Tag: diary

The Week That Was – 3rd June 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Record of the week: M – M Factor
Highest entry: Squeeze – Up The Junction

20th Apr 2022 – M Factor was the b-side of Pop Muzik and is a preferable listen these days as Pop Muzik became too successful and familiar. Squeeze’s Up The Junction is another classic pop tune that makes me want to go and seek out more of their music though I have a feeling I may have done this in the past and been disappointed to discover that they were just a great singles band.

3rd June 1979
Since I bought Banana Splits, I’ve never not played it
6
2p

20th Apr 2022 – Music obsession was forming fast this year. Of course, at the time it was much more difficult to hear new music and there were far fewer options for entertainment. This really focused interest on whatever it was that caught your attention.

4th June 1979
Average day
First day back at school
7
2p

5th June 1979
Qualified for everything except High Jump and Long Jump in Athletics
10
2p 2p

20th Apr 2022 – As well as being in the football team I was good at sprinting and other field events. I eventually got good at Long Jump and High Jump too. In the last couple of years, an old school friend posted on Facebook about how I seemed to be nonchalantly unconcerned about these events and that it seems I was just very casually good (or better than other participants at the time) at them. I was quite proud of myself but when moving up to high school later, the competition got much stronger. I still did fairly well though.

6th June 1979
Find out whether I get into the top four in Athletics (June 5th)
I know I got into the Sprint and cricket bungin’
I don’t know about Long Jump
Gotta sore throat
7
2p 78p*

20th Apr 2022 – We didn’t often play cricket in PE but at this time we were too young to be trusted with javelins so there was an event to see who could throw a cricket ball the furthest. I loved this and I was very good at it. One time, balls were being returned from the field and Jonathan Duncan wasn’t paying attention. A ball came flying at speed and smacked him right on the temple, with an echoing clunk. His eyes rolled and his legs crumpled as he dropped to the grass. He soon got back up and went to the sick bay for a while but earned his deserved reputation as a ‘tough nut’.

7th June 1979
1. Blondie – Sunday Girl
2. Roxy Music – Dance Away
3. Anita Ward – Ring My Bell
4. Earth Wind And Fire – Boogie Wonderland
5. Peaches and Herb – Reunited
6. ELO
Not at school got bad throat
7
2p

20th Apr 2022 – Sick again. I wonder if I was really sick, or I probably was a little but not really that bad. Well, that habit certainly continued for the following 40 years or so. Lucky that I always had a set wage. As I learn about and see different parts of the world I realise how much I have taken for granted in my life.

8th June 1979
Off school again
Matthew came down. I found out that I’m not in Long Jump.
8
2p

20th Apr 2022 – Not so sick that friends couldn’t come and play! And likely I was making a healthy recovery by lunchtime when it would be too late to bother going to school. As kids, we already know how to play the game.

9th June 1979
Arnold Muhren is Ipswich’s Player of the Year
8
2p 2p

20th Apr 2022 – Arnold Muhren and Franz Thiessen were the first players (of note at least) from abroad to play in the English League. It was a big discussion point at the time. In the following 20 years, things moved along to the point that it seemed as if some teams had NO English players.

Football feels fully biased towards the teams with the most money and spending power so that there are very few exceptions to the same 6-10 teams winning every year. Although somewhat floored, I like the systems in place in Australia to try and balance things out as much as they can.

52

20th Apr 2022 – 52 out of 70 seems pretty good for a week I was supposedly sick.

The Week That Was – 27th May 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Record of the week: Ian Dury – What the Dickens Inbetweenies
Highest entry: Anita Ward – Ring My Bell

12th Apr 2022 – For a favourite tune of the time I don’t remember how this Ian Dury song goes but I do remember the annoying Anita Ward tune. It’s not bad. Just annoying.

27th May 1979
Dunno
Them lot came round staying all today and tomorrow
0
2p

12th Apr 2022 – An obvious connection between ‘them lot’ staying and the score for the day.

28th May 1979
Rangers 3-2 Hibs
Hooray
28
2p 2p
98p*

12th Apr 2022 – 28?! What the hell? How does that work? Rangers were my Scottish team of choice due to their wearing blue. Stranraer was my second Scottish team for the same reason and that they never did well. I don’t think they ever made it out of the second division whilst I followed them. Another example of rooting for the underdog.

