Introduction

The 1970s was a decade of major upheaval. We had hippies, and progressive rock, and big music festivals, and drugs and peace and love, which slowly gave way to, and clashed with, social and industrial unrest, Punk rock, different drugs, and pop culture. In personal terms, my own life was about to be turned upside down as I moved from living in the middle class comfort and relative luxury of home in Oxford, to living on my own in a strange working class city, with poor accommodation, bad landlords, left wing radicals, no money, no drugs/too many drugs, run-ins with the police, falling in and out of love, having no money, trying to follow a challenging course of study, and generally trying to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. 

Being a student at Portsmouth Polytechnic in the 1970s was a massive roller coaster ride of highs and lows, laughter and sorrow, utter stupidity and a fight for mere survival, and what follows is a recount of my life as an undergraduate in the ‘70s. You might not believe some of it, as it's so incredible, and today I'm really embarrassed by much of what happened, and some of the things I did, and my views on many things have changed considerably over the years (e.g. drugs) but everything that is recounted in the book is true and unexpurgated (although there were several sections I very nearly omitted!) and it’s just how things were, back then, back in the day!

How I failed my A levels

I took my ‘A’ levels in 1976, when I was 17 years old. By this time my family had become completely dysfunctional, with my parents living separate lives, with neither taking responsibility for their offspring. 

My father, then aged 68, and once a pillar of Oxford City council, but by now a disillusioned retiree, had lost his job, at the age of 64. One day at work he had a big argument with some civic dignitary or other and, being highly principled, he walked out, just like that, and never went back. It was half way through his final year at work and he lost half his pension. 

Dad was a typical Victorian style father who took no role in the upbringing of his cildren - that was women's work. Only later did we realise that dad was actually suffering from the beginnings of Alzheimer’s disease and his mental faculties were already failing. Note that Dad was 50 when I was born, and that massive age gap really didn't help our relationship, especially in those days when 65 was old.

My mother remained as she always had been – slightly out of touch with this world and living in some ‘happy place' that only she inhabited. I’m guessing she was on some kind of medication as she once went mad at Peter, my elder brother when he played Mother’s little helper by the Stones on the record player in his bedroom. Whatever the case, she had a mantra of ‘Boys will be Boys’ which was great as far as we were concerned, as she generally left Peter and I to our own devices.

So between my mum and my dad we had no real parental oversight - and we took full advantage. Peter even went as far as fitting a Yale lock to his bedroom door.

I guess that’s all you really need to know about my family – my brother fitted a Yale lock to his bedroom door. From that you can probably kind of guess the rest. Why would a child want to hide things from their parents so much that they wanted to fit a Yale lock to their bedroom door, and what parents in their right minds would ever let them do so!?

Mopeds and motorcycles

In the lead up to my exams I was left pretty much to do as I pleased, as had been the case for the preceding few years, and things began to go slightly awry. Despite being under age, weekends were spent in the various student bars and pubs around town (which, being the major student hub that was Oxford, there were many to choose from) and my days, supposedly filled with revision whilst on study leave, were actually spent mending an old Mini I had bought. 

I always loved driving and riding motorcycles and I had taken my moped test as soon as I turned 16, so I could take my girlfriend on the back (the fact that I didn’t actually have a girlfriend at the time was irrelevant! - I lived in hope.) It was the mid-seventies when I turned 16 and the sports moped craze was at its height (before the law changed a few years later to stop 16 year olds going way too fast on ever more powerful machines). 

The king of the sports moped was unquestionably the Yamaha FS1E, but there was no way I could afford one, so I bought a second-hand Casal moped, a bike that had originally been designed by Zundapp in Germany, but was manufactured by a company in Portugal. It was an absolute dog of a bike, with a false neutral between every gear, and an exhaust pipe that fell off every time you hit a bump, but it was fast! I loved that bike, and named her 'Mariah' which I painted on the tank (after a supposedly deadly wind in Native American folklore) and pretended to be a biker.

When I finally turned 17 (it seemed like an eternity!) I was old enough to ride a proper motorcycle, up to 250cc (once again, the law on this changed soon after) and I sold my moped and bought an old '68 BSA Starfire 250 that I paid just £60 for as it ran so badly. Luckily, the one talent that I inherited from my father was an ability to work on anything mechanical, and I was able to mend the Starfire without too much fuss (a bent needle in the carburettor was the problem), and I took my motorcycle test as soon as I could. 

Taking my test meant that I could ride more powerful bikes and also, again, I could take my girlfriend on the back, as by then I did actually have one! - the beautiful Diana. Having passed my motorbike test, I sold the BSA and bought a Suzuki 350 Rebel, which was a revelation when compared with old Starfire in that it was fast, light, ran like clockwork, and didn’t leak oil. 

Very silly Teenager on Suzuki motorcycle

A short while later I sold the Suzuki, and, together with some cash I’d saved up from my part-time job, I bought a Mini – my very own car!

The part-time job I had was as a cleaner at Debenhams in town, and cleaners began work at 6.00am and finished at 8.00am, six days a week. This meant that I had to get up at 5.30 every morning before heading to work on my moped/motorcycle, doing my cleaning job, and then going straight to school. As a result of such early starts I was continually in a state of tiredness and fatigue and I fell asleep at school quite regularly, and it most certainly didn’t help with homework in the evenings. 

My dad had a favourite expression: ‘Hard work never hurt anybody,’ but a few years later I came to realise that this statement just simply isn’t true – how many people have died in the mines and factories of this world by being overworked, ill-treated and exposed to noxious chemicals? Hard work has definitely hurt a lot of people - including me.

Quite apart from having to get up at a ridiculous hour of the morning, the job itself was horrendous, and we (myself and my great friend Gazza) were given areas to clean that should really have been covered by at least two people. My job was to clean the entire second floor of the department store. This meant that to begin with I had to hoover the sports department, followed by the the main admin offices situated behind it. 

The offices were a nightmare to clean as they used copious amounts of rubber bands for some task or other, and they littered the floor every day, and these would regularly jam the roller on the ancient hoover I had been provided with, which then had to be dismantled and unblocked before I could continue. I then had to mop the floor of the kitchens that serviced the café/restaurant, before then hoovering the whole restaurant itself. It was a bugger of a job, and I had to work really hard every day just to try and finish all the work in the allotted time, which made me even more tired. But I made good money: £6 a week! Wow!

Mini Madness!

And so it was that I bought my first car, still only aged 17, a '64 British Racing Green 850 Mini, reg no. BUD 929B, with a long gear change lever that went straight into the gearbox, and a button on the floor to start it. I paid £120 for it and I loved that car to bits - but almost needless to say, it was an absolute old banger, being already 12 years old and having had a hard life. The seller had seen me coming, and he ripped me off completely. It transpired that the sills of the car, which were structural, were completely rusted through and the car required major surgery to put right. 

Just after I bought it, I remember once attempting to jack the car up to adjust the brakes, but instead of the car lifting off the ground, the jack just went straight through the sill! The MOT was due 2 weeks later, and of course it failed miserably, requiring two new sills - and these would cost around £140 to fit, which was £20 more than I’d paid for the car! 

I had no hope of ever paying that amount and so instead I spent my revision days applying plastic padding to the bottom of the sills, sanding it down and then painting over it, in the hope that the tester would be fooled into thinking it was metal, and pass it. Oh, the folly of youth!

Why had I spent most of my revision time trying to mend my old Mini, instead of studying for my crucial A level exams? Why had I got up at 5.30am to go to work every day as a cleaner for two years thus making me constantly tired and unable to concentrate? Because, as an eager and slightly wild teenager, owning a moped/motorcycle/car was far, far more important than doing school work or passing exams, and if the only way I could buy and run a vehicle was by getting up at 5.30am and going to work, then that’s what I did. If the only chance I had of getting my car through the MOT was by spending all my time mending the car instead of revising, than that’s what I did. Whatever it took to be on the road. My only excuse is that I lacked any parental guidance or censure, but I have to shoulder most of the blame.

Not only had I spent two years slaving as a cleaner and then a few vital weeks of revision time trying to mend my Mini instead of focussing on my studies, but, needless to say, all my work in trying to mend the bodywork on the car was completely fruitless and the car failed the MOT again anyway. 

The tester also made it very clear that ‘someone’ had clearly tried to fool him by attempting to mask the terminal rust on the sills with plastic padding, and that he didn’t think much of this at all. At this point my mum suddenly said that she’d pay for the repairs and I had the car welded and MOTd the following week. Just like that. Why hadn’t she done this several weeks previously? As a teenager, the actions of one’s parents are nothing if not mystifying.

