Monday December 31st
A TYPICAL NEW YEAR
New Year’s Eve. Every year the same. While
Christmas Eve would usually be spent in the
company of my Mum’s side of the family, we always
spent New Year with my Dad’s - more specifically,
with my grandparents Mary and Jack Shepherd, who
held a New Year’s Eve party every year at their
bungalow in Durkar.
Monday December 31st, 1979
TERM 1: New Year
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
11pm, ITV: Kenny Everett
Special, ITV: The “Will Kenny
Everett Make It To 1980?”
Show - featuring:
•
Roxy Music
•
Boomtown Rats
•
Cliff Richard (in leather!)
•
David Bowie (with a
bespoke re-recording of
Space Oddity, filmed on
the same set he used for
Ashes to Ashes)
•
Thin Lizzy & Sex Pistols
(singing a Christmas
medley)
•
plus of course Hot Gossip
(dancing to Sleazy and
Brown Sugar)
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world…
10.30pm, BBC 1: Late News
•
Main news: Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
•
Thatcher foresees a difficult year for Britain’s
economy
•
Steel strike imminent
•
Rhodesia ceasefire happening, but very slowly
•
Children march through London in support of
the International Year of the Child, which ends
today
BBC 2: Old Grey Whistle Test: Blondie in Concert
Adam and the Ants live at the Electric Ballroom,
Camden - the last gig they did in their original
formation, before spectacularly splitting up:
•
better quality, shorter
•
worse quality, longer
It was always so quiet in Durkar - quite
disconcerting for a town lad like me. Even a sleepy
village like Fairburn had a motorway running
through the middle of it. So Durkar unnerved me a
bit. But New Year was different - loud and colourful.
Music and dancing. Joe Loss. Brown Girl in the Ring.
Plenty of alcohol (which obviously I didn’t drink,
unless maybe someone treated me to a
Babycham). And the conga. Before the end of the
night, everyone did the conga, all around the
bungalow.
There are a few photos above, of Jack’s - stuff I
inherited when he died. Difficult to be sure about
the dates - it’s harder than you think trying to put
things like that in chronological order - but I don’t
think any of them are from this particular night in
1979. I reckon the first two are from 1977 and the
second pair from 1978. They’re mainly from before
the parties started, so they don’t do my memories
justice. But I do miss those days. Everything was so
much simpler. Nothing had gone wrong yet.
Everything was, temporarily, absolutely fine.
This basically meant a gathering of all Dad’s side of
the family - like Mary’s brother Ernest and his wife
Rita (although they might not have been there that
year thanks to a massive bust-up Ernest had with his
sisters over the arrangements for their Mum’s
funeral. Seriously. I’ve no idea what happened but
they never spoke again for the rest of their lives);
Mary’s sister, also called Rita, her husband Les (who
absolutely terrified me, even though he was lovely -
maybe because he smoked a pipe and had big thick
dark bushy eyebrows) and their teenage daughter
Kim.
Then Jack’s brothers and sisters - Nan and her
husband Jim; their son Paddy and his wife Amanda;
Vin and his wife Maureen (who I once upset by having
a wild tantrum round their house when I wasn’t
allowed to watch Play School); Dad’s cousin Martin and
his wife Angela (of whom more another time). Loads of
them. So many I’ve probably forgotten half of them.
TERM 1 IN LINK FORM
Something
Else
Sep 15, 1979