Chapter 12

University ‘Time of your Life’

My best friend during the first few months at university was Annie Nightingale. 

Having missed the cut for a room in Halls due to my ill-advised attempt to get into Cambridge that meant Birmingham was second choice, I’d had to scramble around at the last minute for somewhere to live.  Armed with a list of approved landladies from the Lodging Office, I was ferried around by Dad to try and find somewhere suitable.  I can’t recall on what criteria I made a decision but there wasn’t much to choose from.  I ended up five miles down the A38 in Northfield, close to the huge Rover car factory in Longbridge where, at the time, ’Red Robbo’ seemed to have his union members permanently on strike.  The following Wednesday at the beginning of October I staggered off the bus and lurched 200 yards up the road, burdened down by with a large holdall and rucksack, to arrive at the home of the elderly Miss Wimmer, my rather dour, German expatriate landlady.  Let’s just say it wasn’t accommodation designed for a riotous fresher experience: no noise after 10pm; no girls (or boys presumably) overnight; no posters on the walls; a steady flow of 10ps into the meter to ensure the electric fire would stave off frostbite during the winter and a monotonous, predictable breakfast of corn flakes or porridge and toast, provided of course I was seated in the dining room between 8am and 9am.  The house phone was available for use only by special request but anything other than family calls was frowned upon and it certainly wasn’t available for frivolous conversations with friends.  It was only a half-hour bus ride to the campus but a million light years from the accommodation expectations of a university newbie today.

If there wasn’t anything going on during the evening or weekend then this is where I would be confined, stuck in my bland room with only the radio or my cassettes for company.  Without the catalyst of the Halls environment, it wasn’t easy for those of us who found ourselves in ‘digs’ to make friends.  Firstly it was necessary to identify others with the same accommodation dilemma who might be likely ‘mate material’ before then embarking on the usual trial and error process to find and build relationships.  The ‘Freshers’ weekend wasn’t a lot of fun when there was no-one to share it with so I was grateful when things kicked off properly a few days later.  Playing it safe, I signed up for trials for the swim team and departmental football, hoping I’d find a few like-minded souls.  But it was hanging out after lectures that proved most fruitful. Without a nearby hall to scoot back to for lunch, or when there was a lull in academic proceedings, it soon became clear which of us in the faculty were marooned in digs dotted around the neighbourhoods of south-west Birmingham.  We were the only ones left in the department common room or student union when those in halls had headed off home in their newly formed friendship-clusters to whatever evening entertainment had been laid on for them.

It took a while but, with a mutual interest to get to know some people, a few embryonic groups started to form.

‘There’s some band called Squeeze playing in the Union tonight.  Anyone want to go?’

‘The Deer Hunter’s on at the Odeon - meet outside at 7pm.’

‘Anyone fancy table-tennis?  How about badminton?  Snooker?’

Or just a simple, ‘Drink anyone?’

Sundays were the worst; there was nothing going on, no-one to share a chat or coffee with, and a walk around the local streets didn’t hold much appeal.  Remember, this was still the time when most places were shut on Sunday and even the campus

was deserted.  With no other option, I was forced to flick on the radio and get on with some studying.  It didn’t take long to realise that the faculty academics were riding a gravy train; most of the subjects required text books that could only be purchased in the student bookshop and, surprise, surprise, the authors were our own illustrious professors.  At least with A-levels in economics and maths behind me, the early modules in accountancy, stats, and business weren’t too taxing, and law was even mildly interesting.  It also quickly dawned on me that there were rarely any homework deadlines; nothing to hand in; you either did the suggested work or you didn’t and no-one was there to chivvy you along.  Of course I adopted my usual approach and settled for a performance level I self-assessed as ‘acceptable’ and allowed the day to drift by to a Radio One backdrop.

During the afternoon I’d look forward to Annie’s show; the self-proclaimed ‘wicked witch of the radio’ seemed to speak directly to her audience of students, many away from home, studying in lonely bedrooms, and her playlist was a refreshing change from the usual chart music or classic singles that were the hallmark of DLT, Tony Blackburn and their other daytime DJ colleagues.  The mix of punk, New Wave, west coast country rock, and prog’ rock all blended together, helped me keep in touch with what was really happening on the nation’s music scene.  Funny how you can become attached to the odd radio personality, their regular daily or weekly incursions into your life anointing them with a special status, rather like a respected teacher or long-established, trusted friend whose views, opinions, humour, style and tastes you are comfortably aligned with.  Apart from Annie let’s pick out a few who’ve accompanied me at various times along the way:

Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart:  Mid-sixties, milling around the kitchen with the family on a weekend morning. Everything from babyish Danny Kaye rhymes about ugly ducklings, billy goats and trolls, to side splitting Terry Scott’s ‘My Bruvver’ and Bernard Cribbins ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman,’ through to sing-a-long Beatles and Seekers classics.

Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman:  Hoping we’d be home from wherever we’d been on the Sunday in time to catch the late sixties and early seventies version of Pick of the Pops.  The Beatles and Monkees had left the scene and it was the start of the era of T-Rex, Slade, Wizard, Mud, Sweet and Motown.  What had climbed the charts, what had drifted down and what, ’pop-pickers’ would be the new entries?

Johnnie Walker:   For a couple of years in the mid-seventies, with swim training meaning I’d be out of the house from 4.30pm to 7pm, there wasn’t much time for any tea let alone an evening meal and Mum, thinking I needed more of a wholesome meal than an ‘iffy’ school dinner, decided I should ‘go home’ for lunch.  Rick was still at the juniors so it didn’t apply to him.  Apart from a menu I actually appreciated, there were other upsides that offset not being able to hang out or kick around with my mates during the lunch break.  Firstly I could listen to an hour of the Johnnie Walker Show, and secondly I could report back the lunchtime cricket scores.  Mum and I would attempt his daily ‘Pop the Question’ quiz and guess the five tracks he’d choose for his band or artist of the week.  Playing anything from The Faces to Steve Miller, Simon and Garfunkel to Carole King, he played a mix of music that was sufficiently diverse from the usual chart sounds and appealed more to NME readers like myself  than the ‘Pop’ magazine audience.  Forty years on I’ll still occasionally listen to his Sunday afternoon ‘Sounds of the Seventies’ on Radio Two.