Anyway, I now had a roadworthy car, and I applied to take my test ASAP and once again passed first time (I just loved driving and riding motorcycles!). Hoorah!

My A level exams themselves didn’t go quite as smoothly as I’d have liked, especially my English Lit as I’d panicked slightly in the exam, and instead of answering the question, I had just put lots of quotes in that weren’t directly relevant! I’d spent ages learning loads of quotes from all my set texts: Anthony and Cleopatra, Nostromo, Martin Chuzzlewit, The Mill on the Floss, The Inheritors, Brighton Rock and an anthology of Ted Hughes and Thom Gunn’s poetry, and be damned if I wasn’t going to use them! Note that in those days you weren’t allowed to take your texts into the exam with you, and if you wanted to quote anything, then you had to learn it by heart before you went in. 

Anyway, my exams and those of my friends were all now finished, I had a roadworthy car, a full driving licence, and we had the famously long hot Summer of ’76 stretching out before us. Bring it on!

The long hot summer of ‘76

My friends and I were now all 18 and we were set to have a great summer holiday that would surely knock Cliff Richard’s little jaunt into a cocked hat. Awaiting us on the South coast was sun, sand and sex (well, at least kissing - or to be honest, maybe even just talking to a girl would be great!) I went to an all-boys school and meeting the opposite sex was always something of a struggle.

In readiness for the holiday, I spent even more time on the Mini, customising the chrome front grill, fitting a roof rack (remember those huge grey alloy things that looked a bit like a shallow lobster basket?) and adding that all-important accessory, an 8-track cassette player! Oh, Yeah!! We were ready to rock and roll with sun-kissed bikini-clad beach babes! Bring it on! 5 of us (yes, FIVE – hence the roof rack) somehow squeezed into the Mini – bear in mind that by then we were five fully grown teenagers, so there were legs and arms everywhere, but no seatbelts, of course. 

We had two tents, a primus stove, a few clothes, and of course some ‘weed’. With all the students, and its proximity to London, Oxford was awash with drugs, and we’d all been smoking dope/weed since were about 16, and it was smoking weed that kind of bound us all together – it ticked all the boxes: it was illegal (tick), our parents disapproved (tick), our teachers disapproved (tick), it was supposedly potentially harmful (tick), and above all, of course, it got us completely stoned out of our heads! (tick)

Setting off on our Summer Holiday!

Crossed wires at the party!

Hooray! We set off on our great holiday! Although, suffice to say, the reality didn’t quite match up to the expectation. Don’t get me wrong, we had a great time, but there was a definite absence of bikini clad beach babes, which is obviously the central part of any teenage group holiday.

Our first port of call was at a party somewhere in Somerset that was being held by a girl that Gazza had met whilst on an outdoor adventure holiday he’d been on earlier in the year. What we didn’t know at the time was that this was a particularly bad idea. 

We were too young then to know that when you’ve had a brilliant time with someone you’ve met briefly on holiday as part of a little group, and got on so well with, it probably isn’t going to be the same when you meet them again later, away from the fun and frolics of the holiday, in a very different environment - and when their boyfriend's around! And so it was to prove in this case.

We arrived at the (very big) house where the party was due to take place, and where we would be staying, but even to completely socially unaware teenagers, it was clear from the very start that we weren’t welcome. The girl who Gazza knew, and whose party it was, wasn’t there when we arrived, and we were met by her mother who clearly wasn’t relishing the prospect of having five weird looking teenagers anyone hardly knew staying in her house, and she didn’t exactly welcome us with open arms. 

The party, when it finally happened was, of course, a total disaster. Not only did we not know anyone there, but it was very clear that for whatever reason, we were most definitely not welcome at the party. Whether her boyfriend had become jealous at her new found friendship with Gazza or what, I don’t know, but the atmosphere was decidedly hostile, and the girl (I’ve no idea what her name was) never spoke to us or welcomed us, or introduced us to anyone the whole evening. It was also ironic, because there was something that we and all her friends had in common – we all owned and drove Minis! 

The drive was full of a variety of Minis, including ours, and we could have had a great chat about our cars etc. and had a great time, but as it was, it was the reverse: we weren’t seen as part of the family of Minis – we were the competition.

After a very unsatisfactory evening we all made our way to our room (five boys sharing a room – it was almost as tight a squeeze as in the Mini) and slept as best we could. 

Running like a Dog!

The next morning we got up, and were greeted in the usual way by the girl’s mother (girl wasn’t up yet) – with a forced smile. We had a quick brecky, loaded the car up, and waved our goodbyes to mother and girl, who had eventually forced herself from her bed to wave us off. I think everyone was keen for us to leave ASAP.

However, as soon as I started the car, I knew there was something majorly wrong with the engine; it was running really rough and it was so bad that it wasn’t driveable. Our dismay was probably only outdone by theirs, as the realisation that we weren’t going to be leaving anytime soon slowly dawned on them.

Of course we had no breakdown cover of any description, and I only had limited tools with me and even though I was quite mechanical, I was still only 18, with a vague knowledge of engines. The rest of the gang went into the house and watched daytime TV (thankfully the Montreal Olympics were on and the phrase Spatial Awareness as coined by one of the commentators during the gymnastics program, became the comedy quote of the holiday from then on) while I tried to find the fault with the engine. 

Shortly after this, girl’s boyfriend arrived and she hastily explained to us that she was going out for the day and wouldn’t be back until much later, and off she went. I was now left with mother as my helper. It wasn’t a match made in heaven.

After some examination, I realised that the engine was only running on two cylinders, instead of four, and that was the problem. The other two cylinders were working, to some extent, but only firing very intermittently, and the engine was as rough as a dog. But what was the cause of the engine only firing on two cylinders? Was it sparking on all four? Yes. Was fuel getting through? Yes. Was there compression? Yes. 

The only thing I could think of was that maybe the inlet manifold gasket on the carburettor had gone and was leaking air, causing a weak mixture. I was grasping at straws, but couldn’t think what else it could be. I therefore removed the carburettor and inlet manifold (not easy) and enlisted the help of mother to drive me to the nearest British Leyland dealer to buy a new gasket.

When we got back I fitted the new gasket while mother went to make lunch for her surprise guests – my, she was having a good day! I continued working on the car and by mid-afternoon the new gasket was fitted and I was ready to try starting the engine again. 

With baited breath, I pressed the starter, and the engine fired - but it was exactly the same as before, no change. Once again, my frustration was only outdone by the look on the face of mother.

I racked my brains, and slowly I began to work through the problem again.. I suddenly realised that whilst the car was only running on two cylinders, no matter what, it actually ran better when I removed both the spark plugs on the cylinders that weren’t running properly. When I did that, the engine smoothed out and ran cleanly. Replacing the spark plugs and the ignition leads on those two cylinders immediately led to the engine running as rough as a dog once more. 

Sabotage!

I suddenly had a brainwave. I swapped the HT leads over (the wires going to the spark plugs) between the two cylinders that were running badly, and immediately the engine roared into life and ran like a dream!!! I immediately realised that the reason the engine had been running so badly was because someone had sabotaged our car!

It all began to slowly fall into place. I remembered that during the party I’d gone to the car with Kit and showed him the engine bay for some unearthly reason, whilst the disgruntled friends of girl looked on. From this they must have seen that mine was a very early Mini and so the bonnet was opened only by a catch from the outside - no need to get into the car to open the bonnet.

Having seen this, I can only assume that one of them had therefore thought that it would be a merry jape to re-open the bonnet on my Mini after we'd gone back inside, and swap the HT leads over between two of the cylinders (The HT leads being the wires going to the spark plugs). I’d found the bonnet not quite fully closed when I’d gone to load the car the morning after the party, but hadn’t really thought anything of it at the time.

I was furious! The fact that someone, a fellow Mini owner and supposed mutual friend at that, had lowered themselves to deliberately sabotaging my car was beyond me. That’s why it had taken me so long to figure out the problem – the fact that someone would stoop low enough to actually do something like that for no reason at all simply never entered my head - we’d not had an argument with anybody or anything, or been abusive - they had just taken against us for no reason. I was annoyed with myself for not having realised the problem sooner, and pictured the other boys laughing when they got to hear how I’d taken half the engine apart trying to fix it. I was mad!

Anyway, mother was quite delighted that the car was finally running, but not ecstatic, as by this time it was too late for us to set off and we had to spend another night at their house. I did explain to mother what had happened, and the level of betrayal – I was always brought up to believe in the sanctity of guests, no matter what, and to ignore this unwritten rule was a betrayal – think Macbeth and The Glencoe Massacre. However, I got the impression that she was more annoyed at us, for being there in the first place, than she was at the perpetrators of this heinous crime, and that we had clearly somehow deserved it! She bought us Pizzas, turned the TV on, and shut the living room door.