29th May 1979
From yesterday I’ll be giving marks on the day. They’ll be out of ten and will be totalled up at the end of the week for a mark out of 70.
60 this week
8

12th Apr 2022 – A reasonable (yet meaningless) statistical indicator.

I recently used the FutureMe online application where you write an email (to yourself but can include others) scheduled to be delivered in the future. Writing up these diary entries offers a similar proposition even if they are quite non-specific. A vague reminder of a time and place that often feels like it belonged to someone else. In a way, I guess it did.

30th May 1979
European Cup Final
Forest 1-0 Malmo FC
4
Malmo should’ve won

12th Apr 2022 – I hated Nottingham Forest and Brian Clough, possibly for the only reason that they wore red.

I watched some old football highlights from 1973 yesterday and it was weird to see the style of play back then. And the haircuts. With less money influencing the sport it felt a lot more real. The players looked like they all went out for a beer after the game. They just looked like your regular Peters and Pauls. They just happened to be footballers. There probably was still a cult of personality about them but not to the extremes of today’s standards. The stands were jam-packed with people and no stadiums had seating. Even the shitty TV quality is super nostalgic though I don’t have any desire to return to that.

31st May 1979
1. Blondie – Sunday Girl
2. Roxy Music – Dance Away
3. M – Pop Muzik
4. Peaches and Herb – Reunited
5. Earth Wind And Fire – Boogie Wonderland
7
2p

1st June 1979
Got a watch
By the way, the watch is NEW
Very sunny
Got Pop Muzik
10
2p

12th Apr 2022 – This watch may have a green LED, one of the first of its time though this technology soon got overrun by LCD. As I highlight the watch being new I guess all my previous watches had been second hand and I thought that was terrific. I stopped wearing watches as a teenager, testing myself to quantify time and pay attention to ways to find the time without having to ask people for it. I finally got the Pop Muzik 7″, though disappointingly with no picture sleeve.

2nd June 1979
Got an Ipswich hat yesterday. It’s the real one, not just an ordinary un.
8
2p

12th Apr 2022 – Again, wanting to highlight the fact that this was the expensive option item, buying from the club and not from the market. Maybe I felt like I needed to advance my station?

46

12th Apr 2022 – Trevor Francis went to Nottingham Forest for one million pounds this year – the first-ever one million pound player. It was a big deal. In my mind, the end of an era for football (looking back at least).

The Week That Was – 20th May 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

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

The Week That Was – 13th May 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Record of the week: Roxy Music – Dance Away
Highest entry: Blondie – Sunday Girl – 10

24th Mar 2022 – When I saw this Roxy Music song here, the tune popped into my head and I thought, I hate this song! Something about it must have caught my interest. I was still into Blondie though I didn’t explore their releases after Parallel Lines. It got a bit too slick, though Union City Blue was ok.

13th May 1979
Feel sick
Found out what was at number 1

14th May 1979
Still feel sick

15th May 1979
Don’t feel as sick as yesterday
Rangers 0-0 Hibs
2p 123p

24th Mar 2002 – Such a sickly boy. Ipswich were my main team but in the Scottish League, I supported Rangers, because they also wore blue. Scottish games were never shown on TV so I could only follow them by watching out for the results on TV on Saturdays or perhaps reading results in my grandparent’s newspaper.

16th May 1979
I wish Bright Eyes would budge now
European Cup Winners Cup Final
Barcelona 4-3 Fortuna Dusseldorf

24th Mar 2022 – I really wanted Pop Muzik to get to number one. It almost seems inconceivable these days that a song could keep selling more copies week after week. I think Pop Muzik is more likely to be heard than Bright Eyes, in other contexts now, such as movies, soundtracks or TV shows – if I may be allowed to reduce cultural attache like that. Bright Eyes was a real downer of a song.

17th May 1979
1. Art Garfunkel – Bright Eyes
2. M – Pop Muzik
3. Boney M – Holiday
4. Abba – Does Your Mother Know
5. Peaches and Herb – Reunited
2p

18th May 1979
More drama in Soap
2p

19th May 1979
Found out that Ipswich are in Europe

24th Mar 2022 – This current wonder of the internet tells me that Ipswich came 6th in the league which means they would play in the UEFA Cup the following season.

The Week That Was – 6th May 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Record of the week: Dickies – Banana Splits
Highest entry: Damned – Love Song – 26

21st Mar 2022 – Seeing the Dickies play Banana Splits on Top of the Pops – it was a video, not in the studio – was amazing. I’d never seen music played so fast before. It was thrilling and exciting. And Love Song – it was a time of great music, but look at the top of the charts and it was not so good. However, it provided the balance to kick against. It’s hard to put yourself back in the position of the context of the past.