I could drop Dannie Baker, Jo Whiley and Nicky Campbell into the story elsewhere; their presence another small reassurance and stability on those occasions when our lives intertwined.

Meanwhile despite the isolation at Miss Wimmer’s, the first term slowly took shape.  I’d made the swim and water polo teams which soaked up a couple of evenings for training and, on either Wednesday afternoons or Saturdays, there’d be matches against other universities.  The standard was quite high with most of the team having Nationals experience and several of the polo team being GB juniors.  Away matches were more fun; there was usually some form of post-race party and invariably a delay before our minibus could set off back to Birmingham to enable everyone to be rounded up.  The other guys and girls in the team were a mixed bunch; some serious party animals (mainly the polo lads) and some who appeared quite dull.  Only a few of us were freshers and, whilst everyone was friendly enough, it didn’t seem like there was much scope for any deeper friendships beyond the pool environment.  Fortunately, within the Faculty, I was managing to establish a few bonds.  Always up for any excuse not to go to the library for a bit of intra-lecture study were a couple of guys who had been billeted together at house in King’s Heath.  Over several weeks of table-tennis, badminton and snooker, I got to know them better and, whilst not completely chalk and cheese, they were quite different characters. 

Andy Peters, well-spoken product of Sherborne School where he been a boarder, the son of a doctor from Bath, he’d grown up in a big house that was even equipped with a tennis court!  Inevitably he was a Genesis fan; I’m not sure the word ‘punk’ had quite reached the private schools of rural Dorset, but he seemed happy to dispense with any airs and graces and tag along with his newly-assigned housemate.

Paul Allen from Surrey, though essentially a Londoner, was full of confidence and on mission to get the most out of his university experience.  Whilst Andy would probably have named Peter Gabriel as a major influence, Paul would have landed somewhere between John Travolta and James Hunt.  No poncy progressive rock for him; it was disco where the action was!  If Andy had put 10p in the Union juke box for ‘I Know What I Like’ then Paul would retaliate with Donna Summer’s ’I Feel Love.’  Looking like a young Tom Selleck in the detective series ‘Magnum’, he was obsessive about his appearance and had the slightly brash confidence I associated with people from London.  He was not someone I’d normally be naturally drawn to, but his open friendly nature and genuine enthusiasm for things made him easy to like.  Sport, as always, helped with the linkages.  Paul was a Spurs fan and motor-racing obsessed. Andy played hockey and knew more about rugby than football, but we had enough in common for starters, even if they didn’t really take much notice of my frequently expressed opinion that a newly promoted football team from Nottingham might surprise the Division One big-boys that season.

We were fortunate in many ways that a hometown student decided to attach himself to our fledgling gang.  Dean Johnson, whose family lived a few miles away, just off the Hagley Road in Edgbaston, was clearly keen to avoid being stuck at home.  He fitted in well, being good at sport, having a fairly wide taste in music and sharing Paul’s objective of making the acquaintance of as many of the female student population who would give them any attention (plus several who wouldn’t).  Growing up in the area meant we had an insider’s knowledge into some of the places to go in the city; before the internet it was largely word-of-mouth or billboard-postings that tipped you off but we at least gained a head start on many of the other freshers still reluctant to venture far from the social comfort-zone of their halls.  Dean dragged us down to St Andrew’s to watch his beloved Birmingham City, to an affordable, trending burger and hot dog restaurant, the Great American Disaster, and to the main gig venue of Barbarellas to watch the Steve Gibbons Band and (I think) The Buzzcocks.  For some inexplicable reason, I didn’t go there in early 1978 to see Blondie on their first tour but from the moment we saw Debbie Harry singing ‘Denis’ on TOTP we were smitten.  We all had our soft spots and weren’t short of choices: Stevie Nicks, Judie Tzuke, and Toyah were up there and Dean had a full size cardboard cut-out of Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter, in his bedroom, but Blondie was everyone’s favourite.

We were also sharing several subjects with a little group who knew each other from their time at Harrogate Grammar.  Alistair Peart, a Bob Dylan loving natural sportsman who, I suspect, you wouldn’t want to upset on a rugby field but otherwise was the archetypal ‘perfect gent’, aligned himself with us by constantly winning at table tennis.  His school friend, Louise Pickering, whom I’d also met in lectures, was soon tagging along with us and brought with her a couple of other girls she’d recently got to know:  Alison Jepson and Marion Foxall.  Within a month or two we’d established a core group that pretty well stuck together for the next three years; on the periphery people would drift in from time to time, girlfriends and boyfriends would come and go, and we were always matrixing with other social and sporting groups, so we weren’t particularly exclusive.  By the time we broke up at the end of the first term, straight after the Union Christmas party that featured The Darts and where I briefly found myself alongside Toyah at the bar, I was over any lingering doubts.  The work was manageable and there was enough going on socially to ward off boredom or loneliness.  Living out in Northfield was a pain but I was getting used to travelling everywhere by bus and a student pass made it cheap enough.  With  swimming and departmental football providing a competitive outlet and free access to the sports facilities for casual knockabouts, there was always something to distract us during the day.  We could also usually manage to sneak into the sauna, rather a novel experience during the seventies, and the only thing that you supposedly had to pay for.

I’d been home just once to catch up with family, mates and a high-flying Forest whose ‘bubble’, according to Jimmy Hill, ‘will soon burst.’  I’d caught a bus to Spaghetti-junction on the north-east side of the city and hitched lifts back to Nottingham.  With four weeks of Christmas break to occupy, I did what all self-respecting students did: work for ten days with the Post Office on the Christmas mail and then sign on the dole for the remaining time before my next grant cheque turned up.

Three words that are no longer part of the student lexicon: ‘grant, dole, and hitch.’

In 1977 only 12% of school leavers went to university.  We weren’t necessarily the brightest and the best but most of us had received a half-decent school education and had benefitted from the encouragement of teachers and parents.  Crucially, we didn’t have to worry about emerging out the other end with huge debts.  Our tuition fees were paid by the local authority and most of us received a means-tested maintenance grant for our living costs.  Dad had to cough up a third, about £150 a term, but the balance of £300 arrived as a welcome cheque in the post.  Without going mad it was perfectly possible to survive on this amount and arrive at the end of the year with enough still in the bank to afford a few weeks on a cheap holiday somewhere before the need to find a summer job kicked in.

