14th Sep 2022 – It seems that the daily diary thrill had almost completely worn off by this point and I couldn’t even be bothered to list the charts. Number one was Another Brick In The Wall which, as a schoolkid, was enjoyable for the representation of mind-numbing school lessons. It became so popular though that I ended up disliking and resenting it.
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: 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.
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
Record of the week: Car 67 – Headlight Highest Entry: Art Garfunkel – Bright Eyes – 27
28th Dec 2021 – I think I checked out the Car 67 song again back when I initially wrote this entry and now, can’t remember a damn thing about it. Art Garfunkel though – ugh. These were the times of realising that popular music was quickly becoming something I hated. I don’t hear this song anywhere in popular culture these days either so perhaps it has been justly forgotten.
18th March 1979 Clocks forward Boring day Really Most days are now 2p 1p
19th March 1979 Same as yesterday 2p
28th Dec 2021 – It’s a shame I couldn’t find anything to write about, or thought that was worth writing about at the time. It was definitely an effort to try to put anything down here every down and there would be long periods when that became normal. I don’t think I have any diaries between 1986 and 1994. I seem to be fairly regularly making 3p per day – making my mum a cup of tea and something else, maybe washing up, though I can clearly view the sink and often still have dreams in this kitchen I don’t recollect ever washing up!
20th March 1979 Got new pair of shoes, wedged 2p 1p
28th Dec 2021 – I was probably costing my mum a fortune with my dodgy feet. These ‘wedged’ shoes would’ve also made me more conscious of standing out from everyone else. It felt like a negative for me and I didn’t appreciate at the time that I was receiving help from others. I found my life to be a hell that everyone wished on me. A lack of self-esteem. I can’t really identify where I developed this from. Perhaps from not having a father figure around? I did often wonder how different my life would have been if my father had been alive for my childhood.
21st March 1979 European Cup Quarter Final (2nd Leg) Barcelona 1-0 Ipswich Colehill P-P Cranborne 2p 1p
28th Dec 2021 – There were three middle schools in the catchment area for Queen Elizabeths (High School) in Wimborne. I was at St. Michaels (up the hill in Colehill), Allenbourne was down in the town and Cranborne covered all the rest of the countryside to the north. My house was along one of the catchment borders, or thereabouts. A bit further north and I would have been going to Cranborne too. The bus route is etched in my memory and it always weirded me out that we drove a long way down one road to pick up a couple of kids and then the driver had to reverse into a side track and drive on back again. It felt like it added so much extra time to the journey but it was really only a few minutes.
Throughout this school year and the next, I developed a habit of getting up earlier and earlier, even before the TV programs started in the morning at 6am. If it was too early for TV I would find something on the radio. I would eat biscuits for breakfast with a cup of tea. I encouraged my mum to buy more and more different types of biscuits and I would eat two of each, lining them up in the order of least tasty to delicious. I would take a bite and suck in a mouthful of tea and feel the biscuit crumble in my mouth dispersing its taste within. On and on…if I ran out of tea before biscuits I would make another cup.
22nd March 1979 1. Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive 2. Elvis Costello – Oliver’s Army 3. Lene Lovich – Lucky Numbers 4. Sex Pistols – Something Else 5. The Real Thing – Can You Feel The Force? 2p 2p
Sid Vicious had died in Early February and there was still money to be made.
28th Dec 2021 – Seeing Sex Pistols videos on TV was thrilling as all hell to me. Who were these crazy people? There was nothing I could identify with from my beautiful green countryside surrounds. I thought Sid Vicious came from another planet. More and more I wanted to be like that. To shock, upset and offend. This would develop much more strongly in the next school year, got me in a stack of trouble and ultimately confused me and made me bitter. It was a lot of fun at the time, a way to express myself and I soon discovered how boring and straight most people are.
At this stage though, I was just beginning to dive in. I was still teetering on the edge of being a good student and being a rebellious one. It’s fantastic to recognise these exact same traits in some of the kids I teach now. I try my best to encourage them but, fuck, I know exactly what I was like at their age and wouldn’t listen to anyone – especially teachers!
23rd March 1979 Rev.’s got more boring since a couple of weeks ago 2p 2p
28th Dec 2021 – Rev. must have been Religious Education but what the hell did the word Rev. actually mean? I wonder if subjects are still called this?
24th March 1979 Liverpool 2-0 Ipswich 10p
28th Dec 2021 – 10p – I was a money-making machine! It wouldn’t last.