6th May 1979
Dunno, quite a good day wasn’t it
Exactly one year since Ipswich won the cup

21st Mar 2022 – This was a great period of time to be an Ipswich Town fan and I was annoyed when Bobby Robson was eventually enticed away to manage the England team. They never got the mojo back after that.

7th May 1979
Carey Camp starts
Nothing much
2p

21st Mar 2022 – Hmm – a couple of hundred kids camping for 5 days. Was that a good idea? As a teacher now, I think I would refuse to be part of that! But then, when I think about the teachers at the time they were probably all in their twenties and thirties and still full of enthusiasm. As a kid though, as a student, this was an interesting week, that did eventually get out of control.

For the most part, we were sleeping in tents of 8 and I don’t recall any shenanigans. The teachers were probably smart enough to pick which kids were in which tents and we weren’t yet brave enough to go against the rules sent down for us.

Image from Carey Camp Facebook page

8th May 1979
Went to Old Harry
God were my legs killing me
2p

21st Mar 2022 – Again, probably a good adult tactic was to wear us the fuck out so that we would get back to camp and just sleep. I found out that on Friday we would be going to Swanage and I was desperate to find a record shop so that I could the Pop Muzik 7″. It was all I could talk about. Pun intended.

9th May 1979
My legs weren’t as bad as yesterday
UEFA Cup Final (1st Leg)
Borussia Muchengladbach 1-1 Red Star Belgrade
2p

10th May 1979
1. Art Garfunkel – Bright Eyes
2. M – Pop Muzik
3. Boney M – Holiday
4. Abba – Does Your Mother Know
5. Racey – Some Girls
2p

21st Mar 2022 – On this night several of us got to sleep in a different field in two-man tents and this was a cause for shenanigans as the teachers were not around. Also, longer summer nights made for a long period of twilight and so we screamed and shouted whilst roasting food on campfires and generally causing the kind of mayhem that 11-year-olds can – which really isn’t that much. But eventually, the teachers in the faraway field came and told us to pipe down. They noticed that there was a big smear of butter down the side of one tent and were very upset about it. Matthew owned up that it was him who threw the butter and we expected him to be led off in disgrace but instead, we all got punished and sent back to join the others.

I was worried about the ramifications because I really wanted to go to Swanage the next day. That was all I could think about.

Image from Carey Camp Facebook page

11th May 1979
Sick at camp
Wish I knew what was at No 1
QPR 0-4 Ipswich
2p

21st Mar 2022 – And so fate intervened as I started vomiting up dodgy food as the sun rose in the early morning and I felt sick as a dog. Someone else had suffered the same fate and we got put in a room at the camp for the rest of the day. Not to be outdone, I gave my money to one of the teachers in the vague hope that they would pass a record store and could be the single for me.

But I was to be disappointed and frustrated, feeling sure that they probably didn’t even bother to find a record shop, because my request was obviously far more important than whatever else it was that the teachers had planned.

I had recovered my dodgy stomach throughout the day, enough to enjoy the final night of festivities, where everyone sat around a huge bonfire singing songs. No doubt Kumbaya was in there.

Some of the kids had prepared a short skit, which I’m sure was initiated by the teachers. It involved a girl standing by a tree and another person came along. The girl said – oh I like your shoes, where did you get them? To which the traveller replied ‘John Lewis’ (a famous clothing store). Another person comes along – oh I like your socks, where did you get them? ‘John Lewis’ again. Another person – trousers – ‘John Lewis’. Another – shirt – ‘John Lewis’. Another – hat – ‘John Lewis. And finally, (I can picture the boy but don’t recall his name, he was a bit of a class clown) a boy comes along in his underpants and the girl says Who are you? to which he replies ‘I’m John Lewis.’ We all cracked up and thought it was very daring.

12th May 1979
Carey Camp ends
FA Cup Final
Arsenal 3-2 Man Utd
Rangers 0-0 Hibs
2p

Information from the Facebook group: Decade 77-87 – a grown-up disco: new wave, punk, postpunk, goth & indie
On this date in 1979, THE DICKIES released the single BANANA SPLITS (THE TRA LA LA SONG), (April 12th 1979).

