I’m not sure if this was exactly 50 years ago, but the photograph dates from around that time. One clue is that I have lost the beard (it was never a very good beard) I had in the earlier part of the year. Three months earlier I had left University and moved down to London to be with Isobel. We still came back up to Halifax every other weekend or so, and this photograph (an early selfie) will have been taken during one of those visits.
In June 1973 I left University at Keele and moved down to London to be with Isobel who was living in Wimbledon. I got a job at the old Merton Park Film Studios lugging cans of film around and assisting the chap who operated the rain machine. It was just around the corner from the equally old Wimbledon Palais, which I would pass twice daily.
August 1973 : I was made redundant at Merton Park Studios after a couple of months but by then I had found a new job at County Hall, then the headquarters of the Greater London Council and the Inner London Education Authority. My job was a somewhat strange one: part of the time I was the Committee Clerk for the Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (whose wonderful acronym was SACRE), the rest of the time I was responsible for planning the evacuation of London schoolchildren in the event of tidal flooding of the River Thames. 50 years ago this week I would have been anxiously watching river levels and offering up a prayer for dry weather!
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