A day in the life of a student: Thursday, 11th. March 1976

Despite the student grant providing for necessities only I found myself buying two weekly papers. I always remember the NME – New Musical Express – essential reading for many years to keep up with everything on the music scene. I often managed to complete the crossword – the only crossword I remember having a go at in those days.

I had almost forgotten the other weekly – The Listener. I have fond memories of that paper and I wish it was still around today. A BBC weekly that focussed mainly on politics, history and the arts, with writers like George Orwell, Sylvia Plath, Bertrand Russell, T.S.Eliot and George Bernard Shaw. It was like reading Radio 4, my constant companion now but not in the 1970’s. My wireless listening was almost exclusively Radio 1 and John Peel.

The Listener was 15p and for context a pint of beer was 20p. I also occasionally bought HiFi for Pleasure – 30p – The Geographical (magazine, not be confused with the National Geographic) at 45p and now and again a Guardian at 10p.

Energy in Ecosystems & Infra-red Mapping

I was out of bed considerably earlier than was usual in those days – 0710 to be precise. Unusually I headed straight for the periodicals library at King’s College and read a paper in a Biogeography journal that proved very interesting – on various energy flows in ecosystems. I had no idea that I would be studying this subject again 25 years later for my Masters degree.

From there I was off to a Cartography lecture on remote sensing, specifically infra-red and satellite imagery. Again, I was not to know that in 2000 I would instigate and manage an aerial thermographic survey in London and go through the tortuous process of ‘bending’ images to appear as a layer on Ordnance Survey maps – on a computer screen. Those images enabled me to ‘see’ heat loss from buildings across the entire Borough of Southwark.

Mike Absalom Live at King’s

After bouncing around the LSE and Paddington I managed to get back to King’s for a band – Outrider. My diary notes that my flatmate had been excluded from the band – but not the reason. I am intrigued. Anyway, it seems they were ‘quite good’.

The main act was Mike Absalom, a folk and celtic music guitarist, harpist and poet who, I discovered some years later, was from Torquay! It would seem that I enjoyed his set and was not expecting the humour to be so prominent and so good.

His eponymous first album on Vertigo (1971) is available on Qobuz and Apple Music (and probably others) and I shall be lining it up to play later today. The song titles provide clues of his sense of humour, although sadly his song Save The Last Gherkin For Me is not available on any album so far as I know.

The only album that is available to stream has songs like Saga of Ernie Plugg’s Bust, Saga of Suzie Grapevine & Pusher Joe and Gaza Striptease. So, I guess you are as intrigued as I am and want to give them a listen now…

Postscript

Mike Absalom moved to British Columbia and in 1986 formed a celtic music band that I understand are quite popular – Mike Absalom & the Squid Jiggers. I would like to think that at age 85 he is still playing.