THE DICKIES were Leonard Grayes Phillips on vocals, Stan Lee (aka Stan Sobel) on lead guitar, Chuck Wagon (aka Bob) on keyboards and sax, Karlos Kaballero on drums, and Billy Club on bass, a year zero punk outfit that emerged from a San Fernando garage in late 1977.

Within a matter of weeks, they’d been given a spot at the Whisky on the Sunset Strip.

“We just came out of nowhere,” said bassist Billy Club. “We’d been together about a week when Rodney Bigenheimer (L.A. man-about-town) came out to the garage we were in. We had about eight songs. He booked us at the Whisky.”

The Dickies were based just outside L.A. and all agreed that the radio was “an outrage – all that disco shi t. We’ve been hearing the same thing on it for the past five years”. But acting on their anti-disco manifesto had to wait until punk reared its head in the form of the Sex Pistols crossing the Atlantic and passing through the States.

“We played the Whisky – like, it was a Tuesday night, no one was there, but we got a cult following, and we started headlining the Whisky weekends and playing the Starwood,” explained Stan. “It was a joke, then all of a sudden: Dickiemania.”

A typical description of a Dickies live show went something like this: “…The lead singer wears a plaster leg cast, while guitar player Stan adorns womens’ lace panties on his head. The bassist wears a flasher’s yellow raincoat with black polka dots…It’s party-time.”

As for the music, a Los Angeles Times writer called it “primarily punkoid in structure and delivery, but pop elements to set them apart from the blunt, primitive school”. After much debate, “Easy listening punk” appeared to be the band’s favourite. Time would see their catchy melodic sound labelled “pop-punk” or “bubble-gum punk”.

Their songs were covers – ‘Paranoid’, The ‘Tra La La Song’ (from the Banana Splits cartoon show) and brilliantly odd picks like ‘Sound Of Silence’, plus a growing number of originals.

Notably, The Dickies achieved a series of firsts: the first California punk band to appear on network television, the first California punk band to be signed to a major (A&M Records) and the first U.S. punk outfit to tour Europe. By 1979, they‘d won over a lot of British fans.

The Week That Was – 29th April 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Record of the week: The Members – Offshore Banking Business Genghis Khan – Genghis Khan
Highest entry: Abba – Does Your Mother Know

18th Mar 2022 – Revisiting Genghis Khan cracked me up. I can understand its appeal to an eleven-year-old. Abba were riding their wave but I don’t remember this song at all. Though I can enjoy some of their music now, because it was everywhere, non-stop, at the time, it symbolised the generic pop junk that was to be rebelled against.

29th April 1979
Forgotten (30th April)
2p 2p

30th April 1979
Quite good today suppose
2p

18th Mar 2022 – I was trying to make sure I filled in every entry in my diary – even if there was nothing to say.

1st May 1979
Almost forgot about charts
Brought wrong book home so wrote on paper
Find out results tomorrow
2p 2p 148p*

2nd May 1979
Mum got magazines today
About yesterday – s,a’right
* = in debt

18th Mar 2022 – I think it’s interesting that I was keeping track of my finances or lack of them. I didn’t seem to learn anything from this. When I started working I always spent all my money before the next payday came around. Perhaps that is what I learned. So I can blame my mother for allowing me to go into debt and that becoming the norm.

I am happy to say that from my thirties onwards I have been able to manage my money much better and I have managed to never use a credit card and never had any debt. I think this has led to less stress in my life. At least, around that issue.

3rd May 1979
1. Art Garfunkel – Bright Eyes
2. Racey – Some Girls
3. M – Pop Muzik
4. Boney M – Holiday
5. Wings – Goodnight Tonight
2p

4th May 1979
Not a lot happened today
2p 142p*

5th May 1979
sr 5.26 ss 8.29
Rangers 1-0 Celtic – at Hampden
Chelsea 2-3 Ipswich

18th Mar 2022 – One of the few things I miss about living in England are the long summer days. And on the opposite spectrum, I do not miss the long winter nights. Although sometimes I feel like I want to endure them again just to get a balance. Wrapping up in layers of clothes, enjoying entry into a heated room. I have memories of walking home from the football club after a few beers and a joint, listening to the Ozric Tentacles and trying not to slip on the icy roads. The air was white with cold.

But I don’t even enjoy the cool winter nights in Thailand now. I’m acclimatised or getting old. Let’s say acclimatised.

