A tale of appendicitis and a stay in hospital followed, in short order, by a reoccurrence of the same and an emergency appendectomy and my appendectomy recovery time. Also, drinking, studying, footballing and no little philosophising.
Saturday 7 October 1989
Well, here we go again! It was back to Liverpool to begin my second year at university.
In a slight variation on my first year, today Dad took me in one trip; there was no separate train ride for me and my stuff a week later. We would travel up the A49 from Shrewsbury, through Whitchurch before turning off just after Cuddington and heading off through the apparent maze of roads that made up Runcorn.
After the Runcorn Bridge, it was an easy drive through Speke, on into the leafy suburb of Allerton and thence to our house on the edge of Toxteth. 29 Gresford Avenue, L17 2AN, to be precise.
This was to be quite a year, and it started with me and five of my friends moving into this house after spending the first year in halls. I am guessing that most, if not all, of us, arrived throughout the course of this Saturday in early autumn before going out for an almighty session on the ale. We were, of course, young men of the world… and that’s what young men of the world did…
Friday 13 October 1989
Well, between you and me, this week must have flown by in such a whirl because this was the first entry since Saturday 7 October.
Today’s entry was by way of comment on the date, like er… Friday 13 October… and a note to the effect that I had withdrawn £50, of which £30 was spent on books, £10 on drinks and the weekend, with a further £10 put into our household kitty.
I can’t be bothered looking up the relevant stats, but back in the day, we had £60 weekly to spend on household necessities, like cheese, bread, frozen chips, tea, coffee, sugar, milk and the like. I think that we did alright thank you very much.
Our rent was £79 per calendar month, each. Sorry, but there was no reduction for the box room ?
Sunday 29 October 1989
A dark day today. Well, a darker end to the afternoon at any rate, as British Summer Time ended at two o’clock this morning.
In other news, my friend and I went to Anfield to witness a 1-0 win over a dogged Spurs side. John Barnes’ twenty-fifth-minute goal was the difference. By crikey, he was some player.
Monday 30 October 1989
Ouch! And again OUCH!
I woke up this morning with bad stomach pains. I had registered with the University doctors so off I traipsed. I then traipsed back again having been told that there was nothing wrong. Just give it time…
And food, thought I. So, I had the mother of all fry-ups when it was offered at teatime. The thing was though, this hearty eating nonsense had no effect whatsoever on my symptoms.
If anything, I felt worse… cold and shivery… slept with the electric bar heater on… very dangerous… rambling now…
(Was that suitably stoic or in the style of Scott?)
Tuesday 31 October 1989
And so, having avoided burning down the house, I woke this morning with worse pains than before.
This time, I was taken seriously by the University GP and swiftly dispatched (ok, asked to walk around) to the Royal Liverpool Hospital. At least they gave me a letter of introduction, so that was ok then.
Anyway, I digress (you may have noticed). The diagnosis was suspected appendicitis. Have a couple of days in hospital under observation and we’ll see what happens…
Well, at least I was in the right place if anything was going to go wrong…
But something had gone wrong already. I had a ticket to go for Ben Elton’s standup gig at the Liverpool Empire this evening… bugger, they’ll not let me out of here to watch that.
So, I suppose it was decent of all my mates to come round and see me, on the way to the gig. At least the lad who had benefited from my misfortune had the decency to look sheepish. (I sort of owed him one from the summer term previously, so I suppose karma had revealed her beautiful symmetry.)
The surprises hadn’t finished, no siree! The Mater and Pater made the journey from Shropshire to come and see their eldest and good on ’em! The nursing staff were brilliant and even allowed them to come in after visiting hours, given how far they had travelled.
Wednesday 1 November 1989
My diary entry for today is short and to the point, “In hospital.”
Truth be known, I was feeling a whole lot better. Very hungry, but much better. And I was called stoic by the doctor on his round. He was being a sarky twat, but at least it played to my Scott pretensions!
Thursday 2 November 1989
Well, well. I was discharged this morning.
Obviously, the policy of just keeping me in and starving me had worked. I felt OK, but extremely hungry, having not eaten since that fry-up on Monday night.
Upon my return home, I was greeted by a cold, quiet house. The other two engineers had gone out. One of the lawyers had gone out too. The other two lawyers were still asleep.
The day petered out without further interest although being a Thursday… in 1989… we would have watched Top of the Pops… as I said, the day petered out.
Now, I can’t remember this, but research reveals that the show was introduced by Anthea Turner with Andy Crane. It featured such acts as Milli Vanilli, Mixmaster and “(insert expletive or expletives of your choice)” Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers. Proof, if ‘twere needed that pop music in general and ToTP in particular were beginning to lose their appeal to me.
Friday 3 November 1989
So, having been released yesterday, I thought it only right that I went into lectures today.
