“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” – Andre Gide
Single of the week: Skodas – Everybody Thinks Everyone Else Is Dead Bad
3rd August 1981
Graeme’s coming
Going to Bournemouth
3rd Feb 2023 – And here ends any entries for the rest of the year. Maybe the school holidays got too exciting to document. It’s a shame I didn’t get back to writing after the holidays as this was when I went to my first year of high school at Queen Elizabeth’s. Things became both more traumatic and more fun, as may be expected for any 13-year-old.
Single of the week: Blue Orchids – Work, Exploited – Dogs of War
20th April 1981
B__________
21st April 1981
___OR______
22nd April 1981
________ED
Matthew is a liar
‘ad an ‘aircut
23rd April 1981
Last night
FC Cologne 0 – Ipswich 1
24th April 1981
Hoping Graeme comes
He isn’t you twat
TIRED
25th April 1981
He might come today
He did AMAZED
ME 4 (I) L.Y.
Ipswich 1 – Manchester City 0
26th April 1981
KNACKERED
TIRED
This week’s chart-topper is: Bucks Fizz – Making Your Mind Up
Single of the week: Blitzkrieg – Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Dead (and EP), Positive Noise – Give Me Passion
13th April 1981
Staying at Sharon’s
God I’m KNACKERED
14th April 1981
Aston Villa 1 – Ipswich 2
We scored the first two
15th April 1981
Made me own breakfast
The Public Image
16th April 1981
Nearly finished tapes
17th April 1981
I got a new watch
It’s good
18th April 1981
Ipswich 0 – Arsenal 2
Never mind
19th April 1981
Rang Graeme
The Bollocks
This week’s chart-topper is: Bucks Fizz – Making Your Mind Up
Record of the Week: Lookin’ For Clues – Robert Palmer
Expecting Graeme 10am – he didn’t come – should come tomorrow
Dentist 3.20pm
11th July 2021 – Graeme Gray – it was all his fault. Somewhere in 1979 or 1980 he told me about this outrageously named band the Sex Pistols and their song Friggin’ in the Riggin’, the lyrics of which excited these typically dumb 13-year-old boys. For some reason I feel that it was later that I saw the Sex Pistols video for ‘Pretty Vacant’ on Top of the Pops – but looking back it seems that that was in 1977, so I had already come across them, perhaps not knowing who they were. I do remember though their bass player, whom I commented to my mother, looked like Frankenstein. My mother and I would always watch the horror double bill on Saturday nights, after Match of the Day, so Frankenstein and Dracula were always a clear black and white image in my mind.
These were the clear seeds of my interest in punk rock and it didn’t take long for me to immerse myself in it.
It seems weird to me now that I would invite a friend over on the same day I had to go to the dentist. Time has a different meaning to pre-teens though.
Anyway, later in 1979, Graeme’s parents moved out to the New Forest, to manage the Red Shoot Inn, yet somehow we managed to stay in touch. I felt it was fairly unusual for kids our age to stay in touch by old style phone in those days – if you weren’t within biking distance and attending the same school then it was practically impossible to be friends.
Each week I would write down whatever song/s stuck in my mind from listening to the radio. I’m just reminding myself about this Robert Palmer song as I have no memory of it now. An appealing upbeat jaunty pop number with a bit of a quirky middle section. Goes well along with XTC and Squeeze tunes that would have been popular around this time.
Music was becoming a bigger part of my interest, though as it had been an interest for most people generally as there weren’t really many other options, it was always around and I often looked through my mother’s collection of June Tabor, James Last and Martin Carthy records and fantasising about these people and their lives. I couldn’t stop playing her Lonnie Donegan album and the Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood album, often sitting in my window singing along, hoping that my Nancy Sinatra may hear. I had a fabulous fantasy world in my head, stuck out in the Dorset countryside.