The Week That Was – 22nd April 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Record of the week: M – Pop Musik
Highest Entry – Boney M – Holiday – 19

15th Mar 2022 – Hooray! Hooray! It’s a Holi-holiday! Boney M were goofy and likeable. I saw an interesting documentary about them the other day. I don’t think they even sang their own songs. Was this cynically released during the school holiday? I think so! I was so obsessed with M’s Pop Musik.

22nd April 1979
Was able to watch That’s Life
2p

23rd April 1979
Not much happened today
2p

24th April 1979
First day at school was all right
2p 2p

25th April 1979
Forgot to get charts yesterday so I got them today
European Cup Semi-Final (2nd Leg)
FC Cologne 0-1 Forest
2p

26th April 1979
1. Art Garfunkel – Bright Eyes
2. Racey – Some Girls
3. Squeeze – Cool For Cats
4. Jacksons – Shake Your Body
5. M – Pop Muzik
2p 2p

27th April 1979
Dunno
Matthew came down
2p 2p

28th April 1979
Do bricks
No six-a-side again
Ipswich 2-1 Spurs

15th Mar 2022 – I would have been in the second year (of four) in middle school, 11 years old. I don’t remember playing six-a-side but the main football team would be comprised of first and second years for the junior team and third and fourth years for the senior team. So, being a second-year and a prolific striker I was looked up to quite a lot. But then in the next year, I would be looked down upon again. The English class system ensured the hierarchies were maintained in school, though I imagine it’s similar everywhere else.

Digging around for pictures online I found this drone view video and it doesn’t look like much has changed in 40 years or more. I even recognise pictures in the assembly/gym hall with its gym-climbing frames, entrance to the changing room and the sports storage room, to which I was consigned when I was in the fourth year because I was too shy to go swimming and begged my mum not to make me go since they started charging a minimal fee for it. Save your money, mum!

All I had to do was tidy it up, which took a boy 5 minutes. At the end of term, I asked the PE teacher if I could keep a book I had found there. It was a tennis umpires scorebook and I was fascinated with its layout, tables and use. I guess I had already been interested in tables, charts and scores with keeping track of my car races, football leagues and music charts.

The Week That Was – 15th April 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Record of the week; Supertramp – The Logical Song
Highest Entry: Bee Gees – Love You Inside Out – 25

7th Mar 2022 – The twisty bendy Logical Song shows my early interest in prog-ish music. The sound of this song made me happy. I like music that challenges but that also makes me laugh with excitement. So, not much into the Bee Gees at the time. I do have their early albums to check out as they were apparently much different to their popular hits around this time.

15th April 1979
Going up North today
2p

7th Mar 2022 – I don’t recall driving back up North with Jean at any time and can only think we took the National Express, though I don’t have any memory of travelling with her on the bus either.

I do believe it was on this bus journey that, on the way to London, there was a mouthy brat further up the bus, a boy probably around my age. He was leaning over the back of his seat, retelling a movie he saw recently about a skydiver whose parachute had failed. People found him standing upright in a field, held upright by his bones having split through his feet and shoved like stakes into the ground.

I also believe it was on this trip that we were waiting at Victoria Bus Station in the evening and I bravely went off for a walk around the outside of the building and coming towards me in the opposite direction was the spitting image of Sid Vicious, in a grey woollen poncho. I guess many punks at the time copied his image and I’m not certain if I was aware that he had already died.

16th April 1979
Playing cards with Paul til 2:30am

7th Mar 2022 – Paul had lodged in our house in Whitehaven for as long as I can remember. He probably lived there right up until mum sold it a few years later. It was a four-bedroom, three-storey, end-of-terrace house with a garden. Maybe I mentioned it already. 20 Hugh Street, Bransty. I asked mum how much she sold it for and I couldn’t believe it was only 13,000 pounds! The north of England was definitely in a different freaking financial hemisphere compared with the south.

Anyway, Paul (and George, a canny Scot) entertained me despite our age difference, he was probably around his early to mid-twenties at this time. Our card game of choice was Hunt The Cunt, more commonly known as something like Chase The Queen, I forget now because we always just called it by its nastier name.

