul Ashby, Matthew Moorhouse)

Miss Bourne left so in our final year we were named after Mr McDaniel and the new French teacher, Mrs Rogers, was our other tutor. In the picture she looks quite stern but actually she was very funny and actually got me interested in French.

The school had a regular fund-raising collection of wastepaper to recycle. In our final year they decided to offer the prize of a day out to somewhere of the class’s choice to the class that collected most. Mr McDaniel and Mrs Rogers told us that we should be the winners and we absolutely went for it. In retrospect I can see that it was the best way to bond the class together. Personal disagreements and fights took a second place to our determination to win, with peer pressure forcing everyone to work hard.

Mr McDaniel offered a bag of crisps to anyone who collected more paper than him (my first evidence that people are easily bribed with food). He had to hand out about 30 bags of crisps. Totals were kept secret so as the deadline approached we went berserk. Every newsagents in Royston was giving us unsold paper and whole roads were having collections made by our class. In the end we won with more paper than the whole school had collected the previous year. We were a bit annoyed that they allowed the second-place class a day out too – even though they had collected a massive amount as well they had less than half what we had.

We chose to go to Great Yarmouth. It was a great day out that marked the end of the academic year and our time at Greneway (not that I had enjoyed much of it). I remember getting home at nearly 9pm at night, with the dinner table ready for me to eat from – it was a salad with various meats and buttered new potatoes. The house was empty (I had had a house key since we moved to Victoria Crescent in 1976).

Baker Street

For the punk motherfuckers that’s showin’ out

For the punk motherfuckers that’s showin’ out

I am going to try to be fair here and highlight my own ignorance. Britain looks like a different place from somewhere like Brightlingsea to the way it does from London (or, I imagine, Birmingham, Manchester, etc.). Race and racial representation look different when almost every face you see in the street is white. Why you see so many non-white faces on the television, despite the under representation, is that it looks like over representation to what you see every day.

It was only going to university that started opening my eyes to issues of race. Fai’s view on issues of the day were an eye opener to me – particularly his virulent condemnation of South Africa (I was pretty ignorant about it). When I started work at Grant Thornton there were only two people of colour working for Grant Thornton in five years. One was a Chinese guy called Godwin, who had some kind of breakdown and was sent home to his parents in China. The other was the wife of a USAF officer on one of the American bases in the area. I did start picking up on issues from the music press and listening to some rap music.

I find so many things shocking today. The merger of the UK’s Department for International Development into the Foreign Office has long been an aim of the right. Their argument is that aid should be a trade tool. You see Facebook memes about why should we give money to other countries when (usually) our veterans suffer (like it is one or the other anyway – if we wanted we could do both), but the worst conditions of UK veterans is far better than conditions in a lot of the developing world).

Aid. Not to help those who need it but to help us.

Britain does not need help. We are one of the richest countries in the world and the best thing people could do is ask why. A third of British people still think that the Empire was a good thing. It is 2020 do we still have that many idiots who believe in “The White Man’s Burden”? Do they really believe that it was a good thing to conquer countries and remove their wealth?

(For the record this applies as much to France, Belgium and the other colonial powers – Belgium’s record in the Congo is so sickening I am not even going to write about it here).

There is an argument that is put forward that the former colonies should get over it as it was a long time ago. This from a country that harps on about World War 2 like it was yesterday. Plenty of atrocities have happened in relatively recent times. Even if you were not alive in the time of Empire by living in Britain we all benefit from the wealth plundered from abroad whilst the British Empire subjugated hundreds of millions, torturing and imprisoning any opposition. Remember Concentration Camps were a British invention.

Churchill is the doyen of the right, yet his actions in his lifetime were mostly disgusting. In 1943 he caused a famine in India by taking foodstocks that killed 4 million people. The food was as a backup for British forces, not for them to eat, to be a reserve. Churchill’s comment: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” Now the usual argument that comes up here is that you cannot judge Churchill by current standards – but he was considered a nasty racist by his parliamentary colleagues. Think about that – how bad was it that the white upper classes in the 1940s thought he was extreme?

Even after the Second World War the crimes continued. In Kenya in 1952 he ordered that 150,000 Kenyans should be removed from land to give it to white settlers. The people were tortured, the men castrated and the women raped. This was in breach of two international treaties that Britain had signed. When Britain finally left Kenya they tried to destroy every document relating to this. Fortunately, they failed and due to a legal case in the last few years the scale of the human rights abuses were finally revealed.

It is not just Churchill. Between 1968 and 1973 the inhabitants of the island Diego Garcia were forcibly removed so it could be used as a military base. This case goes on and Britain has been threatened with removal from its permanent seat at the UN Security Council unless it is resolved. Think about it – the people who lived there were forcibly removed from their own country by Britain.

