Nostalgia Central

[Pete Smith]

My first day at school! Fond memories of Mary Datchelor House.

My first surprise occurred when I told my father who was then in his sixties where I would be working. When I mentioned MDH, he blushed! It turned out he was at Wilson’s School which used to be in the next street along, and his first girlfriends were all young ladies from Mary Datchelor. 

Turning up there on your first day was uncannily similar to your first day at school. There was no internet to prepare you for what was in store. No way of saying ‘hi’ electronically before you walked in. And the building still felt like a school. Don’t run down the corridor, Smith.

As it happened, the night before I joined there was a late night TV programme called ‘After Dark’; the format was to encourage a serious conversation amongst smart people sitting around a coffee table. This one was on Ethiopia and Mark Bowden was there representing SCF (as was) in his typically dazzling and informed way. My first day was fairly quiet, but I remember about 5:30 popping across the road for a pint in the Kerfield on the way home, and there propped at the bar was Mark. I was star struck! I barely managed to mumble ‘hi’. I think for the next six months he thought I was the new pot man in the pub!

[Mark Bowden]

My goodness, I had completely forgotten about After Dark. Quite a bizarre programme though much lauded in its time and some say much missed. It had a format with no end and just carried on until those involved ran out of steam or got totally plastered. The programme I was on was about Ethiopia and I looked up the listing of who was there as follows
Ethiopa
14.10.89

With John Underwood, Mark Bowden, Mary Dines, Richard Balfe, Berhane Ghebrehiwot, Rebecca Astrate, Lord Bauer, Charles Stewart, Abadi Zemo

Abadi was the TPLF representative and affectionately known to some of us as the “one armed bandit’ as he had lost his arm in a grenade attack. Mary Dines had been head of War on Want. The most objectionable person was Lord Bauer recently enabled by Margaret Thatcher for his contribution to economics. He was a friend of Milton Friedman and famously anti government spending on development. At about two in the morning and after copious amounts of wine he said to me; ” Thought I should like you but I have decided I don’t to which I retorted “I don’t much care’. There you go for dazzling wit and repartee – well it was two o clock. I think we finished at three.

[Author]

Posts