Even better was the arrangement that allowed students to sign-on for supplementary benefit during the holidays.  Okay so it was only around £15 a week and, in theory, you had to be available for work, but it kept us in beer money and our heads afloat until the next cheque arrived.  Most of us felt obliged to make an effort to earn something during the long summer breaks and at least start the academic year with a bit in the bank; I ended up back at the Pool for the first two years and then didn’t bother in the final year as I was starting a ‘proper job’ in September.  With the numbers of university students relatively low, these arrangements were something that successive governments felt the state could easily afford but sadly there were dark clouds on the horizon. These clouds had names: Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher and John Major.  More later of my thoughts on higher education and the path we’ve recently been led down.

Being prudent about our finances encouraged us to embrace another cost-saving method of the time: hitch-hiking.  During the seventies it was almost guaranteed that at every major junction or slip road there’d be someone  sticking out a thumb or holding up a sign:  ‘London please’; ‘Charity hitch’ or, more desperately, ‘Anywhere but here’.  And drivers would stop, happy to help, happy for a companionable chat; rarely did you have to wait long.  On several occasions I’d hitch home and during this ‘golden period’ of hitch-hiking Rick and I went to the Yorkshire Dales and back, Naomi and I hitched back from London and around parts of Greece, Dean had made it down to Newquay and back and around parts of the USA, Paul had disappeared on a ‘rag-week’ charity hitch with some American girl student he’d met and I travelled around New Zealand and parts of Australia largely using my thumb.  Maybe the best illustration of our attitude at the time was a post-exam hitch-hike ‘race’ to Woolacombe that the four of us in the Selly Oak flat plus Dean attempted in the summer of ’78.  I’d set off early, hoping to get to the A38-M5 junction before the others; the plan seemed to have worked until after several patchy lifts, I was marooned roadside in Bampton, a village in mid-Devon, for ages.  Worse was the wave a smug looking Andy gave as he cruised by in the cab of a lorry!  But eventually we all rendezvoused in the Red Barn cafe with embellished stories to share.  But the fun stopped during the eighties; too many exaggerated stories of assaults and risks, too many myths of invalidated insurance for drivers.  Whatever the truth, suddenly the lifts dried up, the hikers abandoned their spots and that mini social-phenomena was a thing of the past.

By the time we’d weathered that first winter, pouring money into the meters, getting cold and wet at bus stops, and operating to the timetable of elderly landladies, we were all ready for a change.   Not a moment too soon Andy and Paul began the search for a student house and I was relieved when they gave me and Alistair the chance to share a flat ‘with character’ they’d found in Selly Oak.  We moved in for the summer term and stayed throughout our second year.

Well, Number 628 Bristol Road was certainly convenient, occupying two floors above a Spar shop on the main road in the middle of Selly Oak and only a five minute walk to the campus.  It didn’t have too many other redeeming features, although the ancient carpets, tatty furnishings, basic appliances and wood-chip walls ensured we didn’t worry unduly about how we treated it.  The plumbing was dodgy and the waste system would regularly get blocked and back up.  This usually meant Alistair (by this time we’d nicknamed him Ralph Malph - his red hair and good nature resembling the character in the cult TV show ‘Happy Days’) would eventually crack first and be the one to lift the manhole cover and free things up with the drain rods.  It was a harsh winter that year and, with no central heating or double glazing, we relied on a coin-gobbling electric fire and a dodgy paraffin heater.  Both bedrooms were in the roof, barely insulated and windowless with just an ill-fitting, draughty skylight to let in the light.  At night we resorted to Bear Grylls survival measures to avoid frostbite, sleeping fully clothed and taking glass lemonade bottles filled with hot water to bed with us.  Once they’d cooled down we’d place them on the floor and on a couple of occasions it was so cold they’d iced up by the morning.  Paul decorated his and Alistair’s room with Athena posters of girls and the odd Ferrari F1 car, whilst, in a desperate, imaginative, attempt to retain some warmth, Andy and I reverted to sticking empty cigarette packets and beer mats to the sloping ceiling in our room as make-shift insulation.  We were quite proud of the patterns we created; amazing what you can do with dozens of Benson & Hedges, John Player Specials and Marlboros (remember that this brand’s packet revealed, subliminally, the manufacturers links with the KKK).  Paul, Dean and Louise’s boyfriend Ian, being the regular smokers in the gang, kept us supplied with empty packets although, disappointingly, they all went through phases of rolling their own.  Andy, being more sophisticated than the rest of us, experimented for quite an extended period with pipe-smoking.

Tobacco wasn’t the only substance being smoked.  From time to time a small package of cannabis would find its way onto the kitchen table, usually courtesy of Dean, where it would be meticulously carved up into smaller portions.  For the next couple of evenings, the lounge would be filled with the distinctive sweet aroma, smoky atmosphere, laid back sounds (usually American: Bob Seeger, Lou Reed, Jefferson Airplane and, inevitably, Bob Marley) and the light, daft chatter of students slowly getting stoned.   Ralph and I didn’t smoke (apart from our passive intake in the lounge) so were at a big advantage if the night ended with one of our infamous brag card sessions.  Sometimes these high-roller games would run into the early hours; amazing how the limited supply of pennies would redistribute itself repeatedly over the course of a term, although Ralph always seemed to have the biggest share stashed away. (‘When you play at cards you use an extra sense - it’s really not cheating.’)  On a couple of occasions, in an attempt to ‘help’ Ralph and me experience the high of ‘getting high’ through an alternative medium to a roll-up cigarette or pipe, some of the contraband was sprinkled, herb-like, into a cottage pie or spaghetti bolognese.  I can’t honestly say I noticed much of an impact but probably went along with the view that it made all the difference: ‘Hey man. Best cottage pie ever, man.’

