WEDNESDAY 25th JUNE 1980.

Morning: I get a message from Mrs Graham: she tells me she is worried about the behaviour of the sixth form. During the exams, the duties of the perfects had been taken over by what the school calls sub-perfects.

These are fourth years identified by the school as their high flyers who are likely to be sixth formers or "O" level candidates or possibly just stay out of prison. In theory they should have been stood down and the sixth formers returned to their duty stations several weeks ago. Naturally, they didn’t and equally naturally I turned a blind eye. Even Tracy Piner seems to have accepted that any attempt to get them to the sixth formers work would be a waste of time. I read Pat Graham’s message, screw it up and throw it away. It is far too late to worry about that now. It crosses my mind that we are not even wanted here anymore so Mrs G can take her edicts and....(Editors note. Cook's comments at this point are a little explicit and in the interests of making this blog accessible to the widest number of people, we have deleted them.)

Afternoon: Steve and Lee have arranged a sixth form versus staff cricket match for the end of next week.
We spend the day practising in Poulter Park. Steve’s plan to humiliate the staff at cricket is perfect except for the fact that only Lee, Ashok and Steve can play cricket. I can, if pushed manage to bowl a ball that most of the time will reach the wicket – most of the time.

Evening: We headed over to the Greyhound for a pre-match drink. Karen introduced us to her boyfriend, a pleasant enough lad called Dave. Unfortunately, Dave got less pleasant and more and more annoyed as the evening wore on and Mark monopolised Karen with a drunken and increasingly embittered monologue about Diane that threatened to cause everyone else to lose consciousness.

Dave was eventually forced to sequester Karen in another part of the pub in order to have any chance of speaking with her.



THURSDAY 26th JUNE 1980
Spent all day in the park getting bowled out by anyone who cared to throw a ball at me. I am hopeless at cricket and yet appear to be somewhere in the middle order for the batsmen. What does that say about our chances of winning? Perhaps Diane and Beverley can wear something provocative, it might distract the bowlers!

Editors note. Oddly enough this thought appeared to have crossed the minds of the Misses Simmons and Downham and referred to some time later in an online entry...

As for the cricket - Bev and I could not understand why when we were batting everyone was fielding behind the wicket keeper in the slips .... Later discovered why we got so may runs was due to the fact that we wore white skirts with our cream cricket jumpers and you could see right through the skirts to our knickers and our outlines left little to the imagination thanks to the late afternoon sun in Poulters Park! For years Bev and I had thought we were obviously gifted at a sport that was a real doddle - thinking thats why the men played it!!!!!! Diane Downham Popovic, April 30th 2008

Diane letting a googly slip between her legs - joke copyright Laurie Stone, 1980


FRIDAY 27th JUNE 1980 1980.
More cricket practice, our best batsman would appear to be Diane, apart from her habit of letting the ball slip past her offside stump. The few sixth formers not playing cricket had decided to play a game of strip the Nick Rowe who in turn was now playing a game of “where the fuck are my clothes?” But on the whole doesn't seem very good at it. Thank god it wasn't Stuart or by now we'ld have had half a dozen semi naked females screaming through the corridors.

At the end of the school day, we head for The Sun. We cram twenty-four tired happy and soon to be drunk pupils into a space designed for about eight. It's just as well that we are all good friends. The evening is riotous, glasses break and the floor is covered in beer, peanuts and Nick Rowe. (He makes one entry in his little notebook, which is never seen again. I think Stuart may have eaten it.)

Mark, who had walked down to the bar with me, vanished within seconds of Diane arriving. On the whole this may have been for the best. We all get very drunk and/or happy. There isn’t a lot of time left now…


Editors note. At the end of the entry for today we came across this curiosity. A rather obscure note about some of Gaynesford's would be artists. It is normally our policy to edit Cook's screeds for legibility and moreover to tone down his almost obsessive use of initial and acronyms. However, we feel this offers something of a zeitgeist of both the man and the moment and with the addition of footnotes have included it in its entirety.

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