Record of the week: Lookin’ For Clues – Robert Palmer
29th December 1980
Expecting Graeme 1000
He didn’t come should come tomorrow
Dentist 3.20pm
30th December 1980
Album of the year:
Damned – Black Album/Machine Gun Etiquette
Cockney Rejects – Greatest Hits Vol II
Dead Kennedys – Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables
31st December 1980
Single of the year:
Dead Kennedys – Holiday In Cambodia
The Fall – How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’
1st January 1981
The Damned and PiL are on OGWT
mixed my drinks – all the family have (illegible)
17th July 2021 – The Old Grey Whistle Test was an interesting TV show although at the time I just wanted to see punk music and not all the boring old hippie, prog, jazz shit they would include. Trying to find more information about the show on this date makes me think that they re-ran recordings from 1979 – maybe a New Year special or something like that.
As to the drinking part of this entry….I’m not sure if this would have been drinking allowed by my mother (and with family – Grandparents, visiting relatives, maybe) or perhaps stolen from my grandad’s stash out in the shed, from which I learned to enjoy Newcastle Brown Ale and practice skulling 300ml bottles of various other forms of ale.
2nd January 1981
Bought The Not The Nine O’clock News album
and Sid Vicious Family Album
3rd January 1981
FA Cup Third Round
Ipswich 1 v Villa 0
4th January 1981
Gotta finish school project
but who the hell wants to do that?
ME! I suppose
This week’s chart-topper is:
Anarchy In The UK for the 3rd time
John Peel’s Festive Fifty
Also in Top 10 – Stiff Little Fingers, Dead Kennedys, Clash, Undertones, Joy Division, Jam, Damned
Record of the week: Tourists – I Only Wanna Be With You
5th Sep 2022 – This is a great song and a couple of years later I found a sleeveless copy on yellow vinyl in Wimborne Market, probably for 50p. I don’t think they had any more popular songs, maybe released an album and then went on to achieve fame as the Eurhythmics, which was dull new wave pop that I generally detested.
An online search shows they had 3 albums and a handful of singles, the only one I recall now being ‘Blind Among The Flowers’ which preceded I Only Wanna Be With You I believe and was also excellent. All of these were released in 1979 and 1980 when bands didn’t hang around, years between albums.
18th November 1979
I want my bike
2p
19th November 1979
(tick)
^^
2p
20th November 1979
God knows
1p
21st November 1979
England v Bulgaria (European Championship)
2-0
2-0
2-0
two-nil
1p
22nd November 1979
1. Dr Hook
2. Queen
3. Jam
4.
5.
My bike comes
1p 182p* 162p*
5th Sept 2022 – Was the excitement of my bike arriving enough to distract me from the top 5 this week? A quick look online suggests there wasn’t much else to write home about, except perhaps Madness cracking the top 10. The Jam song was Eton Rifles, one of their last great singles. Funeral Pyre was the last – they’d gone too soft by this time.
23rd November 1979
My bike is here
Mum did tell it came yesterday because she was going out.
2p 160p*
5th Sept 2022 – I guess this bike was a Christmas present and with it coming a full month before Christmas it still gave me enough time to beg for new presents on the actual day. She would’ve told me it was here because I would’ve discovered it in the garage anyway as I always had my nose in everything. Keeping myself entertained as an only child and in a garden about an acre in size, I was intimate with every nook and cranny. I knew places to hide and spy from, football was best behind the sheds where the two apple trees could be goalposts. Athletics could be run around the top lawn as it was mown with an oval around the edges. This tree was good for one thing and that tree good for another. The garage I often rearranged to make it more convenient, first for my bike, then motorbike and later drum kit and sofa,
24th November 1979Hope Graeme comes
Ipswich 3-1 Soton
2p 180p*
5th Sep 2022 – It’s possible Graeme didn’t come because his folks forbid him to see me anymore as they decided I was a bad influence. I was bemused by this as it seemed that he was always the bad influence on me.
5th Sep 2022 – I had an irrational hatred of Peter Shilton. Maybe it was his curly hair or the fact that he kept Ray Clemence out of the England team whom I considered a better keeper.
Record of the week: Madness – One Step Beyond
Highest entry: Madness – One Step Beyond
29th Aug 2022 – I think it’s pretty much impossible for pre/early adolescents not to love this song. I still love it now though its familiarity has worn a little thin.