18th February 1979 No 5th Round Matches on yesterday Them lot came round today BLURP! BLURP!
12th Nov 2021 – I believe “them lot” was my Aunt Lorna, her husband Jim and daughter Elise. When my mum and I first moved to Forest Cottage they actually lived next door, on the other side of the field I mention here. The house looks huge when I check on Google Maps and I think I only ever went inside once or twice. I then couldn’t understand why they moved to a much smaller council house in Ferndown soon after we got there in 1976.
At one point I used to like playing hide and seek in our garden with Jim but he would be off the scene sometime over these few years as they got divorced. I never became friendly with Elise, even though she was my cousin and maybe only one or two years younger. It seems that by this time I was in no mood for extended family and dubbed them “them lot”! It probably meant me having to join in with eating, talking and games with them and granny and grandad. Not exactly how I wanted to spend my Sundays.
19th February 1979 No Monty Python but Fawlty Towers. Boo! Boring Day! But then it would be with no MONTY PYTHON
20th February 1979 1 Ipswich P-P Bristol Rovers BLURP
21st February 1979 Back at school today! Not going to match tomorrow because of my foot! H. First Leg 1-5 Second Leg 0-4 Allenborne
22nd February 1979 1. Blondie (1) (4) 2. Bee Gees – Tragedy (7) (3) 3. Abba – Chiquitita (2) (1) 4. Three Degrees (3) (2) 5. Elvis Costello – Oliver’s Army (13) (-)
23rd February 1979 Soap’s on tonight. Great. Da! Da!
12th Nov 2021 – 11pm Friday nights and I was allowed to stay up to experience the joy of Soap. Classic soap opera parody that cracked us up with its absurdity. I have downloaded episodes even now and watched a few of them a couple of years ago. My humour has become a little more sophisticated but it still tickled the 12-year-old funny bone in my nostalgia brain.
24th February 1979 1 Everton 0-1 Ipswich First time we’ve beat Everton in 13 years Top: Liverpool Heyy!
18th Oct 2021 – It seems to be around this time that I was really starting to pay more attention to the charts and leaning further away from pop and disco tunes and towards louder raunchier music.
21st January 1979 Horray no school tomorrow WO
22nd January 1979 Boring day WHAT
23rd January 1979 Great, school bus didn’t come so I ain’t going to school
18th Oct 2021 – Already sarcastic, aged 11. Just looking at these words, they could be read as positive – ie – Awesome, no school! But I know that is not what I meant. The school bus didn’t come but I was still up and ready and waiting for it when I could’ve been sleeping in or getting up to whatever other nonsense I usually did on free mornings.
24th January 1979 School today BLURP Leeds 2-2 Soton (League Cup semi-final 2nd leg)
18th Oct 2021 – I’m pretty sure these were times when I could tell you all about football teams, players, scores etc even those I didn’t really follow. I think this was the time of Allan Clarke (Leeds) and Mick Channon (Southampton)?
25th January 1979 (1) Hit me with your rhythm stick, hit me, hit me ID and the Blockheads (6) Once I had a love and it was a gas, soon found out had a heart of glass Blondie
18th Oct 2021 – I loved that this Ian Dury song was number one, after 1978’s What a Waste was a favourite. Somehow I convinced my mum to buy me this single and I was thrilled that the b-side title was “There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards”, finding it very daring to have what was then considered a swear word in the name.
Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ wasn’t my favourite song from Parallel Lines, which would have been one of the first albums I owned, again, after convincing my mum to buy for me. Anything that featured Debbie Harry and saw the chance of seeing her beautiful image on TV again was wholly supported by my imagination, which had already run wild after seeing the video for ‘Presence Dear’ where I was certain she was talking directly to me from the screen.
I dreamt that she was waiting for me by a particular tree in the woods and hurried that morning to go and meet her. I waited and waited, trying to feel her presence, almost ecstatic and a tingling in my pants that I was only just learning about.
I limped home ever so disappointed as my youthful hard-on waned in my tight pants but I didn’t give up hope.
26th January 1979 Got a new magazine called Superpop HEYYY!
27th January 1979 Ipswich 0-0 Orient Hey Nerds! Rly Tes
18th Oct 2021 – There are many codes in my diaries that I was sure I would remember the meaning of because they were ‘really important.’ A couple I’m still able to work out and I also left deciphering clues elsewhere in the pages but this entry I don’t know.
1994ever 