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"I went up to UEA in 1965, liked it so much that I spent a total of seven years studying there!
In 1965 the intake of 400 freshers doubled the size of the University. Everything took place in the Village and in 1967 the transfer to the permanent site began."
Dr Mike Muncaster
BA History 1965–68 (and later MA and PhD Social Sciences)
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"The Campus then was the University Village on Earlham Road consisting of prefabricated buildings which included laboratories, a lecture hall and seminar rooms, the Union and refectory."
Dr Richard Edwards
BSc Biological Sciences 1966–69
Martin Pope
BA European Studies 1966-69
"Nick, Dave, Mike and I were freshers in 1966. The university campus was just the Village, with its temporary buildings: an administration block, seminar rooms, a bank, lower and senior common rooms, a small, over heated library that Nick remembers was conducive to a good nap, the most substantial building being the refectory. It served up flaccid and uninviting dinners. Students were forced to buy wads of dinner tickets, whether eating dinners there or not, something that really riled us.
The student protests of '67 abolished the system of prepayment tickets and overnight the quality and variety of food at the refectory rose markedly! The refectory also served as the cultural centre of the Village, a meeting place for larger gatherings, events and clubs such as the immensely popular UEA Folk Club (that we took over running in our second year) and the Jazz Club etc.
The background for Bookshop Blues was frustration felt by our tutors and students on the prelim European Studies over the fact that the bookshop didn't have the VICO course book in stock when required. Days went by with the bookshop manager repeatedly claiming that the order was 'imm'nent.' With days turning into weeks of the 'imm'nent' delivery, Nick, Dave and I put together Bookshop Blues. It probably wasn't the bookshop man's fault that the VICO books never arrived. As Mr Sabean was prone to say whenever things didn't work out, 'that's the way the cookie crumbles.'
Nick and and I were thrown together in a double room in P-block, furthest away from the breakfast block and closest to the perimeter fence with the part of the airbase that was still in military use. Dave too was housed in P-block. In no time the double room evolved into a crucible for folk music. With Dorothea 'Dot' Proffitt (née Imrie) joining us, we formed a folk group. Alex Atterson of the Norwich Folk Club had christened us The Hairies (beards and long hair). With Dot not sporting facial hair we renamed ourselves The Woodburners, the name arising from the wood-burning chimney smoke Horsham houses as autumn evenings grew chilly. The best acoustics for practising our songs were in the P-block toilets. And we sang ourselves through prelims and much more with fiddling Mike Vollar in the following two years.
Although UEA was quite out in the sticks, we were still influenced by the upheavals, protests and demands for radical change of the mid 60s. Student unrest in the USA and France spread to some campuses in Britain.
At UEA, there arose demand, in the name of equality, for undergraduates to have access to the Senior Common Room. Demonstrations were held in the Village. The cry: storm the SCR! Prepare a sit-in! Students of action, we stormed. The tutors greeted us, welcomed us in, and gave us cups of coffee and biscuits! Those hours of action, UEA-style! Having stormed, we quickly withdrew and left the seniors to their own common room. It was in those heady days of social unrest, of CND marches, of Vietnam War demos that Nick, Dave and I launched ourselves into protest song writing.
The result was Bookshop Blues and the wise words of Mr Sabean's evaluation. I guess the song had just one performance at a seminar with Mr Sabean. Says Nick: “One of the (probably many) reasons Bookshop Blues didn't turn out to be either an instant hit or a long-term classic was that we never really had a consensus as to whether the tune was essentially 'St James Infirmary' or 'Streets of Laredo'. And of course none of us were really a blues singer. But it's a fond memory of a great time at UEA.”
This poem unfortunately rates barely a pass. However it shows effort and considerable creative talents. D
On second reading I've decided it would be a mistake to encourage you in your poetic careers. F++
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