Between us we had sufficient surplus cash a month to afford to rent a black and white television; yet another distraction from doing anything academic.  At least there were only three channels and on weekdays there was little on during the daytime.  I’ve no idea how today’s generation of students manage to spend any time on their studies with all they’ve got at their fingertips: Netflix, I-Player, Facebook, What's App, You Tube and so on.  A mark of our increased maturity as we entered our second year was that we usually managed to stir ourselves on a Saturday morning to watch Tiswas, the chaotic, unscripted mix of sketches, bands, songs and comedy slots.  Advertised as a children’s programme and a rival to the BBC’s more reverent Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, its anarchic style appealed to a big student audience; maybe this had something to do with Sally James who co-presented with Chris Tarrant.  We felt some allegiance as it was filmed in Birmingham and regularly featured up and coming local talent.  Jasper Carrot of ‘Funky Moped’ fame, Lenny Henry (Algernon Razzmatazz and Trevor McDoughnut), Rik Mayall and Spit the Dog all gained early national exposure on the show; it was like having the Edinburgh Fringe Festival beamed into our lounge as we ate our cornflakes.  We even briefly contemplated applying to go in the Cage and allow Sally James and the Phantom Flan Flinger to hurl buckets of various noxious liquids over us whilst singing ‘The Bucket of Water Song.’   By the time it finished at lunchtime we’d be hurriedly trying to locate sports kit and rushing off to the various activities that occupied our Saturday afternoons.

Despite the fact that today it would probably be declared ‘unfit for human habitation’, we developed an affinity for what was effectively our first house.  Okay, so we had to share bedrooms, which required an understanding that someone would have to sleep elsewhere whenever a girlfriend was staying over.  The unfortunate Ralph had drawn the short straw when he drew Paul as his roommate, whereas I was okay as Andy decided never to risk inviting the mysterious Rachel to visit No 628. 

Being above the Spar shop, we only had to pop downstairs to grab bread and milk.  The grocer and butcher were just along the road; the phone-box was visible from the lounge window so we could pick a moment when there wasn’t a queue; the Indian restaurant and Chinese takeaway were within easy reach; and, for a quick pint or two, the student watering holes of the Bournbrook and the Gun Barrels were only a short stagger away.  Arguably of equal importance was our proximity to the legendary ‘Mick’s Cafe’, a greasy spoon that served a monstrous fry-up called the ‘Mick’s Mixed Grill’.  It was great value for students on a budget providing enough protein and calories to last a week; the downside was that the fat and cholesterol was enough for a month. We were regulars and felt obliged to enter the infamous ‘Mick’s Cafe Race’, an annual highlight of Carnival week.  It was not for the faint-hearted or weak-stomached.  Starting outside the Union, the sponsored participants would drink two bottles of Newcastle Brown before running the mile to Mick’s, crossing the campus and playing field, and traversing the traffic on the Bristol Road. Once there, a full Mick’s grill would be gobbled down, having doused it with a glass of water to cool it off.  Inevitably some of it came back up into the strategically place buckets with ‘Vomit Vigilantes’ alert to any cheating. Trying to surreptitiously put a barely digested sausage directly into the bucket would result in it ending up back on the plate; needless to say the sight, sounds and smell were not conducive to appreciating the food.   After emptying their plate, the competitors would retrace the route to the Union and endeavour to drain a final bottle of Newkie Brown.  Spectators were advised to stand well back, especially as there was also a spot prize for the ‘best puke’.  It was with some satisfaction that I managed to survive the 1978 edition although I cringe when I recall an unplanned halt to use a bus-stop litter bin right in front of a couple of queuing pensioners: Paul managed a creditable top five finish.

Paul had also turned up in the spring term behind the wheel of a green VW beetle named Herman in which he proceeded to hone his F1 skills, especially on the campus circuit road.   We were willing passengers and, squeezed in, were able to expand our knowledge of the local area, Dean suggesting various beauty spots or pubs in the nearby countryside we could visit.  It got dodgy when it rained; the wipers didn’t work so the front seat occupants operated the blades using a piece of string.  We made it home somehow from a trip to the Clent Hills in an absolute downpour, and, post-exams, managed it safely to Newquay and back; four of us wedged in along with the camping equipment, football and other kit which meant there was no room for Dean.  He opted to hitch but, to our amusement, any petrol money he wanted to save was wiped out by the two fines he received for hitching on the motorway.

The second year was about as fun and carefree as it’s possible to be.  On the music scene, punk and two-tone were sitting alongside the big name rock favourites and Birmingham was the place to catch it all.  The Odeon was the bigger venue where we splashed out to see Wishbone Ash, Ian Drury, Bad Company, Joe Jackson and Blue Oyster Cult (rubbish) but it was often more exciting to head for the Town Hall or Barbarellas for the new sounds where Midlands’s bands The Specials, The Beat and Selector all performed.  In the flat there was a continual stack of LPs waiting their turn on the record player; Dean gave us a first listen to the Stones’ ‘Some Girls’ album, featuring ‘Miss You’; Ralph brainwashed us into an appreciation of Dylan by repeated playing of ‘Blood on the Tracks’; we’d laugh and sing-a-long to Ian Drury’s ‘New Boots And Panties’ but we all agreed that Blondie’s ‘Parallel Lines’ was the universal favourite.

We weren’t short of films to watch either; the University Film Club could be showing Mel Brook’s ‘Blazing Saddles’ or Woody Allen’s classic comedies ‘Everything you always wanted to know about sex - but were afraid to ask’ and the quirky ‘Annie Hall’.  (I think we all were Diane Keaton fans at the time).  Meanwhile the cinemas in town featured everything from the appalling funny ‘Animal House’, the shock horror of the original ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’, the cautionary tale of ‘Midnight Express’ through to the Oscar-winning Vietnam movies ‘The Deer Hunter’ and ‘Apocalypse Now’ and one of my all-time favourites ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind.’

Blended in, and a huge part of the lifestyle we adopted during that time, were the various girlfriends who shared the scene; some rather fleetingly, others more permanently.  From the moment she tapped on the door for a surprise visit at the beginning of the autumn term in 1978, Naomi seemed comfortable in the group and got along well with the others whenever she came to stay.  Several times a term we’d catch the train between Birmingham and Hull or rendezvous for a home visit in Nottingham; our relationship at the time was so important to my memories and enjoyment of that period.  (More on Na elsewhere).  Also leading a monogamous romantic life was Andy.  We never met his hometown girlfriend, Rachel, but she was eventually superseded by his pursuit of Dean’s sister who was training as a nurse at a local hospital.  Being good mates, we put laxatives in his coffee on the evening they first went out but it clearly didn’t work as we intended as he continued to see her regularly during the year.  Dean wasn’t very impressed when he’d get home some nights to find his mum had allocated Andy his bed and he’d been demoted to the sofa.  Once or twice he’d come over to our flat to claim Andy’s bed, explaining he needed to avoid watching Andy being treated like a lord by his mum at breakfast. 

