32. testing, testing
The Newman Rooms are on St Aldate's, one of the roads that radiate from Carfax, heading off between Pembroke College, where Bill was, and Christ Church.
At the time, the main room looked an unlikely venue for a rock band. The ceiling was way too high and the pale walls and light wooden floors made it look like a place for classical music or lectures. Maybe it was already a chapel.
They'd erected a temporary wooden stage, and the room had space for over 500 chairs, though there weren't that many at the time of the sound check for the Song Contest.
This was an event in itself. It was morning or afternoon, daylight anyway, with all these acts milling about. The Milkins planned to dress up for the show itself, but right now we were in cords and t-shirts, me in a pinkish cowboy nightshirt with no collar and three buttons at the neck, plus cowboy boots from Kensington Market. They started out brown but I spilled a drop of oil on them which wouldn't come off, so I dyed them black. The back edges of the heels kept wearing down, so I had a metal bar screwed on, very Wild West. They struck sparks on pavements and thundered on this wooden stage when I stamped my heel in time to the music.
A lot of people there. Not just performers but sound engineers and organisers. Duos and trios as well as rock groups, bit of banter, sizing each other up.
I remember only two of the acts that day. Nightshift and American Express, bands from Balliol and Merton colleges. Both proficient, though their entries were more interesting to play than listen to, full of changes in tempo and style. Too many, if you asked me, but then I'd just written a song about a donkey, so what did I know?
Nightshift had two prominent members. A solidly built bass player whose name I'm pretty sure was John Silver, though he was short. Bernie rated him, but I said ours was just as good. Their frontman played sax as well as singing, tall and thin with long straight dark hair and sunglasses. Confident, the pair of them.
American Express had less in the way of personality. Their song was called Telephone, with a low-key chorus of 'Telephone, Telephone' and nothing else to make it memorable. Which didn't stop them thinking it deserved intricate attention. Their sound check went on for fucking ages.
The engineer near the back of the hall, he was a personable guy and good at what he did. Patient, too. He had to be with those clowns.
'Now, in the intro, we want the bass miked up and the drums down. In the verse, the bass drops down and the guitar comes up. In the chorus - '
Oh for christsake. All through this rigmarole, the sound engineer's nodding politely and saying yes fine while I'm rolling my eyes and Bernie's emitting one of the long breaths of air which stopped him laughing out loud at things ridiculous. Those exhalations were another part of the soundtrack to my life.
Still, American Express knew how to play, and maybe that's what a song contest jury would be looking for, though I thought Nightshift had more of a chance. Never mind donkeys, their song was about a banana!
Comes to our turn and the sound man asks for instructions. I tell him to do what he thinks sounds best, he's the expert. Oh right, he goes, pleasantly surprised.
I felt completely at ease up there.
Which sounds weird, because it should've been my worst nightmare. I mentioned singing in front of six people in a pub. This was that, only worse. The crowd were musicians and proper vocalists. I should've been embarrassed to death.
But I had musicians too. And we knew our song rocked. Anyway I was never uncomfortable on a stage.
I was usually better during the gig than a rehearsal in front of other people, but that day we played like we owned the place. Running through a joke song, watched by better singers and people who fancied themselves with guitars: fuck them, the stage was ours.
I aimed the vocals at the sound engineer, just going through the verses, saving the performance for the actual show, left leg pumping the beat, not a trace of self-consciousness. I remember thinking the other acts were impressed by us! No evidence for that, but it's a good state of mind to be in.
Just as well, because I needed this event.
*
I spent the spring holidays revising for finals exams, but with the usual level of enthusiasm, and trying not to grind my teeth about the end of an affair. That was a relief by then, but the way it came about left a taste for a while.
The start of the final term was much the same - not helped by some minor friction between me and Steve. His german girlfriend was an issue too by then, but he found ample compensation at another of our house parties, where he met a younger girl - just out of school, if that. Have to admit I envied him.
