School.

At the Grammar school there was a Unit of the Air Training Corps (the ATC), and although I never joined, we used to make fun of them when they were marching up and down in the playground. The officer in charge was one of the science teachers and he was one of the few people that I knew at that time just after the war who drove a car. In his case it was a baby Austin seven and on the days when there was a parade in the evening, he would drive to school and park the car alongside the playing field adjacent to the groundkeepers sheds. Apparently one winter evening, whilst the parade was going on, some pupils (and we never found out who), picked up his car, carried it round the corner and then placed it down so that its bonnet was against one shed and the back against another. This meant that it could not be driven out, and he had to obtain the services of his airmen to recover his car.

Some two years after I went to the grammar school we were joined by a new English master whose name I forget, but I certainly recall the car he drove which was a dark green open-top Bentley tourer. Every morning we used towait by the gate and when he appeared in the road a great cheer used to go up which continued as he drove in and parked. I think he enjoyed the adulation for he always waved and I am sure that he purposely revved the engine loudly as he drove through the gates. The other English master who must have resided there for many years was a gentleman by the name of Bailey, Bill to all of us behind his back. He was a pleasant man, but when he was teaching, he used to threaten us by saying that he would spread us round the walls and make strawberry jam of us.

Of course we played tricks at school and among the many things that come to mind from that period was the day we were in the geography class. The teacher who taught us was Scottish and he had a very broadaccent. Like all the masters in the school, he wore a black gown (and on special days, mortar boards). In his case he used to be so untidy in his dress that when he moved around, he always seemed to be rushing about and was all gangly with his gown flying about all over the place. Consequently he had been nicknamed the Mad Scotsman.

In the particular room where he taught, the desks were single and of a type with movable sidelegs and a hinged top so that the desk could be folded up flat. When we left the room it was common practice tofold the desks up and just balanced. The last person out used to tip over the desk nearest the door so that they all went down like dominoes, then run like hell.

However came the day when in geography lesson I thought I was really going to be in trouble.

We were sitting waiting for the Mad Scotsman, and as was the rule, the door had been left open to await the teacher. I had balanced my geography book on the top of the door so that when he came in and shut the door the book would be pushed off and hit him on the head. However horror of horrors, the Headmaster rushed in and slammed the door, announcing as he did so that the geography master was sick and he (the headmaster) would be taking the lesson. Luckily for me the headmaster was moving so fast as he entered the room that he was already about half way across the room when the door shut and the noise the door made as it slammed covered the sound of the book hitting the floor. As I was sitting close to the door I was able to recover the book when he was writing on the blackboard and had his back to me so that he did not see me. I often wonder what the outcome would have been if the worst had happened and the book had hit him, or he had seen it fall and picked it up, for of course it had my name in it.

Another trick that we used to play in class was to get small pieces of the chalk and wet one end. This softened the chalk making it into a sort of paste and by putting the wet end of the chalk up against the ceiling above the masters desk and twisting it, the chalk used to stick to the ceiling. A short time later, the wetness having dried out the chalk would conveniently drop onto the teacher’s desk, or even better onto his head. By putting several pieces up they could be made to drop at intervals, and unless the master knew about the tricks, he assumed someone was lobbing them at him. Another favourite pastime in class was to fire pearl barley using drinking straws like a peashooter. The trick was not to fire directly at someone, but to fire at the ceiling, from where the barley would bounce all over the place.

The Grammar school was on two floors and in the upstairs corridor of the school there was a room set aside for the prefects in which there was a very old leather couch. As you looked at the school from the front, on the right hand side up a short flight of stairs was the Art room. To get from the art room to the prefects room meant a journey down a short flight of stairs along a corridor, a right hand turn then another right hand turn and then straight in through the door into the Prefects room. It was standard practise for the prefects to have late evening cycle races.

They rode an old cycle out of the art room door, down the short flight of steps, along the front corridor, round the first corner round the second corner, through the door to finally leap onto the leather couch. This was great fun especially to newcomers, but what they were never told was that come the winter and the dark nights, the trick was that someone would turn the lights off just as the cyclist was coming up to the first corner. This meant that the person on the bike would often smash into the end wall.

During my years at Grammar School I got involved with the annual school play and amongst other things helped with the lighting which I enjoyed, and selling programmes at the door which I did not enjoy. At the age of thirteen, I took an exam to go to the Technical School, and I passed with flying colours. However my father would not let me switch schools as he believed that the Grammar School provided a better education and more chance of getting a Good Job when I left school.

In hindsight I dearly wish that he had let me go to the College since practical things such as engineering have always been more to my liking, and maybe I could have got the qualifications I struggled for but failed to get, in later life.

In the year that I was sixteen, I took my G.C.E. examinations, but I only gained Maths and General Science. Although I was supposed to finish school at the end of the summer term, I returned to school for the autumn term in order to try and get some more G.C.E.’s. However having again taken French and English, I only managed to obtain a pass in English Language. As a result, I decided that was enough and I left at Christmas