Tag: school

The Week That Was – 25th March 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

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

The Week That Was – 18th March 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

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.

The Week That Was – 18th February 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

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!

The Week That Was – 21st January 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Highest Entry – Blondie – 6

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.