And so, nearly a year after starting and 10 months since “I is for…” the journey continues with a trip that originally I wasn’t going to include on the blog.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term “Janners”, the definition is as follows:

janner. Proper noun. (UK, dated, slang) An English person born within ten miles of the sea. (UK, slang) Someone from Plymouth, (UK, slang) The accent and colloquialisms of such people used by the people of Plymouth.

I qualify as I attended Devonport High School for Boys between 1977 & 1980, and this weekend saw a reunion take place down in Plymouth.  Despite living in Plymouth on and off for 2 decades I haven’t actually been back there for 10 years – and only made occasional visits in the decade before that.  There are a variety of reasons for this, which I’m not going to go into in such august and delicate company.

Anyway, I wasn’t going to include the trip as J (the “real” J is planned for tomorrow) but on the first evening in Plymouth I really wanted to write down some things that had happened – and so, dear reader, you get inflicted with an extra blog entry of drivel!  To whet your appetite further, I can tell you that J (the second J) – N will be done over the next 2 weeks and will involve (hopefully) flights, cable-cars, swash-buckling, dinosaurs and undoubtedly some very annoying fellow travelers.  I know you can’t wait, so let’s get on.

Day One

So with some misgivings, a sense of excitement, an age-appropriate hoodie and enough books for 3 days, I head out into the early morning sunlight of Slough.  Misgivings? Many.  I’m off to spend some time with people that I haven’t seen for 37 years and none of them are from the group I used to spend time with.  So I’m not sure how things are going to go.  Apart from that, it’s a warm day even at 06:15 and the shorts are on ready for a good weekend.  I do, of course, forget the baseball cap and as a result I’m writing this with a decidedly red head.  Even the book is appropriate – Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev.  It’s about the difference in attitude between generations and will gel nicely with conversations that I have over the next 2 days.

All starts well with a hike to the bus stop.  I sit down, store the rucksack and reflect on the rather odd journey I’m taking today.  When planning this trip I found that the train ticket was wildly expensive (£50 more than the cost of the flight I’ll be taking tomorrow!).  Car hire was similar and so I fell back on coach travel.  However, to properly start that I have to get a bus to Heathrow.  So, 45 minutes after leaving home, I find myself heading in the wrong direction and become possibly the only person to travel to an airport in order to catch a coach.

For once the people on the bus with me aren’t annoying enough to entertain, so I alternate Turgenev with checking where I am and as a result realise that the bus could do the journey in about 15 minutes, but instead stops absolutely bloody everywhere.  I also discover that my luggage is, apparently, fair game for anyone else to move around for their own convenience.  An American couple join the bus and want to put their suitcases in the storage area, so just move my rucksack and shove it onto a shelf.  I, naturally, say nothing and sustain myself by glowering at them and then return to Turgenev.  Little did I know this would be the start of a trend.

So we arrive at the glittering emporium that is the Coach Station at Heathrow.  I join the small sea of people that are waiting for coaches and, like them, start to stare at the Departures Board which seems to enjoy showing little but “Wait in lounge”.  I wonder whether it’s like a kettle and watching it stops it from changing.  Despite my attempts to will it to change, it doesn’t so I settle down to wait for the coach.  In some ways this is very familiar – I did the journey from Plymouth to London by coach a lot in my teens and twenties and very little has changed about it.

And for some reason, this tune keeps running through my mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc6qFpbAgwM

 

..and that’s why sometimes I laugh softly to myself as I wait for the coach.

When the National Express coach finally arrives I’m a little disappointed that they don’t have trolley service on them any more – though it would have probably started me giggling, so it’s just as well they don’t.  However, the embarkation plan works.  As the time approaches, I lurk close to the doors and as soon as the coach is announced I’m off to ensure I get first in line.  And of course, I’m behind the people who already knew which bay the coach would be coming into and thwarted my cunning plan.  The next plan is to try and get the seats with some reasonable leg room, so having handed my rucksack to the driver I head inside.  Right at the back, conveniently directly opposite the coffin-like toilet I find the seats with the decent leg room and grab one, only to find that it might have leg room, but it certainly doesn’t have arse room.  This is going to be an uncomfortable journey – and unfortunately someone decides to sit beside me so a cramped seating position now becomes a decidedly painful one.  That’s OK though – it’s only a 5 hour journey.  One note here – while clearly I am wider than the normal passenger the pain is not solely my fault as after a couple of hours my traveling companion turns to me and says “These seats are a bit bloody tight aren’t they?”  He is considerably thinner than me, so I am somewhat comforted.  Comforted mentally but not physically – after half an hour I’m wondering what the best way to avoid DVT it.  I resist the temptation to look up symptoms as my mobile phone although I am regularly checking it as other people heading for the reunion are updating our Facebook group.  I’m momentarily distracted by the man in the seat in front of me who is very proud of the fact that he paid £2.40 for his ticket – so much so that he tells the people with him 4 times in 5 minutes.  I have the horrible feeling that he’s going to keep going for the next 5 hours.  Luckily his batteries run down and he keeps mercifully quiet.

