Chapter 5

‘Teach Your Children Well’

The opening words from a catchy song by CSNY that will worm their way into in your head and remain there for days.  The lyrics don’t just relate to days spent in the classroom - they also refer to the role of family in defining the rules, setting examples and providing a ‘code to live by.’

But this sort of ‘character’ education happens invisibly, absorbed by a sort of osmosis without you actually realising how it happened.  On the other hand, it’s the time spent in school being force-fed your formal education that you really remember. This schooling process can be a lottery; either a path with signposts and guides or a confusing maze with dead-ends.  It can be fun, miserable, scary, boring, inspiring.…  At the end of it all you emerge equipped, to a greater or lesser degree, ready to head out into the big bad world with whatever has been downloaded along the way.

How did I fare?  Was I a winner in the lottery?  Who were my guides?  Which villains placed obstacles in the way?

It’s time for another trip backwards.  The dial is set for the mid 1960s and my Time Machine is seeking to intercept and observe the little lad wandering slowly up the driveway that leads to…..

Bramcote Hills Primary.

It was only a ten minute walk from the house in Ranmore Close, down Arundel Drive, along Deans Croft, across Moor Lane and through the wide grey and white painted wooden gates.  Mum accompanied me for the first few weeks but after that I’d happily make the trip with Francis and Richard Cole, friends who lived in the same cul-de-sac. All she had to worry about was that my tie was done up and I’d remembered my satchel and dinner money.

A modern building, nestling on a huge open campus shared with two new large secondary schools, it served the growing suburb of Bramcote Hills.  With a large playground surrounded by a cluster of oak trees and plenty of adjacent grass it provided endless scope for outdoor activities and playtime away from any traffic fumes. It’s interesting to note that there were no fences or obvious boundaries around the primary school.  Whilst we wouldn’t dream of wandering too far from the playground, a modern-day observer might comment that security didn’t appear high on the school agenda.

Details of some events can still be recovered relatively easily from the memory bank, hopefully not having suffered too much deterioration or distortion over the intervening years.  When backed by supporting documentation in the form of school reports a picture emerges of the early steps on my educational journey.

I was accompanied through most of the first year by 41(!!) other classmates plus Peter and Jane who shared their exciting adventures with me, provided of course I could follow the Ladybird Reading Scheme. It seemed to work because within a year or so I was making use of my Beeston Library tickets and taking an interest in comics and pictorial encyclopaedias.  According to Miss Taylor, my teacher in 1965/6, I made ‘good progress in my reading.’  However my written work and spelling were ‘often erratic’ and I ‘always seemed to be in a hurry to get things done.  I am afraid it is a matter of temperament at the moment and his attention is soon distracted.’   Pretty accurate then (and now).  I’ll forgive her those comments because she was the teacher who ended most days with story time.  She frightened us with Alan Garner’s ‘Weirdstone of Brisingamen,’ a tale of wizards and monsters set in the unlikely location of Alderley Edge and Macclesfield. She enchanted us with ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ from the Narnia collection and entertained us with tales of Barney’s adventures in ‘Stig of the Dump.’

A basic teaching tactic that worked well with pupils like me who responded well to targets, was the ‘test’.  Whether it was spelling, reading or ‘sums’ there was usually the incentive of a little metal badge to be earned, if and when you eventually reached the desired level.  A starting point was the ’72 Club’ badge for knowing the 6x table before taking on the more advanced challenge of the ‘144 Club’ badge.  ‘Reading’ and ‘Spelling’ badges all helped bolster the learning process. I slipped up though with the ‘Merit’ badge.  Finding one in the playground I surreptitiously acquired it and proudly announced my achievement to Mum during tea-time.  My subterfuge didn’t last long as Claire Machin, from next-door-but-one, snitched on me and it had to be sheepishly handed in the next day.  However I was legitimately awarded the ‘Research’ badge for my topic folders.  My Francis Chichester project was a blend of colour photos from the Sunday supplements, sketch maps and pictures and even a poem about the arrival of Gypsy Moth IV in Sydney Harbour during his solo round-the-world-sail.  On the theme of badges, one of the more highly prized was not directly linked to school education but awarded to viewers of BBC 1’s ‘Blue Peter’ for such achievements as doing well in a quiz, or sending in an amazing model made out of lolly sticks.  I don’t recall if I had any parental assistance but my answers to their ‘Great Fire of London’ quiz resulted in a badge arriving in the post a few weeks later.  Unfortunately it seems to have been lost over the decades.

