I started University on October 3rd 1972. My accommodation was in halls on site in West 1 room 13. I struggled. The room was one of 14 on a floor with a shared kitchen and mostly final years. I was so out of depth. I spent a lot of time on level 3 where I made some friends and a room became vacant. I plucked up huge amounts of courage and asked the warden for a move. It wasn’t a problem. I moved to West 3 room 13 and never looked back. They were mostly freshers and we got on really well.
At the same time my family moved to Kenilworth (63 Common Lane, phone 35618). This was strange because coming down for vacation was a lonely time as there were no friends to come home to. In the summers I worked at Courtaulds in the labs. I joined Coventry Cycling Club, which was a much bigger club, with some famous members. There was the twice a week Knolwe Run which was a 10 mile run to a cyclist’s cafe in Knowle. Depending on who was going the 10 miles there could be up to 25 miles in the lanes between Coventry and Birmingham, but always ended at the cafe to leave at a specific time. The run back to Coventry was a burn up. No hold barred open road race, with top riders and juniors testing each other out. There could be upto 40 people and the route involved few hazards other than traffic and no traffic lights. It ended with a massive sprint for the Coventry sign, then everyone dispersed. Usually held my own so was chuffed with that, especially alongside national champs. I didn’t do much actual racing with that club as you had to be ‘selected’.
I enjoyed Uni after a poor start, made friends and got into music. Bands came to play the uni or Guildford Civic Hall and we saw bands most weeks. Many big name bands played as it was a warm up for a London gig. Saw Hawkwind, Deep Purple, Free, AC DC, Rick Wakeman, Genesis, and cant remember who else. Made a good friend in Martin Elliott, plus Len Woods Chris Gaskel and anothe guy and we rented a house together in year 2. I gave up French which was taking a lot of time to keep up. After the second year we had an industrial year. The uni found us placements in relevant industries. I seemed hard to place but ended up at BIP in Birmingham working in Environmental Control department looking at effluent from a chemical factory. Dave Harrison was my boss and he taught me a lot about how to behave around other people & management.
I was in digs in Brum and went to see bands at Birmingham Town Hall most weeks, including Roxy Music, Led Zeppelin, Doobie Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Golden Earring, Kiki Dee and many others. I also bought an album every week! After that 6 months placement I was offered a placement in Stockholm, which I took. This was a big adventure and involved a 24 hour ferry crossing and a 12 hour train ride, arriving in Stockholm late one evening, in fact very late. The guy meeting me was well pissed off and dropped me in my flat in a tower block for students at 16 Cherry St! . He met me the following morning to take me to work on the underground and I was expected to find my way after that. Work was very boring and was feat or famine, with great tracts of time bored silly. Everyone spoke English well and I was encouraged not to bother with the free Swedish for foreigners courses. If I’d gone I would have met people like me and made friends. I didn’t so I was lonely. I was friends with the technician who wanted to better his English, but I couldn’t hang out with him all the time.
The weather was -20C when I arrived in February and warmed gradually through spring until summer when it was 25C! From work we visited nearby natural lakes where we swam and had picnic lunches. I had 2 weeks holiday in June and came home for my birthday (20) and visited Marin and his fiancee in Scotland on the isle of Rothsay.
Back home at the end of August ready for my final year at uni. Girls have not been mentioned so far in my story because there weren’t any! I spent a lot of the second year lusting after a girl (Heather?) who made me feel hot and cold for days each time I saw her, but never even spoke to her. In the final year I started to feel a little more confident, and met Sue at a birthday party for her friend on October 13th in the Union bar. She sat on my knee as there was nowhere else to sit. We started something but she was a first year and didn’t particularly want tying down, so it was a bit on and off for a while, but I think she grew to like me. We continued through to the end of the year and in the summer met her family.
Finals were just after Easter and revision and work was pretty intense. There was one course I struggled with as there was a lot of maths I could not get my head around. Differentiation and Integration were crucial to success and the exam would have been a breeze if I had master this, but I couldn’t rely on waffle in the exam. I think I nearly failed my degree because of this but passed with 3rd class honours.
A lot of revision time was lost to job applications as my dad had put the fear of god into me as he was recruiting for his profession at the time and was only taking PhD’s and 1st class graduates. I put a lot of effort into applications but eventually had the choice of 3 jobs – Reeds paper in Reading, Phillips TV’s – a glass factory in Blackburn and Rockware Glass in Middlesex, which I took. I didn’t really have a clue what I wanted (too young still) but thought factory management might be good. I had totally lost sight of earlier ambitions around flying when the RAF and CAA told me to come back with a degree.
Also a feature was the summer of ’76 where we visited Guildford Lido most days and even dragged our mattresses outside to sleep on the grass.