11th November 1979
Nothing
2p
12th November 1979
(tick)
Not a lot
2p
13th November 1979
today
2p
14th November 1979
Six weeks til me bike comes
2p 195p*
30th Aug 2022 – It’s funny to see the affected writing using me instead of my. Is it an English thing? It feels like it. Northern perhaps? Scottish or Irish influence? Blackie from the Hard-Ons still uses it when he’s sending emails, messages etc. It also reminds me of Gilesy who never says fucking but fooking. It sounds weird to me but it seems to be his thing.
Anyway, me bike was an Eddy Merckx 12-speed racing bike ordered from the huge catalogues that appeared once or twice a year. I didn’t know who Eddy Merckx was but the catalogue spiel sold me on it. I thought it was something special.
I don’t know where these came from but I think they were free. Grattans was the name of one. They contained everything such as kitchen items, clothes, tools, toys etc and usually at a cheaper price than in the shops, though by the time shipping charges were added they probably ended up the same.
For teen boys (maybe girls too) the fashion pages were prime material to get excited about, especially the underwear sections. Without any access to porn, this was as good as it got. I still prefer to be stimulated by a semi-clothed body rather than a naked one. I’ve got an imagination that I want to use.
15th November 1979
1. Dr Hook
2. Lena Martell
3. Queen
4. Jam
5. Commodores
6. Abba
2p
16th November 1979
(tick)
If I don’t find something to say soon I’ll do something about it
2p
30th Aug 2022 – Seems I was even annoyed at myself at the time for what felt like boring days. I bet they weren’t boring at all and filled with forgotten episodes or creative stupidity.
17th November 1979
Ipswich v ?
Graeme came
30th Aug 2022 – Why I didn’t write more? We would’ve got up to loads of mischief but maybe the mischief was so prevalent that it wasn’t worthy of mention. We usually walked up to Queen’s Copse and dicked around there. To be honest, there wasn’t much to do there, occasionally we’d stumble through farmer’s fields and get chased by bulls, piss on electric fences and find dead snakes. I got my mum to take a couple of pictures with her Polaroid Instamatic as Graeme and I pulled ‘punk’ poses that we’d learned from whatever magazines we’d come across.
Chris’ house on the left and the entrance to the ‘mansion’ opposite.
Record of the week: Secret Affair – Time For Action
Chart entries: 40 – Secret Affair – Time For Action, 38 – Billy Connolly – In The Brownies, 34 – Commodores – Sail On, 32 – Nick Lowe – Cruel To Be Kind
22nd Jun 2022 – The Secret Affair song is a great mod tune though it wouldn’t be long until my allegiance to punk had to see me dislike anything that didn’t fit into a strict definition. Billy Connolly making fun of the Village People, there’s the cool disco-funk of the Commodores and the very 70s pop tune from Nick Lowe. Music was good.
2nd September 1979
Part 12 of the Dickies saga
De-ciphered some words from Dickies album
2p 209p*
22nd Jun 2022 – The Dickies songs were so fast, the vocals blurred and spasmodic but I really wanted to sing along. I couldn’t wait any longer for the unlikely event of Smash Hits printing lyrics for Dickies album tracks. I’m not sure they ever printed the lyrics for Banana Splits but everyone already knew the words to that from watching the TV show. Having no comprehension of record collecting yet I wrote the lyrics in some spare space on the inner sleeve and wrote on the cover too. I completely ruined the Boomtown Rats ‘Tonic For The Troops’ doing that too. That album had a lyric sheet but there were so many mistakes and missing lyrics that I attempted to fastidiously fix.
3rd September 1979
Oh no
(arrow pointing to tomorrow)
2p 207p+135p = 342p*
22nd Jun 2022 – I wonder what I bought this time? I’m guessing it was some 7″ singles or Matchbox cars.
