I Went There On My Bike: Part 2 -
The first time I set foot in Manchester University was when I arrived as a Fresher in the autumn of 1958.
I went to University
On the basis of my ‘A’ Level results, Leicestershire County Council gave me a County Bursary of £240 a year. I applied to get into a Hall of Residence, but was unsuccessful. The University found me digs at 20, Salisbury Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, just round the corner (about half a mile) from where my father’s cousin lived – Uncle Willie, Aunt Alice and their sixteen year-old daughter, Ann. In those days most students lived in digs in their first year. That is: they lived with a couple who provided bed, breakfast and evening meal and full board at the weekend. In our case the couple were Mr and Mrs Higgins.
20 (left) and 22 Salisbury Road. (2020)
I shared a room with Derek Wood from Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, and a lad called Brian from Middlesbrough. Derek was a great extrovert with a strong Potteries accent. He was reading Architecture. Brian was one of the most introverted people I ever came across, though, once he had got to know us, he was quite argumentative. He was reading Maths. Two Laotian students shared another room, while an “older” (30 year-old) Indonesian, called Santosa Sumadibrata, had a single room to himself. The top floor of this Victorian house had been converted into a flat, which was occupied by three second and third year students. Before we had been anywhere near the University, Derek, Brian and I had paid our shillings to become Life Members of Chorlton-cum-Hardy Billiards and Snooker Club!
Me, Santosa, medical student, Derek and Brian, top floor, 20 Salisbury Avenue, 1958
All the first year students were invited to a Freshers’ weekend. I remember a few things. We went to a Church service at Manchester Cathedral. Sitting not far from me was a young man with a very big birthmark on his face. I remember feeling very sorry for him. His name was Bob Davies and he became a good friend of mine – he came to our wedding six and a half years later. Of course, after the initial shock, one didn’t think about the birthmark and it certainly didn’t seem to affect him.
The Freshers also went to the Sports Centre, where we were lectured on the need to keep active, even though, as we were no longer at school, physical education was no longer compulsory. We were also encouraged to join clubs and reminded that we were no longer at school and were now responsible for organising our studies.
Life at University
I was enrolled in a BA French Honours course. The Head of the School of French was Professor Eugène Vinaver, a very distinguished academic, who specialised in the 17th century dramatist, Racine, and Old French (11th to 15th centuries). There was also another professor, Professor Lloyd Austin. Other senior lecturers included Dr F.E. Sutcliffe, Dr Gilbert Gadoffre and Dr Frederick Whitehead. Both the first two were made professors before I left.
All first year modules were compulsory. On the literature side we studied only two authors: La Fontaine (Fables) and Flaubert (Madame Bovary and Trois Contes). Professor Austin ran this course throughout the year.
Dr Sutcliffe was a Yorkshireman who rattled out his lectures in a rapid monotone. In the final year, he lectured us on the philosophers Montaigne, Descartes and Pascal.
I didn’t have that much to do with Dr Gadoffre, but he twice had an important influence on me. In one seminar he told us how to write an essay. First write down everything you can think of; then make a plan and slot your thoughts into the appropriate place in the plan. If it was a French dissertation the plan had to include an introduction, itself containing three or four elements, a main body divided into thesis and antithesis and a conclusion answering the questions posed in the introduction.
One afternoon, Dr Gadoffre held an extra-mural seminar on the French economy. Since the war, France had appeared to me, as a teenage outsider, to be a poor country with a chaotic Government and a new Prime Minister every other week. Dr Gadoffre pointed out that, in spite of the political turmoil at the top, the French economy was in good shape. There was a national plan, run by a team of elite civil servants, which provided a sound strategic framework for economic activity. In particular, they had decided to exploit the recently discovered natural gas resources in order to develop their infrastructure.
Dr Whitehead was a Reader in linguistics. For the first few weeks of the first year, he lectured us on Syntax and Semantics. In my immaturity, I skipped some of these lectures, because they were boring. I discovered nearly four years later that there was a paper in the Final Examinations, based on this course. Dr Whitehead was a very shy man, but I remember one of his lectures. He explained the difference between denotations and connotations – the former provide a neutral designation for an object while connotations carry emotive baggage, for example a person could be called a man (denotation) or a bloke with its connotations. He divided connotations into purr words and snarl words.
Other lecturers included Frank Saunders, Mr Daniels and Miss Morgan. There were also some native French-speaking lecturers. Their lecturing style was a complete contrast to the English speakers. Whereas, Dr Sutcliffe was down-to-earth, Jean Gaudon was highly intellectual and ‘airy-fairy’. You could reproduce Dr Sutcliffe’s lectures virtually word-for-word in an essay, whereas I didn’t have a clue what to make of the French lectures – very beautiful, but completely useless.