The situation was more complicated with Dean.  We humoured and encouraged him when, around the kitchen table over endless coffees, or in the lounge in clouds of smoke, and wearing his heart on his sleeve he would share his doubts and desires.  He’d range from a dangerous Swiss beauty to the friendly, Mediterranean charms of Sue Garinni before setting his sights on the intellectual Lesley, an attractive slightly older mature student.  It took a while to wear her down but he was nothing if not persistent; it’s unclear to me whether Paul’s brief fling with her best friend helped bring them together, or set back his campaign, but it was amusing watching the pursuit evolve as we entered our final year.  He eventually married Lesley after we left university although they divorced eleven years later.

As far as we know, Ralph never got round to anything romantic at uni and seemed quite happy to leave the angst to the rest of us, content to just enjoy himself without the complications.  It was equally as simple for Paul who happily surveyed the wide field and managed to persuade a steady stream of girlfriends to check out the catering and accommodation at Number 628.  It felt like watching a relay race although in fairness I don’t recall much if any two-timing overlap.  This wide ranging approach to life wouldn’t last; onto his radar during the second half of that second year had appeared the pretty little curly-haired blond called Candia.  We all thought she wouldn’t want to chance it with Paul and was ‘too nice a person’ but we under-estimated his determination and patience and her ability to subtlety take him on on her own terms.  Whatever the formula was, it worked and forty years and four kids later, it’s still working.  We could see why; she was always pleasant and friendly whenever she stayed and clearly had a besotted Paul on a light but unbreakable leash.  By the time we started our third year, they were becoming a well-established couple and Paul was spending proportionally more time with her.  This created a change in the group dynamics that Dean recently described as like ‘Yoko breaking up the Beatles’.

Just in case there was a danger we’d find ourselves at risk of having spare time for study, we continued to while away time in the sports centre or on the playing fields.  I’d ended up as Swim Team men’s captain; duties non to serious, it usually just required selecting the team and hoping they all turned up and, after the meet, ensuring the visiting team had managed to find their way to the beer and sandwiches.  I was lucky; we had a strong squad that year and managed to win the British Uni Champs at Blackpool, usurping Edinburgh and Southampton from their customary positions at the top of the pile. When there wasn’t a swim match, I’d turn out for the departmental football team, usually alongside Dean and Ralph, and we also entered a ‘flat’ team in the university five-a-side league.  My hazy memory suggests we were actually half-decent: Paul was cat-like in goal: no-one got past Ralph or wanted to be in the way of his pile-drivers: Dean was the midfield general with a ‘Graeme Souness’ edge to him: I’d occasionally pretend I was Tony Woodcock and tuck a shot away: and Andy played wherever Dean told him to, usually managing to frustrate the opposition by getting in the way or kicking someone’s ankles.

Somewhere between the sport, concerts, card sessions, parties, girlfriends and general loafing, we managed to get enough done to pass our second year.  Luckily most of the emphasis was on the end of year exams so a concerted push for a few weeks was usually sufficient.  Supposedly we self-imposed a six-week embargo on sport and socialising from the beginning of May as we woke up to the looming threat and problems only arose when it was discovered that some lecture notes were missing or that you couldn’t actually understand (or remember) how to do something.  It helped that, between us, we normally managed to cobble together enough knowledge to help each other cover any gaps; a belated ‘thanks’ to Alistair for the time he spent explaining accounting rules and statistical techniques to us.  On the 30th May we broke off briefly to watch Forest beat Malmo to win the European Cup; the fact that Trevor Francis, for whom we’d paid Birmingham City the first ever £1 million transfer fee earlier that season and who was one of Dean’s heroes, helped give it a local touch.  The others went back to the revision but I was buzzing for the rest of the night: Nottingham Forest - European Champions 1979.

Academically I’d managed to keep up, although I can’t say I found much of the course content, or the lecturers, particularly inspiring; hardly surprising as it was only designed to give us, the nation’s supposed future business leaders, a necessary grounding in what makes the world of commerce and industry tick.  More interesting was the subsidiary course I did with Andy and Dean on American Frontier History.  I’m still not sure how they let me sign-up for this one but, being economic history, it came loosely under the wide departmental umbrella.  The passionate professor, Maggie Walsh, conjured up images of exploration and exploitation, political intrigues and outrageous abuses as the north-American continent was rapidly overrun by the westward expansion of European settlers, in the process subjugating and decimating the Native American people and wildlife. 

With exams out the way, there was the chance for a few weeks of other extra-curricular activity before we headed home for the summer.  This included a water polo trip to Holland to compete against university teams in Utrecht, Eindhoven and Amsterdam.  This was my first trip abroad and it was hard work, even for students in the prime of their socialising-life.  Luckily the minibus driver didn’t drink or smoke so we managed to get there and back safely, but the rest of the week disappeared in a blur of hangovers, sleeping on floors, barely competitive matches and alternative sight-seeing in Amsterdam.

Within a couple of weeks, I was crossing the Channel again; this time on a four week inter-rail holiday with Na and a bunch of our school friends.  In Venice, the others headed for home whilst Na, Sally, Jackie and I boarded the train for Athens from where we’d fly out to stay with Dad and Mavis in Cairo for three weeks.  By the time we returned to the UK later in August, the funds were low and there was an urgent need to maximise the life-guarding opportunities at the pool before returning to Birmingham for what I kept telling myself would be a ‘serious’ final year.

The first couple of years had been anything but serious for us, taking advantage of our uncluttered, state-financed education and privileged student lifestyles.  Elsewhere things were not so rosy.  

There was an underlying tension in society.  Race relations were simmering, the National Front gaining support.  New opposition leader, Maggie, hadn’t helped by observing that ‘the British people fear being swamped by people of different cultures’.  Worryingly, the Tory popularity in the polls immediately improved, supported by the reporting in many of the national papers that tacitly echoed her views.  (Not however The Times which was closed by strike action that lasted a year.)  In the Union building, the posters supporting international causes, primarily anti-apartheid campaigns to free Nelson Mandela or seek justice for the murdered Steve Biko, were being supplemented by activism nearer to home.  Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League emerged, riding a wave of punk and new-wave that appealed particularly to students with a social conscience.  Birmingham was one of the cities at the heart of the movement, blessed with bands and a diverse ethnic mix, and we watched and listened from the fringes not sufficiently committed, outraged or brave enough to commit to marching in London or skirmishing with the bovver-booted skinheads.  Some were prepared to take action, although it wasn’t just the National Front that they were up against.  That spring the Met’s Special Patrol Group broke up an ANL march and protester, Blair Peach, died after being assaulted.  A few months later The Clash released ‘London Calling.’  On a brighter note, Forest full-back, Viv Anderson became the first black player to represent England.