It wasn’t all plain sailing.

In my first year I hated it when salad was on the dinner menu and once, under pressure from a dinner lady, I threw mine on the floor.  Mum was summoned to discuss my behaviour with Mr Wing, the Head, but fortunately I don’t recall any major repercussions.

‘I don’t want to be the bloody Angel Gabriel.’  I defiantly announced at home in the run up to Christmas 1967.  I’d been selected for the role in the Nativity play and was horrified at the requirement to wear a golden headband and a white gown with golden cellophane wings attached.  Not a good image.

Mum wasn’t impressed.  ‘Where did you learn that word?’

Thinking quickly, ‘Barry Cooper told me.’

Even storming up to my bedroom didn’t help my case and I duly reported for duty a week or two later for the arrival of the baby Jesus.  Close scrutiny of the photo recovered from the data archive reveals a forced smile (grimace) on my face and, please note, that because my arms are crossed it means my performance doesn’t count.

I left the Primary at the end of the summer term of 1968.  Thanks to the efforts of Miss Taylor and her colleagues, supplemented no doubt by encouragement from Mum and Dad, my report featured a number of ‘very good’ and ‘excellent’ comments.  The Head even signed it off with a ‘most satisfactory’ remark so it seems that I’d made substantial progress from my erratic early  days.

For me it was far more important that I’d made a whole load of new mates.  Robbo, Smiffy and Baz, were just a few of the little gang who were ready to join me when we moved to the juniors the following September.

Meanwhile I was completely oblivious to events happening out there beyond my little world of Bramcote Hills.

 1964

• The Cold War continues. The Soviets lead the Space Race.

• Mods and Rockers slug it out on Brighton Beach.

• The Tokyo Olympics sees GB win just three medals.

• Labour under Wilson win the General Election and Churchill finally retires after 63 years as an MP.

• TOTP and MOTD are first screened.

However, I did fully appreciate the release of Mary Poppins.  What a brilliant film and score; nearly six decades later it still has the power to bring a smile to faces and encourage a sing-along:

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious…………………………………(Bet you’re already singing the next line!)

And by 1965 events still passing by my six-year-old self included:

• Martin Luther King leads black civil rights walks in Selma.

• The war in Vietnam escalates rapidly as the US send in thousands more troops and begin bombing.

• Britain repeals the death penalty.

• Brady and Hindley are arrested for child murders and the Kray twins for racketeering.

• The Rolling Stones release ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ and The Who sing about their ‘Generation.’

• Dylan goes electric whilst revisiting ‘Highway 61.’

On the other hand there are highlights of the year that I can easily recall:

• Goldie the eagle escapes from London Zoo.

• The Post Office Tower opens.  It belonged to the people and you could go up it.  Nowadays it’s the property of BT and you can’t.

• The Magic Roundabout starts - what a load of rubbish; give me Noggin or Pugwash any day.

Songs we’d all sing along to included The Beatles ‘Help’, Petula’s ‘Downtown,’ Val Doonican’s ‘Walk Tall‘ and anything by The Seekers, our family’s favourite group of the time.

Beeston Fields Juniors

The Time Machine encountered a space-time anomaly in 1968. 

For reasons known only to Nottinghamshire County Council there was no local junior school for the Bramcote Hills children between the ages of 8 and 11, despite there being an infant and three secondary schools on the local large campus.  The consequence was that, aged nine, I could be found at 8.30 every morning joining the collection of estate kids on Deans Croft waiting for the school bus.  A double-decker Barton’s charter would haul us the two miles to Beeston Fields in exchange for a 3d single fare.  The only ‘school run’ that was possible in the sixties was just that.  If you missed the bus, the only options were to leg it all the way, or at least get as far as the main Derby Road and do the rest of the journey on a frequent public service. Either way, you’d be late….

