A few of my favourite things: Part 1 – 1970s

In this world shattering decade, I went from being 6 to 16 years old, was despatched to boarding school aged eight, left two terms later, went to day school at Moorlands in Leeds, became head boy and captain of the cricket team, passed my Common Entrance exam to St. Peter’s School in York, did my O levels, made life long friends and lost my virginity. You change a lot between early childhood and mid-teens. I ushered in the decade wearing navy blue velvet shorts, black patent leather sandals, white socks and a white ruffle fronted shirt (think Little Lord Fauntleroy) and saw it out flirting with New Romanticism and er, white ruffled fronted shirts, patent leather pixie boots and navy blue velvet trousers. So, exactly the same outfit ten years later.

My life was subject to the rhythms of what was going on in the grown up world – Labour and Tory governments changing all the time, the three day week, Watergate, Apollo 13, the Munich Olympic hostage crisis, plane hijacks, inflation, oil prices going through the roof, the Arab-Israeli war, the Cold War, the era of Bjorn Borg at Wimbledon, the world falling in love with Chrissie Evert and Olga Korbutt, the collapse of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War, Thatcher’s election and the Winter of Discontent. My own world was made up of bikes, mates, sweets, the discovery of music and satirical comedy, school, sport, discovering Woody Allen movies and film noire, funny fashions, shooting things with air rifles, tennis, golf with dad, TV shows like Hogan’s Heroes, Hawaii-Five-O and Time Tunnel my brother introduced me to, those I watched in the common room at boarding school like Grange Hill and Monkey and those I discovered for myself and which kept me amused as I ate my tea in the living room as the winter night closed in and the coal fire roared in the grate. Programmes such as Whacky Races, Black Beauty, Marine Boy and Thunderbirds.

My reading habits evolved from Whizzer & Chips, Victor for Boys and Secret Seven novels through all of Tintin’s Adventures, Jennings and Derbyshire and Roald Dahl’s sinister short stories, to obscure anti-establishment books like Meet your friendly social system and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Below are the visual reminders of everything that made up my world. They include many items which trigger all sorts of instantly visceral memories plus things which I just have to smell, hear or taste in order to be transported back in time immediately to my childhood. To hear the theme tune to White Horses, an obscure black and white French TV series about the white horses of the Camargue is a delight and dissolves all earthly worries. The same with Black Beauty. And Robinson Crusoe. It’s all here: my entire childhood.

An Overhead Projector (OHP) – the 1970s laptop

Fabulous American sit com about a witch in suburban America.I was in love with Samantha, the witch mother, aged 7.

You will only understand these books if you have boarded in the 50s, 60s or 70s

My prized Stuka. I had them all. Spitfire. Hurricane. Japanese Zero. If Dinky made it, I collected it.

Airfix model soldier armies. They were my sniping targets and home made napalm victims

Like a streak o’ lightnin’ runnin’ cross the sky, like a mighghghghghty cannon ball…you hear about him everywhere you go…

5…4…3…2…1…Thunderbirds are GO! Everyone knows T2 is the coolest one

Shitty computer tennis – who knew it would be a thing?

Assault weapon – 70s boyhood was guns, games and girls. Mainly guns.

1970 – 6 years old and dressed in blue velvet shorts and a white, ruffle-fronted shirt for my birthday party. Dad went to America and brought me a toy metal aeroplane with a staircase full of embarking passengers. Super cool. The Beatles break up.

1971 – 7 years old. A pirate party at home. My collection of penknives and other kit grows. I am obsessed with my best friend’s mother of pearl handled knife. My last year at High Trees pre-prep school in Boston Spa. Discover the Aztec bar and never look back.

1972 – 8 years old and packed off to Aysgarth boarding school. I last two terms and then escape. It is like Colditz. Join Moorlands School where the headmaster’s first words to me as I shook his hand on the front step were: “Cap off, boy!”

