Friday 25th May 1984
Woke up at 7.50 and got up at 8.10. First at school I read, then I finished Maths 3 with Stan and started Maths 4. Had dinner at 12.00 and after that we played Tip it. Did Maths 4 all afternoon and at 3.15 I came home and played patientce.
Then I played on the ramp outside till tea. After tea I went out again, and at 7.00 I watched The pyramid game. At 7.50 I watched Odd One Out, then at 8.20 I watched Time of your life.
After that I went out, then I came in and played patience. Went to bed at 11.20.
‘You can go out with Doug and Paul Huggins, but you’re back to school in the morning’. I imagine that had been the proviso attached to my exploits the previous evening, and I hadn’t been able to resist. So after two days of ‘illness’ attempting to cultivate a hacking cough and pretending I was ‘off my food’ (as I pushed a Findus Crispy pancake around a plate), I was piled back onto the Worsall bus and sent to endure a rare day of education before the half-term holidays.
I remember Doug and Ian ‘Ozzie’ Oswald meeting me off the school bus at the entrance to our playground. ‘Where have you been?’ asked Ozzie, with a raised eyebrow. ‘I’ve had the bug,’ I growled, ‘I really shouldn’t be here…’.
I did this in an entirely unconvincing ‘I AM ILL’ voice, pitched somewhere between Clint Eastwood at his hoarse whisperer peak and Phyllis Pearce from Coronation Street.
‘Bollocks,’ said Doug. ‘We were out on the bikes last night and you weren’t talking like that’.
I shut up for the rest of the day, and concentrated on my maths.
Good to see Andrew ‘Stan’ Henry and I completing the latest of our Maths books… I think we had four of these to finish throughout the course of the year, so we now had half a term left to race through ‘MATHS 4 (THE VOYAGE HOME)’ before putting aside childish things and leaving Levendale Primary School for the terrifying bigness of Conyers, Yarm’s sprawling comprehensive.
I was never much cop at maths. In fact, I struggled so much with simple multiplication that, at the age of six, my Mum made a rare foray into the school staff room to speak to Mrs Keasey because the trauma of attempting to multiply six by nine was keeping me awake at nights. And I’ve still never mastered long division. I HATE IT, HATE IT, HATE IT and – after deciding at the age of eight that I was never going to be able to do it, I just gave up there and then. I’m actually slightly proud of the fact that I managed to get through a further ten years of state education without any of my teachers really noticing.
I never washed my neck or behind my ears, either.
A couple of strange, haphazard memories that undoubtedly stem from this day…
1. Telling Ian ‘Ozzie’ Oswald that a new book, simply called ‘Fighting Fantasy’ had been issued, containing detailed instructions on exactly how to construct your OWN Fighting Fantasy book. ‘Get it!!!’ he hissed, his eyes aflame. I tapped my nose and said I’d do my best.
2. Saying the word ‘Maths’ with a strange, hissy ‘s’ sound on the end, as in ‘Mathshshshshshshsssss’. This was inspired by Paul ‘Frankie’ Frank unwittingly mispronouncing the word during casual conversation, a mistake inevitably seized upon by the rest of us grotty oiks and cruelly exploited for comedy value for at least the next six months.
3. Doing ‘backwards talk’ so much throughout the course of the afternoon that Mrs Keasey (or Srm Yeseak, as I was now calling her) told me, in no uncertain terms, to ‘jack that in. NOW’.
‘KO’, I replied, bravely, and ran away.
I’d been slowly cultivating this utterly pointless talent for a few months, ever since first being entranced by Bill Homewood’s shambling Australian character in the ‘The Adventure Game’, but it all came to a head on this particular afternoon. Doogy Rev, Doogy Rev.
OK, a few entirely inconsequential TV bits for those that haven’t been paying attention… ‘One By One’ was a cosy, thoroughly entertaining BBC drama starring Rob Heyland as vet Donald Turner, treating exotic animals in a variety of zoos and constantly crossing tranquiliser darts with the mighty James Ellis, playing grumpy Irish dung-sweeper Paddy Reilly. I presume it was intended as the ‘new’ All Creatures Great And Small, and it ran for three series until 1987.
‘Odd One Out’ was an amiable Paul Daniels-hosted quiz show, punctuated throghout with some marvellously jaunty organ music. Here’s the gripping final round…
And Time of Your Life was Noel Edmonds taking Random Celebrity Of The Week (Dave Lee Travis, Barry Cryer, Barbara Dickson etc) and immersing them in the music, film and TV of a time when they were doing particularly well in their career.
I probably practised doing a bit of long division while this was on.
Wiffle Lever To Full! 
I am somewhat relieved to discover that when you watched ‘Odd One Out’ it was not the John Inman sitcom set (I fear I recall) in a fish and chip shop. Now I (shudder to) think of it, that might have been called ‘Odd Man Out’. Man or One, it had certainly ceased to take up schedule space by 1984.
Or had it? Until now I’d have scorned any suggestion that ‘One By One’ ran for three whole series. I suppose that at the time I was inhaling rather a lot of crushed potassium permanganate in the course of my scientific research and that this has affected my memory.
Certainly, boron ingestion was at the root of that very peculiar morning when I thought the headlines were telling me that David Bowie had married John Inman.
Sdrager dnof,
Lecrap Selig Rd