The 2016 reunion

The title of this blog is inspired by a comment by my late colleague Roger Duclaud-Williams, 'nostalgia ain't what it used to be.'   Psychologists warn us about the phenomenon of 'rosy recollections', so I have not simply portrayed my years studying for a PhD at Exeter  (1969/71) in a retrospective pink glow.

On August 7th 2016 my former fellow Exeter University PhD student and later Warwick colleague Annie Phizacklea drove across Leamington to collect me for a trip to Exeter for a reunion.  We talked continuously all the way to Exeter.   Annie dropped me off at the former eye hospital where she had once been a cleaner, now an up market hotel.  She went to her sister's and that evening we all went out to dinner.

From left to right: Terry, Annie, Bill, Wyn

The next day we took a taxi to a café in Fore Street, Topsham next to Annie's old flat.   Bill Tupman and Terry Rees (Dame Teresa Rees) were already there.   terry passed away in October 2023: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/oct/25/dame-teresa-rees-obituary  Bill and Annie passed away this year, as did Mike Hawkins who could not join us on that day., although he was able to come to my 70th birthday party.

Mike was a competitive weightlifter.   He was a very down to earth person with a good sense of humour who lightened up the day.   He lived in lodgings which were still available then.  A Physics postgraduate was also there whom I got to know and a typically sardonic school master from the boys selective school.  In his youth he had been a member of a pop group called the Classics who went round village halls in the Swindon area.   Turning up at one venue, one girl was heard to say 'Oh no, it's those ****ing Classics.'   Ian Gordon was a temporary lecturer at Exeter at this time and Mike later joined up with hm in a successful politcs team at Kingston.

Bill and Terry in conversation at the café

Terry and Bill on the Topsham Ferry

After coffee we walked to the Topsham Ferry and crossed the river.  Bill and Annie walked ahead and Terry and I walked together.   It was if it was not forty years since we had met.  We talked in the open and friendly way we always had.   Arriving at the Swan's Nest pub, where the decor and carpet seemed to be the same as in the 1970s, we were joined by a number of former staff members including my supervisor Jeff Stanyer.

Malcolm Shaw, still teaching at 90

How had this reunion come about?   In 2015 I was contacted out of the blue by Terry Rees who sent me a series of satires I had written about the Exeter department in 1969/71.  We then set about contacting our contemporaries with the idea of organising a reunion.  I had lost touch with Annie Phizacklea after she had retired early from Warwick and gone to live in Spain.   I managed to contact her by email and she said that she was in England and could come.

She did not say where she was in England, until a casual conversation with the late Bob Fine from Sociology, who was a neighbour, revealed that she was back in Leamington!   I asked her to meet me for coffee the next day at a Portuguese place in Regent Grove not too far from where she lived.  I was standing in the queue when I heard a 'boo' behind me and there was Annie.

Coffee with Annie

After the reunion, I cooked lunch for Annie on the following Sunday and we continued our conversation about times gone by and our lives since Exeter.  We then met regularly for lunch, sometimes at a restaurant, but quite often Annie would cook me a delicious vegetarian meal, sometimes letting me have fish.   I ferried her to and from Birmingham Airport when she went to her place in Spain and to various medical appointments when she developed cancer.   When I was in pain after a knee operation, Annie was round in ten minutes and cooked me a meal.

With Annie at a birthday lunch

First year at Exeter here: https://uniexeter6971.blogspot.com/2023/08/my-first-year-at-exeter.html