Fifty Years Ago: Monday 6th September 1976
(Gosforth, Age 14:11)
We had ‘Cap’again. She was the neighbours’ red setter. They were away, and we’d offered to have her. This was somewhat exceptional as we also had a cat in the house. My sister had been given it, though Mum wanted rid of it – she was never a pet person. Dad had been. Cap was watchful and quite inquisitive about the cat.
When Dad was still around, we’d Morag, a black Labrador and trained gun dog. One of my strongest memories was of her giving birth to ten puppies in a basket under the counter in the utility room. In no time the mauve tiles were awash with dog pee and mini dog poo, and Dad had us putting newspapers down everywhere. Five of each: dogs and bitches. One puppy went to Granny V and was called Queen. Another got its tail caught in a closing door, so we called it Twitchit and wanted to keep it.
My sister’s cat didn’t last anything like as long. Mum insisted that it was given back to the litter it had come from.
I was very tired first thing but couldn’t sleep because Mum had been busy in the kitchen since half past six. She often fell asleep early in the evening, usually in front of the television, then got up early and started her day’s tasks. Cooking could be one of them. We might wake to find a chocolate cake, brandy snaps, or a Bolognese sauce already underway.
My bedroom was directly above the kitchen. Air vents connected the rooms to the boiler, and both noise and smells travelled extremely well. The smells weren’t unpleasant but not something you could sleep through. The noise was less so.
Mum would start innocently enough and gradually decide she could make as much noise as she wanted. The Colston dishwasher went on. It hadn’t been started the night before so as not to wake me, but apparently half past six was fine. Then Radio 4. Cupboards. Getting the milk in. Once Mum was awake, the house was awake.
I remembered dreams, particularly if I drifted into consciousness while still dreaming, and I had things to fret about. Or I’d been woken by the smell of roasting oxtail or caramelised sugar.
Dreams were another problem altogether. At first I merely noted in the diary that I had had one. Seven tight lines in a Five Year Diary were woefully poor for elaboration. Once I actually tried to describe what I had experienced, it was like opening Pandora’s box. You thought you could get the gist of it in two hundred words and realised you needed a thousand. Then, after all that effort: what on earth did it mean? My older sister was interested too, and we began talking about dreams when we were together, probably during the Christmas and New Year skiing trip that coming winter.
I was going back to Sedbergh on Saturday—five nights left at home.
There were people I looked forward to seeing and others I didn’t. There was being dragged into playing rugger, which I no longer enjoyed, especially since it came at the expense of swimming. If it wasn’t rugger, it was Cadet Corps once a week, running, then athletics and cricket in the summer. I had an active grievance about it. Swimming was what I wanted to do.
Then there were classes I had to take which I thought were a waste of time or which I struggled with. Art was particularly annoying. The school had been challenged to let me take it and refused. If I couldn’t do it at O-level, I wanted to take it later as a fourth A-level. They refused that too.
For now, though, I intended to go into Newcastle.
I had £5 birthday money from Gran V.
Five pounds was generous. Because I was always away at boarding school for my birthday, I tended to get some presents before I went back.
I didn’t know what to get without wasting Gran’s money.
Saving it never crossed my mind. The attraction was thinking of something, deciding I wanted it and then seeking it out. Of course, going into town simply because I had money was also an excellent way to do exactly what I was trying not to do: waste it.
I decided on a Peter Powell Stunt Kite. They had become an overnight craze and looked tremendous fun. Something had suddenly brought them to my attention — Blue Peter, John Craven’s Newsround — and they’d been on Nationwide.
I wasn’t new to kites. Dad had bought my brother and me much grander kites several years earlier, canvas-and-wood affairs with single lines. My brother had a box kite, which needed a proper wind, and I had a more classic kite. I must have been very young because I could squeeze myself into mine and had thought I might launch myself off a dune at Beadnell in it.
The Peter Powell was different. Flimsy, light, with two handles, two flying lines and a long tail. Mine was blue. Once you got it up, the point was not simply to keep it there. You made it loop and dive.