Prime Minister Jim Callaghan was struggling.  Unemployment was stubbornly refusing to drop and industrial action became more prevalent.  His minority government was being buffeted by public sector strikes; even we non-rate paying ‘flat owners’ noted that the bins hadn’t been emptied and that the news seemed to constantly feature groups of marching workers waving banners, or pickets standing by braziers at factory gates.  He never actually said ‘crisis, what crisis?’  It was a Sun headline wrongly attributed that did him no favours as we muddled through the ‘Winter of Discontent’ and messily drifted towards a showdown; the General Election of May 1979 was my first chance to exercise the franchise that had been won, and defended, on my behalf across the centuries.  Even with my in-built vaguely-socialist leanings and the mild, campaigning influence of the student union, I wasn’t switched-on enough, or hadn’t developed my political thinking to get too excited about things.  Clearly the minority Labour government and the leadership duo of Callaghan and Dennis Healey were past their sell-by date but the alternative, an increasingly strident Conservative party, made me feel distinctly uneasy.

I was right.  Within weeks of moving into Number 10, the Tory wheels were in motion to start the sell-off of large parts of the nationalised industries.  Secondary schools regained the right to be ‘selective’, and £4 billion of expenditure cuts were actioned to help fund the 3p cut in income tax.   And that was just for starters.  At least we escaped more dismal news whilst on holiday that summer, but we flew back into the UK to hear of the Fastnet Yacht Race Disaster and yet more ruthless IRA activity, including the assassination of Lord Mountbatten and three others on their boat, and the Warrenpoint ambush in which 18 soldiers died.

As befitting our new status as final-year students, (no one stayed-on to do a Masters or PhD in those days), we bade a sad farewell to No 628 and upgraded our accommodation to a three-bed-semi in Halesowen.  It was a proper house with a decent kitchen, large lounge-diner and a garden out the back.  We actually made an effort to look after it, despite me accidentally breaking the smoked-glass coffee table and putting a knee through one of the door panels.  Well I was carrying two bags of Chinese takeaways and stupidly thought a bang on the door panel with my knee would attract attention without having to knock properly.  The bus ride into the campus was a drag, requiring a long stop-start trip along the Hagley Road and a change that invariably meant a frustrating wait in the cold or drizzle.  Thank goodness for Paul’s Beetle and Andy’s new acquisition, a Morris 1100, which provided a decent taxi service, but we tended not to hang around the campus after lectures and only ventured into the city for the odd party, gig or football match.   Maybe we were finally finding some academic focus?

I’d relinquished the swim captain role and eased up on the swimming commitments although not before an unusual event in the autumn when the team flew to France for a meet with the Lyon and Frankfurt University teams.  Both cities were twinned with Birmingham and the city-fathers thought it was good idea for an able-bodied swim team from each city to accompany a disabled team (the word ‘para’ wasn’t in use then) and act as support buddies to help with the logistics.  When we finally arrived after a scary landing at Grenoble in a thunderstorm, we were feted by the French, wined and dined in the Hotel de Ville, and given a tour of a renowned vineyard famed for its claret of which we each received a couple of bottles.  The swimming became almost secondary and I can’t even remember the result.  But the stars of the show were the disabled guys and girls; until you experience things close up you’ve no idea how tough it is going anywhere in a wheelchair.  It’s hard enough now - this was 1979. Just helping them on and off the plane was a challenge) but their determination and cheerfulness to just get on with things was a real eye-opener.

I made up for the gap left on a Saturday by stopping swimming by playing football for the University Academicals team; nominally it was the Uni fourth team in which Dean was a shoe-in, and played in one of the Birmingham amateur leagues.  From initially being someone just called up to make up the numbers if there was last minute cry-off, both Ralph and I ended up as regulars.  Playing against blokes who wanted to ‘kick the shit’ out of the poncy students was interesting and I was barely worth my position at full-back but we had a good laugh.  It could get feisty with Dean rarely able to keep his nose out of things, often being booked and ending up with a mounting collection of letters from the FA advising him of the £25 fines he was incurring.  He adopted various policies to avoid detection, the best one being when he told the ref his name was Frank Worthington (a current striker at Birmingham City; one of a dying breed of entertaining characters and adored by the fans, that included Duncan McKenzie, Stan Bowles, Charlie George, Gazza ..)

We were showing signs of knuckling down.  To a soundtrack of Bob Dylan, The Police, Bob Seeger, Elvis Costello, ELO and inevitably Blondie, we would sprawl on the floor or squeeze around the dining table.  Text books, folders, coffee mugs, ash trays and beer cans all competed for space in those pre-laptop days.  It would get quite cosy, especially if any of the girls were staying over, but we could spread outside onto the patio as the weather warmed up and exams approached.  The countdown clock never stopped but we were quite content to occasionally hit the revision ‘pause’ button.  During the Easter break Louise, Andy and Alistair came up to Nottingham for my 21st and then Naomi and I squeezed ourselves alongside them in Andy’s car to crawl our way up to North Yorkshire.  It was a long-awaited chance for Louise and Alistair to show off the Dales and we spent a few chilly days admiring swollen rivers and bleak snow-flecked moors, being well looked- after by their respective families during the evenings.

We’d sometimes relieve the pre-exam tension by popping down to the local playing field for a kick around.  We did just that on the May Bank Holiday, taking an evening break from revising whilst simultaneously keeping an eye on the snooker final (everyone watched the World Championships back then and the 1980 version was finely balanced between Cliff Thorburn and Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins).  Flicking the telly back on when we returned, sweaty and ready for a beer, we were as surprised as the terrorists themselves to watch ‘live’ as the SAS stormed in through the windows of the Iranian embassy and brought the siege to an abrupt end.  And a few weeks later we broke off briefly from the studies to cheer Forest to an unlikely second European Cup against Kevin Keegan’s Hamburg.  Nottingham Forest - European Champions 1979 and 1980.  Unbelievable.