The next morning, not for the first time, we loaded the gear back into the Mini and set off, actually leaving this time! Mother and girl  (once more levered from her bed) waved us off, but their forced smiles were very thin and as we drove away I saw their body language in the mirror, clearly showing their sense of relief as the boys left town. Anyway, we were on the road again, at last!

Cornish camp!

From there we travelled all the way down to the Lizard Point in Cornwall and camped on a site that Geoff and I knew from the previous year when we had stopped there on our motorbikes - my BSA Starfire 250 (which broke down) and his Suzuki GT250.

The Boys, with Spot, the dog

During our time on the Lizard, we amused ourselves by going to the beach during the day (no sign of Bikini Babes) and then driving round the country lanes in the evening with a couple of the gang sitting on the roof rack. Health and safety? Bah! 

Camping on the Lizard Point.

One day when I went off to the shops to buy some food, I picked up a girl who was hitching, but had to drop her off a couple of miles from her destination as I was picking the others up from a pub. However, when they heard the story, they insisted that I take her the rest of the way and so, somehow, the four of them squeezed into the back seat (a world record?) and we went back and picked the girl up again (I think that she was a little wary of us to begin with – who wouldn’t be when offered a lift by 5 youths in a Mini!) and took her to the lovely little pub on the quay of the little fishing village where she worked as a bar maid. 

I’ve no idea where the village was or what the pub was called, but we spent the rest of the afternoon there, enjoying the atmosphere of a little Cornish fishing village in the sunshine (see the book cover photo), before driving back to the campsite.

Torquay welcome!

Going on from there we went down to Torquay and camped outside the town, and although we spent most of our days on the beach, there was still no sign of any Bikini Babes - Damnation! 

Camping in Torquay - but where were the girls?

The most noteworthy thing about our stay there was that one evening we hit the pubs in downtown Torquay, and we chanced upon a really great bar with loud music, loads of young people and a great atmosphere. Brilliant! (Just the sort of place that I would now avoid like the plague, but as teenagers, it was heaven!) By that time it was getting a bit late but we all bought pints, somehow squeezed onto a table and began to soak up the great music and atmosphere. 

However, no sooner had we all sat down, but the music suddenly stopped, massive, blinding spotlights in the ceiling were switched on, and a door at the back of the pub suddenly opened through which several massive bouncers entered in an aggressive manner – carrying baseball bats! They all started to shout ‘Time’ and ‘everybody out’ and one bouncer even came up and smashed his baseball bat down on our table, telling us to get out – immediately!

One forgets all too quickly in this day and age, that we used to have strict licensing laws and pubs called time at 11.00 pm at weekends (10.30 pm on a school night) after which no more drinks could be served, with a 10 minute ‘drinking-up’ time allowed after this – and Sunday licensing laws were a complete nightmare! This particular bar in Torquay had clearly never heard of ‘drinking-up time’ or the idea that they were entertaining guests in their establishment who were to be treated with courtesy and respect.

Before we knew it, we were out on the street, near full pints left behind in the pub, at the suggestion of the bouncers, and the doors of the bar were closed and locked behind us, and we all stood there, rather bemused, not knowing quite what had just happened, or what to do next. I suppose you have to hand it to the bar, they cleared the place in under two minutes, with no drunken arguments from the drinkers and not having to wait for ‘drinking-up time’ to elapse – but it was rather harsh!          

Cruisin' through the night!

On return to the campsite, we were all a little unsettled and certainly not sleepy, and someone suggested that instead of waiting until the next day to move to our next destination, we should ‘drive through the night’. Ah, what a romantic idea! That vision of being in the middle of nowhere, maybe in the USA, maybe in the desert, with the hood down, cruising through the night, radio blaring, watching the moon and the stars, and then seeing a spectacular sunrise, in a cloudless open sky! Pulling into a roadside diner for breakfast with ham, eggs over easy and hash browns. We were going to be Jack Kerouac, On the Road Again, or maybe James Taylor in Two Lane Black Top, or Barry Newman in Vanishing Point. Bring it on!

We naturally fell for this romantic vision - but once again the reality didn’t quite live up to the dream. All we had was a car packed full of overgrown bored teenagers, who couldn't see anything out of the windows, and after half an hour were all trying to sleep. However, while traveling in such cramped conditions was difficult, getting to sleep in them was nigh-on impossible. 

For several hours we drove on with various groans of discontent, punctuated with snoring and frequent oaths being uttered by the disgruntled passengers. Not even my wonderful 8-track cassette player could lift our spirits.

8-Track Heaven!

That 8-track cassette player was one of the best things I ever bought, together with the tapes to go with it. One day, shortly after buying the Mini, I wandered down to an infamous second-hand shop in Oxford, and there in the window was an 8-track tape player for a car. An 8-track was a type of cassette, but it was much larger than a normal cassette, and instead of having the normal two sides on it, it had eight, which were selected by an array of buttons on the console. 

I bought the 8-track for about £10 and was also offered some tapes to go with it. As it was an 8-track, none of us had any tapes that would fit it (we all used standard cassette tapes or vinyl) but a good music selection was essential. By extreme good fortune, the person who had sold the 8-track to the shop was clearly an old ‘head’ and had recorded some of the best music ever onto the 8-track cassettes. 

I bought three tapes for £1 each (I wish I’d bought more) and as well as having some music on that we already knew and loved, there was also a lot of great music on them that we’d never come across before, and those tapes helped introduce us to some great new bands. Without them, the holiday wouldn’t have been half so good.

There were artists and tracks on the tapes that we knew and loved: Bowie classics including tracks from Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and The Man who Sold the World, Free tracks including Wishing Well, My brother Jake and Soon I Will be Gone, Wishbone Ash tracks such as Blowin’ Free, Time Was and The King will come, Stevie Wonder tracks including Superstition,You are the Sunshine of my Life and I Believe. Not only were those great songs on the tapes, but we were also introduced to new music by such as King Crimson, especially tracks such as Epitaph and Moonchild, as well as songs by the legendary Jimi Hendrix, and in particular the wonderful track that remains my favourite Hendrix song to this day, May this be Love.

 But above all, we were introduced to the music of Nick Drake. What revelation! The tapes included the stunning tracks Time has told me and River Man, but we quickly learned that by then he was already dead, having committed suicide due to poor record sales and a lack of recognition for his work. Sales during his lifetime totalled only about 4,000 for all three of his albums combined, due mainly to poor marketing - compare this with Tubular Bells that was released on the new Virgin label, headed by Richard Branson at around the same time. Once you hear Nick Drake's songs you’re hooked forever. A true genius who is only now achieving the recognition he deserves.

Meet the relatives - early!

Now, as the UK is slightly smaller than the US, we arrived at our destination well before we had imagined, at around 5.00 am and before anyone was awake. Whoops! The main problem was that our destination was my uncle’s house in Leigh-on-Sea and I hadn’t told him that we were coming. I had somehow forgotten to mention to him that he was about to be invaded by 5 sweaty teenagers in an old Mini. 

This was a minor oversight brought about by Geoff and I having stayed there two years before when on holiday on our mopeds, and I think that I had perhaps taken their open invitation to return a little too literally. 

So, there we were outside my uncle’s house at 5.00 in the morning: what were we to do? We decided that it was far too early to ring the doorbell and wake them up, so we rummaged through the car, found our sleeping bags and stretched out in the front garden. What we didn’t realise was that having five clumsy teenagers rummage through their luggage in a Mini on a quiet side street at five in the morning without disturbing anyone was being rather optimistic.

After we had apparently awoken half the street, my aunt forced herself out of bed, and appeared at the front door to rescue us and invite us in. Heaven! Despite the manner of our arrival, we were welcomed with open arms and invited to use the bathroom, whilst a wonderful breakfast was prepared. We spent a great couple of days there being spoiled by my aunt and uncle and entertained by my two cousins, who were about the same age as Peter and I and we spent some great days with them on the beach and around the town. I can also report that almost incredibly no major gaffs were committed! We were family and we were officially persona grata! Hoorah!

Reading festival! (That’s a place, not a book!)

From Leigh-on-Sea we went on to our last port of call – Reading Festival. As we lived in Oxford, Reading was easy to get to, and I’d been to the legendary festival there the previous year on my own. That year (1975) I hadn't take a tent and so slept in the communal marquees which was quite an experience! I also didn’t have a ticket, so I completely missed the Friday performances, but my luck changed and I met some friends from Oxford on the Saturday morning, and they knew someone who was leaving, saying that the festival that year was sh*t, and that he was going home forthwith. 

