EIGHTIES LETTERS AND FAN DIARY

Like most people, I have at various times in my life tried to keep a diary, and from 1983-1997 I succeeded. At some points the entries are little more than a listing of names and dates, at others they also record my thoughts at the time. The period the diaries cover was the most socially and fannishly active of my life and I think they give at least a hint of the social whirl that was London fandom in the 1980s. From mid-1982, I also started keeping copies of my correspondence.

I was 25 years old when I moved to London at the end of May 1980 to take up a position as a draughtsman at the Southwark head office of supermarket chain J.Sainsbury Ltd. For the first few months I stayed with Greg & Linda Pickersgill at their Lawrence Road flat in Ealing, West London - a Famous Fannish Address - before buying my own flat at Greenleaf Road in East Ham, East London. One of my first purchases was a Gestetener 466 duplicator. It was a beautiful machine, but having it meant that as well as my own fanzine EPSILON, I also ended up running off fanzines for half of London fandom.

(For coloured version of this cover see here. NB: Email link to me no longer valid.)

The following were the main regular events on my monthly social calendar back then:

• The first-Thursday meetings at the One Tun pub on Farringdon's Saffron Hill. These regularly attracted hundreds of people and at the time were almost certainly the biggest regular fan-group meetings in the world.

• The BSFA meetings. These were held in the King of Diamonds pub in Holborn on the third Friday of the month and sponsored by the British Science Fiction Association.

• The North London pool sessions. A monthly meeting of North London fandom and guests to play pool and drink beer in the Salisbury Hotel in Harringey, North London fandom at the time initially consisting of couples Malcolm Edwards & Christine 'Chris' Atkinson, Leroy 'Roy' Kettle & Kath Mitchell, and Rob Holdstock & Sarah Biggs, with Pat & Graham Charnock moving into the area later.

• Friends In Space. A third-Sunday meeting of that fan-group at the Queen Victoria pub in Ealing. Group name was taken from a TV drama of the same name (which I've never seen).

• KTF - Kent TruFandom. I don't recall the frequency of these, but they were held in Vince Clarke's house at 16 Wendover Way, Welling - 16 WWW, as it was usually called - on Sunday afternoons. Regulars included Terry & Margaret Hill, Elda Wheeler, Arthur Thomson, and Chuck Harris, though a wide variety of other fans dropped in on meetings over the years.

• Westminster Comic Mart. Actually a bimonthly event and held in Westminster Methodist Central Hall, which is within sight of the Houses of Parliament. Only now does this strike me as odd - like having a mart in DC across the street from Congress. Local pros used to also show up at these, much like SF pros used to show up at the One Tun. Those were the days.

There were also occasional visits to Ortygia House in Harrow. At this time Chris Evans lived in a flat there, as did then-husband-and-wife Chris Priest & Lisa Tuttle.

TAFF - the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund gets quite a few mentions. You can find most things you might need to know about it here.

An overview of UK fandom from the beginning of the decade to the 1987 Worldcon can be found in the appendices in THEN for those who need background on the period. These are taken from the booklet giving a brief history of UK fandom that I wrote for that convention.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE (well, some of them):

Rob Hansen, Greg Pickersgill, Linda Pickersgill (previously Karrh, later Krawecke)

Kev Smith, Rob Holdstock

Malcolm Edwards

Roy Kettle

Sheila Holdstock (Rob's ex-wife.)

Chris Atkinson

Chris Evans

Pat & Graham Charnock, Harry Bell

The entries that follow are lifted from my letters and diaries mostly verbatim. Where additional commentary has been added this appears in italics. Names have been expanded in the fannish sections, and surnames of my work colleagues reduced to an initial where I've included entries about them. The names applied to people herein are the names they went by at the time.

1981/2
ORTYGIA HOUSE		1: 1981/1982
1983
2: JAN/FEB	3: MARCH	4: EASTER	5: APRIL	6: EARLY MAY
7: LATE MAY	8: JUNE/JULY	9: AUG-OCT	10: NOV/DEC

1984
11: JAN-MAR	12: APR/MAY	13: JUNE	14: JULY/AUG	15: TAFF TRIP
16: SEPT/OCT	17: NOV/DEC

1985
18: JAN/FEB	19: MARCH	20: APRIL	21: MAY	22: JUNE	23: JULY
24: AUGUST	25: SEPT	26: OCT	27: NOV	28: DEC

1986
29: JAN	30: EARLY FEB	31: LATE FEB	32: MARCH