Occasionally the mounting pressure caused one of us to briefly flip. I had an uncharacteristic pop at the others one morning when the pile of washing-up had nearly reached the ceiling and, in retaliation to noise from next-door, Paul moved the speakers alongside the wall and blasted them with the ‘1812 Overture’ at full volume (must have been one of Andy’s albums).  It wasn’t just exams adding to the pressure.  We also had to produce a dissertation; 10,000 words of academic writing based on a piece of original research on a subject relevant to our degree.  Blimey!  It was hard enough to find a topic, let alone do the research and then write it up without plagiarising other people’s work.  And that wasn’t the end of it: the final step was to find (and pay) a typist who was prepared to convert our scribbles into something that looked vaguely professional.  I ended up producing something on ‘monopolies and mergers’ that was largely copied from various text books and research papers but I must have done a good job of disguising my sources as I didn’t get picked up on it. 

Another distraction was the ‘milk-round’; a chance for businesses to persuade final-year students that a career with them would be a good move and for us to reluctantly face up to the reality that we’d be out in the big, bad and increasingly tough real world in just a few months’ time.  The process was simple; in the days before on-line applications, you just browsed around the stands in the Great Hall and submitted your name for a chat with any organisation that seemed interesting.  If their graduate programme and salary was attractive enough, or they’d not politely filtered you out already, the next stage was to complete the more detailed application form and then forget about it for a few weeks until the offer of a ‘proper’ interview arrived; or didn’t.

Alistair went after the big accounting firms.  Paul chased the banks.  Dean wanted to head for something in London and Andy didn’t appear to be too bothered, confident he’d stumble into something suitable somewhere, sometime.  I played it safe looking for a decent-sized industrial company with a graduate training programme.  As it happened I could have ended up doing marketing with Northern Foods (Pork Farms, Fox’s Biscuits, Hull Brewery) who amazingly made me an offer, even after I’d turned up for the two-day assessment in Hull after virtually no sleep for a couple of nights, and having driven non-stop with Naomi from South Wales where we’d been visiting Rick at school in Llantwit Major followed by her step-sister in Cardiff.  However I opted to stay Midlands-based for at least another year by joining Tube Investments graduate training programme.  At least that was sorted before our Finals finally came… and went.

And that was it. No grand celebration party, we just slowly drifted through a couple of weeks of farewell drinks, whiling away the time until the results went up on the notice board. 

‘Phew!  A ‘Two-two’!  No need for a viva voce!  I’ll take that.’

And off we went our separate ways.  Simple as that.

As we said our final farewells to Old Joe, the all-seeing iconic clock tower that dominated the campus, other things were happening elsewhere in the world.

‘Xanadu’ by Olivia Newton-John and the ELO was Number One, but was under pressure from a song that always makes me smile: ‘Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps please’.

In Poland, the Solidarity Union was taking on the Communist Government. In Germany, the communist Red Army Faction was terrorising the right-wing Government. In Afghanistan, the Soviet Union were realising they were in a no-win fight with the Mujahedeen, and in Iran, the Americans were being humiliated by the Ayatollahs.

Meanwhile back home, unemployment had rocketed to two million as closures across pits, steelworks and other traditional industries start to bite.  Not to be deterred, and despite the economy nose-diving, Maggie told us ‘the Lady’s not for turning’ and promptly celebrated the ‘success’ of private ownership and the increase in the treasury coffers by the rapid sell-off at rock-bottom prices of another national asset: thousands of council houses.

The mood was briefly lifted as Daley Thompson, Steve Ovett and Seb Coe won athletics gold at the Moscow Olympics.

Dean, Andy and Paul, with Candia alongside him, headed for London.  Alistair and Louise went north.  Alison and Marion quickly married their hometown boyfriends and looked for work close to their roots.  And me?  As soon as Na had finished her year in Hull, we jumped on a plane for Athens and spent the next four weeks in Greece, island hopping around the Aegean on the ferries.

I didn’t even make it to my graduation; the Greek holiday was a higher priority and with Dad, Jackie and Rick in Egypt for the summer, I’d have had no family there anyway.  My Degree arrived in the post a few weeks later and so there’s no photo of me in a gown and mortar board clasping a scroll.  It saved me a few quid on hire charges as well.

And my friends? I’d meet some at various weddings over the next decade; we’d exchange Christmas cards, the occasional newsletter, the odd drink in London if our paths crossed.  More recently it’s been Facebook that’s pulled us back together.

Andy’s made a career in ‘hospitality’.  From working for a wine merchant in London, he’s progressed over the years to a being the owner, for most of the last three decades, of the highly regarded Green Park Brasserie in Bath.  We meet up every now and then; Dean and I managed to make it to the Brasserie in 2019 to help him celebrate his sixtieth, along with his wife, four grown up kids and loads of his family and friends.

Dean ended working up in Pensions, carving out a role advising Schemes and Trustees, trying to ensure that all powerful, slick-talking Fund Managers are keep on the straight and narrow.  Still a devoted Blues fan, he remains a sucker for punishment, making regular pilgrimages to St Andrew’s and, although he no longer plays, his affinity to cricket sees him at the Lords Test each summer.  His love life went through some turbulent periods including marriage and divorce from Lesley, but finally emerged into calmer waters with Alison.  A big traveller, it’s no surprise to see a FB update from some exotic location every few months.

Paul and Candia have done more than just travel for holidays like the rest of us.  He

worked for the National Australia Bank in London, Melbourne and New York before an extended spell with the Yorkshire bank in Harrogate as their four kids went through school.  Fifteen years ago he signed up with HSBC and they jumped at the chance to relocate to China for him to take a senior posting in Shanghai.  He’s now Head of International Banking and they’re definitely making the most of the opportunity, embracing the different culture and travelling extensively within the country and region.  We haven’t actually managed to meet up since their wedding forty years ago, but the offer is there to visit them in Shanghai or their hideaway in Provence; in the meantime FB allows the conversations, opinions and humour to flow back and forth.

At the moment we haven’t managed to draw Alistair back into the fold.  He’s had a successful financial career with British American Tobacco and Melrose, had two children with Kate, and lives in Surrey.

And so what can we say?

Fortunate to receive three years of funded further education, fortunate to take advantage of the facilities and opportunities, fortunate to meet friends to share the experience with, and fortunate to be able to look back from position of relative comfort and appreciate just how lucky we were.