It wasn’t such a disaster if the bus was missed for the return trip.  Occasionally Robbo and I would race the bus home, hurtling out of the school gate to gain a ten minute start, choosing the most direct route down Central Avenue to Derby Road (it’s now a three-lane dual carriageway known as Brian Clough Way) and hoping we could maintain our lead until the Sandy Lane turn off into the estate.  From this point victory was dependent on enough kids ringing the bell for their various stops.  The reward was 3d bus fare that could be pocketed to buy sweets or football cards.  How did it happen that kids stopped being bused to school?  Whose cunning master plan was it to replace the bus ride, offering its environmental and social-skill development benefits, by a polluting traffic-jam of hassled parents?  When did it become acceptable for teenagers to allow themselves to be dropped off at the gate by their parents?

Beeston Fields felt old.  Built of brick at the turn of the last century, it comprised several single storey buildings linked by a cross of covered corridors that cut across a small grass courtyard called the ‘quadrangle.’  The classrooms were draughty with ancient wooden double-desks with inkwells and the hall doubled as the gym.  The toilets were outside; no urinals just a glazed brick wall and drainage gutter which ensured no-one bothered with accuracy and usually focused more on height or a creative dispersal pattern.  The playground wasn’t much to shout about either; a square of tarmac that was always too crowded for a decent football kick-around. Any attempts at British Bulldog were frowned on by the whistle-blowing dinner ladies who could easily anticipate the fall-out of scraped knees, headlocks or frightened smaller kids who’d innocently got in the way.  Occasionally, if the patrolling supervision were slow off the mark, a playground fight would break out and the chant of ‘Scrap! Scrap!’ would draw a crowd before it was broken up.

The school was a different environment in other ways.  Its location in the heart of a large council estate ensured I’d be part of a much more diverse bunch of pupils than previously encountered.  Fat kids, thin kids, smelly kids, black kids, scary kids, kids with callipers, scraggy kids, Irish kids, Italian kids, thick kids, smart kids.  All chucked into classes together and all rubbing along happily enough.  I don’t recall a particular ‘us and them’ between the Bramcote snobs and Beeston kids, they even shared their nits with us, although inevitably your close friends came from your own neighbourhood.

There’s not much data to validate my academic performance but there are pointers.  The only surviving report is from 1969 in which Miss Leech, my favourite teacher, comments on my ‘considerable ability and good progress’ but balances this with the observation that ‘he does not always fully extend himself.  When he sets his mind to it he can do some very good work but at other times he will just do the bare minimum.’  The view of my other two teachers, Mrs Bishop and Mr Platt, will remain lost, exactly like my memories of their unremarkable tenure of my education.

Mum and Dad were alerted to my inconsistency and, following some unsatisfactory feedback at a parents’ evening, I was given some instructions.  ‘Don’t sit next to any kids who’re messing around’ which clearly was often easier said than done.  There was also a target called the ‘Eleven Plus (11+)’ looming on the horizon and my parents understood the significance, slowly brainwashing me that this was a challenge to be taken seriously.

Unfortunately part of their ambition for me included something called Progress Papers.  Essentially these were IQ tests designed to mimic the questions contained in the 11+ and I was forced into doing several hours of practice at the weekend before being allowed out.

Non-academic memories of the school are stronger, many of which took place on the adjacent football pitch which in the summer doubled as a playing field, marked out with running lanes and a rounders pitch.

The school football team was quite successful, proudly wearing our assortment of red shirts as though we were junior Forest players. I managed my first headed goal in a 2:0 win over Rylands.  To be honest it was almost impossible to miss as I was standing virtually under the bar when the corner came over.

During the summer I’d always enjoy sports day, although no-one, including the boys, could come close to Susan James, the school’s equivalent of Dina Asher-Smith, in the 100 yards dash.  In rounders, my backstop-4th post partnership with Dave Smith was instrumental in running out several of the staff in our final term’s ‘Pupils versus Teachers’ match and I can still remember taking a spectacular diving catch for one dismissal.