As we head down the motorway, I dip in and out of Turgenev in the same way people dip in and out of a jar of Nutella.  No, sorry, that just doesn’t work.  We all know what happens with Nutella.  The first slice of toast gets covered with a thick layer of brown deliciousness, flecked with the occasional sliver of yellow from the butter underneath.  The second comes about five minutes later and this time the Nutella is roughly knifed on in peaks.  For the third we barely wait for the bread to be fully toasted before covering it in Nutella and for the fourth we use our fingers to smear Nutella onto barely warm bread before gobbling it down, leaving ourselves with chocolate-smeared hands, face and (bizarrely) elbows like some avant-garde performance artist demonstrating his piece called “Secret Shame”.

Which explains why I never buy Nutella.

Anyway, I dip in and out of Turgenev in the same way people dip in and out of … fuck it, provide your own simile.  Let’s just say the book isn’t gripping and isn’t helped by the extreme discomfort of the seat.  I am distracted a little early on as I look up and see us sweeping majestically past the hotel at the end of my road.  I check my watch and, yes, it’s just gone 9 o’clock and 3 hours since I left home I have gone nearly 400 yards.  The journey gets lengthened near Reading when, for no reason I can divine, the driver turns off the motorway and heads down to a Park and Ride area where he stops the coach for about 12.7 seconds before heading back again.  The main reason for doing this appears to be the chance for us to sit in a traffic queue before we get back onto the motorway.  The man beside me turns to me and says “That seemed a bit pointless” and I have to agree with him — though the reason becomes clear on my return journey.

Apart from this brief interlude and the increasing pain in my arse and thighs, the journey is relatively uneventful.  We seem to have a set of very low tolerance drivers because we change drivers twice.  I’m sure drivers used to just drive the whole journey and wonder if it’s some health and safety legislation (it isn’t, as I find out on the return journey).  We get a break at Tiverton Parkway and while I normally begrudge the stop as it delays the journey, I’m desperate to stretch my legs.  But before we get off, we get the rules:

• 20 minutes only.  There will be a headcount taken and we will leave people behind if they are late
• Do not bring hot food onto the coach
• We can bring hot drinks on but only if they have lids on

I’m now wondering what the problem with hot food is?  What if the food is warm?  How about food that was hot, but has now cooled down?  Does the lid on the hot drink have to fit?  I am full of questions that I wisely do not ask the driver as he fixes with me with a baleful eye and I head off to buy cold food and a cold drink (because it’s still really warm here, not because I want to avoid testing the boundaries).

I give up on Turgenev and have a chat with the man next to me.  He’s also heading to Plymouth for a reunion – he served there in 1962 and is meeting up with a group of ex-servicemen and women.  We both have a good moan about the price of beer and I help him with the location of his hotel — somewhat marred by the fact that the Coach Station in Plymouth has moved since I went there last so I give him some massively bad advice.

Luckily I spot this error as we approach and I correct myself.  The coach station is now located just off Western Approach and as we approach it is clear that Plymouth is welcoming us in the best way it knows – to absolutely piss down with rain.  The Coach Station exterior has been designed with an eye to form and nothing to do with function.  It looks trendy and interesting but provides absolutely no protection against sun or rain.

The whole area is on a hill so when it rains heavily (like now) a lovely river runs across it — which is where some prat has decided to deposit my rucksack.  As I’m last off the bus, it’s completely soaked – and in about 10 seconds, so am I.  I dart for the lack of shelter provided by the structure (it looks far more effective than it actually is) and get the age-appropriate hoodie out of the pack.  Slip it on, hood up and head out for the guest house.

I head off to Citadel Road and the George Guest House.  It’s wet and bloody cold and I wonder what the hell is going on — I thought it was meant to be warmer down here!  By the time I get there, I’m soaked and it’s a relief to get into the room that I’ll be staying in for 2 days.  I’m right on the Hoe, so I’m looking forward to a good view up to the War Memorial.  Instead I have a lovely view of the backs of some houses with the Guildhall in the distance.  My room is clearly in what used to be the attic, so I can only stand upright in half of it.  This promises to give exciting opportunities for smashing my head open.  But it’s clean and I make myself a coffee before putting on some dry clothes and heading out for the first element of the reunion – a trip around the old school.

