Wednesday 29 September 1976

Mum’s Diary

Went to Tesco with P at 8.30. Mr A left work 11.55 to go to Dublin. Nice busy am. V busy aft. Cold no better so rang GTE to say I wouldn’t go tomorrow. 1 M at 9.45 came to bed 11pm. 1S. Rang Roy in aft – P & R had had cheques yesterday but none for me. He says he is coming Fri. I told P she was to say who she wanted to go to Cambridge with her. Can I bear it if she chooses Roy? Do I talk to M? Roy says he wants to talk to me too!!!

Roger’s/My Diary

This lunch-time there was a committee meeting and the main thing was that the Upper Sixth Members of the Working Party were elected with no further
trouble. We are having our first meeting on Friday. I have volunteered to take part in a reading scheme to help backward children to read during assembly times. This evening after having an after-school Latin lesson I came home and had a bath as I was dirty through playing football. In the Heavyweight championship Ali beat Norton in a controversial points decision.

Notes

Food Shopping

P refers to my older sister Tricia (Patricia). She and mum went food shopping, see Chapter 125, at Tesco at 8.30 am before mum went to to work.

Tesco

Tesco was, and is, a very well-known supermarket chain. It was formed by Jack Cohen in 1919. The name came from the initials of his tea supplier, T E Stockwell, and the first two letters of his own surname. I assume the Tesco mum went to was the one on Guildhall Hill. Tesco appears to have opened in Norwich in the 1960s at 4 Market Place and, since at least the early seventies, was based at 5 Guildhall Hill. I think the Market Place/Guildhall Hill addresses probably refer to the same place under different names. This shop was previously Chamberlin’s department store. Tesco closed their store here in 2022. Although plans were approved for a hotel on the site, it remains vacant currently. Apparently, there are plans to turn the upper floors to residential use while keeping the retail space on the ground floor.

Mum Worked for Mr Ashken and Mr Stephens

During this period, mum worked as part-time medical secretary for the private practice of two surgeons, Mr Ashken and Mr Stephens, see Chapter 121. This practice was based at 41 Newmarket Road. She worked all day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and half day on Fridays. On this occasion, as it was Wednesday, she worked all day. She noted that Mr Ashken (Mr A) left work at 11.55 am to go to Dublin. She noted that the morning had been nice and busy and the afternoon very busy,

Cold No Better

Mum had had a cold for the last few days, see Chapter 116, and noted that it was no better.

Work for Rev Eddy

GTE refers to Rev G T Eddy who was the Chairman of the Methodist District. Based on her CV, see Chapter 105, mum did some part-time secretarial work for him between 1973 and 1977, see Chapter 121. On this occasion, she phoned him to say she would not be there the next day because of her cold.

On one level this makes sense. If she was unwell then it made sense not to go to work. However, there appear to have been double standards here. Mum had been well enough to work for Mr Ashken and Mr Stephens, a job she loved, but was not well enough to go to work for Rev Eddy, a job she liked less!

Two photos of Rev G T Eddy (red rectangles) from local news cuttings at the district Synod in Sheringham in May 1978 (left) and at a meeting with Methodist President Rev Donald English in January 1979 (right)

Mum’s Medication

Mum tended to note the tablets she took each day, particularly at night, see Chapter 116. On this occasion, she noted that she took one nitrazepam (M for Mogadon) as a sleeping tablet at 9.45 pm before going to bed at 11 pm. She also took one senna-containing tablet (S for Senokot) for constipation.

Issues with Dad

Roy refers to my father Royle Drew. My parents had separated in 1973 and, at this time, dad was living and working in Birmingham, see Chapter 114.

Mum phoned him in the afternoon (aft) as cheques had arrived for my older sister Tricia (P for Patricia) and me (R for Roger) the previous day. However, the monthly cheque for her had not come. Dad said he was coming on Friday and that he also wanted to talk to her. This merited three exclamation marks.

Reading between the lines, I think dad wanted to talk to mum about the level of financial support he was going to be giving to her now that Tricia (Patricia) would be away at university. I don’t think they ever had that conversation. I assume dad “wimped” out of it because he knew it would be difficult! Although he had planned to come to ours on Friday, he only came on Saturday. He left on Sunday leaving mum a cheque for £90 and a note saying that because Tricia had left home, and there were only three children at home now, he had reduced the amount he gave her by a quarter, presumably from £120 to £90. Mum noted that this made her “very angry“,

Forced to Choose

This was an important time for my older sister Tricia (Patricia). She had excelled at school gaining straight As at A level in maths, physics and chemistry. As a result, she had gained a place to study natural sciences at Newnham College. This was a big deal! She was the first person from our family to go to university and, of course, there was the added prestige of Cambridge, see Chapter 120.

While I think mum should have recognised how important this was for Tricia, and that it made sense that dad would want to be there to join in the occasion, she was locked into full competitive mode! She told Tricia that she had to choose which parent would take her to Cambridge and mum wondered if she could bear it if she chose dad.

