Single of the week: Bad Manners – Can Can, Splodgenessabounds – Cowpunk Medlum
15th June 1981 Not bad Adam and the Ants
16th June 1981 Dead Kennedys out oh well
17th June 1981 Haha Frampton got hit on the head by a cricket ball Haha
1st Feb 2023 – I remember this as being Jonathan Duncan, not Tim Frampton, either way, the sound of the ball hitting the side of his head was sickening and dropped him to the ground for a good few minutes. I wonder if there was any long-term effect from that?
18th June 1981 Did Adam and the Ants talk in music
19th June 1981 Farmer’s a creep Creep creep
20th June 1981 Anti Pasti, UK Decay, Cure, Clash, Damned That’s what I got
21st June 1981 I missed today out
This week’s chart-topper was: Faggy Robinson’s Barley Water – Bee’s With You
29th Sep 2022 – And so we are here, at the mysterious back pages of the diary.
Record of the week: The Greedies – Merry Jingle
29th Sep 2022 – Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy and Steve Jones and Paul Cook from the Sex Pistols were the Greedies and this song is a fun, romping Christmas song but as with most Christmas songs, won’t hold up at any other time of year. I wonder what it is that makes people think to write a Christmas song? If it’s your last resort maybe it’s time to give up?
29th Sept 2022 – Paul Mariner, Mick Mills, Mick(?) Lambert, Bobby Robson, Trevor Whymark, Roger Osbourne, John Wark, George Burley, Paul Cooper, Kevin Beattie…the other faces are familiar but names stuck somewhere deep in the noggin. I’m going to go search the rest of the names as a reminder.
Frm Fidy tety sx nw cod i sudrtkn
29th Sept 2022 – Any codebreakers got this one? I reckon ‘From Friday Twenty Six…….” – any significance to the missing letters? Children and their warped minds.
Andrew said “I don’t think the FONZ is very interesting.”
29th Sept 2022 – Me trying to work out how to spell Leif Garrett, and yes, I had to look it up again just now.
Me —— Them Golf -8 —— -2 -2 —— -2 -3 —— -6 -4 —— -10
29th Sep 2022 – In my childlike imagination my bedroom was a golf course. Using one of our eating knives as a club and a marble as a ball, I devised a course around the bed, chair, floor, drawers etc.
I remember the knife well, it was one that was least favoured to be used at the table, it was the odd one out in the cutlery drawer. It had a cream handle, some kind of imitation ivory, bakelite maybe? Where the blade joined the handle had a small piece missing that added to its devious charm. The tip of the knife was an industrial semi-circle shape, with no pointed end as with our other knives. It was ugly. So it became my mini golf club and I loved it for that.
Of course, I just played against myself, labelling the scores Me and Them and generally always favouring Me, naturally.
When you chatted up the girl with the great big boobs I don’t make a fuss, I just kept me cool
29th Sept 2022 – The genesis of getting into writing lyrics and trying to make them outrageous as per my idols. I didn’t yet have the vocabulary and ability but genius (haha!) must start somewhere!
Bed (curtains) 2p Bricks 102p Make own tea 2p Make both teas 5p Make tea to drink 1p Collect coal 1p Collect wood 1p Extra jobs… 1p Depending how hard… 2p It is 3p and so on
29th Sep 2022 – Keeping track of potential earnings. No matter, I would always spend more than I earned, well into my late 20s. Some lessons take a long time.
Racing Kempton 1.30pm 10p stake 1. Be Better 8-1 80p Kempton 2.00pm Catechism 7-1
29th Sep 2022 – A minor interest in Maths, betting and odds developing. I soon realised what a con gambling is, though when I say soon, it probably took another ten years as I did usually put some money through the fruit machines of pubs I attended for a while.
29th Sep 2022 – Artistic skills don’t look particularly promising but that never stopped me from trying.
I want Sex Pistols book, LPs and Clash ‘Give ‘Em Enough Rope’, dartboard
29th Sep 2022 – I ended up with all these except the Clash album which I curiously never owned on vinyl and even now when I listen to it it still sounds fresh and new as many of those songs are not so familiar to me. Weirdly, I think I only ever owned the first album and Sandanista on vinyl and I’m not sure why I missed out on London Calling, which is also a little less familiar to these ears.