Much search began at Boydells on Gosforth High Street, on the corner of Hawthorn Road. Boydells had been our go-to toy shop growing up as boys: Action Man first, then Airfix and Tamiya plastic model kits.
They had none left. Given the craze, I suppose that was hardly surprising. They had none at Fenwick’s either.
I found the kite I wanted at the Model Shop on Blenheim Street, near the corner of Westgate Road. The Model Shop was another place where my brother and I spent birthday and Christmas money. A windsock flew from a pole on the roof, and the whole top floor was given over to model railways. It was for keen model makers and people creating proper dioramas: craft tools, balsa wood, more grown-up kits than the ones we had first bought at Boydells.
This is where I bought a blue Peter Powell kite.
While in town I also the single “Dr Kiss Kiss” by 5000 Volts from Woolworths. It had been one of the big disco hits of August
Doctor Kiss Kiss, help me, give me a thrill,
Doctor Kiss Kiss, tell me, give me a pill.
Doctor Kiss Kiss, help me, set me on fire.
Doctor Kiss Kiss, doctor of my desire.
From Thornes, the student bookshop on the Haymarket, conveniently close to the buses home, I got myself a copy of Usage and Abusage a Penguin paperback, probably bought.
I already had an English dictionary, a thesaurus and a Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Usage and Abusage more or less completed the set.
English had never come naturally to me. I’d always been mediocre at it. Spelling was a struggle, which my Five Year Diaries demonstrate rather well. I could hear a word and want to spell it phonetically. I saw words as hieroglyphs rather than constructions. I had been slow to read and had struggled with “th” and my ‘Rs’. Yet words were the way to share ideas and express yourself.
So I kept acquiring defence books.
Dictionary. Thesaurus. Phrase and Fable. Now Usage and Abusage.
I dipped into Partridge rather than reading it from beginning to end. I can imagine reading some rule or guideline and immediately thinking, but why?
It mattered because I wanted to write. If nothing else, surrounded by those books at my desk, I looked like a writer.
Perhaps it also kept me on Dad’s right side. I might even impress him with my developing mastery of English.
I also bought a pack of Maths revision cards. Maths didn’t worry me. Mr Savage had taught me well at Mowden, and Mr Hedges was an excellent Maths teacher at Sedbergh. I liked figuring it out, and I liked the certainty of knowing you were right. One hundred per cent.
It was always good when a school subject happened to be something I was interested in. That happened much more naturally with Geography, History and English. Here Maths had crossed the line too.
So Gran’s £5 probably paid for the lot: a blue stunt kite, a disco single, a Penguin book on English usage and O-level Maths revision cards.
Work and play.
The book and cards felt like an investment. The kite was for fun!
I was impatient to try it. If I bought it in town, I may even have stopped on the Town Moor on the way home. Otherwise I would have gone down through Fencer Hill Park and onto the Bohemians football pitch.
Once it was up, the fun was loops and dives.
I burned my fingers on the lines. Friction burns. That only added to the challenge, rather like catching a fish or climbing a rope. It was something to master. The long tail had an unfortunate habit of getting caught in telephone lines and trees.
Then I watched television and my brother went to a party.
He was only eighteen months older than me, but at this stage eighteen months was a considerable gap. We had grown up together and for years had almost been treated like twins. We had even been made to dress the same.
That was ending.
At home we still saw plenty of each other. At school we ignored one another almost completely, as brothers did. He had his friends, and I had mine. I had my own interests.
But he was sixteen and a half and going to parties, playing at being an adult and perhaps, for all I knew, with a secret girlfriend somewhere. I was flying a kite. Both seemed perfectly reasonable.
My final note for the day was:
Jo and Granny V.
That is still too cryptic.
Perhaps my kid sister, twelve years and ten months old, was going to stay with Granny V. My brother and I would both be back at boarding school by Saturday, and the house would suddenly be empty. Mum may have been preparing to go to Chipping Campden to see Barry. He had already been introduced to the family by then.
On one occasion Mum was virtually waving us off before our Saturday afternoon coach to Sedbergh had even gone because she had her own 250-mile journey ahead of her.
Perhaps Jo went to Granny V. while everybody else scattered
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