He somehow managed to prise open the metal clasp on his wrist band and gave it to me! I had a brilliant time, with highlights including watching Wishbone Ash, Yes, Supertramp, the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and The Heavy Metal Kids, although it was bit weird being by myself, especially as I’d only just turned 17. A big disappointment though, was that Lou Reed had been booked to play, but he didn't turn up, allegedly because he was only second on the bill on the Sunday night, below Wishbone Ash. 

I would have loved to have seen him and heard him play White light, White Heat live, but it was not to be. To be quite honest I have to agree with him about his poor place on the bill – he wasn’t even second billing on the Saturday! – who can blame such a massive music star as that for not bothering to fly over from the USA with all his band and equipment, for a lowly Sunday night second slot billing?

Anyway, this was now Reading 1976 and another truly great line-up, and I could enjoy it with all my friends. The only thing was that although this was still part of the ‘long hot summer of 76’ it rained a lot! - it was Reading festival, after all! Highlights that year included AC/DC who were just stunning, Eddie and the Hot Rods, and a great headlining set by Rory Gallagher, but head and shoulders above them all were Phil Manzanera (Roxy Music) with his band 801, who were just fantastic. 

However, for very different reasons, the performance of the festival for us, was by the legendary American rocker, Ted Nugent. It was a pinnacle for us, not so much because of the music, but because of the great time we were having in the audience with some weed (which was ironic as Ted Nugent was heavily anti-drug), a lot of red wine in plastic bottles, and above all with a group of girls we knew from Oxford.

We were in the crowd, drinking and smoking, when we were suddenly and miraculously joined by Gary’s girlfriend, Steph, and a few of her friends from school. We knew that Steph was coming that night, but not with a group of her friends, and how they found us in the middle of several thousand people was inexplicable (no mobile phones etc. of course in those days). 

We all had a great time, and as it decided to rain heavily at that point, we all dived under some plastic sheeting we got from somewhere, and somehow, probably due to the alcohol and the drugs, we all automatically paired up with the girls in the group – occasionally leaping out from under the plastic sheeting to ‘freak out’ before diving back under again and having a bit more sexy fun. This was what festivals were all about! A great time was had by all. They weren’t Bikini Babes, but they were most definitely Festival babes! Result!

Results Time!

The next day, on the Monday, we made our way back home, where our ‘A’ level results were awaiting us. I thought I’d done okay, not brilliantly, but okay. However, when I opened the letter I was in for a shock. I got a ‘C in History, an ‘E’ in English Literature (by far and away my best subject) and a ‘U’ in Geography, meaning that I’d failed it altogether. I was reeling. I went into the park and climbed a tree - I didn’t know what else to do. My world fell apart. Failing Geography altogether wasn’t great, and only getting a C in History was poor, but an E in English Lit??!! Bugger. 

I was so shocked and traumatised by my results (although in retrospect they were what I deserved) that all I could think to do was to go over to the park opposite our house, wander about aimlessly and then climb a tree and sit in it for a couple of hours. The problem was, that I soon realised that nothing I did could change my results; no amount of mooching around or self-recrimination or sitting in a tree – my results were what they were, and that was it.

I had applied to read English Lit at University and unsurprisingly none of the five universities I’d applied to were remotely interested in taking me following my extremely poor results. I contacted clearing, but due to my abysmal grades they weren’t able to find anything for me either. English, they explained, was a very popular subject, and there was little chance of finding a course willing to take me with my grades (or rather, lack of them).

Damnation. What to do? My whole life up to that point had been based on the premise that I would go through school, and then go to University to read English Lit. and suddenly the whole plan was destroyed, just like that.  I had two options: take the year again, re-sitting my A levels at the end of the following year, or go for my ‘insurance’ option of reading History at Portsmouth Polytechnic, for which I had been offered a place, but not yet accepted? 

Now, at the time Polytechnics were seen very much as second class institutions, not on a par with Universities, and certainly way below those universities in the Russell group, and I suppose I was a bit of a snob. Decisions.

In the end I was just too proud to face going back to school, having to re-sit my final year with students who were a year below me, whilst all my friends were off at Uni. or wherever, so I opted to go to Portsmouth and read History, reluctantly accepting the place that was thankfully still on offer. I was good at History, and quite interested in it, but as subjects went, as far as I was concerned it was far below my preferred subject of English Lit, and it had been a hard decision to make. Whatever the case I resigned myself to the situation and prepared to set off for Portsmouth – where was that exactly?

It had been the first real knock-back I’d ever experienced (apart from never having been picked for any school team in any sport during my entire school career!) but I had to accept it. I got my stuff ready, and my brother prepared to take me in his VW Camper van to the digs in Southsea that the Poly had provided for me. Little did I know what awaited me at college (college, not university) and little did I know what a completely mad and topsy-turvy 3 years it was going to be, in every way!

I'm a student!

Welcome to Pompey!

I had been born and grown up in Oxford; one of the most beautiful and bohemian cities in the country. It was what I was used to – lovely stone architecture with a learned air, steeped in history, together with a fairly laid-back counter culture, driven by the large student population with bars and trendy shops and great pubs. Portsmouth, however, was pretty much the exact opposite. 

Portsmouth was a very staunchly working class town with a strong naval history, with architecture to match. Instead of students there were sailors (known as Skates to the locals) and people tended to be quite right wing in their orientation. There weren’t the bars and pubs and cafes and general air of culture that there had been in Oxford. Portsmouth (Pompey) was very much a naval dockyard town, and proud of it.

Of course the seaside resort of Southsea was also a part of Portsmouth, and that was great, but it belonged to a slightly bygone era, one of candy floss, and deck chairs and penny arcades. There was a fairground with rides that had seen better days, and this only added to the sense of a seaside town that had once been great, but at that time was in decline. So, not only was I leaving home for the first time and living on my own in a new city, the contrast between the city I was leaving and the one I was going to, could hardly have been more marked.

Facilities

 Portsmouth Poly was trying hard to develop and upgrade its facilities (and in subsequent years it did a great job), but at the time their facilities were still meagre, especially in terms of halls of residence, of which there was only one. 

At the time I arrived, there was no real campus, only a selection of old buildings just to the North of Southsea and the pleasure beach, bought up by the then still quite new Polytechnic, and then re-purposed as different departments. There were virtually no purpose built buildings at all. 

The History department building was actually an old hotel that had been partially, and hastily converted into a college. The name of the old hotel, somewhat optimistically named King’s Rooms, had been removed from the front of the building, but where the letters had been, they had left an indelible mark on the stone façade and the name could still be read quite easily. Hence the History department building was still known as King’s Rooms. For a start this meant that there were no catering facilities in the department, and as there was no central campus, we would all troop to the café next door when given a break between double lectures.

Apart from this there were a collection of old Victorian houses that formed the administrative blocks, and various other buildings (old schools and the suchlike) that were used by various departments throughout the college. The Students’ Union was in an old warehouse. 

The old library (that was finally replaced in my third year with a wonderful new building) was housed in a very unsuitable building, with cramped rooms and poor lighting, which wasn’t great, but even worse was the lack of resources. There were some books that were so in demand, yet of which they had so few copies, that the library operated a short term loan system. 

Nothing unusual about that you might think, but in our library if a book was marked as being on short term loan it meant that you could only take it out for 4 hours! If you didn’t get your reservation to borrow the book into the library in time, you were stuffed (and sometimes you were anyway as previous borrowers sometimes simply failed to return the book on time).

Fellow students - from later in the course

My Accommodation Part 1: Pepe’s

When I arrived, the good news was that they had just finished building a brand new hall of residence; the bad news was that although it was brand new, it was the only one they had. Fear not, however, as first year students were given priority to live there, and that included me. But of course I had only accepted a place at Pompey late in the day, and that meant that the hall of residence was already full, and so there wasn’t any room left for me.

This was a major blow, as being in a hall of residence in your first year had many benefits, foremost among these being that you were living amidst a large group of fellow students, from many different courses, and you therefore had a ready source of friends and you weren’t alone. As I was to discover later, living away from home for the first time without friends, can be a very lonely experience, and living amidst other students who are mainly also first years, can be a big help. 

Secondly, a hall of residence can be a bit of a half-way-house between living at home and living entirely on your own. It can be a good way of easing oneself into independent living, without going straight in at the deep end, which can be quite a shock: for a start, it’s warm! That may sound facetious, but when you’ve lived in a student house without heating, you realise that the warmth you once took for granted at your parents' house, is actually a very expensive luxury. 