Friggin’ in the Riggin’ Ch. Friggin’ in the riggin’ (repeat two more times) Cos there’s fuck all else to do Stick glass up your arse (repeat thrice) Cos there’s fuck all else to do
The captain’s wife is Mable And when she’s fully able She’ll give the crew the daily screw Upon the mess room table The captain’s name is Dodo And he’s a lazy bugger He isn’t fit to shovel shit From one place to another
29th Sep 2022 – As Graeme Gray introduced me to the Sex Pistols through this song I would ask him to repeat these lyrics for me until I could remember them and write them down. Not accurate as expected but filthy enough to warp the precious minds of eleven and twelve-year-old potential brat-punks.
75m – 11.2
29th Sep 2022 – I was obviously pleased with myself for being a fast runner.
Chorus to Pretty Vacant We’re so pretty, oh so pretty -ow – Vacant (repeat) And now, we don’t careeeee!
Second verse and chorus to Silly Thing People here, people there People around you everywhere What you gonna say What you gonna do Now you’ve missed out once again But I thought you knew Ch. Oh, you silly thing You’ve really gone and done it now (repeat)
More songs Bodies There’s a girl from Birmingham She’s had an aboushtion She looks a screaming mess Screaming mess Fuck this, fuck that Fuck that fucking little brat She don’t want a baby like that I don’t want a baby like that She looks a screaming mess Screaming mess
29th Sep 2022 – More outrageous Sex Pistols lyrics. It’s really hard to comprehend what an impact this band had at the time. For folks like me, it has been a lifelong inspiration and influence that I am proud to be a part of. It all looks old-fashioned and pointless now so I’m forgiving of anything that kids are into these days and forgiving of those who were consumed within their own subcultures that were at pinnacles in the past. We don’t have to understand what they like but we can understand the feelings that it gives them.
RAD DID IT GRANDAD DID IT
29th Sep 2022 – I had an irrational dislike for my grandparents. Being a snotty kid around Victorian/Edwardian grandparents was never going to be easy. I did like them when I was smaller but perhaps they were more forgiving then too. I would soon be driving them crazy with super loud music and friends visiting for drinking parties. I never really reconciled with my granny (as I called her and my mum wished to be called by Hayden) before she passed but I was more sympathetic to my grandad as I got to my late teenage years. I was surprised to find out at one point that they were actually quite liberal and were members of CND. They weren’t quite so impressed when I showed them the lyrics to Crass’s What The Fuck but they did seem to get the sentiment.
This fucking’ little bastard Was a fuckin’ little burk He didn’t know what to do When he went to work
Record of the week: Lene Lovich – Say When Highest entry: Mcfadden And Whitehead – Ain’t No Stopping Us Now
4th Apr 2022 – Lene Lovich was a character. I don’t remember this song, even after listening to it a couple of months ago and listening now triggers no memories. It does remind me a lot of Hayzie Fantayzee but they came later, maybe owing a debt to Ms Lovich. McFadden and Whitehead though, one-hit wonders perhaps, this song is catchy but generic pop garbage of the time. Maybe still played in retro soul clubs?
20th May 1979 Clear out under sofa, that’s where I’m writing to you from 2p 120p*
4th Apr 2022 – A pivotal time for me. My first move to break away from my mum, albeit, just to be laying under the sofa whilst she was sitting above!
Mum kept a lot of junk under the sofa but I convinced her it was time to sort it out, clear it out and I would lay under there to watch TV or whatever. It would be MY place to own. Our sofa was like a converted park bench so there was plenty of space under there for a skinny 11-year-old.
It was soon after that I got mum to clean out under the bureau too so that I could use that space as a race space for my collection of Matchbox cars.
I would keep a logbook of my racing league, with daily races. I was mad on charts and tracking, and a little, by extension, on statistics. My favourite, Ford Capri, always came first, even though I convinced myself I gave it the same amount of push as the Maseratis and Lamborghinis I had.
It was during this time I discovered the pleasurable feeling of rubbing my squashed knob on the floor. I tied together, in my mind, using a pen on paper and rubbing myself on the ground by moving my hips rhythmically so that I soon began to just colour in letters with fastidious intensity.