Building on my earlier success as the Angel Gabriel, I tried acting and played the role of Ranko, a Russian spy, in a comedy about smuggling secret plans - very Cold War.  Wearing my gabardine mac’ and my grandad’s trilby, I had to exchange briefcases with fellow agent Lanko (played by friend Mick Parker).  To my horror I fluffed my lines: ‘Mick, (forgetting I should have called him Lanko) have you got the plans?’   Not exactly a big deal but enough to persuade me against any future theatrical aspirations.

I managed to avoid getting in any notable disciplinary scrapes and rarely had to report to the Headmaster’s Office.  In contrast, the unfortunate Robbo managed this feat one lunchtime having smashed a school window when one of his slip-ons flew off when shooting!

I left in July 1970 in rather uncertain circumstances.  I’d passed the 11+ and was headed to the Grammar School on the Bramcote campus, but Dad was still critical in hospital following his brain haemorrhage a month earlier. Mr Bowers, the headmaster, left me with this message, believing my ‘popularity amongst classmates shows leadership qualities however I must beware of becoming over-confident and cocksure!’

By now some awareness of the world at large was now creeping in and in 1969 I vaguely registered that:

• There was a civil war in Nigeria.  We ‘jokingly’ described thin kids as ‘Biafrans.’

• The US was bombing Cambodia and there were huge protests in London.

• British troops were sent to Northern Ireland to ‘maintain the peace’.

• A huge music festival was taking place at place called Woodstock.

• We’d split from Rhodesia, or was it the other way round?

On the other hand, highlights of the year that really stuck in the mind include:

• Apollo 9, 10, 11 and 12 Moon missions.

• The Beatles playing ‘Get Back’ on the roof of the Abbey Road recording studio.

• Concorde’s maiden test flight.

• Manchester City beating Leicester in the FA Cup and Revie’s hated Leeds won the First Division.

• A very brief glimpse of Barbara Windsor’s boobs in ‘Carry on Camping.’

• Lulu jointly winning the Eurovision Song Contest with ‘Boom-Bang-a-Bang.’ Personally I thought The Scaffold’s ‘Lily the Pink’ should have been our entry.

Bramcote Hills Grammar

It wasn’t an ‘over confident and cocksure’ 11 year-old that faced up to Day One at the Grammar.  From being big fishes in a small pond, my mates and I were now starting again at the bottom of the pile.  We’d been warned that the older lads might target us as ‘fags’, or worse, the older girls might try and whip our trousers off.  We must have looked like obvious prey, nervously resplendent in our new over-sized ‘you’ll grow into it’ blazers, ties, and long trousers and with an unmarked and graffiti-free, empty rucksack on our shoulders. Adopting a safety-in-numbers tactic there must have been at least ten of us who rendezvoused that first morning on Deans Croft to walk the last 400m into the school and be shepherded to the ‘muster point’ in the hall.

Sheath 1B

It didn’t take long to figure out our new environment. 

A classroom on the second floor of the tower block that offered endless opportunities for gazing out of the windows across the running track and playing fields, or watching the clouds and seagulls drift across the sky.

My own desk was complete with lift-up lid, a now redundant ink well and several years’ worth of carved messages from previous owners.  We were arranged in alphabetical order of 15 girls, who mysteriously ended up with the best window seats, followed by the 15 boys. We had a rolling two-week timetable and each day began with morning assembly, for which we all received a pocket sized hymn book, and was followed by mix of lessons in various rooms around the assortment of buildings. Within a fortnight we’d found the Labs, the Art Room, the Gym, the Library and the location of the various Boys’ Toilets.

Rumours of ‘fagging’ proved to be unfounded and, provided you stayed out the way of the older kids, (anyone from the 4th year upwards seemed almost like adults), and knew your place in the dinner queue, life seemed to be relatively straightforward.  Carefully at first but with increasing confidence, we eased our way into new little social groups.  Suddenly I had a few extra mates who lived in nearby Bramcote village, or the far-flung Chilwell or Stapleford.

