DO YOU LIKE PILCHARDS?

On the first day of the first term Mick and I were walking down Manchester’s Oxford Road back to Owens Park, having discovered we were in the same hall of residence.  I’d never got the required A Level grades, but the Cavalry had somehow persuaded the faculty that I’d make a good student, and Mick had got in through clearing.

Arriving at Owens Park, he asked me up to his room, which was a couple of floors up in the same block as mine.

“Do you like pilchards?” he asked.

“Uh….yes….thanks,” I said.

An hour earlier we’d been at student registration for the Manchester University Drama Dept.  A group of about 25 in the year, which would later reduce to 18 as people changed their minds, transferred to another course or, in the case of a couple of them, were carted off by the police for drug offences, with one of them, as I remember, actually being arrested during a tutorial!  

The head of department was running through our names; some of us, who hadn’t spent years retaking A Levels or grown up touring with a rock group, replied “Yes, sir” as though still at school.  Towards the end he looked up from his clipboard at a big, round-faced student. 

“Who are you?”

“Bogdan Pilecki.  It’s Polish,” he clarified.  (Pilecki is pronounced Piletski).  “Call me Bog, everybody else does.”

“Well….er, Bog….you don’t seem to be on the list…”

“No, I won’t be.  I’m meant to be in Hull.…”

“???”

“….But I’d like to come here because my friend, Pavel, is here in another department.” (Pavel is pronounced Pawo).

“I don’t know what to do about this.  Um….Can you stick around for a bit?”

Which is exactly what he did - for three years - at the end of which he got his degree.

Times were different then….

Mick handed me my pilchards on toast.

“I want to be an actor,” he said.

Yeh, me too,” I said.

“I’ve got a girlfriend, but I don’t think she likes me much”, he said.

“Yeh, I’m a bit in that position,” said I.

“I do music,” said he.  (Is this reading a bit like Dickens?, ask I)

“Yeh, me too,” said I.

“With a school friend, Allan, we write songs together.”

“Well….Me too.”  It was beginning to feel like talking to myself.  “My friend’s called Jeremy.”

So, friendship.  Little did we know that this was the start of a collaboration as actors, musicians and writers that would last for, well, forever…. 

By the way, you’ll be wondering what we were wearing (it was that period, after all).  I was in my usual - jeans, shirt, tennis shoes, and a dinner jacket.  The jacket was my attempt at sartorial originality and had served me well for a couple of years at least.  My Dad had once remarked as I left for work at a building site one morning, “You must be the only site worker in the country who goes to work in evening dress.”

Mick was similarly dressed except for his fireman’s jacket.  It was fabulous - deep, deep blue, almost black, collarless with two rows of silver buttons.  Over the course of our time in Manchester, I took it to wear so often that he finally gave it to me.  Fireman’s jackets have been in and out of fashion several times since then - right now I’m waiting for trends to change again.

I still basically dress like a cowboy.   Mick too, though he has much more interesting shoes.