Fifty Years Ago: Wednesday, 4 August 1976
Mum took me into Newcastle for a haircut at Salon 66. It was an Italian gentlemen’s barber for fashionable middle-aged men. Dad went there, as did several others in the close-knit Tyneside business world—including, eventually, my future stepfather and even my former stepmother’s future husband. Everyone seemed connected.
The haircut cost £1.75, including a wash. They used a blow-dryer to give it more volume, leaving it too bunched up, though otherwise it was all right. Salon 66 could be too trendy for its own good. If this was a rite of passage, I was giving it a miss. It was too Frank Sinatra and Perry Como for me. I listened to Bowie and Genesis.
We came straight home. I hid beneath my anorak until I had taken a proper look at it. This was an instinct left over from prep school, where you might return home with a hideous army crop—short back and sides—during an era when hair reached the shoulders and beyond.
Hair mattered enormously. Like an accent, it could make us stick out unnecessarily. Both my parents expected received pronunciation, smart clothes and a presentation considered “befitting”. Mum had come from a modest background, only a generation removed from grandparents in domestic service or working as shop assistants. Her side of the family had climbed through self-made Victorian and Edwardian men and was still clinging to its earned middle-class position.
There were plenty of words for those left below: hoi polloi, peasants, working class, and several less savoury expressions for what were, in truth, normal people. We were marked out as different and expected to regard this as an advantage.
I had a can of Heineken and talked with Mr Foster. Either he had come over to our house for a drink, or Mum and I had gone to his. Nobody remarked on my drinking. I looked old enough and was already used to alcohol at family meals, parties, pubs, school and holidays. It was simply the culture around us.
At home, the cans often came from Grandpa. Beer formed part of his pension from Scottish & Newcastle Breweries. Otherwise, the Heineken may have been available at Mr Foster’s, though I remember him preferring gin.
Adults almost certainly mistook my height and physical maturity for emotional maturity. Looking old enough was apparently the same as being old enough.
Mr Foster was our millionaire neighbour in Fencer Hill Park, a property developer and collector of rare Dutch paintings. He owned flats in Paguera, Majorca, where we stayed several times, and a cottage at Beadnell. His wealth did not seem exceptional. Almost everyone we knew lived in a large detached house, sent their children away to school and drove something expensive: Aston Martins, Bentleys, Jaguars or Austin-Healeys.
The Dutch paintings displayed in his house were convincing copies. The originals were kept securely off-site as investments. This was not entirely unreasonable. Every house on Fencer Hill seemed to be burgled every few years, despite Mr Foster having a live-in housekeeper. The real paintings were safer where nobody could enjoy them.
I fell asleep during the afternoon. Perhaps it was the lager, tiredness, boredom or exercise. Who knows? I have always been able to take a daytime sleep when one comes upon me.
Mum rang the Crowdys, another Gosforth family. Their son was away at boarding school—Sedbergh, I assume—while his sisters were educated in town and could train regularly with Newcastle City Swimming Club. I wanted the timetable so that I could keep attending while I was home.
Richard said 8.15 with the senior lot at Newcastle City Baths on John Dobson Street. It was most likely the evening. They were all in the high group, apart from one girl from mine. Groups were decided by fitness, skill and times across several events.
The locally educated swimmers could train seven or nine times a week, including early mornings, and then compete regularly at galas. At prep school, I had been lucky to swim once or twice a week. At public school, perhaps four times. Boarding school was sold as opportunity, yet in swimming it removed me from the very system that might have allowed me to progress.
I was painfully aware that I could achieve more under my own steam at home than by being sent away.
I tagged along at the back and clung on. There was no conversation. If you had time to speak to someone, you were not training hard enough.
I managed to keep up.
For now, that made me determined to return and become the best swimmer I could be.
Sedbergh would undo it.
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