We also had a series of lectures on mediaeval French. These began with learning the basics of Old French grammar. (This proved unexpectedly useful decades later when my son’s doctoral research included literary texts in Anglo-Norman.) Then we read La Chastelaine de Vergi, an elegant thirteenth-century tragic romance.
In those days there was hardly any emphasis on spoken French. The ability to translate to and from French were, however, essential skills. Miss Morgan led the language translation seminars.
There were 70 students in our year. General lectures were held in large amphitheatres. A printed sheet was passed round for students to sign to testify to their attendance. It became apparent very quickly that the system was far from perfect: it was easy to get one of your friends to sign in for you. Indeed there was one chap who only went to one or two lectures in the whole of the three years – he spent most of his County Major Scholarship (the best scholarship available) on beer.
Students who were not doing Honours degrees studied four subjects in the first year, three in the second and two in the final year. For an Honours degree, we had to follow a “General” course for two years in a subject other than French. I chose German. It was also compulsory to have reached the required standard in Latin.
I was very good at Latin, but didn’t get a very good mark in ‘A’ Levels. For reasons that I have found hard to explain ever since, I did three years in the Sixth Form at Grammar School. After two years I got adequate ‘A’ Levels in French, Latin and German. A year later, I took the same subjects again. The second time round, I got a much better mark in French, the same (low) pass mark in German, but dropped from 55% to 45% in Latin. I thought there were two possible reasons for this. We had a very demanding Latin teacher. He was called “Tocker” Allen. He earned this nickname, because he arrived at the school some 30 years after the English master, who was called “Ticker” Allen – presumably because he was so boring. Anyway, Tocker made us do fiendish translations from English into Latin and I was pretty good at them. So, I was hoping that the ‘A’ level translation paper would be very difficult. In fact it was very easy; consequently I didn’t have chance to shine and so, presumably, got similar marks to everyone else. The more likely explanation for my poorer performance was the following. The ‘A’ level course contained a strong literature component. Even for someone who is good at Latin, it’s not easy to sit down and read Virgil’s Aeneid in an evening, or even one book of it. That is even more true of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Lucretius’ De rerum Natura, both of which are difficult. By February 1958, I was already assured of my place at Manchester and a grant from Leicestershire County Council, based on my ‘A’ levels, so I suspect I didn’t work as hard as I could have on the Latin literature. The result was that I was obliged to take the Intermediate Level Latin course for the first year. This was an undemanding course, which I completed without difficulty. Indeed I realised at the time that that was the only realistic chance I had of getting a “First” at University. However, I decided to concentrate on getting through into the second year of my French Honours course.
The German course was equally undemanding, but had a considerable bonus. The tutor was a beautiful sophisticated young woman. Completely unattainable, of course, but very good to look at. At school we had all been called by our surnames, but now at University this beautiful young woman addressed me as “Mr Mackley”.
I also enrolled for an Intermediate Russian course. I went for about six weeks, learning the alphabet (which I can still work out) and also to write in Russian (which is now still completely indecipherable). I did all the written homework, but decided not to spend time learning vocabulary. This proved to be my downfall, because the lecturer humiliated me when I didn’t know a simple word, that she thought I should have known, so I didn’t go again.
Derek Wood, my housemate, told us right at the beginning that there were about 42 students taken into the School of Architecture each year, but only about seven graduated at the end of the course. I thought this policy was appalling. Then, in my second year at Mrs Higgins’ I was joined by a number of Chemical Engineering students from the Faculty of Technology (recently incorporated into the University, later separated to become UMIST and now, since 2004, part of Manchester University). The Faculty of Technology’s policy at the time was similar to that of the School of Architecture: there was a high wastage rate at the end of the first and second years.
The School of French had a much better system. They told us right at the beginning that they believed that they had a good selection policy. They only admitted students, who they thought were capable of completing the course. There was an examination at the end of the first year, but everyone was expected to pass. If anyone didn’t get through, the School was to blame for admitting them in the first place. The result was that, out of 72 students in the first year, 69 or 70 went on to the second and third years. Those who didn’t negotiated places on other courses.
After that there was only one short examination before Finals. There was a course in the second year on French History, with an examination at the end of it in March 1960. That counted towards the final degree mark. Otherwise the final degree papers were based on the whole of the second and third year courses. More of that later.
Of course, there was much more to University than attending lectures and writing essays. There was a whole new world to discover, both within the University and the city of Manchester. Manchester was rather bigger than my village of Wymeswold (population 770).
The University
The original Victoria University of Manchester consisted of a rather daunting old Victorian building, which housed a museum. I hardly ever went there.