I don’t know when was the first time I orgasmed doing this and the first ejaculation, because the tip of my penis was squashed between the foreskin, I never actually ejaculated, trapping any discharge inside. This had both positives and negatives. I could rub myself to orgasm like this many times over, and not really ejaculate. This was useful later when I was having real sex. Any leaking liquid would follow a minute or two after orgasm.
Over time my sensitivity moved from the penis head to the base where even now I can still experience deep orgasmic pleasure by squeezing the tube at the base to stop ejaculation.
The downside of all this was that I don’t know what damage I was doing. Also, I could never spurt a fountain, and the joke ‘he makes love like a footballer, he dribbles before he shoots’ has always remained in memory for the past 40 years since I first heard it. Multiple orgasms seemed like a reasonable trade-off at the time.
Another part of the pleasure was holding my breath whilst doing this, but I had to be really careful not to burst out a big gulp of air at climax as my mum would be reading her book quietly sitting just a few inches above me. At this time I wasn’t yet thinking about girls or imagining what sex was like, that would develop in the next year or two. Although thinking about it, perhaps I was imagining Debbie Harry in some form or another.
21st May 1979 Cripes, Coronation Street is getting so dramatic 2p 2p 98p* 9
4th Apr 2022 – So, having written all that above, I’m wondering if the ‘9’ entry here is the number of times I orgasmed that day!
The sofa had a kind of curtain to hide whatever was underneath and I would tuck it up so that I could watch TV on our boxy white Sony Trinitron, which my mum was very proud of owning.
Mum and I enjoyed the Northern trappings of Coronation Street, with which we were still somewhat familiar from living in Whitehaven. It’s odd now to consider how wildly accents can change in relatively short distances in England. My own accent adapted from Cumbrian to Devonish to a middle non-descript plain English by this time.
We tried other shows like Emmerdale and Crossroads but they didn’t stick like Cory and then I dropped that later when East Enders came on the scene though I think mum stuck with it a bit longer.
22nd May 1979 Dunno Glad Sunday Girl’s at No. 1 Scotland 1-0 Northern Ireland Scotland should have won the Championship 2p
4th Apr 2022 – Finally a half-decent song at number one. Going for Scotland – always support the team in blue.
23rd May 1979 Today went quite fast UEFA Cup Final (2nd Leg) Borussia Munchengladbach 1-0 Red Star Belgrade England 0-0 Wales 2p 2p
24th May 1979 1. Blondie – Sunday Girl 2. Roxy Music – Dance Away 3. M – Pop Muzik 4. Abba – Does Your Mother Know 5. Peaches and Herb – Reunited Andrew’s birthday 2p
4th Apr 2022 – I can only think this must have been Andrew Farmer who I was still friends with at this time. I was invited to party at his house which was up on the Heath. A big house that cemented their status in my mind as being rich and a little hoity-toity, helped by the fact Andrew’s mum was the deputy headmaster at school. In the following year, his family built and opened the Elim Pentecostal Church on Leigh Road to which we were all invited for the opening week, and during the one time I actually went, I enjoyed pogoing with Keith ‘Fog’ Forward during one of the more uptempo songs. Besides that, it was boring as fuck.
Anyway, at this party we walked around the woods in the beautiful sunshine, exploring places I never bothered to go again, shooting our fake guns and caps. Back at their house, they had a mini (kids) pool table set up in an attic room and here Andrew got into an argument with his younger brother Steven which ended with one or the other whacking the other across the back with a pool queue. I left soon after and as their family continued on their religious trajectory, I was off on my anti-establishment one and we didn’t remain friends. I don’t know if that random act of violence made me pause for thought or if there were other factors involved too but I felt like he was becoming too much of a goody-two-shoes in general.
25th May 1979 Northern Ireland 1-1 Wales Championship Table England 2 1 0 5 1 5 Wales 1 2 0 4 1 4 Scotland 1 0 2 2 6 2 N. Ireland 0 1 2 1 4 1 2p
26th May 1979 England 3-1 Scotland Every Saturday I’m going to try and say something about Ipswich Look at August 12 2p
1994ever 