I’m due there at 16:00, so naturally I give myself an hour to complete a journey that will take about 20 minutes.  On the way, I take a quick trip down memory lane and stop by one of the places I used to live.

Yup, 45 years on and it’s still a dump.  As I get closer to the school it starts to drizzle, but I want to try and get a photo from across the playing fields.  As I try to find a spot, but am thwarted by the trees that have grown up since I went here, I see another man who seems to be doing much the same.  I suspect that he may be one of the people I’m here to meet – so typically I don’t go and say hello but head on to the school.  I get in there at 15:30 and he joins me a few minutes afterwards – so Stu Evans and I become the first people to get to the reunion.  (Bizarrely, we later realise that he and I live within 10 miles of each other).

Over the next 45 minutes there is a steady stream of people arriving.  It’s weird.  People walk in and I look at them and there is something about their face that is familiar.  A few I can put names to but most have to give their names.  We soon get over the embarrassment of asking and very quickly the Conference Centre is full of the sounds of chatter and laughter.  It starts what is to be quite a strange feeling across the next couple of days – it’s not sad, it’s not maudlin (except for Dave May’s poetry!), it’s not depressing, it’s happy but tinged with a bit of regret.  Part of that regret is undoubtedly for the time that has passed – but it doesn’t feel bad.  Instead it’s exciting to find out what people did and what they are doing now.  I find it quite jarring when I find that 4 people here joined the police after school and have all retired after 30 years in a job that I am still doing — and hell that really makes me feel old!

The journey around the school is fascinating.  Since we were there it has increased in size and taken over buildings that used to be used by another school.  So initially we’re all in unfamiliar territory.  But as we go on we head into areas that are familiar and we all get into conversations about which rooms we used to use for what subjects and realise that after 40 years some things are exactly the same.  The colonnade is exactly how I remember it.

But I’ve got a mission while I’m here.  I was never sporty at school and so haven’t got the memories that a lot of the guys have – or the team photographs that have been shared over Facebook in the last few weeks.  I only did one thing while I was at school that should have been recorded – and I don’t know if it was.  I’ve meant to come back to school to find out multiple times since I left but never have – so now the time has finally come.  Typically, the Honour Board I’m looking for isn’t with the rest of them in the Sixth Form Centre, but there in the School Theatre is the proof that I did go to this school and that I got one thing right:

I know it’s stupid, I know it doesn’t make any difference — but hell it matters to me!  (If you want to know about small things mattering, just ask Tim Hoy about Prefects.  Ask, then prepare to be talking for a long time.  You may need a drink.)

The guy showing us around is justifiably very proud of the school and is very patient with us.  The Sports Hall is amazing as well as the Learning Commons  (you and I would call it a library, but a previous head apparently thought it somewhere people could “graze” for knowledge.  Damn good job I didn’t meet him or there would have been a good deal of mocking!).  By the time we finish we’ve been there for 2 hours, the caretaker is very keen on us going and we head off to our next stop – the Walrus pub.

The Walrus has clearly been selected due to its ambiance rather than the fact that it’s right beside the restaurant.  Wait sorry I meant that the Walrus has clearly been selected due to its proximity to the restaurant rather than its ambiance.  It’s always nice to walk into a pub where the glare of the barman and the regulars makes it perfectly clear that they do not welcome strangers here.  Because its a local pub.  For local people.  The barman was clearly efficiently and effectively trained at the local undertaker school and is one of the few people I have ever met that allow me to use the word “lugubrious”.  He was joined by someone who looked remarkably like Rolf Harris and being children of the 1970’s we left rapidly.

The evening carried on with our dinner at Everest Spice – http://www.everestspiceplymouth.uk/.  A very nice meal and I can thoroughly recommend it.  Unless you’re sharing the room with 24 people on a school reunion which means you will be crammed against a wall and have to suffer a rendition of the School Song.  If you go there, try the Lamb Kathmandu.  It’s excellent.  Unlike the rendition of the school song.

The evening finished at The Bank – a slightly more up-market pub than the Walrus. Not difficult.  Sitting on a kerb drinking Stella would be more up-market than the Walrus.  Plans are made for tomorrow.  We have our formal reunion in the evening, but a group is heading out to the Plume and Feathers and Dave Ware offers me a lift.  So with plans made, I head back to the George.

Day Two

I’m in the only B&B on the planet that doesn’t do breakfast.  I sleep fitfully – nothing to do with the alcohol obviously, and I’m up by 08:00 to start exploring Plymouth.  It’s sunny so the shorts are back on though it’s still chilly enough for me to put the hoodie on from time to time.  As I’m right beside the Hoe, that’s where I head – and it’s as fantastic as I remember.  As I head up to the Hoe, the familiar shape of the War Memorial rises in front of me.