While I think it was fairly uncommon for mum to give one of us this choice so explicitly, this kind of choice was our day-to-day reality at that time particularly when dad came to visit. I invariably chose dad and this made my relationship with mum extremely difficult in my later teenage years! Tricia, however, on this occasion chose mum. Initially, I thought this made little practical sense as dad would have been driving back to Birmingham the same day and Cambridge was pretty much en route! Although dad did not own a car at this time, he sometimes used a Norwich Union car to come to Norwich. On this occasion, he came by train which perhaps spared Tricia a difficult choice. Dad could, of course, have gone with them and got the train back to Birmingham from Cambridge but given the state of the relationship between my parents at this point, this was not a realistic alternative.

This image is from Christmas 1980. It shows me sitting between mum and dad. It provides a good visual illustration of how the late seventies and beyond felt, for me, in the middle of mum and dad and their conflicts

Malcolm Carter

I think M in this context refers to Rev Malcolm Carter. He was a Methodist Minister who became mum’s friend and confidant, see Chapter 114. From Merseyside, he served in the ministry there and in Darlington and East Anglia. He was Minister at Court Hey Methodist Church from 1978 to 1986. He was the Methodist chaplain to Walton Prison, now HM Prison Liverpool, for 20 years. I found a YouTube video of him taking a service at Wonford Methodist Church in Exeter in July 2024. When he was in Norwich, he was mainly based at Bowthorpe Road Methodist Church. On this occasion, mum wondered if she should talk to him about the issues with dad, in general, and specifically regarding taking Tricia to Cambridge to start university.

Sixth Form Committee Meeting

I had just started sixth form at the Hewett School, see Chapter 118. I had been elected to represent the form I was in on the sixth form committee. The committee wanted to set up a smaller working party to make day-to-day matters more efficient. Just under a week earlier, I had been elected as one of three lower sixth members of that working party. However, the upper sixth had failed to elect their representatives and wanted to set up their own group. I am not sure if there had been behind-the-scenes discussions but their concerns appear to have been resolved and, on the occasion of this lunch-time meeting, they meekly chose their representative! We agreed to have our first working party meeting on Friday.

Members of sixth form committee from prizegiving programme 1976. Note that the Treasurer and Secretary are both identified

An article about the sixth form committee taken from the anniversary brochure produced in 1982. The sixth form had grown from when I was there. Also, the degree of staff involvement in the committee seems greater then than it was when I was there.

My diary entry for 23 September 1976 concerning elections to a sixth form working party

Lunch-time

Based on my family’s working class background in Nottinghamshire, we had tended to refer to our meals as dinner and tea. However, given that we had moved to Norwich in 1960, and possibly because we were becoming more middle class, some of that usage was changing and family members sometimes, and perhaps increasingly, referred to a midday meal as lunch, see Chapter 92 although we continued to refer to an afternoon or early evening meal as tea. Here, I referred to lunch-time.

Starkey comics have produced this really excellent map which shows how people refer to evening meal in different parts of UK and Ireland. It is interesting that “*tea*” is the common form in the north including Kirkby whereas there is no clear majority in Norfolk. This map has been accessed from the Brilliant Maps Facebook page

Reading Scheme

I noted that I had volunteered to be part of a scheme to help children in the lower part of the school with their reading, see Chapter 118. I referred to them as “backward” children but I don’t think the term then has the stigma associated with it that it does now. I do wish I had used a different term though!

I suspect my reasons for volunteering were not purely altruistic! The scheme operated during assembly. I was not a huge fan of assemblies so having a legitimate reason to miss them would have been fine with me!

After-School Latin Lesson

Although I was studying pure maths, physics and chemistry at A level, see Chapter 118, I was also doing two O levels at the end of lower sixth. These were biology, which I was aiming to complete in one year, and Latin which was a three-year course that I had started in Form 4. These additional subjects posed problems for timetabling and this was resolved by having lessons at lunch-time and after school.

Football

At some time during the school day, see Chapter 118, I had played football. I had got dirty and this meant I needed a bath at night.

Muhammad Ali v Ken Norton III

While I have never been a huge boxing fan, I did follow heavyweight boxing at that time, particularly the career of Muhammad Ali. I noted that Muhammad Ali beat Ken Norton in a controversial points decision. This was the third time the two boxers had met and the fight was held at Yankee Stadium. It was to be the undisputed world heavyweight champion. In their first fight on 31 March 1973, Ken Norton had surprisingly beat Ali on a split decision, see Chapter 112. The re-match was on 10 September 1973. Ali won that time again on a split decision. In this match, Ali won on a unanimous points decision, see Chapter 123. I suspect I watch highlights on TV that evening as they were shown on BBC 1 at 8 pm. I noted that the decision was controversial.