This is the tip of the iceberg – I have not even brought up the slave trade – that would require a far longer piece. It is also the tip of the iceberg about Churchill. If you want more go to

https://crimesofbritain.com/the-crimes-of-winston-churchill/

The crimes of the past remain and many of the men (and it was men) are even remembered and memorialised. The statue controversy is illuminating. Those – inevitably on the right – try to say that we should not forget history – at the same time as they try to ignore the mountain of crimes. There are no statues of Nazis in Germany but remembering the crimes does not appear to be an issue.

Of course times and attitudes change. Television programs like Mind Your Language or songs by paedophiles were acceptable when they were made. Times change. If you transmit or play them now you are endorsing that position anew.

Churchill led Britain to victory in the Second World War, but for rest of his life before and after he was incompetent and actively a bad human being. I know I am only talking about his bad side – but his one real achievement is repeated incessantly.

Britain has done great things in the past, but the wish of the Right is to ignore the other side of this. The torture, looting and oppression are a blight on our society that we benefit from today. If you are white and you see someone on the streets who is Pakistani, Indian, Sri Lankan, West Indian or Bengali, remember they are here because their countries were oppressed by Britain. Do not say go home – be aware that they have every right to be here.

Given the British record I do not think a tiny amount of international aid to the poorest of the world is a problem. It should be far more that the pittance we give.

You cannot be agnostic on racism. You either oppose it or are, by default, endorsing it. A vote for Boris Johnson (whose racist opinions are in print in articles that he has written) means that you do not care that he is a racist. Think about that – you are saying you do not care that a racist leads the UK because you like his policy on tax or Brexit. What does that say about you to People of Colour?

The only people in Britain who should be allowed to refer to the Second World War, the Blitz Spirit or anything else related to it are people who were alive then. Lets us say born before 1935. That should reduce the amount of crap spoken in Britain. We should stop defining ourselves by the actions of our grandparents or great grandparents in the War. We need to define ourselves as a caring nation that realises that people the world over should share in the wealth and luxury that we have. Then do that. The forces of nationalism are the politics of greed and larceny.

I actually prefer NWA’s second album – Efil4zaggin (read it backwards), it is much more Dr Dre’s baby (if Dre was white he would be recognised as one of the most important musical figures of the last 30 years). She Swallowed It is an amazing track in a musical sense – but not in what the lyrics say. Watch the film, listen to the music.

Straight Outta Compton

The Best of Men

When I started at Monoux the College had been frozen in aspic for years. It was 2007 and Curriculum 2000 was still to be implemented. Kim Clifford got rid of the Deputy Principal and Director of Finance and recruited Sardip Noonan and me in to replace them. There was a split between the old timers, some had been in post for 15 years, and the new people. Allegedly one of the senior team had got their job because she walked a former Principal’s dog for her in the early 1990s.

I am an early starter and so was one of the other senior managers – David Ranger. David was almost at retirement age and was responsible for data, as well as being Clerk to the Governors (a split role frowned upon, but not banned). David was a nice man, I only ever heard him swear once, which was a major shock. Our early arrival led to long conversations about the problems at the College and how we could navigate the stormy waters between the governors and the senior team.

David managed the timetabling. Due to the College’s choice of data systems the process was incredibly difficult. There was a separate data system and timetabling system that would take about an hour to integrate – then would throw up errors that needed to be fixed, which would then be followed by fixes and another synchronisation.

When David left we were really worried about finding someone who could do the complicated timetabling process for 2,000 students (even though we had bought a new integrated system that did not need synchronising). David now works as a volunteer at St Pauls and is on a diocesean board.

We got lucky again. We actually recruited two new senior managers. One only lasted three months and was a disaster. Louis Strover stayed much longer. He moved into the office next to mine and we worked together for over six years.

Louis was brilliant at what he did – not just timetabling, but he was also our Ofsted nominee. During my year as acting Principal I was unofficially told that Ofsted considered him the best nominee of any educational establishment in London.

Louis was a gifted sportsman and has three wonderful children. The great thing was that our as a trio, with the Principal, Paolo, we had a set of complementary skills. We were all very different types and had different strengths and weaknesses, together it was a great combination. We all loved Rugby Union, which helped.

Monoux had a big problem with retaining Curriculum Vice Principals. Sardip lasted less than a year. Kim did it herself or a while (as well as being Principal), then we had an external consultant do it for a few months. Paolo came in, but was promoted to Principal inside a year. John Kenyon did the role as an interim for a year. That was followed by another person who never passed probation. In between these Louis filled in the role when he needed. Somehow it became the view that he was fine to fill in but not to have the role permanently. A totally unfair view in my opinion.

Louis is meticulous, clever, conscientious, fair, moral and brilliant at problem solving. I was incredibly sad when he left Monoux and I no longer had him in the office next door to talk to and mull over the problems of the College.

They are both good men. Kind men. Smart men. I imagine that neither David or Louis probably like this song, but it reminds me of both of them. It is a great example of early rock.

Louis Louis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCY0bAPLZ1w