Halls are also relatively safe, comfortable, have all mod-cons and facilities on tap, are often near to the college itself, and sometimes provide food as well as accommodation. The downside is that they are of course relatively expensive

Anyway, I couldn’t get a place in the one and only hall of residence at Pompey, and so I had to make the best of it, and instead took a room in a house owned and lived in by one of the Art lecturers at the Poly: Pepe. It was a typical Art lecturer’s house: a small Victorian terrace, sparsely but nicely furnished in a slightly alternative way (alternative to the dated 1950’s soft furnishings and ridiculous retro-fitted PVC double glazing of my family home), with plastic sheeting acting as makeshift double glazing in the dining room. It was a very cool place to live, and I was very pleased to be there. It was also half board, so I ate breakfast and dinner with Pepe and his lovely wife.

He worked as a clown (seriously!) in his spare time, and once took me with him on a wonderful weekend to Action Space, an Arts’ centre in London where he was doing a couple of children’s shows, and I went along as backstage crew and drummer. I played during the magic tricks to further enhance them, and I also got very good at doing the percussion when he pretended to hit his colleague, another clown he knew from London. I sometimes had to stop doing this though, as it made some of the very young children cry! 

On a tangential note, I had to make my own pot of tea for the first time ever whilst in London (I slept on a sofa in one of Action Space’s offices) and I didn’t know quite how to do it. I ended up putting 8 tea bags in the pot and then left it to brew (stew) for several minutes before pouring it out. The resulting concoction was so strong I physically wretched when I tried to drink it, and I’ve never been able to drink a cup of tea ever since! Despite that little interlude, the whole weekend was wonderful, if slightly bizarre (I was still rather shy and withdrawn and it was all a bit much for me at the time), and the future looked bright.

However, whilst living at Pepe’s was great on paper, there was a catch - a big catch. There were actually two of us lodging in the house, sharing a bedroom. So, I had almost no privacy, and sharing a bedroom with a complete stranger was a potential recipe for disaster - and so it turned out to be. 

The problem was that Dave, who I shared with, turned out to be a rather strange chap, and he kind of latched onto me, with his demand for company increasing as time went on. It was a very difficult and awkward situation. I was only 18 and away from home for the first time, and I was struggling to find my own feet, never mind having to look after and support someone else at the same time.

Of course, Dave really needed help. He needed counselling and looking after and a friend and someone to care for him, but I’m ashamed to say that in my case I did exactly the opposite. I quickly came to resent his constant demand for attention, his need to go everywhere I went and always be with me, and my attitude towards him began to harden and become one not of caring, but of annoyance and frustration. I wanted to have a good time, and go to wild parties and generally enjoy myself, and Dave’s presence was suffocating me.

After a month or so, I knew that I had no option but to move out, and get my own place. It was the only way I could see to escape the claustrophobic clutches of Dave. I was sad to leave Pepe’s house, as in many ways it was a wonderful place to live, but I just had to get away.

However, by this time in the academic year there was little accommodation available, and in my desperation I agreed to move into a house run by someone I came to know as Mr Man, his wife and young daughter, which I instinctively knew was a mistake, but that was all I could find, and reluctantly gave Pepe my required two weeks’ notice.

When the time came for me to move out, I said my slightly emotional goodbyes to Pepe and his wife, but David ruined the occasion by suddenly reminding me, at the most inappropriate moment, that I owed him £5. In all honesty I had forgotten about it, but luckily I had a fiver in my wallet (all the money I had) and was able to reimburse him there and then. I knew that he was actually punishing me for abandoning him, but that was to be expected. (In those days, £5 was a fair amount of money)

The Cashless Society – where cash is essential!

You need to be aware that in those dark days, cash was an essential means of paying for goods and services, but that actually getting cash out of the bank was very difficult. For starters, there was no such thing as a debit card; you paid cash, or cheque, or nothing. The only type of cards that were available were credit cards, and these were very new, and only those with limitless reserves of dosh were allowed to have them, and even then many places weren’t geared up to accept them. 

Those establishments that did accept credit cards didn’t have electronic consoles, but instead they used rudimentary copying machines that physically printed your card details onto carbon paper, by sliding a printing block over it. Debit cards were yet to be invented, and contactless was literally something from Science Fiction (I remember reading about it around that time, in a Philip K. Dick novel, and wondered if such an amazing idea would ever become reality).

People did have a bank card, but it functioned merely as a ‘cheque guarantee card’, that you had to present when you wrote a cheque, and guaranteed that the cheque would be honoured by the bank. There were no such things as cash machines, no nipping down to the local hole-in-the-wall for a few notes, and of course no cash back offered in shops, since you were paying in cash in the first place! 

So, cash was essential, but the only place to get cash from was your bank – and not from the non-existent cash machine, but from the teller inside. You joined an endless queue, finally got to the one window of four that was actually open, wrote them a cheque (!) and finally got some cash. Even that was difficult, as banks weren’t open during normal hours, as they had their own opening hours of 10.00am – 4.00pm Monday to Friday, and they were shut all day on Saturdays and Sundays. 

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that it was often hard getting to the bank, and if you ran out of cash on a Friday or Saturday night (as happened frequently), then you really were stuffed, and borrowing (sponging) from a friend or acquaintance was your only option.

The Cash machine!!

A year or so after I started at Portsmouth, Nat West Bank excitedly announced the arrival of the first ever cash machines to be available in the UK! Wow! But they were most definitely not cash machines as we know them today! 

Customers (myself included) were sent a separate cash card which was a thin, flimsy piece of plastic with holes punched out of it (rather like the holes in Pianola sheet music) and the holes were read by the computer in the cash machine. 

The cash card was for emergency use only! and worked as follows: you went to the one and only cash machine in Portsmouth that had just been installed (outside the main Nat West branch on the High St) and inserted your card. The machine would then automatically dispense one £10 note (no other options available) which was your emergency cash. That was it, a tenner - and be thankful! Not only that, but the machine would then keep your card! Your card was only returned to you a few days later in the post (!!) This system was touted as the best thing since sliced bread!

So, if anyone wants to start moaning about how far away the nearest cash machine is or whatever, just remember how bad it used to be. By ‘eck, we had it tough in them days!

My Accommodation Part 2: Mr Man’s

Anyway, I eventually left Pepe’s and moved into a large shared house in a rather unfashionable area on a main road, that boasted rooms – with breakfast! The landlord, who I dubbed ‘Mr Man’ had hit on some tax loophole or other. He had apparently discovered that by offering not just accommodation, but breakfast too, the house was officially classed as a Bed and Breakfast, and apparently the tax paid on a B&B was far less than that on a straight rental property. 

So, every morning at 7.30am, Mr Man would arrive with his wife and daughter, remove the padlock from the kitchen door (!) go in and prepare breakfast, and then serve it to the residents in the dining room at 8.00am sharp. Following this the family would clear the table, do the washing up, replace the padlock on the kitchen door, and return home, not to be seen again until the next morning, when the whole operation would be repeated. Slightly bizarre - and which also meant that we had no access to the kitchen at all! No coffee, no tea, no chance to cook anything at all!

The rooms all had at least two beds in them, including at least one with bunk beds, and the students there were all foreign students from India or Pakistan; I was to be the exception. Now, the thing to realise, and it’s hard to remember as you get older, but when you’re young you don’t consider things like impoverished accommodation with loads of foreign students, all sharing one bathroom and all being forced to be up at the same time as being a nightmare, you just look at it as being perfectly normal – your acceptance level is much higher. 

And so it was, that despite some misgivings, I was happy to live there (especially as by that time I was desperate to free myself from the increasingly irksome burden that was David).

The day finally arrived and I moved in, but there seemed to be a little confusion amongst my fellow inmates (I use the term advisedly) and this led to Mr Man being summoned. When he saw me he looked slightly shocked and taken aback. He then proceeded to explain, in a slightly embarrassed manner, that as I hadn’t been back in touch in the two weeks since agreeing to take the bed (I can’t say room, as they were all shared) he assumed that I’d changed my mind and he had therefore let the bed to someone else, and they were already there. 

In retrospect I guess it’s fair to say that I probably had a lucky escape, as the place was so weird, but in the short term it gave me a major problem – I was suddenly and unexpectedly homeless!

 Luckily, though, Mr Man clearly felt rather responsible and kindly offered that I could live in the dining room of the house, sleeping on the (velour) sofa – at full rent! With no idea of what else to do, I accepted and moved into the dining room. 

The dining room consisted solely of a very large table with sufficient chairs for all the tenants, and the aforementioned sofa. Luxury! I was provided with a few blankets, a couple of sheets and a pillow and this was my new accommodation. I began longing for the old-fashioned carpets and saggy sofas of home.