The teaching staff required a new approach.  Now with a teacher for each subject, it was necessary to make rough preliminary assessments on each individual, some of whose reputations or failings were being circulated in advance of our early encounters.  I adopted a deferential approach in the first term, trying to get some early runs on the board, and hoping to be at least a mid-table performer in each subject. 

One thing to be avoided at all costs in the first term was a ‘detention.’ It was a new word in our vocabulary and one we did not want to risk having to explain to our parents.  It’s fair to say that 1B were a pretty well-behaved bunch, so the risk was low.  With the evidence of later exam results, it appears as though some rudimentary streaming had been done on the overall intake so the class had more than its fair share of swots and was quite low-risk on the pratting-about scale.

Over the weeks, months, terms and years ahead, I encountered many teachers and experienced a wide range of characters and styles, some good, some bad, some inspiring, some scary and intimidating, some hopeless, some entertaining, some dull, some were characters, some were nonentities, some earned respect, some earned ridicule, some were enforcers, some were eccentric, some wore gowns, some wore corduroy.

I reckon that there are only three factors that determine how well a pupil is able to maximise their educational potential.  Parental support is one and luckily for me that was a given.  Your gang of friends and their attitude to the balance between school-work and amusement is another.  Luckily for me, the bunch I travelled my senior school years with were able to keep on the safe side of the juvenile delinquent boundary.

But by far the biggest influence on learning and development were the people trained and paid to do it.  Holding you as a captive audience for what seemed like hours on end, they could literally make or break our future lives.  Of course it didn’t feel like that at the time.  The subject didn’t really matter as, like all pupils throughout time, we responded to teachers who were interesting, entertaining, patient, firm and fair and switched off if the opposite was the case.  There was a handful at BHGS to whom I responded and whom I remember gratefully.  Unfortunately, there was another bunch, eminently average, who made no lasting mark, and a few who I now hold a retro-annoyance at for allowing me to drift slowly and unenthusiastically through their subject which I now think I could have quite enjoyed and appreciated.  Finally there were a few other members of staff who left memories for other reasons.

It required some interrogation of the historical data banks and memory archives but the retrieval mechanisms have identified and prioritised some of the characters who made significant contributions along the way.  For the sake of balanced reporting the list also includes a few who hindered any progress in the right direction.

Les “Pop” Stewart

‘Sit down!  Be quiet!  Wait to be called!’

He had a fearsome roar that I had first encountered at school swimming galas a few years earlier when he organised and despatched hordes of nervous junior school pupils to their various heats and finals. In his early fifties, Pop Stewart was ex-military, lean and grey-haired. He was a sporty-type who lived at the other end of Balmoral Drive from our house and could sometimes be encountered out running or on the local tennis court.  It was with some trepidation that we learnt he would be 1B’s history teacher and his reputation as a strict disciplinarian preceded him into our classroom.

There was no mucking about in Pop Stewart’s lessons.  He was an accurate shot with the board rubber and would slam a ruler on a desk to stop any chit-chat.  Firm but fair was our general assessment as we travelled back through our Roman, Saxon Viking and Norman past.  I’d been reading historical adventure stories for a few years. Rosemary Sutcliff’s ‘Eagle of the Ninth’, the ‘Viking Sagas’ of Henry Treece and Ronald Welch’s medieval knights adventure ‘The Gauntlet’ were regularly renewed at the library.  This gave me an upper hand in class and Pop’s lessons added depth and credibility to my semi-factual knowledge.

Homework in the first year usually involved a mini-essay of a few paragraphs supported by a drawing.  Keen to impress I got worked up on one occasion in the first term when my fountain pen’s ink cartridge leaked huge blots onto my work, obliterating a sketch of Roman gladiators.  Mum came to the rescue with a clever trick to remove the offending page from the exercise book although it did require a painstaking reproduction.  ‘8/10 good work’ was his comment, about par from Pop during the first few terms.