This was the hill my mum had to drag me up a couple times a week when she went shopping in town where the only supermarket was.
The typical back alley of British terraced houses where kids could and would get up to as much mischief as possible. It was quite daring to go into allies where we didn’t live or know anyone. This particular alley was where I first tried and failed to ride a pushbike that was far too big for me.
20 Hugh Street as it is now (2022). They’ve got a new door and have walled off the garden. The path also looks like it has been tarmacked whereas in my time it was just dirt and perfect for games of marbles. And gone is the old traditional green lamp post that used to have arms near the top. Was it just to stop kids from throwing tyres over it? Cos it didn’t work!

17th April 1979
Quite good day!

7th Mar 2022 – I had lost pretty much all traces of my northern accent by now but it was a kind of comforting sound to me, like a return to home, to something far away but familiar. I think these days were quite good because there was no school and I probably badgered my mum into generously buying things that I wanted.

18th April 1979
Quite good day again!

19th April 1979
1. Art Garfunkel – Bright Eyes
2. Racey – Some Girls
3. Squeeze – Cool for Cats
4. Jacksons – Shake Your Body
5. Milk and Honey – Hallelujah

7th Mar 2022 – The Squeeze song is classic, they had some great singles, I should probably check out their albums. I dig the Jacksons early stuff these days too. Not into any Michael Jackson though. Ever.

20th April 1979
Hi! Mum
Gave mum a tape measure
2p

7th Mar 2022 – Mum’s birthday and no doubt she had to give me the money to buy her her own present! She probably had to go and buy it too! Well, at least she got what she wanted

21st April 1979
2
Bolton 2-3 Ipswich
2p 2p

7th Mar 2022 – 2 – more long-forgotten secret codes.

The Week That Was – 8th April 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

Record of the week: The Members – Offshore Banking Business
Highest Entry: Wings – Goodnight Tonight – 25

3rd Mar 2022 – The Members were knocking out classic singles and Offshore Banking Business was even surpassed by its b-side Solitary Confinement. The lyrics summed up what I assumed was in store for me as an English teenager in the forthcoming decade. I didn’t know it at the time but I spent all of the eighties avoiding it to some degree.

Coincidentally, The Members vocalist Nicky Tesco passed away this week. One day all my idols will be dead. As you, as I.

I’m sure some folks remember and enjoy the Wings tune. I have no recollection though.

8th April 1979
Would be able to stay up to watch That’s Life but it’s not on
95p
2p

3rd Mar 2022 – That’s Life was actually a good introduction to the cruelties and absurdity of being alive. It was funny but in a typically dry English way. I used to enjoy the Last of the Summer Wine which was on Sunday nights too I think. Though I ended up so fucking annoyed at the miserable characters in that show even though they did overcome their weekly dramatic obstacles. But why were these shows on a Sunday night, priming people for the misery and absurdity of a working week!? So typically English. Is it any wonder we are fucking miserable people!

I didn’t get everything that was featured on That’s Life but knew that it was funny. I would laugh along with my mum even if I didn’t understand why something was funny. My mum influenced me quite a bit as she enjoyed absurd humour such as Spike Milligan, Michael Bentine and Monty Python etc Even kids’ programs were pretty out there, influenced by the drugs, excesses and changes of the sixites, not that I knew it at the time. The Americanisation of kids’ TV is disappointing.

I remember my grandmother as being quite Victorian, though it would have been her parents that lived during that time. By contrast, my mother seemed to be a fifties and sixties girl, growing out of the post-war grind. It was only when I was in my twenties or thirties that she told me that my dad was her second husband! It wasn’t something that she hid from me but she didn’t think it was that an important thing to tell me.

On one hand, I can understand her thinking, though I’m curious now. At the time she told me I only asked her a few questions and didn’t investigate further and of course, now it’s too late to ask. I wonder if there are things I don’t think are important for Hayden to know that might surprise him in the future when and if he finds them out?

9th April 1979
I was buttering up my bedroom wall today – looks fab
2p

3rd Mar 2022 – My guess is I didn’t quite know the meaning of buttering up unless the meaning has changed a little in my short life. I think at this stage I was still just putting up posters and pictures cut out of the music magazines and papers that I was collecting through my mother’s benevolence.

10th April 1979
Got a new pair of trainers. And I got two pads now.
2p

3rd Mar 2022 – The ongoing fucked feet saga. I still haven’t gone to get them checked again. Not that I’ve been waiting since 1979.