4th September 1979
School
S’arite in fird yer
2p
22nd Jun 2022 – Middle school was split into two sections somewhat. Years 1 and 2 did things together as did years 3 and 4. In Year Two you had some sway over the kids in Year One. Moving to Year Three didn’t really give you sway over the two years below, instead, you became the target of attention from the Year Four kids. It was during this year that a bunch of them started calling me Sid as that was the only punk icon name they knew. One tomboy girl, in particular, took umbrage at me being a punk and would punch and kick me at any opportunity.
The main point of contention for me was in the school football team. I was the top player when I was in Year Two but now I struggled to make it into the team with the Year Four kids. I did end up playing a few games though and felt like I got a little respect from some of them.
5th September 1979
Forgot about the charts yesterday so I got it today
2p 338p*
6th September 1979
1. Cliff Richard
2. BA Robertson
3. Gary Numan – Cars
4. Roxy Music
5. Money
6. Specials
7. Street Life
8. Rats
9. Vanwarmer
10. EWF
2p 2p
7th September 1979
Going to I Eye and staying the night and coming back Sat 7.00pm
2p 2p
22nd Jun 2022 – The secret code of I Eyes is lost to time though I think it may have been Chris Foote. He, Graeme and I were the only three kids interested in the Sex Pistols and punk at the time. I do recall staying at his place once or twice until I was deemed too unacceptable as a dirty punk by his parents and later him too.
He lived on the corner of one of the hills that led down into Wimborne. We could climb his fence and still atop and shoot peas through a peashooter at cars as they drove by. This was great fun until some guy spotted us and got out and came in and told us off in front of Chris’ parents. Maybe that’s what got me into trouble with them.
Also, opposite his place was a big hidden mansion, or so it seemed to us. Their drive had a little bridge and a dry moat-like area that was hidden from pedestrians and the owners. We adventured through the hedge and down into the ditch in search of treasure, perhaps hoping for a porno mag or…who knows. What we did find on one occasion, under the bridge, was a huge human shit, which was both fascinatingly huge and seriously disgusting. Who was responsible for this!? What kind of massive butthole evacuated it?
The other road of the roundabout outside Chris’ place led down to the chippie which I most remember for having a cigarette vending machine standing by itself on the pavement, like a mailbox. You could buy single cigarettes for tuppence or five pence but we never had any money. We did see if we could get our little hands inside though, which worked occasionally. Of course, the fragility of the device meant that some folks would come along and just bash it until the glass broke and we would take advantage of that if we ever found it in that state.
It was also walking up this hill that one time I actually did find a porno magazine in the bushes which I had to hide in my pants and smuggle home.
8th September 1979
Great at I Eyes
Ipswich 1-0 Bristol
2p
22nd Jun 2022 – It would have been around this time that my mum lent me a cheap camera to finish off a roll of film which saw me pretending to take a shit, squatting over some dog poo on the pavement and hungrily pretending to grab at cigarettes on a billboard.
Record of the week: The Dickies – Poodle Party, Paranoid, Rondo (The Midget’s Revenge)
Highest entry: Sham 69 – Hersham Boys
Entries: The Boss, Telex, The Bitch, Showaddywaddy, Spyro Gyra, EWF
19th May 2022 – Days when Sham 69 were the highest entry in the charts! In the big scheme of things, punk was a flash in the pan. I’m a flash in the pan. Humanity is a flash in the pan! I was all about the Dickies this week.
29th July 1979
From Tues
Last week was great
Part 7 of the Dickies saga
Haven’t stopped playing the album.
2p
30th July 1979
Part 8
As you can see my records of this week and next are off the album.
2p 2p
31st July 1979
‘ad me ‘air dun
Part 9
Got the single Paranoid. The B-side is I’m OK You’re OK.
2p
19th May 2022 – This new Dickies song was a little bit of a let-down when compared with the album but it was still great. I wonder what madness I tried to get the hairdresser to perform this time?
1st August 1979
1 – Going to get the Dickies LP The Incredible Shrinking Dickies – False
2 – I’ll get it on 27th July – False
3 – 20th July
2p
19th May 2022 – When plans come early.