Truth be known, I was always a sucker for a good old dose of sympathy. The doctor obviously knew me far better than I gave him credit.
Saturday 4 November 1989
Back into the routine properly now as I made my way over to Anfield to see Cyrille Regis score the only goal as Coventry City celebrated their first-ever away win over Liverpool.
Sunday 5 November 1989
Another short diary piece here. However, the story behind it is long and let’s not be coy, quite negative. You might even say bitchy.
So, the entry, “Bollocks to you! Everton lost 6-2 vs Villa.”
And now for the story behind it… well, in our house of six souls, we were grouped thus:
Three of us, including me, were Civil Engineers – see boring (an old Yellow Pages joke…). The other three were Lawyers. I got on perfectly well with everybody most of the time.
However, in the grand scheme of things, such groups always have a pecking order. I sat somewhere in the middle. Not the leader of the pack, but not a sheep-like follower. I would occasionally defer, but never with good grace, and I could never defer to this character.
Anyway, he was an Evertonian whilst I support Liverpool. The two teams had been going neck and neck in the mid- to late-eighties. Of course, he gloated over Liverpool’s 0-1 reversal to Coventry City from yesterday. I let him have it back with both barrels following Aston Villa’s fine win over the Blues.
Monday 6 November 1989
If you have studied my 1986 diary in any great detail, as you would, then you will know that my life at the time revolved around two things.
The first is the avoidance of doing any school/college (and by extension, university) work until absolutely necessary. The second, is football. This diary entry encapsulates me in around eight words.
“Went to lecture – ok. Went for a game of football.”
Of course, at this age, you could add drinking into the equation, for that, there’s always tomorrow.
Tuesday 7 November 1989
Tonight, we went out for a drink. I didn’t have much – it was a school night.
Innocent words, but probably worth taking notice of as the usual thing was to go out and get bladdered. I put this down to a few things, not least, and you need to bear with me here, the exuberance of youth. You might well ask, ‘Why not do something constructive to utilise this exuberance?’ Well, that’s where football came in.
I used alcohol to enhance a vital commodity – confidence. In this situation, it was Dutch courage rather than confidence. But, of course, it was transitory, illusory – I often felt ‘happy in the hour of a drunken haze.’ Misery* soon reverted.
I was a bright lad, with a slew of O Levels and a clutch of A Levels, studying for a degree. Why would I need Dutch courage? It’s a long story, best not to bore you with it here.
But tonight, it was clearly not required, hence my comment.
*It was hardly misery. But so that I can crowbar Morrisey in here…
Wednesday 8 November 1989
Another short entry, grief I was good at this wasn’t I? (Rhetorical!)
After a hard day at it, studying was such hard work, tonight we stayed in a watched the boxing. I made no note at the time regarding who it was, but the tiniest amount of internet research has revealed to me that we must have watched highlights (we may even have watched live) from a couple of bouts from Wembley’s Grand Hall.
The top of the bill was Dave ‘Boy’ McAuley’s split decision victory over his challenger for the IBF flyweight title, Filipino Dodie Boy Penalosa. Also on the bill was Duke McKenzie, from whom, McAuley had won his title five months earlier.
Thursday 9 November 1989
This entry forms the last one for a while. Again, it’s short, pithy and I think bang on the money. Of course, there’s a story to go with it, so let’s just quote the entry, then I’ll share…
“Some bastard nicked my bike!”
What’s not to comment on, eh? I was a student from Shropshire, studying in Liverpool. It could have been any other large city, but I had chosen Liverpool. Before starting at university just over a year ago, I had lived a most sheltered existence.
I was as naive as could be. I was also quite materialistic in my outlook on life. This combination then, of my naivety and materialism, led me to chain up my brand-new bike to some railings outside the entrance to the Civil Engineering Department on this Thursday morning.
I attended my Thursday morning lectures, then headed off to the pub for a liquid lunch, after which I rolled back for the afternoon’s lecture. Having imbibed I was more than a little obfuscated when I saw a gap in the railings between a couple of other bikes where mine had been previously. My bike was there, wasn’t it? Hang on, does this mean that someone has nicked it? If so, how so… I chained it up.
Of course, the mystery was soon solved. The chattering classes were in the common room and of course, they had seen a white van pull up. Out jumped two blokes, equipped with bolt cutters and… well, you can work out the rest.
I remember the interview with the policeman at the station when I reported it missing. He didn’t say it, but the inference and his body language were, ‘Why did you bring a brand-new bike into the city and expect to keep it for more than a couple of weeks you thick yokel?!’
Sunday 26 November 1989
Not a diary entry as such. Just a note to the effect that I attended Liverpool versus Arsenal at Anfield.
This was the first league meeting of the teams since Arsenal had won 2-0 at Anfield to win the League Title at the end of the previous season.
On this occasion though, goals from Steve McMahon and John Barnes were enough to see off the challenge from North London. Alan Smith scored the Arsenal goal.