I head past the memorial to the statue of Sir Francis Drake and then across to Smeaton’s Tower.

The Hoe has a ton of memories for me and, as an extra bonus, a couple of geocaches as well – so I tag them while I’m here.  After a good wander around here I decide to head into town and grab some breakfast.  As I’m in the West Country it seems only right to grab a local delicacy so I pick something low calorie and carbohydrate free.

The particular one if provided by the Oggy Oggy Pasty Company who claim to serve “Pasties to Shout About!”  I will happily shout about the pasty I had.  Half of it was empty.  The other half was well filled, but seemed to have no seasoning whatsoever.  The meat was cooked to a temperature similar to the surface of the sun and as a result I still have a burnt tongue.  The main taste was that of the pastry – which was burnt.  2 out of 10.

After my disappointing pasty, I continued my exploration of the centre of Plymouth.

Some things are new like this statue outside St Andrews Church, some are old like this place:

This used to be the Drake Cinema and is the place where I saw Star Wars (the original one!).  Quite sad to see it this way.  But not quite as sad as when it becomes clear that Dave Ware has forgotten his promise from last night and I am left to fend for myself.  Which actually isn’t a huge problem.  I spend several hours wandering around Plymouth, taking in the Barbican, Sutton Harbour and the University campus.  It’s a really interesting day.  The Barbican is in the middle of Pirate Weekend which seems to be an excuse for children to hit each other with plastic swords and for people to play the Pirates of the Caribbean theme at high volume.  But the Barbican itself is still charming with its’ narrow cobbled streets.  Some things have been let go – the Plymouth Mural is now a sad remnant of what it used to be.

Other places were always there, but I had never found them before now.  I walked past the strangely named “Drake’s Place” for years without knowing it was there but it has now been turned into a very attractive park.

And some things are new.  The University campus is completely new and really well put together and there are signs of new builds that are appearing everywhere – and some buildings here are quite striking.

Walking down the streets behind the Hoe, the whole place gives a feeling of shabbiness.  It looks exactly the same as it did when I lived here and doesn’t seem to deserve the sobriquet of “Britain’s Ocean City” that is on all the tourist signs.  But all the guest houses are full, so clearly something is working.  I want to get a photo looking down Armada Way as you used to be able to get a clear shot from the War Memorial right to the other end of the shopping centre – but the trees have now grown up and obscure it.  Annoying to photograph but actually is great for the town as it breaks up the buildings in a very pleasant way.  My feelings about coming back here were mixed but as I explore old stamping grounds I fall in love with Plymouth all over again.

And so on to the final event in a function room of Porters in Looe Street.  Twenty or so people in their 50’s all drinking (well most of us drinking).  What could possibly go wrong?  Luckily nothing does.  It is a really good evening renewing old friendships and hopefully making some new ones.  There is obviously a lot of nostalgia and a huge amount of laughter – and of course a final rendition of the school song (there is a video of it, but I won’t inflict that on you).  We end up at gone midnight eating a greasy burger on the Barbican and then go our separate ways.

It’s an odd feeling.  Do we wish we were all 18 again?  I’m sure we do but more than that what I got was a sense of accomplishment, of maturity and of people who had done some amazing things.  Some of the guys have traveled huge distances to get here – Australia, New Zealand, California.  One even had to get permission to leave Liverpool to attend.  On the previous night Paul Woods had asked me if I would change anything about my life.  On the whole, I have to say that I wouldn’t and that’s the sense I get from everyone here.  My only regret is that I didn’t get to see their stories as they developed rather than having such a huge gap in the middle.  We have all promised to keep in contact and meet up again – I hope we do.

Day Three

Blazing sunshine again and it actually feels warm today as well.  I have a lot of mixed feelings this morning which is a mixture of reaction to last night and the looming fear of a painful journey home.  I sit in Costa coffee drinking a remarkably bland cappuccino and posting on the reunion forum.  As I do, I can’t get “Prorsum Semper Honeste” out of my head and at one point I realise I’m humming it quite loudly.

Leaving before people complain, I head towards the Coach Station, pausing to snap a picture of the sundial…which is wrong by an hour.

As Graham Prisk sets up a WhatsApp group for us I make a half-hearted attempt to get the coach driver to fake a breakdown on the M4 and thus shorten my journey by 3 hours.  He doesn’t go for it.  At least this time I’m alone in my double seat, so I have a pleasant journey back buoyed up by memories of a great weekend and by my current book: The Ring of Thoth by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  It’s a book of short stories and it gets finished before I get home.

So J is for Janners is done.  The “real” J awaits.