The only real item of note that happened in the short time I was there, was that we held some kind of party and various people who nobody knew turned up (of course!). One of the unknown students to arrive was someone who was studying French, and he had with him another boy who he introduced as a French exchange student who didn’t speak much English. I had reasonable spoken French having done a French Exchange at the end of the fourth year (year 10 to everyone under the age of 50), with Frederique in Strasbourg, and I chatted away with the exchange student as best I could in my pigeon tongue, and I was quite proud of the fact that I managed to converse quite well.

It was only after they left that one of the other lodgers at the house, Rikki, a trainee chef from India, told me that it was obvious to everyone but me that he wasn’t an exchange student at all, and they had just been pretending he was French for a laugh. All they needed was to find someone gullible enough to believe them ......!?

Rikki became my friend after that, but I have to say that he was rather a ‘toxic’ friend, as David had been, but in a very different way and he was always using me to get something or other that he needed or wanted. By the end of the year I had largely managed to shake him off, but it was another friendship that I wished I’d never had.

Flasher!

As regards the house itself, I managed to last out for a few more days sleeping on the sofa, but the situation wasn’t great and things all came to a head one morning as breakfast was being prepared. 

I was of course sleeping in the dining room, and for the system to work, I had to be up and about before everyone came down for breakfast at 8.00am. Or, to be more precise, I had to be up and about before 7.45am when Mr Man’s daughter came into the dining room to lay the table. 

One morning, I was bit the worse for wear and when the alarm went off, instead of jumping off the sofa as usual, and immediately getting dressed, I lay there for a bit, slowly coming round. After a few minutes I was awake enough to get up and get dressed. But just as I was in the middle of doing so, at the most inappropriate moment possible, in walked the daughter to lay the table. The level of embarrassment between the two of us was palpable, especially as, both being young, we didn’t really know how best to deal with the situation. 

What I ended up doing was collapsing back on the sofa whilst trying to cover my embarrassment with sheets and blankets, whilst she, instead of retreating, covered her embarrassment by continuing to lay the table! The time it took her to finish her labours and exit the dining room became the longest two minutes of my young life!

The good news was that this incident made it abundantly clear that it was completely impractical for me to stay there any longer, and that I urgently needed to look for yet another place to stay. And so the search for my third place to stay in as many months began. As before, places were at a premium, and I think I rather went from the frying pan into the fire. This time I moved into the lino house.

My Accommodation Part.3: The Lino House

I found a room in a shared house where there were three tenants (including myself) and the landlord, who lived in. The landlord was Mediterranean (I’m not sure from where) and the other two tenants were both Greek. We each had our own room and shared a kitchen, dining room and bathroom, all much as standard. However, the house was completely, and I mean completely, covered in cheap lino – the hallways, dining room, kitchen, bathroom – even our bedrooms! This, along with the universal use of woodchip wallpaper on every single wall, gave the house a really cheap and chilly atmosphere. I guess if you were an estate agent you would call the place Spartan, as opposed to what most people would call it, which would be institutional. 

The piece de resistance though, were the gas fires. Each bedroom was fitted with its own gas fire – and gas meter. We all had old style gas fires in the fireplaces (the ones that had 'miser rate' written on the control valve, for those old enough to remember such things), and near to them, at the side of the old chimney breasts, were individual gas meters that took 50 pence pieces - and those meters ate 50 pence pieces like they were going out of style.

I became friendly with one of the Greek tenants who was clearly politically aware, and he was keen to tell me all about modern Greek History and the suppression of free speech and the ‘Z’ movement. 

One day he came to me and said: ‘Chris, I think that the landlord is charging us too much for gas, so it’s costing us much more than it should do to heat our rooms. I’ve asked around and apparently there’s a maximum that landlords are allowed to charge their tenants for gas, above the standard price, and I’m pretty sure we’re way over that limit.’ He then showed me a little indicator on our meters that displayed how much we were being charged for gas. It clearly showed that the meters were set to maximum, meaning that we were paying the maximum possible for our gas. He then asked if I could contact the gas board about this, as his English wasn’t too good.

I was stunned. I remember thinking ‘Hang on, I’m the English guy here. It should be me showing him that we were paying too much for gas, not the other way round.’ A lesson learnt in never underestimating others, or overestimating yourself. I wrote to the only supplier of gas at the time, British Gas, and asked for clarification.

Note that there was no such thing as the internet through which I could contact the gas board, and the only other alternative apart from writing a letter, was to ring them. Now you also need to be aware that back in those days your only access to a phone was via a public call box, and not only that, but any phone calls made in the morning (before 1.00pm) were charged at a much higher rate than those made in the afternoon, or at weekends, so if you did need to use the phone during office hours, you had to try and wait until after 1.00pm, which was a total pain. At the time I thought that it would be too expensive and too complicated to try and ring the gas board, so contacting them by letter was the only viable option, and I duly sent them an enquiry.

The following weekend I was away, back home in Oxford, when apparently a letter arrived for me on the Saturday, clearly marked British Gas on the envelope, and was left, as was the custom, on the hall table, ready for me to collect on my return. Now, according to my Greek friend, the letter mysteriously disappeared from the hall table not long after it had arrived, reappearing a few hours later. Suspicious!

When I returned on the Sunday evening, as soon as I opened the front door, and before I could even take a step down the hallway, the landlord suddenly appeared from nowhere, and greeted me in a rather overly effusively and friendly manner. 

He said: ‘Chris, my friend, I have just discovered that I have accidentally been charging you and the other tenants too much for your gas! I did not realise! I have therefore re-set all the gas meters in the house to where they should be, so from now on your gas will be cheaper! Not only that, but I am refunding you all £5 to make up for any overpayment you may have already made. Good news, yes?’ I replied that it was indeed good news and collected my mail – the letter from the gas board - and went up to my room to read it.

As I suspected, when I opened the letter it explained that landlords were allowed to re-sell gas to their tenants at a slightly higher tariff than standard, but that there was a legal limit on how much more they could resell the gas for. I knew from my previous examination of the meter that he had been charging us way over the maximum limit allowed. 

He had clearly taken the letter from the gas board, addressed to me, steamed it open, read it, and then re-sealed it and put it back on the hall table! He was therefore able to pre-empt any complaint from ourselves and make him appear to be a caring and thoughtful landlord - which he wasn't.

Not only that but when I re-checked my gas meter, he had indeed re-set the meters, but only adjusted them as little as possible, so he was still charging us the absolute maximum for gas that he could legally get away with! I also conservatively estimate that he owed us all at least £10 each for the excess money we’d all had to shove in our meters since we'd moved in, but he repaid us just £5 each. Some landlords are good, but sadly many aren't.

Cordon Bleu!

The lino house also gave me my first real taste of having to cook for myself - and I didn’t have the faintest idea of where to start! This was very much in the days before any form of cookery/home economics/food and nutrition courses were on the radar in any boys’ school such as the one I attended, and I was never even taught the rudiments of cookery, let alone anything else. 

Similarly, when I was brought up, ours was a very traditional home, and cooking was classed very much as woman’s work, and the kitchen was a woman’s space. Peter and I therefore almost never even entered the Kitchen, let alone did any cooking, and hence my knowledge of the culinary arts was virtually zero.

Culinary Chaos

Meals in my new lino house therefore consisted of such culinary delights as beans on toast, fish fingers, sausages, fried eggs, canned soup and a variety of packet and ready-to-cook meals (all of which were totally inedible). Note that the vast majority of my meals involved frying something, as frying was pretty simple (I don’t think I actually ever even opened the oven door let alone used it to cook anything; that was just a bridge too far), and whilst microwave ovens had just begun to appear in houses around the country by this point, they were still very much new technology that could only be found in some of the wealthier or more modern homes, and certainly not this one!

Because I was frying most things I bought some lard in a plastic tub, and used this for frying, as I’d seen my mum do. After the frying was finished, I would then pour the fat from the frying pan back into the tub of lard, again as I’d seen my mother do. I’ve no idea why mum ever did this, but in my case it was about the only thing I knew about cookery, and so I religiously carried it out. 

However, one day I realised that the boiling fat I was pouring back into the plastic tub, had actually melted and ruptured the walls of the tub, and horrible, hot, greasy lard was oozing everywhere! That put an end to my attempts at re-using lard, or using lard at all (thank heavens!)

I also bought a selection of ready meals in tins or packets or whatever, which seemed like the ideal solution to my problems - but I found them all to be completely inedible, without exception. They seemed so convenient and easy, but the promise they offered of delicious meals that were easy to make, was illusory. 