Wednesday 29 November 1989
Another football reference. However, this was an altogether more poignant one than the one previous.
This evening, Liverpool travelled to Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough Stadium for the first time since 15 April 1989. Before the game, which Liverpool lost 2-0, Alan Hansen and Chris Turner laid wreaths at Leppings Lane, where the tragedy had occurred.
Saturday 2 December 1989
More football! I must have been working really hard on my studies since there are no actual accounts of what happened on any given day. However, the football dates are there, etched in some crappy biro or other.
Anyway, today was that rarest of things, an away game! Today being my friend’s birthday, he had suggested that he and I take the short trip across to Maine Road to watch our heroes playing Manchester City.
It was an excellent decision. City were struggling but had earlier in the season enjoyed a 5-1 win over their arch-rivals United. They must have been pumped for this game. However, Andy Dibble aside, they were no match for a Liverpool side, keen on making up for their understandably poor performance on Wednesday night.
A 4-1 thumping ensued with goals from Ian Rush, Peter Beardsley and Steve McMahon being answered from the penalty spot by Clive Allen before Rush grabbed his second with two minutes remaining.
And then, back to Liverpool for an almighty session on the ale. A session which saw me getting phenomenally ill. The thing is, I don’t recall having drunk all that much. (They all say that don’t they…?)
I do remember being stood outside a kebab house waiting not only for my mates to come out with their greasy, spicy prizes but also for the poison in my stomach to come out onto the pavement.
Saturday 9 December 1989
Getting close to the end of term now. I remember that in the third year of our course, there was this big Birmingham lad who really didn’t like me.
Being a second-year myself, I tried my best to void all contact with him, and it wasn’t that hard, but when our paths did cross, he was obnoxious in the extreme towards me. I don’t know why; I must’ve just had one of those faces!
Anyway, he was a Villa fan and made his dislike of Scousers in general, and non-Scouse Liverpool fans in particular, very clear for all to see… In the run-up to today’s game at Anfield, he’d been up to his old tricks. Giving it loads – the usual nonsense. One of his tricks was to sneak up behind me and nick my glasses. Something that used to annoy me intensely.
But enough of all that, the game passed off as a 1-1 draw, with Peter Beardsley’s sixty-fourth-minute effort cancelling out Ian Olney’s first-half opener.
Wednesday 13 December 1989
Another extremely short note in my diary, “Get drunk tonight.”
Note that it’s not even written in the past tense. It was an intention, or a prediction if you will.
Secret: I was twenty today, so that’s why I wrote it.
Unfortunately, I have no recollection of whether I did actually get drunk or not; if so, how drunk etc, which means I probably did, doesn’t it?!
Saturday 16 December 1989
So that was that.
Second year. First term. Over.
Dad came to pick me up in the early afternoon and we were off. I was again going to swap the high life in the big city for a much lower-paced existence in the countryside for a month.
We set off, out of Liverpool past Allerton Cemetery, on towards Speke Boulevard and further onwards over the Runcorn Bridge. Then out along the A533, (a maze by any estimation apart from Dad’s) to the A49 at the Tall Trees Filling Station.
As we drove through Whitchurch on the A49 we had the football on the radio. Back in the day, there was no Radio 5. So, we were tuned to Sport on 2 on the medium wave.
There was some game going on as we drove. Liverpool were playing Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and it was one of those games in which, back in the day, the Reds would stand toe to toe with anybody, trading goals. And more to the point, generally finish the game having scored more.
Today’s scoreline was Chelsea 2-5 Liverpool. Beardsley and Rush had made it two within five minutes before Gordon Durie halved the deficit on twelve minutes. Ray Houghton made it 1-3 after twenty-three minutes and there were no more goals until Steve McMahon grabbed Liverpool’s fourth on fifty-one minutes – four minutes after Dave Beasant had made yet another penalty save against Liverpool. Jan Molby denied this time.
Rush made it five with his second as 11 minutes remained, and Chelsea’s great goal-getter Kerry Dixon finished the scoring in the penultimate minute.
And that really was that. I was home and ready for the Christmas festivities to commence…
Sunday 17 December 1989
Aaaaahhhhh! First day of the Christmas Holidays.
What did I do today? Well, I chose to start my day with an important job that I had been putting off for a while now. Today I ensconced myself in the bathroom with my Rotring pen set so that I could clean it.
Whoo hooo! I knew how to live. No, I really did. I had a four-pen set, with nibs of 0.25, 0.35, 0.50 & 0.70mm. Back in the day, a Civil Engineering degree course meant that there was a certain amount of draughting to be done. Anything on a drawing board that required a straight line – I was competent in the extreme. Start involving curves and I was done in.
Cleaning the set was, in fact, great fun … no, go with me on this. First, take the cartridge out and wash out the nib section with cold water. Once the water ran clear you could introduce a little Fairy (liquid) to give it a proper wash. Then… ok, ok, I’ll stop.
