Record of the week: UK Subs – She’s Not There Highest entry: Paul McCartney – Wonderful Christmas Time
9th Sep 2022 – How many singles did the UK Subs put out in one year? Rock bands these days are slow as fuck to do anything. ‘In my day’…haha – the punks were cranking this shit out month after month, no wonder there is so much great music from this time period. Of course, there was lots of shit getting cranked out too but let’s not talk about that.
Despite hating Christmas, Paul McCartney and Christmas songs, for some reason I really like the tune in this song. I mean, not so much I went out and bought it but at least I can find it somewhat unirratating. I suppose Mud’s ‘Lonely This Christmas’ isn’t a bad vocal melody too. You don’t hear that one so much though. And since living in Thailand, never heard again!
2nd December 1979 Not a lot happened give me self a new hairstyle 2p
9th Sep 2022 – I can’t imagine that this went well but this was the year of hair experimentation. It wouldn’t be long until Mr Gander sent me out of class to go and fix my messy hair in the bathroom. As a teacher now I can’t really imagine asking a kid to do that. Imagine messy hair being such a terrible affront to the possibility of learning.
3rd December 1979 did myself this… 2p
4th December 1979 week… 2p 6p
9th Sep 2022 – I seem to be just filling up the days with a sentence spread out a word a day, just so I could feel that I managed to write something every day.
5th December 1979 Got it Punk rocker in Coronation Street 2p
Mike refuses to get involved in an exchange trip to Charleville as the machinists are too busy. Renee returns from her mother’s. Suzie rouses Hilda into having a slanging match on the other side of the connecting wall to put buyers off No.11. Steve tells Ivy the Trades Council are organising a French exchange for five of the machinists. He realises he shouldn’t have told her when it’s too late. Suzie puts six buyers off the house. The factory girls challenge Mike about the French invite. He tells them he’s been too busy to tell them. Paul Haines, the estate agent, rings Suzie to tell her that he’s not happy with the way no one is interested in No.11. The machinists row over who’s to go to France. Mike isn’t happy with Steve’s attitude.
9th Sep 2022 – Punk goes mainstream. I don’t think any punk representation was portrayed in a particularly positive light though. Still not as bad as CHiPs or Dr Quincy would be.
6th December 1979 1. Police 2. Pink Floyd 3. Donna and Barbra 4. Dr Hook 5. Gibson Brothers 6. Tourists 2p 6p
7th December 1979 DO… 2p
8th December 1979 Ipswich 4-0 Man City 2p
9th Sep 2022 – Well, that’s a positive result to end the week on.
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
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
1994ever 