1973 – Best buddies are Jeremy Brown, whose home I visit frequently and whose bar mitzvah I attend in 1977, Anthony Barnett who lived nearby, Hadyn Cunningham, who sounds like the start of an American WASP dynasty, Robert Austin, who I cribbed from in maths lessons and Richard Crump, scion of a flash dad who bought all the accoutrements of Leeds wealth.

1974 – Have my first sexual experience with Roz Johnson and Booney Greenhauge upstairs at the Johnson’s Christmas Eve party. See Chrissie Evert beat Evon Goolagong in Wimbledon final. Fall in love with my incredibly sophisticated Chelsea based cousin, Georgina. It is unrequited love.

1975 – 11 years old and go to see Godspell in Leeds for my party. Birthday party at Leeds’ answer to New York City cool – the Flying Pizza in Moortown.

1976 – 12 years old and the famous long, hot summer of ’76. Glorious freedom at Thorpeness and kiss Sophie Hopkins. But there must be more to sex than this, surely? The year of village discos and snogging.

1977 – Captain of the cricket team, score 24 against Malsis school, an innings my father described as “the only time I actually ever saw you play proper strokes”. Head Boy of school. Daily treats on school run home comprise Cadbury’s Amazin’ raisin bar and Old Jamaica rum and raisin chocolate. Introduced to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and Beyond the Fringe satire. Go to board at The Manor, St. Peter’s School. Am thrown in with a bunch of boys who already know each other from the junior school, St. Olave’s. Neil Harnby and Mark Heywood dub me “cheeky new kid”. The first night at school we are pogoing in the corridor to the Stranglers track Peaches playing from the sixth formers study. We holiday on the Thames and as a consequence, my parents nearly divorce.

1978 – I start to settle into St. Peter’s. Have first proper girlfriend who smells of cheap perfume. We meet in York and go to the Danish Kitchen for sophisticated Scandinavian open sandwiches and hot chocolate. Dad picks me up every Saturday afternoon after games and usually he is mud splattered and wet from a day’s hunting. When we get home, mum has the fire blazing and crumpets for tea. Exeats last until I have to be back at boarding on Sunday evening.

1979 – I am in a study with Mark Heywood, Neil Harnby and A J Nichols, who is obsessed with J S Bach. It is the year of O levels. We listen to Fleetwood Mac’s album Rumours every lunchtime which reminds Johnny Atkinson, who comes over to our study every day, of Sally Shuttleworth, our housemaster’s daughter. Johnny is in love with Sally. Neil is going out with Claire Lockey and is caught shagging behind the drama centre. The world, amazingly, continues to turn. Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister. Pink Floyd brings out the album of the decade: The Wall.

Between 1980 and 1990, I move from 16 to 26. By the end of this decade I will have passed my driving test, had five car crashes within a year of passing that test, worn many ill advised outfits, become active in student politics and been beaten up, graduated from university, made lifelong friends in Ripper, Danny and Tom Ingle, had illicit sex with my first proper girlfriend at St. Peter’s, got my first job at Asda in Crossgates, Leeds as a ‘cardboarder’, hoed a 10 acre field of strawberry plants, worked in two pubs (one in East Keswick and the other in Cattle),at McDonald’s, the Cumberland Hotel in Marble Arch, as a washer upper at Victoria Station and as a steward for Warwick University. I had also been President of the Warwick University Conservative & Unionist Association, been sick on Sir Robin Day’s shoes at Blackpool Tory Party conference and hosted a fire eating stripper in the Sudent’s Union (against union policy on sexism). I had worked as a phone salesman for VNU Business Publications, an airtime salesman for Yorkshire Television and then as an account man for Charles Walls Advertising in Pudsey, Leeds. In 1988 I moved to work at Allen, Brady & Marsh in London and in 1989 I got married. I also learnt to ski very badly and developed a taste for Next suits and was an early adopter of the Filofax and the Psion Personal Organiser. I drove a VW Scirocco and earned £15,000 a year. Yes. I was a Yuppie. I lived in York, then Pimlico and by 1990, I was living in our own one bedroom flat at 40 Limburg Road in Clapham.

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