2nd August 1979
1. Boomtown Rats
2. Police
3. Dooleys
4. Dave Edmunds
5. Abba
6. Janet Kay
7. Tubeway Army
8. Knack
9. Supertramp
10. Sparks
2p
Going to Johnny’s.
19th May 2022 – Probably stayed at Graeme’s for a night or two. At the back of his house, which was above the pub, there was a camping and caravanning area, with shower and toilet blocks. Graeme had an air rifle and we took it out around the woods to ‘play’ with as the sun was coming down. We got back to the campsite not yet satisfied with shooting at things. I think we’d scared a few birds by this point. In the dark, Graeme said that there was a garbage bin next to the toilet block and we should shoot across the car park and see if we could hit it. So, with no thought or care for anyone else, that’s what we did. And we did hit the garbage can! And no one was hurt.
Little did I know that in my future I would come very close to being killed with an air rifle!
3rd August 1979
Part 10 of the Dickies saga
I’m going to try and play the album every day until the Eve of Destruction. Get it?
2p
4th August 1979
Hope Ipswich sign Ray Wilkins. That’s for 930,000 pounds.
2p 10p 107p*
19th May 2022 – I had to look up Ray Wilkins. Not sure why I was that excited about this possibility but I obviously rated him at the time. He ended up at Manchester United and so I soon forgot about him!
Record of the week: Generation X – Friday’s Angel
Highest entry: The Knack – My Sharona – 24
14th May 2022 – My Sharona is still in the cultural zeitgeist, though maybe only for another generation. Friday’s Angel I don’t even recall myself. Let me check it out again. Seeing the cover, I may have even owned this 7″ at some point. Looks familiar. A re-listen is not winning me over these days.
8th July 1979
Not meant for today but the Sex Pistols are great.
2p 12p^
14th May 2022 – Not meant for today? What does that even mean, 11-year-old me? Perhaps just filling up diary space when having no recollection of what I actually did on that day. I wish I could go back and tell myself to write down as much as possible, to tell Hayden to do the same. Tell your kids to keep a diary, even better, a journal. No need to get all Kerouac about it but your future self will be grateful to you.
9th July 1979
Had chalkie today
Great stuff
Chalkie = Hard and White = Arden White
2p 14p^
14th May 2022 – Well, I’ve searched but Arden White remains a mystery. Some kind of candy, chocolate or beverage, maybe? Already enjoying playing with language. It is something that I still admire as part of my Englishness. Not to say that language games don’t exist in other languages or that English is better, just that I enjoy the learning, practising and knowing of it.
10th July 1979
Graeme brought a Rubber Johnny to school and I’ve got the instructions
2p 16p^
14th May 2022 – Damn, this would’ve been a playground coup and kids would’ve gathered around to see this forbidden item. I was obviously proud to be the owner of the instructions! Even with them, I wouldn’t have known what to do with the thing! I feel sure Graeme would’ve given it a go though.
11th July 1979 called the
2p
14th May 2022 – As if my writing wasn’t hard enough to read already, I obviously wanted this piece partially obscured
12th July 1979
1. Tubeway Army – Are Friends Electric?
2. Janet Kay – Silly Games
3. Sex Pistols – C’mon Everybody
4. Squeeze – Up The Junction
5. Amii Stewart – Light My Fire
6. Gerry Rafferty – Night Owl
7. Ruts – Babylon’s Burning
2p 2p 20p^
14th May 2022 – Extended to a top 7 so that I could include the Ruts. It’s amazing to remember a time when a song like this was in the charts.
13th July 1979
Gra Johnny’s number is 0425 42800
24p^
14th May 2022 – In the punk tradition Graeme and I changed our names though I forget what mine was. So Graeme was Johnny, implying that he was the Johnny Rotten of us two potential punks. I don’t believe I ever went by the name of Sid but it wouldn’t be long before that was the name older kids called me to make fun of me. And by this time I was the only punk in the school.
14th July 1979
No news to write about Ipswich this week
26p ^
14th May 2022 – That’s how to write about Ipswich every week, even when there was nothing to write. I could’ve been a journalist, I tells ya!
1994ever 