Today’s students certainly have it more comfortable and the facilities and range of courses have expanded hugely but at a price; big debts, often made even bigger by ‘gap years’ (another thing that was unusual forty years ago) and the trend towards tagging a Masters onto the basic degree.

Green Day – Good Riddance (Time of your Life)

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road

Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

So make the best of this test, and don't ask why

It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time

It's something unpredictable

But in the end, it's right

I hope you had the time of your life

So take the photographs and still frames in your mind

Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time

Tattoos of memories, and dead skin on trial

For what it's worth, it was worth all the while

It's something unpredictable

But in the end, it's right

I hope you had the time of your life

It's something unpredictable

But in the end, it's right

I hope you had the time of your life

A thought or two - from an educational snob wearing rose-tinted specs

(Plus an acknowledgment to Harry Lambert’s article in the August 2019 New Statesman that provided some of the background and a few of the sentences in which he articulated the situation better than I ever could.)

Over the past 30 years, successive governments, from Thatcher to Blair, to Cameron and May, have imposed a set of perverse incentives on universities.  Has their effect been to degrade and devalue the quality of British degrees?

At a glance, British universities are a national success story.  They have increased the number of undergraduate degrees they award fivefold since 1990, while the proportion of Firsts they hand out has quadrupled – from 7 per cent in 1994 to 29 per cent in 2019.   For every student who got a First in the early 1980s, nearly 25 do now.  We regularly hear that British universities are ‘world class’ evidenced by the thousands of overseas students who flock here to study, convinced that standards are rising and the knowledge that 80% of students now receive a ‘good honours’ degree (a First or 2:1).  This allows government ministers to tout the UK’s global academic influence, university management to pay themselves accordingly, and students to appear exceptional.

Masters’ degrees, meanwhile, are nearly ten times as common as they were.  Universities have, it seems, managed to surge in both size and quality.

I don’t know anyone from my peer group who managed a First or went on to do a Masters back in 1980.  It just didn’t happen and, arguably, it wasn’t necessary, seen as the preserve of the super-clever who were destined for glittering careers in academia or the civil service.

This supposed university miracle can only have happened in one of three ways.  The first is that schools have, over the past 30 years, supplied universities with students of a far higher calibre than in the recent past.  This would be a notable achievement, as the university students of the past were the select few; in 1977 only 15 per cent of us went on to higher education, whereas 50 per cent now do.  The second is that universities have taken indifferent students and turned them into unusually capable graduates.   And the third is the likely reality: the whole thing is a mirage.

Until 1980 there were 45 universities, fiercely guarding their right to award degrees with standards that were moderated by sister establishments, plus a similar number of polytechnics able to award degree equivalents.  The Thatcher administration, under Education Secretary Keith Joseph, was the original architect of today’s changed university system.  For Thatcher and Joseph, universities were run as archaically as the public utilities and should be shaken-up to allow them to be governed by the market and measured by its metrics. They were determined to introduce a much higher level of accountability for public funding and greater choice for students as customers.

In 1985, the Thatcher government published a report, which stressed that universities are first and foremost corporate enterprises.  Scholars should not run universities – business leaders must.  Additionally the percentage of school leavers heading for university should target 50%.  The following administration under Major took a big step in this direction by allowing the Polys to rebrand as universities, effectively doubling the percentage without any change in public spending.  And Labour reinforced the situation by continually increasing the flow of money to the sector so that the numbers target was reached within 25 years.  The fact that a secondary benefit would be to help keep the unemployment figures for school-leavers lower would not have escaped the government’s notice.

There have been however some policy decisions and trends that have combined to undermine what could have potentially been a success story.

Firstly, the newly expanded universities had their funding partly linked to a new measure of their contribution to the wealth of the nation.  It was deemed that the amount and quality of the research they were doing on behalf of industry, public health, science and so on would be a good indicator.  The effect was to drive the academics away from inter-active lectures and tutorials towards where most of them have always wanted to be: in their office or lab, beavering away in the competitive world of academic research, publishing in journals and chasing money to fund their next project.  Consequently many courses have become more prescriptive; easier to download and regurgitate every year.

Secondly, when in 2011 the coalition government raised tuition fees to £9000, the direct funding from the public purse was eliminated and a university’s income became increasingly dependent on students choosing their institution.  How does a prospective student make a choice?  They look at the league tables, created and published by unaudited research journalists rather than a recognised body like Ofsted.  How many ‘good’ degrees are obtained is a key metric that establishes a university’s place in the pecking order; inevitably the pressure is on the business managers and academics to deliver good results and equally as inevitably the results have improved.  This is hardly surprising considering they’re marking their own homework, awarding their own degrees and there is no overarching quality control. Fellow establishments are doing the same so there’s no incentive to ‘rock the boat’ and call out this trend.  Call it a self-perpetuating spiral of shattering standards.  It starts with the academics.  They are faced with an inadequate student: why do they give them a 2:1?   Because they are being pressured to by university management.

So the universities are no longer competing to provide an education as envisaged by Thatcher and Joseph.  They are competing to manipulate and massage the metrics that govern their survival and chasing the student.  The consequence of all this is playing out in the labour market.  It’s harder for a large chunk of students to find well paid jobs.  And it’s harder for recruiting employers to distinguish between students.

So who now is the custodian of standards?  Not the universities, nor the government that’s for sure.  It looks like it will still be left to the professional bodies and employers to act as the gatekeepers.  A Civil Engineering First doesn’t mean the graduate is competent to build a bridge.  A First in Accounting doesn’t mean that the graduate is ready to audit the accounts of the local ‘chippie’ let alone a blue-chip corporate giant.  A degree in Medicine or Nursing still requires further training.  The only thing we can hope is that the Institutes maintain their standards and that the employers in the non-professional sector are prepared to invest the additional time, effort and money to plug any gaps for some of those high-achieving graduates who might not be quite so special, compared to previous generations, as we’ve all been led to believe.

I’m not sure where it will end; maybe in another decade everyone will end up with a First.  Maybe I’m just jealous; my 2:2 seems rather inadequate looking back.  On the other hand it was good value for money and time well spent.

Images removed to avoid copyright risk: Tiswas, Blondie Parallel Lines, Drury New Boots and Panties, Deer hunter, Annie Hall, Close Encounters posters, Dee Brown Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.