11th April 1979
Matthew’s coming down
Went on common
European Cup Semi-Final (1st Leg)
Forest 3-3 Cologne
2p

3rd Mar 2022 – Pre the mega money-spinning sponsorship of football I don’t recall ever seeing European football matches on TV, not even highlights. The scores just appeared occasionally on the news and in the papers, which I would sometimes check out my grandparents’ stash. They got the Guardian and the Observer delivered to our oversized letterbox that sat snugly in the privet hedge by the gate along with the morning milk, twice-weekly bakery goods and the mail.

It’s difficult for people to comprehend these days just how difficult information was to come by. There’s a reason Encyclopedia sets were a popular door-to-door sales item though the one we had we had to sell so that we could live. Food was more important than knowledge at that stage. We were never destitute but it always felt like it wouldn’t take much to push us in that direction.

12th April 1979
1. Art Garfunkel – Bright Eyes
2. Squeeze – Cool For Cats
3. Racey – Some Girls
4. Village People – In The Navy
5. Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive
2p 10p

13th April 1979
Jean came today
2p

3rd Mar 2022 – Jean was my mum’s school friend. A hard-drinking, hard-smoking lady who always wore too much perfume to hide the fact she might’ve been enjoying whiskey breakfasts. I think it was on a visit to her house back in Carlisle that I stole my first cigarettes from her many packets and took that first step into bad boy teenage smoking rebellion. I don’t remember much about any of the visits, her coming to us or us going back up North. She and mum were always off to the pub. These times were my mum’s only holiday time in the year.

14th April 1979
Do bricks
Norwich 0-1 Ipswich
2p

3rd Mar 2022 – I wasn’t a Liverpool fan but did much prefer Ray Clemence to Peter Shilton. I hated Peter Shilton’s hair!

The Week That Was – 1st April 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Record of the week: Generation X – Valley of the Dolls
Highest Entry: Sex Pistols – Silly Thing – 24

28th Feb 2022 – This guitar-based noisy music was grabbing me more fully. The Billy Idol’s on TV intrigued and as kids still do today, were something to aspire to. The dross of mainstream music was made bearable and in hindsight seems far better than today. I don’t know what kids today are rebelling against. It’s all very serious now. Demonstrations and riots are common and no one is shocked. Why don’t you rebel against me? I am the old fogey, the establishment. Fight me!

1st April 1979
Them lot came round
UGH!
2p

2nd April 1979
It’s alright today I suppose
2p 1p

3rd April 1979
Went down to Matthew’s today. You should see his place, it’s brilliant with a tennis court
Today got English Civil War
2p

28th Feb 2022 – Matthew’s house was huge, maybe three stories high. His dad drove a Mercedes and they had a tennis court. In comparison to our humble place I felt I was in the company of a rich family. They were down-to-earth and friendly though. I got on well with his Mum and Dad and over the next couple of years, Matthew and I would play many long five-set matches of tennis. His brother Toby was a year or two older than us and had bought the Dexy’s Midnight Runners album which we enjoyed listening to.

That English Civil War 7″ by the Clash! The cover was taken from the cartoon version of Animal Farm which I hadn’t read or was even able to comprehend but I knew it was a statement. I was still early in my vinyl-buying days, begging mum to pick up things for me if she could and I had been a good boy. I wonder what would have happened if I’d been a better boy?

4th April 1979
Got mag called Smash Hits today
2p

28th Feb 2022 – Smash Hits, I think, was the magazine that had some light articles about pop music but its main attraction was the printed lyrics to the songs of the time. This was revelatory for me and besides being able to understand the words to the songs and sing-a-long, it wouldn’t be long before I would be trying to imitate writing them, inspired further by the crude and rude lyrics of the punk songs I heard or heard about. Fuck was becoming more common in my vocabulary. I wanted to become a singer and a lyricist, a punk and a poet. But I was only 11 years old.

5th April 1979
1. Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive
2. Village People – In The Navy
3. Art Garfunkel – Bright Eyes
4. Chic – I Want Your Love
5. Sex Pistols – Something Else
2p

28th Feb 2022 – There it is – 80% dross and 20% intrigue.

6th April 1979
Yesterday I got a Fiat X1/9 and Prototypes Trumps but I swapped them
TCH!
2p

28th Feb 2022 – Still hanging on to my Matchbox car fixation and my competitive nature of Trumps. I loved playing that game.

7th April 1979
Went to Matthew for 4 hours
Leeds 1-1 Ipswich
2p 2p

28th Feb 2022 – Matthew did come to my house sometimes, or we would mess around in the woods and on the common but I was more enamoured with his new mansion to explore.