“What popular song includes in its lyric: losing my hair, Valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine, 64 and Wight?” If you don’t know, there’s really no hope for you.

That day, for me, has finally dawned.

Once you’re south of 21 it becomes difficult to distinguish one birthday from the next unless they enjoy a “special” status. I can remember nothing about my 22nd. In contrast, my 20th (14 February 1975) is one I remember all too well. I was scheduled to have a Portuguese tutorial at King’s College London, my usual tutor, Professor Tom Earle having taken a sabbatical year. I planned to take the 190 bus to London in the morning, read out my essay, see a few students I knew there, then get the bus back to Oxford.

I’d written a decent enough essay. The tutorial ended with a birthday glass of sherry, courtesy of Prof Luís de Sousa Rebelo. We fixed the date of my next tutorial (which turned out to be the date of the Moorgate Tube Disaster). I had a bite to eat, met a couple of friends from the Wirral who were studying Medicine at King’s, and we had a pint or two.

One theory (and the one I prefer) is that Valentine’s Day is celebrated on 14 February because in ancient times it was believed to be the day on which the birds started to sing (i.e. the first day of spring) – which might indeed be the case in Rome. In Britain, of course, it’s bang in the middle of winter, though any sort of weather is possible.

As I write, it is indeed springlike in Herne Hill. But in 1975 it was dark, cold and beginning to snow when the 190 pulled into Gloucester Green. The lovely Alison was supposed to be coming down from Durham that evening, so it was my intention not to “overdo” it before she arrived, though I’d planned to lead my mates on a pub crawl through East Oxford. The weather was bad, and I was going down with a cold and feeling a bit rough. But the show must go on.

We set off up the Iffley and down the Cowley before docking at closing, four hours later, at the Kashmir Tandoori for the inevitable chicken vindaloo. Somewhere on this Ulyssian itinerary I badly cut my hand (the details are conveniently hazy). Leaving the others to deal with the bill, and with most of a toilet roll wrapped round my hand as a bandage, I ran to the Radcliffe Infirmary where, after a long wait, I was stitched up by a doctor who looked younger than me.

It didn’t look as pretty as this at 10pm on a February night.

At about 11:30pm, now sober, I made it back to my rooms in Back Quad to find my pals playing darts and polishing off my Queen’s College Ruby Port. There was no sign of Aly, but there was a message at the Porter’s Lodge saying she’d arrive at 1pm (i.e. the following afternoon). How disappointing. I fell into bed… after what seemed like a couple of hours there was a knock on the door. I turned the knob with my uninjured left hand, half-asleep and wiping my nose on the bandage. There stood a woman who had only a year before sent me a billet doux, saying, “I did not believe such happiness were possible!”.

So where were you then?

“I spent the night at St Aldate’s police station as the college door was locked.” My brain struggled to compute.
“I thought you were coming at 1pm?”
“No, 1am. Five hours ago!” The idiot porter Pickavance had taken down her message wrong. I showed her his note.
“Anyway I’m going back to Durham as soon as I’ve had a couple of hours sleep.” And despite my pleas to stay until Sunday, that’s what she did.

***

That evening, with a streaming nose, a bandaged and throbbing right hand, the remains of a hangover, and thoroughly depressed, I tried to put things right with a gallon of Hook Norton at Balliol’s Lindsay Bar. The barmen, Dick and Horace, thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. I staggered back to Queen’s Beer Cellar, bouncing off the walls of New College Lane, but I was clearly too far gone to be served. It is hard to imagine how drunk a student has to get to be refused a pint at his own college bar. My darts mentor, Mike Tracy, had to put me to bed.

I couldn’t stop crying

After a week or so the penny dropped: my true love and I were finished. She wrote a letter to make sure I’d understood (at least she had the kindness to wait until Valentine’s Day was over); but we were to remain good friends. Of course we would! There were to be no more “my darling” communications. But I got over it, more or less, and – to our mutual surprise – we have remained friends until this day.

***

Here’s a One for the Wall recording from a few weeks ago. We’re rehearsing a new song of Bern’s called “Guiding Hand”.