One of the worst incidents I had as part of my great culinary exploration of ready meals was with a Fray Bentos pie. These came in saucer shaped tins (and still do I believe) and all you had to do was to pierce the lid in a few places and then put them on top of a saucepan of boiling water and steam them for about half-an-hour or so until cooked. Simple, no?

One day I tried to cook a seemingly delicious Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie that I’d bought - but forgot to pierce the lid of the tin first! I left the pie steaming over a pan of boiling water and left it for half an hour or so whilst I returned to my room to get on with some other work. 

However, when I returned to the kitchen the once saucer-shaped tin was by now almost completely round! Without any holes in the lid, there had been nowhere for the heat and steam inside the tin to escape, and pressure had built up inside, forcing the once saucer shaped tin into a spherical shape! Oh, dear, what to do about it?

In retrospect, the obvious course of action would have been to allow the tin to cool down before throwing the whole thing away - but this was far too obvious and sensible an option for a young student like myself! Instead, I decided to open the tin and see if the pie inside was still edible. I found the can opener and after quite a bit of a struggle, due to the deformity of the tin, I finally managed to get the can opener onto the rim. I squeezed the levers of the opener together and turned the key on the side and managed to puncture the tin and make a hole. 

I knew that I had managed to puncture the tin because a terrifying spray of steam mixed with boiling gravy and liquefied beef and God knows what else came shooting out of the hole! I leapt away in surprise and shock, and this meant that the pie was no longer being held in place! Because the tin was now spherical, it could move easily, and being propelled by a jet of steam and liquefied pie, it span around wildly on the kitchen worktop, spraying the whole kitchen and myself in boiling liquefied pie. Eventually it literally ran out of steam and came to a rest next to the sink.

I was in shock. I stood completely still before looking round at the scene of total devastation, with bits of liquified pie dripping from everywhere and the room full of steam. I cleaned up the kitchen as best I could (thank heavens for that lino! Ha!), belatedly threw the pie away, and then went and had a good wash and changed my clothes. At least I hadn't been badly burned. No more tinned pies for me.

The fact that ready meals proved to be so horrible, combined with my complete lack of culinary knowledge, meant that I indulged in creating some of my own dishes, and amongst others, this led to my amazing invention of the Banana Omelette! All I can say is that is that it was a culinary delicacy best consigned to the annals of History! 

Then there was another time when some friends came round and we got the munchies. All I had to offer them was spaghetti - nothing else, just plain spaghetti with no sauce or anything. It was the only time I ever longed to eat Banana Omelette again!

Loneliness, Leeds and ….. Stalking!

I was struggling. I was now in my third set of digs in as many months, and I was basically very lonely. I now had a room on my own, which in some ways was great, but in other ways was bad as I felt totally isolated, with little contact with any other students, and I couldn’t really see a way of meeting people or making friends. 

The other students on my course were very friendly, but we just had little chats at break times etc. - we hardly ever went out socially, and although I went to see bands and so forth at the Students’ Union, going on your own to such events can be actually more lonely than staying at home, as everyone else is having a laugh and enjoying themselves, while you stand quietly somewhere, enviously watching everyone else having fun.

I tried to join the Hockey club, which was a complete disaster, (I went once, but was never invited back), and similarly I tried to join the sailing club, with almost identical results (I went to beginners’ sailing club every Wednesday for 3 weeks in a row, and each week it was cancelled due to strong winds). I even tried to enlist in the University Air Squadron, remembering my passion for the Air Training Corps I’d had in younger years, but at the signing-up meeting, the officers took one look at me in my trench coat and long hair, and suggested that perhaps this wasn’t the right group for me. (Oh, things could have turned out so differently!)

I finally made a couple of friends who were on a parallel course to mine, who had a flat together, and we had a lot in common. I can’t tell you how much it meant to actually have a couple of people to talk to! The problem was that I was so desperate for some company, I knew that I was in danger of going round to their flat too often and wearing out my welcome. It was a bit like being a love-struck teenager who obsesses over a new girlfriend and ends up smothering her with their attentions. 

And indeed, my fears were duly realised when I went round to see them one Sunday morning – Sunday mornings being one of the loneliest times. I went in and instead of a normal greeting, they both asked separately: ‘So, what have you come round for then?’ in a polite but clear message that I had exceeded my allocation of visits and they were tired of seeing me. They had clearly been talking about me and had apparently agreed that my presence was just a bit too regular. I was mortified with embarrassment, mumbled an excuse and left, never to return. My loneliness deepened.

My friends' flat that I so longed to be part of!

At about the same time my coat was stolen. My dad never bought me anything that wasn’t either for my birthday or Christmas, but one day, shortly before I was due to leave for Portsmouth, I bumped into him in town. I explained that I was there looking to buy a coat and he insisted on finding me a really good quality duffle coat and buying it for me. It really was a nice duffle coat – it fitted well, it suited me in a kind of posh studenty way that my other clothes didn't (I looked vaguely respectable!), and it kept me warm and dry. Not only that but because my dad had bought it for me it was rather special. 

Unfortunately though, sometime in the Autumn term I went to a party at someone’s house and wore my coat as it was raining heavily. The party turned out to be the usual dreary affair with everyone siting around and not much evidence of partying going on, and after staying a short while I decided to leave. I returned to the bedroom where everyone’s coats had been left, and of course mine was missing. Clearly because it was still raining hard some lowlife had taken it upon themselves to help themselves to my brand new coat! 

I was very annoyed with the unknown person, and with myself for having left my valuable coat in such a vulnerable place. I walked home in the pouring rain, getting soaked and feeling totally miserable. I never did get over the theft of that coat – such a simple thing, but one that meant a lot to me. Things in Portsmouth were going from bad to worse.

Roll Away the Stone

Things came to a head one Saturday evening when I went to a big concert by Mott the Hoople, or rather by Mott as they were known by then. At that time the band were in terminal decline and had just released their new album Shouting and Pointing, which was due to fail to chart anywhere, and the band split up shortly afterwards. Once again I was on my own and I was just about at my lowest ebb that night, and sat morosely watching the band, who were performing in a kind of club venue, with the main crowd in the middle and then with tables round the outside. 

As part of the fun, they released loads of balloons and Frisbees, which were wafted and whizzed around the auditorium, and added to the enjoyment of most of the audience – apart from little old lonesome me. Towards the end of the show I walked round the side of the audience, to get a better view, and as I did so, a Frisbee going at high speed caught me full on the side of my head. 

Because I was in such a depressed mood at the time, instead of ducking down and exclaiming, as one would do normally, I simply stopped mid-stride and then slowly turned my head round to where the Frisbee had come from with a bit of a death stare. 

I could immediately see that it had come from a small group of students standing near the bar, as they were all looking mortified and embarrassed, and rather scared, evidently thinking that I might come and exact some form of revenge on them. But it had clearly been an accident, and I wasn’t sure exactly who had thrown the Frisbee anyway, so I just walked on, pretending to be a hard man, but in actual fact I was hurt, hurt deep down inside.

The Frisbee whacking the side of my head, thrown by fellow students who were clearly enjoying themselves, was just too much to bear - it was the last straw. I felt like it was a sign that I really wasn’t wanted, and that I would never be accepted. I realised I had to do something if I was to escape this whole depressing situation. Suddenly, it was obvious – I would go and see my friend Gazza in Leeds – and I would go now, there and then, without delay! And so it was that at 11.00pm that night, I left the concert, got in my beloved Mini and drove Northwards towards Leeds and the friendship of Gazza.

Leeds or bust

Driving to Leeds that Saturday night was a strange journey. To begin with, I picked up a hitchhiker who insisted on giving me some Speed, which I had never had before, and he shovelled a couple of small spoonfuls of white powder into my mouth. This led to the rest of the journey seeming to take about 6 months, as my brain was in total overdrive (unlike my little Mini!). I then picked up another guy who immediately started to roll a large joint and I smoked that on top of the speed. 

All I can say is that having driven overnight, straight from a concert and having been plied with enough speed and weed to sink a battleship, I wasn’t in the best shape when I arrived in Leeds at about 6.00am the next morning. Not only that but as it had been a snap decision to go I hadn’t told Gazza I was coming so he wasn’t expecting me, and above all, when I got to Leeds I realised that I didn’t even know where he lived! Apart from that, all good!

I drove to the University and as it was very early on a Sunday morning I was lucky to find a caretaker/security guard in a kiosk and explained that my friend Gazza lived in a Hall of Residence, but I had no idea which one! Fortunately, he was clearly used to students and didn’t appear that surprised at my predicament.   