Left: Main University Building c.1950
Right: The Arts Building
The School of French was in the Faculty of Arts. The Faculty occupied a sizeable area alongside the main building. The main “Arts Building” was a large neoclassical construction with some large amphitheatres, smaller rooms for seminars and rooms for the more senior members of staff, big enough for tutorials of six or eight. The School of French had its own student common room. All our tuition took place in this building.
At the end of the plot of land, furthest away from the main road, stood the Arts Library. This was a huge three or four storey building. It had at least one open seating area. Its main feature for me was the stacks: several floors with rows and rows of books. There were individual seats with tables by the windows. That was where I wrote most of my essays. I can still smell the rather fusty atmosphere in those stacks.
The University was situated in one of the poorer districts of Manchester, of which there were many at that time. The outlook from the stacks was rather depressing. Behind the Library was a row of back-to-back nineteenth century workmen’s houses. Each had a small backyard with a washhouse, a coalhouse and an outside lavatory. I never saw a human being in any of these houses, but one of them had a dog, which seemed to bark most of the time.
The other important building was the Student Union. This was a recently constructed building and was a good amenity. It had bars, a coffee shop, a modern hall for open lectures, debates, plays and Saturday evening ballroom dancing. In the basement there were table tennis tables and snooker tables. On the top floor there was a sizeable silent room for study.
I went to a number of general lectures there. I remember two of them. One was given by a young and up-and-coming politician, called Roy Jenkins. The other lecturer was a Roman Catholic talking about contraception.
There were regular debates. One which I remember was on the motion “This house prefers Saturday night to Sunday morning”. That, perhaps more than anything else I have to say, captures the spirit of the time. It was based on the 1959 film, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. It reflects the young persons’ rebellion against the conformist, church-going and prudish society that most of us had been brought up in.
Every Saturday evening there was a big dance in the Students’ Union – or rather three dances. This was the late fifties. Discos had not yet been invented, while Night Clubs were outside my budget. The main dance took place in the spacious main hall of the Students’ Union building. There was a large live orchestra with one or more vocalists. As had been the case in the Leicestershire villages, Wymeswold and Seagrave, where I had been going before I went to Manchester, most of the dances were so-called “modern” dances: quickstep, foxtrot and modern waltzes. There were the occasional Olde Tyme dances: Gay Gordons, St Bernard’s Waltz, Valeta and Military Two-step. There were two other smaller dance-rooms. Both had live musicians. One concentrated on jazz and Latin American music, while the other played the new Rock’n’Roll.
I also joined the Scottish Country Dancing Society, which met once a week in the Sports Centre. They were a friendly group of about a dozen students, mostly Scottish, but not in any way exclusive of Sassenachs. I learned the basic steps and a number of dances. It also enabled me to widen my circle of acquaintances. Early in the summer term the group hired a coach to go to a ball at Glasgow University. We left one Friday evening and travelled overnight. On the coach they taught me to play brag. They were playing for money. I cottoned on quickly and came out with winnings.
This was the first time I had been to Scotland. Indeed, it was the first time I had been north of Blackpool. It was mid-morning on the Saturday, when the coach drove us down Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow. I was shocked. The scene was like something out of a Dickens novel, though the trams were anachronistic. The trams went down the middle of the road. There were poor-looking people everywhere scurrying across the traffic to and from the trams.
On the Saturday afternoon, I went to a football match. Queen’s Park had just been relegated to the Scottish Second Division, but they played, in front of a small crowd, in the vast Hampden Park Stadium with a capacity of well over 100,000.
I had one item of Scottish attire in my wardrobe: a Royal Stuart tartan tie which an aunt had given me as a birthday present. I borrowed a kilt to wear at the ball. I hadn’t been there very long before someone pointed out to me, not too kindly, that my tie and kilt did not match! and that I had no right whatsoever to wear a Royal Stuart tartan.
I spent many hours playing table tennis, which I was good at, and some hours playing snooker, which I wasn’t good at.
As I was in digs for the first two years, I went back there most evenings for dinner. I did most of my private studying in the library.
Manchester
It was wonderful to live in a great city like Manchester. Where do I start?
My great passion at the time was football, so I will begin with that. Manchester had two First Division football teams. Manchester United won most of their games, Manchester City didn’t. I went to both grounds on a number of occasions. They could not have been more different. It was, of course in the days before all-seater stadia and indeed crowd segregation. A visit to Old Trafford (Manchester United’s ground) was an electrifying and somewhat terrifying experience. The land area of the stadium is (or was then) relatively small. This meant that the sides of the spectator terraces were quite steep. The supporters were very partisan and very vocal. The effect was like being in a cauldron with 60,000 other people. Getting out of the ground after a match was a struggle. The exit from the terraces was narrow. Once you had fought your way out you arrived into a confined area between the stand and the outer wall. Through the gate you arrived in a narrow track. After that, in my case, the only way to “freedom” was over a narrow bridge along with 10,000 other people.