I remember a moment in our kitchen doorway when things got a bit testy between us. Nothing at all really, but there was definitely some tension around, in both of us due to girls and exams.
Meanwhile I wasn't playing enough sport to take my mind off things.
The football season was over and tennis matches were relatively rare. I played for Worcester seconds against a little guy from St Benet's, the college for trainee monks on St Giles, and this man of god had a serious temper, swearing at every point he lost, and there were many, thumping the grass with his racquet while I turned my back to smile. He apologised cheerily over tea and sandwiches, but it was just his way of venting. I played only one match for the firsts, against the previous year's champions University College, but they had a weak team by then and I won again.
I still jogged a bit, once or twice near the house with Steve (so we weren't always spoiling for a scrap!). And outside the band, I socialised with Pat and Harry as well as Bernie. I mentioned hosting a dinner for them, which even by student standards was seriously basse cuisine.
*
scotched eggs
The housemates were all out. Steve, Pete Whiteside, and Colin. Maybe they'd seen me prepare ingredients.
Instead there were seven of us. Me and Patrick, the four guys in the Worcester french class who shared the top flat at 88 Banbury Road - and a girl. Much the same personnel as the chinese we went for in year one, though this time the female companion wasn't mine.
Like Harry, and typical of the times, Martin had to go abroad to find a girlfriend, a frenchwoman who was about to be dazed by my culinary skills.
I'd never cooked a meal for anyone outside the family home, and even that was only omelettes. I'd never used a recipe book and it didn't occur to me to borrow one. I took Harry's motto about learning new songs ('minimum input, maximum output') and applied it to the meal. That should've meant pasta, which I'd watched my parents make hundreds of time. I had the sense to do that for a fiancée's family years later. But that night in Oxford, I went for curry.
*
Now, it has to be said: my standards weren't that high. I'd eaten well enough at Uddin's and so on, but I was quite happy with curry from a packet. Everyone fancied a Vesta.
In the holidays, I sometimes worked at a mental hospital in Oxfordshire, where I paid two pounds a week (really as little as that) to rent a room on the top floor. So did other ward orderlies, except they lived there full-time whereas I went back to my dad's for the odd night. Most evenings we'd cook our own food in the communal kitchen.
I say 'cook'. One of my main memories was the odd packet of Vesta. They came with boil-in-the-bag rice, and the stew looked like dogfood. Tiny cubes of something chewy, nothing like any meat you ate outside a cardboard box. But the curry taste made it a delicacy.
Me, I added a personal touch by emptying a packet of wotsits on top! Let them soak in a bit. My take on cheesy poppadums. I've never been tempted to try it again, but I remember those meals happily.
*
Since that was my only experience of curry outside a restaurant, why inflict it on fellow students?
Well, I thought: how hard could it be?
Boil some veg, fry some meat, make a stew with it all, then toss in some curry powder. No cumin or turmeric or coriander: I didn't know they existed. But I added boiled eggs as a luxury!
I couldn't even get the rice right. I might argue it came out as classic oriental sticky, but that's just the asians not being able to keep it fluffy. My italian family would've turned their noses up. Meanwhile the curry powder turned my stew green! Green curried eggs. Dr Seuss would've been proud.
Martin's mam'selle was charmingly polite, and the others had probably eaten worse (Harry proved that by wrecking my frying pan in Pimlico). Apart from the food, the meal went well!
In fact the guys came back for more, with the addition of Pat Slade and another of the french posse. This time I settled for soup and god knows what else. Probably no improvement, but those get-togethers weren't about food.
*
So there were fun moments. But the song contest was a real godsend.
Just like our first ever gig, it gave me a focus. Something to write and rehearse and think about besides schoolwork and a break-up.
On that front, I made no effort at all for now. Apart from anything else, I needed a breather after eighteen dismal months. I looked forward to a music competition more than trying to impress new women.
Hi. I'm the singer in a rock band. How about I cook you dinner one night? I do a mean curry.