My heart sank when he explained that there were about 10 Halls, so that just knowing he was in a hall didn’t help too much. Had I any idea of which one he was in? I knew that Gazza had previously mentioned the name of the hall he was in, and I suggested to the security guard that if he could tell me the names of the various halls, maybe I‘d recognise Gazza’s. He obliged, and when he said the name Henry Price it immediately rang a bell, and I remembered that that was indeed the name of his hall of residence. Thank God!

The caretaker gave me directions and I drove round to the hall and parked on the main road outside. However, I still had no idea of which room, or indeed which flat, or even which floor Gazza lived on, in what turned out to be two massive blocks. 

Not only that but it was by then  6.30am on a Sunday morning, and there was no-one around to ask, and no way of contacting Gazza to alert him of my presence. 

Stalker!

I tried the main doors, but they were locked and there was no sign of a concierge or anyone else around to help me get in. I stood there for a while, with my head completely fuzzy from the drive, the lack of sleep and the drugs, not knowing what on earth to do next, when I saw someone go into one of the blocks through a small door on the side.

I lumbered forward, in a bit of a haze, and tried the door - it was open! Once inside I found myself in a stairwell, but with no idea of where to go, so I just started to climb up the stairs.

As I reached the first landing, I saw a woman I took to be a cleaner, and I mumbled ‘Hello’. I think she nearly had a heart attack as she hadn’t heard me come up the stairs, and when she turned to look at me, I know I must have looked quite a sight! 

She asked me what I was doing there and I replied that I was looking for my friend, Gazza, and had she seen him? She said she didn’t know anyone by the name of ‘Gazza’ and couldn’t help me, and shot off down the corridor. I wasn’t sure what to do and stood there for a while, peering through locked doors that led into carpeted corridors off the stairwell. 

Not long after, the cleaner reappeared with another woman, who asked me in a rather abrupt manner what I was doing there and how had I got in. I gave my usual teenage/student mumbled reply saying that I was looking for my friend Gazza, but I wasn’t sure what flat he was in, and that I’d entered through an unlocked door. She replied officiously that she didn’t know anyone called Gazza, but that they certainly weren’t in that particular block, and that I should get out – now! Welcome to Leeds!

Anyway, I did as I was bade, and she pointedly followed me back down the stairs, shutting and locking the exterior door behind me. 

I loitered around outside for a while, not knowing quite what to do, when some students began to emerge from the adjoining block, and I asked them if any of them knew my friend Gazza. By pure good fortune, I eventually spoke to someone who thankfully did know Gazza, and was able to give me entrance to the building and direct me to his flat. Hurrah!

The block was sub-divided into small flats, each flat housing about 6 or 8 students, each with their own kitchen/dining area, and Gazza’s was up on the third floor. Luckily someone in the flat was up and I was able to gain access to the flat and find Gazza’s room. After knocking for a while, I was greeted at the door by a very sleepy friend who did a double take when they realised who it was, before giving me a great and excited welcome and bidding me to enter.

Although I was obviously a bit burned out (to say the least) Gazza took me for breakfast in a café and then proudly showed me round the Leeds Uni. campus. I have to say that this didn’t really serve to lift my general mood, as it was so vastly superior to what we had down in Portsmouth - a proper university! In some ways seeing Gazza was making me feel worse, not better.

After that, we went back to his flat, and were sitting in the kitchen/dining area, when the cleaners entered. They were welcomed as part of the family and were obviously well known to all the students, including Gazza, and were very chatty, and they were eager to give us all the latest gossip. 

The really big news of the day was that a potential rapist had recently been apprehended trying to break into one of the girls’ flats next door! He was apparently some kind of low-life, who looked dirty and desperate and had tried to trick his way in. Luckily, however, he had been scared off by the courageous cleaning staff, despite being aggressive and possibly carrying a knife! Security had been called, but the suspect had vanished before they arrived. A general alarm had been sounded in the block and there was apparently great consternation amongst the girls who lived there

Now, I know that I was a bit naïve and innocent, but it was only towards the end of this story that the awful truth dawned on me – I was of course the person they were talking about! By the time the cleaners told it, it had been embellished out of all recognition with evermore terrifying details added on etc. and that’s why it had taken so long for me to cotton on. I was stunned: I was the person that they were now talking about? - an evil looking knife-carrying intruder and possible rapist, with lank hair and incoherent speech, who was almost certainly also a serial killer!? (Well, okay, guilty on some counts!)

I finally blurted out that it was possibly me that they were talking about, and began to explain what had actually happened. At first they refused to believe it, such was the description they had been given of the perpetrator, but they eventually realised the truth of my story. 

The two cleaners were a bit deflated, as this had been the hottest gossip in months, and they had clearly been looking forward to telling it to all the various students in the flats they cleaned, probably adding a little more relish each time it was told. However, after a while they perked up a bit as I think that they suddenly realised that would now be able to go round to all their fellow cleaners and tell them the truth of what had actually happened – a truth that they had been able to glean as a result of meeting the dangerous stalker himself, face-to-face! Theirs would be the definitive story, and that in itself would give them some Kudos.

A load of Ballads!

I stayed overnight at Gazza’s, sleeping on the floor of his small bedroom, waking and showering (at last!) in a little ‘Jack and Jill’ shower cubicle that he shared with the room next door. It was Monday morning, and the University was in full swing, so I accompanied Gazza to one of his English lectures. I had envisaged a large lecture theatre, but when we finally arrived, through a maze of corridors in a grand building, it was actually quite an intimate space, with about 15 other students sitting at modern desks. 

During the course of the lecture, the lecturer herself kept looking at me with a slightly quizzical expression, as she clearly couldn’t quite place me. Luckily, however, she apparently thought I was a new member of her group that she hadn’t noticed yet. 

Gazza himself had applied to Leeds to read Theology, although he had no intention of actually reading that, and he only did it to get himself a place, and as soon as he arrived he applied to change courses to English Lit, which is what he’d wanted to do all along. 

In those days, applying for a less popular course with lower entrance requirements, and then switching courses was a relatively common ploy, and after a bit of argy-bargy the university had granted his request, so Gazza was himself a relatively new member of the English Lit group and this served to help camouflage me.

The lecture itself was on ballads, which whilst interesting, my attention was focussed more on passing infantile notes to Gazza, trying to make him laugh. I eventually succeeded by passing him a note that read: 

Hey, baby, get your gums round my plums! 

Now, when you think of undergraduates, studying hard for their degree, with a thirst for knowledge and enlightenment, you may forget that sometimes they actually have the mental age of a 13 year old and that they sometimes sneak into someone else’s lectures and pass childish notes to each other, giggling secretively. Anyway, I was happy, as the lecturer stared hard at Gazza for laughing at a very inappropriate moment.

At the end of the lecture the lecturer asked myself and another student to come and say ‘Hello’, explaining that she still didn’t know everyone in the group. Luckily for me the other student went up to see her straight away, and under the cover of that meeting, Gazza and I made a swift exit before she realised we’d gone.

Later on that day it was time for me to go and head back to Pompey, and having said my farewells I returned to my car, only to find a parking ticket stuck to the front windscreen! I was shocked, as even in the hazy stupor I'd been in when I’d arrived a day or so before, I’d checked that it was OK to park there. 

When I looked at it, the ticket was for parking facing the wrong way round at night, with the front of my car facing the oncoming traffic! I am the only person I have ever known to have been done for such a heinous offence, and I wasn’t happy, not happy at all - but there you go. In those days we even had police on the streets!

The darkest hour ...

I returned to Portsmouth, even more depressed than when I left, having seen the accommodation, friends and facilities enjoyed by Gazza in Leeds, compared to my miserable existence in Portsmouth, and for the first time ever, I was prepared to admit defeat, quit the course and return home to Oxford. 

But then, just when I was at rock bottom, I bumped into someone I knew from school in Oxford, who was also studying at Portsmouth. Alan (AKA Womble - a nickname he gained after wearing a bobble hat that made him look a bit like a Womble!) was in his second year at Portsmouth and was studying Accountancy. Although he was a year older than me, I knew him from school mainly through the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme that we’d both joined, and I knew that he also shared my passion for motorcycles. 

Neither of us knew the other had come to Portsmouth Poly and we were both very happy to discover each-other’s existence, and immediately went for a few drinks together. By chance, it turned out that he was being forced to leave his digs at Christmas (in Southsea it was common for students to be turfed out of their accommodation, usually at Easter, as landlords could charge much higher prices to tourists in the Summer months) and he was also looking for somewhere to live! Not only that but he had already found a large room in an old Victorian house – and just needed a roommate! Perfect! We would move in together after the Christmas hols. A friend! Suddenly things were looking up. Remember the old adage: the darkest hour is right before the dawn!