Manchester United played in blood red shirts. Manchester City played in wishy-washy pale blue. Their home was at Maine Road. It was built on a vast plot of land and had a capacity of nearly 85,000. But, whereas Old Trafford was like a cauldron, Maine Road was like a saucer. Some 30,000 spectators (I’m guessing) would be spread thinly across the terraces. In general, at that time, the supporters were not so partisan. On the few times I went there, I had the impression that the supporters quickly started criticising the player, if things weren’t going well.
I did not, in fact, have all that much time to go to professional football matches. While I was at school, I learned that my friend, John Elsom, had trained to be a football referee. I decided that I would like to be a referee. In the summer before I went to Manchester I wrote to the secretary of the Football Association to enquire how to go about it. I was thrilled to receive a personal letter from the Secretary, Sir Stanley Rous, who was the “god” of the football world at that time. He wrote that he had forwarded my name to the Manchester and District Football Association and told me how to contact them. I went along for some tests (which did NOT include an eye test, which I might well have failed!). I was assigned to referee junior matches in a South Manchester league. (I may have been a shy country bumpkin, but it took some courage (or foolhardiness) to step into that minefield.)
So I bought the kit and most Saturday afternoons I went off on my bike in search of football pitches in the depths of Wythenshawe and Northfield. Wythenshawe, in particular, was a relatively new council development. Most of the players came from pretty rough backgrounds. I survived for one and a half seasons, then went off to France. When I came back, I didn’t think about taking it up again, though I did referee one or two University games. The boys came from better backgrounds, but were no better behaved!
Manchester had a large number of cinemas, theatres, restaurants, dance halls and the Hallé orchestra. I went to a dance hall in the city centre only once or twice. The one time I remember I went with the Laotian boys. One of them asked me to ask a particular girl to dance. I did and she accepted. When I got back to my seat, the boy told me that he had asked the same girl and she had refused – he assumed because he was Asian.
We went to the theatre two or three times a year. Early on in my stay in Manchester, the Laotian boys said that a new musical was coming to Manchester, just before it went to London. They arranged for me to go with them to see it. The musical was called West Side Story.
I also went a few times to the Hallé orchestra. The first time I went was to Haydn’s Creation. I can still see the vast array of musicians, playing together with mechanical precision. I also remember studying one of the violinists for a long time. Eventually, I realised that he worked in the Midland Bank, which I was using at the time. Some years later, I went to the ballet to see Sleeping Beauty. At the time, I thought ballet was the perfect art form.
Before I went to live in Manchester, I hardly ever went to the cinema. This was a good period for film going. The Asian boys thought for a long time that the Gaumont cinema was called South Pacific, because the film had such a long run there. That was followed by The Nun’s Story, starring Audrey Hepburn. There was also a cinema in Market Street called the Cinephone. That showed mainly foreign films. I remember going to see Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (based on the painting by Manet) both of which made a big impression on me in very different ways. Later on, there were the so-called kitchen-sink films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, A Room at the Top and A Taste of Honey, which were very relevant in the changing cultural climate of the time.
Quite early on in our stay, Santosa, the Indonesian, invited Derek, Brian and me to a Chinese restaurant. None of us had ever been to such an exotic place to eat! That was about to change, as there were a number of Indian restaurants within walking distance of the University. Of course, we ate most of our two-course midday meals in the University Refectory – how old-fashioned that sounds now!
For most of the University year it was cold and dark. In the spring of 1959, Brian and I took Santosa to a local beauty spot – Mere in Cheshire. I had just bought my first camera. It was a beautiful spring day. We went into an open grassland area and Santosa –who was quite a stocky man – was gambolling around like a spring lamb. Suddenly, he saw a clump of lush greenery and dived into it. “Jim, what is it? What is it?” he yelped! He had just thrown himself into a bed of nettles: he had never seen nettles before. Later in the summer, Santosa came to stay with me for a few days at my home in Wymeswold. I lost touch with him soon after that, but I have often wondered what happened to him. Nothing good, I suspect: soon after that Indonesia got entangled in a series of bloody civil wars, some of which targeted so-called intellectuals.
Coming from a village, it seemed natural to me to get involved in local activities. Accordingly, I went to the local church. I joined a badminton club in the Methodist Church Hall. I also went to Stretford Church and joined their bell-ringing team. In Wymeswold I had been a keen bell-ringer. We had six bells and, mainly at my instigation, had learned to ring a number of peals for five or six bells. At Stretford they had eight. I learned a whole new lot of peals. On one occasion I biked to Knutsford for a bell-ringers’ meeting.
Continue to Part 3: My First Visit To France
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