In the afternoon, I settled down to watch the football. I needn’t have bothered. In his first game in charge of Manchester City, Howard Kendall took his new team to face his old team at Goodison. There were no goals.
Monday 18 December 1989
I woke up (or was woken) this morning with a familiar stabbing sensation in my right side.
Struggling to the parents’ bedroom I managed to let them know that the old trouble had reoccurred. It wasn’t that early, so they got up and I crawled into their bed. Within half an hour the doctor had been called and I was lying on my left-hand side, knees up to my chin… well, you fill in the rest.
I was whisked off to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and admitted to a surgical ward. I had miraculously scored a small side ward off the main ward. Good job too as I proceeded to produce some rather interesting green stuff from deep within. I spent the day in a haze, in equal parts moaning with pain, sleeping, throwing up and feeling hungry.
By 5:30 pm they were ready to operate, and I was wheeled down to theatre. I remember being in the anaesthetist’s room, waiting to go and Steve Wright was on the radio. He was still on Radio 1 at this time, so I guess that the anaesthetist thought he was pretty with it, playing Radio 1 in his room. (Or he might have liked listening to it?)
Anyway, he challenged me to count to ten as he introduced the drugs into my system. I think that I got to three…
Relieved of my appendix, I spent the night drifting in and out of consciousness, receiving an injection in the buttock. Also, something that I remember vividly, I was aware that the drip, which was supposed to be delivering stuff into me, was slowly turning red as my blood moved in the opposite direction.
Tuesday 19 – Friday 22 December 1989
On Tuesday morning, I woke up in my little room feeling like shit.
My side hurt still, but in a different place and I was wired up to some machine or other. I felt like an army of woodland creatures had been in to use my mouth as a toilet and I had the mother of all headaches.
But, out of the window, Christmas time looked lovely. The hill in the distance was a stark silhouette as I woke, but as the day slowly dawned it began to sparkle with a beauty only December can produce.
There was more gorgeousness in the world inside the hospital in the shape of a student nurse. She was peachy. Of course, me being me, I didn’t even find out her name, much less ask her about the possibility of a date for when I got out of there… ☹
Anyway, over the course of the next few days, I slowly recovered. Visits from family helped of course. One incident sticks in my mind. My cousin asked to see my wound. Now having shown it to her, I know that she had expected to see a brown sticking plaster type thing covering the wound site. In reality, she saw a wound covered by a clear slicking plaster. This was, I presume, to allow any medical professional to see how things were going at a glance.
By Thursday, they had kicked me out of my cosy little side ward and onto the main ward. I was feeling a lot better by then, so this wasn’t a problem. Truth be known, it gave me the chance to meet some other people. Well, I say meet other people, in fact it was more like allowing me to be on nodding terms with them.
I was now able to move around the ward, going into the television room and stuff like that. All the time leaning over to my right-hand side ever so slightly…
Saturday 23 December 1989
So, today was the day. Home at last.
There was of course the small matter of removing my stitches first.
Accordingly, I lay on my bed, eyes shut tightly with that familiar lightheaded feeling as the nurse undid the surgeon’s fine piece of needlecraft. There, all done, you can go home now… Hooray!
When I got home, they had set up the living room, just for me. Well almost. We had a large portable reclining deck chair which had been moved into the room, right in front of the telly. This was a good thing.
The first thing that I watched was the delayed, live (that’s right, delayed, live) transmission of Liverpool versus Manchester United. This was another case of my condition having denied me the use of a ticket for an event that I had already bought and paid for.
Although this season I had a season ticket (thanks Dad), I had been up to Anfield some weeks previously and bought another ticket for my brother. The intention had been that he and I would attend the game.
In the event, he went with his mate, and I had to settle for this. I don’t know why ITV had to show it this way, it’s just that this was before the days of Sky Sports, so I’m guessing that someone in the FA was still working on their infamous blueprint which would revolutionise the distribution of wealth within that game. I mean herald the introduction of the Premier League…
In the event, the game was a goalless draw. Liverpool stayed with Arsenal at the top of the table while United remained in mid-table mediocrity. That’s just how it was back then.
Monday 25 December 1989 Christmas Day
So, the big day was here and a week on from my appendectomy I was feeling much better.
Of course, I had only just had a relatively complex surgery, so I wasn’t firing on all cylinders.
One cylinder was working though. As a result, I had to go out for a walk on Christmas night so I could… well you catch my drift. But then I suppose that the fear of people catching my drift was the reason that I went out for a walk in the first place.
Anyway, enough of my graphically trying to avoid being graphic about, let’s not be coy, farting. I was still leaning over to the right so I avoided stretching my wound site. There would come a time in the next few days when I would have to bite the bullet and stand up straight. But not tonight…