Fifty Years Ago: Friday, 20th August 1976 — Grandpa’s 80th
(Gosforth, Age 14:10)
I started to clean out my room.
I did this quite often. It was a kind of ritual, a way of re-establishing myself in my own space after I’d been away, or to mark the moment, or prepare myself for the next chapter. Sometimes it might have been sparked by losing something. Sometimes I wanted to see what was there. And what was missing. The contents of my room defined me, and I could consider what might need adding: what book, what record, what article of clothing or accessory. Sometimes it would dawn on me that Mum had thrown something out: a second-hand ex-army jacket she didn’t like, or my Action Man (when did he go AWOL?).
I got a second-hand record player for £20.
I had seen it advertised in the paper, I think The Journal. Grandpa dropped the papers in most days. He was eighty and still drove over to deliver them to us, our octogenarian paper boy.
The address was on the Great North Road, behind Polwarth Drive. Mum knew the man as a boy from the RGS. They made ‘catch up’ small talk. The record player was Russian and made like a cabinet. I paid for it with savings and holiday money.
I already had plenty of records: Bowie, Abba, Genesis.
Until then we had the family mono. It was supposed to be portable, though it was a hefty box: deck and single speaker all in one, with a lid and carrying handle. Now I had my own record player in my own room.
It stopped working within six months.
That taught me the value of buying a reliable brand.
My older brother had a bath. Not usually wortht of note but this is the summer of the 1976 drought – when one person had a bath we all followed. Afterwards my brother and I syphoned the water off to put on the rhododendrons. Whoever did the sucking on the end of the hose got a gob full of soapy water.
There was a hosepipe ban because of the drought. My brother and I took saving the bathwater as a bit of fun. It was all very Blue Peter. If Valerie Singleton, Peter Purves and John Noakes asked us to save our bathwater, we did so, even in our teens.
Grandpa’s Birthday.
We helped Mum with the food and chairs. It was sunny, so everything was being set up in the back garden. There were sandwiches, a birthday cake, a big pyrex bowl full of crisps, brandy snaps, strawberries and cream.
I rang Gran to bring my good trousers.
To help Mum out, a basket of washing sometimes went off to Gran’s in the back of Grandpa’s car. She washed and ironed it. My good trousers were brown cords. We were smart because we had visitors.
Then I cut the lawn just as Great Aunty Sarah turned up. The ancient aunties as we called them would all arrive in good time. Never on time or late, but early.
They were the Hogg sisters: Jean, Barbara, Sarah and Mary, born around the turn of the century, one after another — 1899, 1901, 1902 and 1904, something like that — with Uncle Jim born in 1903.
There were presents, photographs, candles and speeches.
Grandpa, who was 80, born in 1896, had a lovely time. There was food and fuss, and i spent a good hour hearing about his time surviving as a machine gunner on the Western Front in the First World War.
Mum took people home afterwards, to Fenham and Ponteland. Grandpa still drove so he gave one of them a lift too.
By mid-afternoon I was off. When everyone had gone, I went swimming with Julie-Anne. We went to the Victorian swimming pool in Jesmond. It was smaller and cosier than Gosforth. We went to get wet, splash about, do some lengths, play around, sit on the side and chat, jump in again and watch people.
Swimming was an excuse to meet.
We were alone walking there and back.
My chain came off my bike. I could put it back on and Julie helped me get the oil off my hands – that’s was touching.
That evening we spoke to each other for an hour on the telephone. This meant sitting on the end of mums bed, or on the floor behind it. Squirreled away. Our secret conversation. Not that we had anything to hide. Our relationship hadn’t progressed to holding hands. If I got a kiss it was on the cheek to say goodbye (and unlikely).
At the time I would have dismissed much of it as banter, whispering sweet nothings. It was more useful than that. It was a way of externalising what was going on in our lives. We shared stories about siblings and friends, reflected on the world, talked about our subject choices, what was on television or at the flicks.
Talking to male friends face to face was different. There was banter, bragging, debating, competition, an expectation that something had to be made of the conversation.
With Julie-Anne I could talk.
Neither of us wanted to end the call.
I wasn’t in love. It was nice to be attached to someone, to have a friend I could talk to. Nice summed us up. Middle of the road. Suburban. Safe as houses. About as exciting as a hiccough into a crisp bag. I had someone, though. That mattered for a boarding school boy: someone to think about, care about even.
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