Beaumont Street: Nosher Leaves Home - October 1985-1986
The day Nosher left home, aged 18-and-a-bit. Mother, Andy (stepdad#1), Sis and my friend Liz (Wizzie) had dropped me off after the trip from near Bournemouth via the A35, M5 and A38. Nosher had some clothes, a box of emergency food, bedding, my old B&O stereo and my precious tape collection, a few other bits-and-pieces and a bag of 50p pieces for the electricity meter. That was it. An entire life in a box. It was kind of weird for a few minutes sitting on the bed in that room: suddenly contemplating the full effect of a transition from one life to the next (and a brief feeling of utter, crushing loneliness as the full import of the situation dawned). Luckily, it didn't last long, and Nosher ended up just getting on with it and massively enjoyed the next few years. Nosher had actually screwed up his A-Levels somewhat. There was a place at Aston University, who wanted BBA grades, but Nosher dossed around too much and got CCE, and so had gone back to do retakes at sixth-form. However, this proved mightily depressing as there was absolutely no-one left at college who Nosher knew. After a few weeks, and only about 3 weeks before the start of the uni term, he got so fed up so phoned around looking for alternatives. Plymouth offered a place on a Business Studies degree, so Nosher went down to have a look around 6 days before the start of term. He liked it, and so accepted. We (Nosher, mother, et al) then ended up in the accommodation office looking for somewhere for me to live. We bumped into a girl also looking for digs and ended up pitching in to rent the same house: 64 Beaumont Street, Milehouse, Plymouth. Milehouse was actually miles away from the Polytechnic, so Nosher was glad that he had a bike. Nosher'd never done anything like it before (sharing a house with a girl!), and she thought Nosher must have been some sort of mummy's boy to be hauling around campus with Mater in tow, but it all worked out pretty well. That is, until the situation whereby if Nosher lives with a girl long enough he will end up fancying her so much in a completely unrequited style kind of took over. It all became so heavy (at least in Nosher's own mind) that he had to move out. And so it was...
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These are cropped thumbnails. Click on an image to view the full photograph.
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Barbara Hunt and Malcolm Roweth, in the lounge at Beaumont Street |
Bee lobs a bottle of lemonade at Malc |
Whilst preparing for a party, we decide to turn Malc into a mummy, by using copious amount of pink bog-roll |
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In the kitchen. I can vividly remember the first ever time I had to go shopping for my own food. It was at Asda in Estover, and I had to be reminded to actually sign the cheque by the checkout girlie, such was the excitement |
Nosher gets a piggy-back from Malc in order to stick the crêpe-paper streamers we'd made onto the ceiling. To this day, I still can't get over how tragically square I looked... |
Bee sticks a balloon to her head |
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Bee and another of her Psych chums |
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Malc wanders through Beaumont Park |
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At the fairground up the road in Central Park |
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Sundeep "Frank" Sembi and Bee. Frank was a really cool bloke, who I later house-shared with (as well as Barbara, again) |
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The party continues |
One weekend, we'd been hanging around outside the house listening to Billy Joel's "The Stranger" a lot, and decided to go into Cornwall. Bee was the only one with a car (a dark brown Triumph Dolomite, reg DOX 529K [why I can remember these, I do not know]). The Torpoint ferry was the chosen means of crossing the Tamar, and here we are at Whitsand Bay |
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The front of 64 Beaumont Street |
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Beaumont Street in the snow. Bee's car, DOX529K (a Triumph Dolomite) is by the lamp-post |
The (slightly gloomy) view from Nosher's bedroom window |
Malc falls asleep |
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Bee hugs James' hang-glider. Every house has a scapegoat, and James was ours. He was actually a nice-enough guy, but we (OK, me) would pretend that the electricity meter had run out whilst he was in the shower on a wintry day, and pretend to look for 50p's for a while before turning it on again. Malc used to put cornflakes in his bed (but then they shared a room) |
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Malc and Bee get it on for a water-fight |
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At the end of the road. Bee had written this in salt on the kitchen top. Originally it said "from B + M", but I brushed the latter out before photographing it, for some sad reason. |
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