The Week That Was – 25th March 1979

Record of the week: Late Show – Bristol Stomp
Highest Entry: The Jacksons – Shake Your Body – 26

29th Dec 2021 – I had to go back and check these again. Bristol Stomp was quite an upbeat pop swing-around, singalong that quickly becomes forgettable (obviously). I like some of the Jacksons/Jackson 5 music but this one is pretty bland and was surely reused for MJ’s Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough. I never got into Michael Jackson. It had no redeeming features in my mind.

25th March 1979
Italy’s gonna win the Eurovision Song Contest
2p
– Israel won!

29th Dec 2021 – Once again my wish and support for the team in blue. Didn’t quite work out. As well as supporting the Italian football team I also had a passing interest in learning Italian and borrowed a book from Sharon and Ken for a little while. I was fascinated that other people used different words for things. The fascination didn’t last many chapters in though, and that was a sign of things to come when it came to studying French in High School. I should’ve tried harder but French sucked!

26th March 1979
You know I think school days are really getting boring so this is all I’m putting (March 27)
2p 1p

29th Dec 2021 – It seems most of my day was based around school at this point and I wasn’t getting up to anything worth writing about at home. These times were when I was still staying in my mum’s room in the evenings and the bedroom was just where I went to sleep.

27th March 1979
I don’t know what to put
Same as yesterday
68p
2p 1p

29th Dec 2021 – Here I started accounting more properly and noting how much I had in savings. Later in the year, with much conniving and begging, these would usually be negative numbers. Early learning about overdrafts though thankfully without interest.

28th March 1979
Real drama in Coronation Street
2p 1p

1st Sep 2021 – Unbelievable! A quick search finds the storyline of this episode (# 1898!):

Ivy shocks the girls by siding with Steve against Vera. Alf comes out of his coma. Vera discovers Steve is doing a time and motion study on the girls. The girls accuse him of spying on them. Ivy calls a stop to the work when he refuses to rip the study up. Steve is shocked that Mike told Ivy to keep an eye on him. Ivy phones Mike. Mike can’t believe that the girls have stopped working on an important order. He orders Steve to get them working again. Steve accuses him of undermining his authority. Mike decides to leave the hospital. The nurses refuse to help him so he struggles with his crutches. Alf can’t remember the crash at all. Mike tells Ivy there’ll be no more clock-watching. She gets the girls back to work. Mike tells Steve he has a lot to learn. Alf tells Renee he will return to the GPO. Ivy realises Gail has wedding bells in mind and doesn’t like the idea.

29th Dec 2021 – We tried Emmerdale Farm and Crossroads but Coronation Street was the only one my mum and I would watch together in the evenings. I think eventually, as I transitioned to staying in my bedroom, she stopped watching it too. Later, we did bond again over BBC’s new offering of East Enders when that started – unbelievably not until 1985! I can’t find the ‘real drama’ of Coronation Street in the description alluded to in my diary entry. Fairly mundane stuff by modern standards.

29th March 1979
1. Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive
2. Village People – In The Navy
3. Sex Pistols – Something Else
4. Elvis Costello – Oliver’s Army
5. Lene Lovich – Lucky Numbers
2p

29th Dec 2021 – Hmm – does this mean I earned 2p and then had it taken away! I don’t know.

30th March 1979
What a day – so many bad things happened today
This is all I’m going to say
2p

29th Dec 2021 – Another one of those times that I probably thought I would remember these events forever just by seeing these words again. Sadly not. But this may have been the time of an after-school event, some kind of series of plays and performances for parents and everyone was at school in the evening which called for much festivity, particularly after we might have finished with our tasks for the event. I was enjoying going around all my friends and talking excitedly with them. I was in such a joyous mood that I wanted to kiss my friends. I’m not sure where I got this idea from. I thought that’s how we showed love or pleasure for each other maybe.

Anyway, after trying this a little, my so-called friends started making fun of me, jeering and calling me gay. I didn’t really know what that meant but it appeared to be obvious that they thought it was bad. My balloon of joy had been rudely pinpricked and no one would talk to me for the rest of the evening. In the car ride to the school, I had been very excited and my mum couldn’t get a word out of me to find out what was wrong on the journey home, as we dropped off David and Joan Anderson to their house.

This specific event left me emotionally scarred and sticks in my memory still. Being called names was nothing really but the quick rejection by friends cut deep. Of course, I didn’t really understand my emotions at the time, or other people’s motivations. But I did understand that people can be pricks.

31st March 1979
Do Bricks
6-a-side match P-P
Ipswich 2-1 Man. City