Extracts from Bob’s 1984 Diary… Volume 275

October 1, 2009 at 12:19 pm · Filed under Bob's Bits And Bobs

Monday 1st October 1984

OCCASIONAL DAY

Got up at 9.20 and at 9.30 Doug came. We went to Levendale and met Whitehead and Tweddall, then we went in the school but they wouldn’t let us stay in. We then went to the VG shop and met Placie, Stan and Tinkler, and we hung around the school till 11.30, when Doug and I went to Yarm.

The chippy was shut so we got a sausage roll, some buns and a shandy, and after eating them we left Yarm at 12.30 and saw Mary Jones on the way. Doug went home so I went back and assembled my Cliff Hanger booklet, then I played out.

At 3.00 Dad got the swing down, then we went in the loft to look for things for me to sell. Got some stuff down, then at 5.00 I had tea. After that I priced my gear, then I went in the shower.

At 8.00 I watched Tripper’s Day, at 8.30 I watched Chance in a million and at 9.00 I watched Kelly Monteith.  I went to bed at 9.30.

Four weeks into the school year, and already we had an ‘occasional day’ off – for teaching training, no doubt… with Mrs Macdonald learning new knuckleduster techniques, Miss Stainsby transcribing the Abbey Road medley for solo acoustic guitar, and Mr Flynn having the sheep on his fluffy jumper dipped and sheared. So we horrible oiks were left to our own devices, which – naturally – turned out to be bikes, junk food and making bloody nuisances of ourselves. 

For years at Levendale Primary School, it had been traditional for recently departed pupils to return on their occasional days off from Conyers and pop in to say hello to their younger friends and former teachers. They would wander around finding old chums, and maybe even stop for a coffee and a grown-up chat with Mr Hirst and Mrs Keasey. Our previous headmaster Mr Watson had actively encouraged this, and it was always nice (and slightly startling) to find our old friends striding around the primary school corridors looking – quite frankly – far too big for them. Deep voices, bumfluff moustaches and masculine, rounded shoulders were usually par for the course… but enough about Anita Hargreaves for the time being.

With this in mind, Doug and I – together with fellow would-be teacher-botherers Paul ‘Wacky’ Whitehead and Karl Tweddall – descended on our old school like vultures. Times they were a-changing, though… the new headmaster, the amazingly hairy Mr Chalkley, had quite reasonably decided that the last thing he wanted was a crowd of last year’s grizzled wasters COMING BACK and passing on dangerous tips to his new generation of more fresh-faced innocent wasters.

So, as we strode manfully through our old cloakroom expecting Mrs Mulhern to lay down a red carpet and sound a trumpet voluntary, Mr Chalkley emerged to head us off at the pass. ‘Nothing personal, but you really can’t stay…’ he rumbled. ‘But it’s nice to see you, and thanks for coming back’. I think we managed to stick our heads around the corner of the Upper Band classrooms, and caught a rueful wave from Mr Hirst, who was busy putting his two new school team centre-backs in a friendly headlock.

In all honesty, it felt a bit weird being back at Levendale anyway. It been barely ten weeks since we left the school, but – when you’re 11 – ten weeks can seem like an eternity. Let’s face it, a half-hour RE lesson can seem like several lifetimes stuck together. The colourful finger paintings in the Reception area windows and the faded netball lines on the gravel playground seemed to belong to a different era altogether, and – as we slinked back to the school bus lay-by, grumbling and fidgeting all the way – I don’t remember feeling TOO disappointed. 

Anyway, we got our revenge by spending the next two hours leaning defiantly against the school gates on our bikes, joined by our old muckers Andrew ‘Stan’ Henry, James ‘Placie’ Place and lanky, white-haired nutcase Carl Tinkler (whose Mum, while working in the school kitchens, was once told by an innocent five-year-old poppet that ‘your son’s a naughty boy I think he’s going to go to hell when he dies’). I think our plan was to stay there until dinnertime, at which point we’d mingle into a bit of playground-based devilment with our younger mates. Needless to say, by 11.30am we’d decided that we really couldn’t be arsed.

As we cycled away, an old man walking his dog stopped us and asked, in a thick Yorkshire accent, ‘Nah then lads, what yez up te? Playing the wag?’

‘Eh?’ we replied, not unreasonably.

‘Playing the wag!’ he twinkled. ‘Sagging off. Playing hooky. Truant!’ 

‘Oh no,’ I explained, ever the well-mannered diplomat. ‘Our school’s got an occasional day for teacher training, so we’ve all been given the day off today’.

This took a second to sink in. ‘Eeeeee,’ he mused. ‘We never ‘ad owt like that when I were a nipper. What a load o’ bollocks. Have a good day, lads. Sithee later…’

 
We did have a good day. Doug and I cycled into Yarm High Street, bought some sausage rolls and some buns (gleefully looking forward to that traditional Teesside dish the, erm, sausage roll sandwich), and went to our usual lunchtime hideaway, the dingy alley that ran through the middle of the Strickland and Holts gift store (Established 1854) 

In fact, this back alley here…

It was a bright, cold, breezy day, and we propped our bikes up against the whitewashed wall, snuggled into our parkas, and idled away another hour of our precious childhoods talking shite and picking our noses. Heaven.

(By the way, I’ve no idea who Mary Jones is, or was. The way I’ve written it, it sounds like one of my Mum’s friends, but I’ve just asked her, and she has no idea either. We’re not sure if Gareth ‘Gazzie’ Jones’ mother is called Mary, but even then I wouldn’t have written her full name in my diary, I would have just put ‘Gazzie’s mam’. I’ll keep you posted of any updates in this riveting saga, but for the time being I’m quite enjoying the mystery…)

Similarly, I haven’t got a clue what on Earth we dragged down from the loft for me to sell (presumably a load of stuff from my very early childhood – Lego, pre-school books, board games, that kind of thing. Needless to say, ALL of this stuff remained unsold and – 25 years later – is still boxed up in the loft in my own house. Sorcha is convinced that we’ll be killed in our bed one Sunday morning when a hundredweight of Nutty comics and Wombles LPs come crashing through the bedroom ceiling)

And no doubt my Dad was entirely chuffed with the prospect of lugging my old, rusty garden swing down from the attic…

I don’t think I wanted this to sell. I think I just wanted it to make his life a misery. And yes, that’s me in the above photo, in a picture with ‘Summer 1977’ scrawled on the back – so I’m four years old, and look like butter wouldn’t melt (don’t be fooled, though… butter would INDEED have melted, and – not only that – it would have been smeared all over the kitchen cupboards as I laughed manically and insisted it made them ‘easier to open’)

And ‘Tripper’s Day’! Bloody hell.  A brand new ITV sitcom, launched in a blaze of publicity, with Leonard Rossiter taking on his first major comedy role since the glory days of Reggie Perrin and Rising Damp. He played a Northern manager assigned to a London supermarket, trying to apply old-fashioned Yorkshire values to typically cheeky Cock-er-nee staff…

It doesn’t seem anywhere near as good as his previous work, but neither is it as bad as many other sitcoms of the period, and Rossiter himself is typically superb. However it was given a bit of a critical mauling after the first episode, and has since taken on an air of inescapable poignancy as – tragically – Leonard Rossiter died suddenly four days after the broadcast of this episode.  After consulting with his family, ITV continued to broadcast the rest of the series, but even as an 11-year-old I found it almost impossible to watch. I wonder if it will ever see a DVD release?

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