Despite his stern persona he did try to make history come alive.  ‘Write as though you’re a monk on Lindisfarne and the Vikings are approaching’ or ‘Imagine you’re compiling the Doomsday entry for Bramcote on behalf of William I’.  He enjoyed hill-walking and once described recognising some ancient remnants of medieval strip-farming when he gazed down from a rest stop on a walk around Malham. I remembered this description and two years later joined him on a school challenge of a 15 mile walking excursion to just that area.

He liked to stretch us and organised a bigger walking event in the 5th Form - a 30-mile circuit of Kinder Scout in one day that required numerous parents and staff to provide support.  An early exposure to endurance events, it was tough and not everyone completed it but enough sponsorship was raised to pay for the new stage lighting.

With hindsight I just took his commitment to supporting extra-curricular activities for granted.  In addition to his hill-walking trips he would usually be heavily involved with the cross-country, athletics and swimming events.  I suspect he adopted an unofficial ‘mentor’ role, often investing me with snippets of advice at the various races or at the end of a lesson.  I’d like to think that I paid him back with my A grade at O-Level and my improving sporting results.

Needless to say I can’t recall thanking him when I left.

Miss Garbutt

‘Oh no!  Double-English in the afternoon!  We’ll never manage to stay awake!’

The 4th Year timetable for 4M had just been issued and the prospect of two solid hours of English on a Tuesday afternoon wasn’t exactly filling some of us with joy.  In fact it promised to be an afternoon of absolute tedium.

‘Who’s Miss Garbutt?’

‘No idea, must be new.’  We speculated about a teacher we hadn’t encountered before.

The previous three years had been unremarkable.  The English Department had failed to ignite much enthusiasm and we (me and my mates) had blundered our way through their efforts to impart a thorough understanding of the grammar, punctuation and other technical aspects of our wonderful language. We knew how to spell reasonably well and could handle tasks like letter writing or describing the ‘First day of my holiday’ but it was hardly inspiring stuff.  Our introduction in the Third Year to the classic literature of Keats, Dickens and Shakespeare didn’t advance the cause very far.  Trying to persuade a 14-year-old boy that an ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ penned by an early 19th-century Romantic poet was worth writing an enthusiastic essay about couldn’t have been easy.  Even the violence of ‘Macbeth’ struggled to raise us out of our mild apathy.

My 3rd Year English report was a B grade and states, ‘when he works seriously he can achieve a good standard’.  Not exactly a strong endorsement. With O-Levels on the horizon, something was needed to help lift my game.

Miss Garbutt, the new English Language teacher, was that something.  She only taught us for four terms because we were scheduled to take the O-Level early in the following November, but she made a difference.  Youngish, in her late twenties and with something of an off-the-wall approach, she managed to lighten the lessons whilst simultaneously gently force-feeding us some writing and comprehension skills.

She’d happily spend an entire lesson delving into the background of song lyrics.  Love ballads such as ‘Yesterday,’ protest songs like ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ and ‘Hard Rain,’ political commentaries from CSNY and other popular hits like ‘American Pie’ were all debated and dissected. She even briefly drew our attention to the hallucinogenic ‘White Rabbit’ link between Lewis Carroll’s Alice and Jefferson Airplane.  It was a novel way to help get our heads around poetry and the potential to express our thoughts and opinions through being more creative in our writing.  Suddenly I could recognise that Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth and the others were the 19th century equivalent of sixties pop artists whilst Shakespeare and Dickens’ stories carried strong political and social messages to the heart of both the ruling classes and the great unwashed.

I’ve no idea how long Miss Garbutt stayed at the school, or whether she was regarded as too much of a maverick, but she provided enough of a spark for me to grab an A grade in the exam.

Desert Island Discs

Won’t Get Fooled Again - The Who

Miss Garbutt was our leftie English teacher who sometimes, for a bit of light relief ‘analysed’ lyrics with us. On one occasion we covered The Who’s ‘Won’t get Fooled Again’ which gave her chance to plant a few rebellious seeds in our heads.

A few years later we were required to attend the weekly House Assemblies.  It was deemed to be the duty of the unfortunate House Captains to organise and run an ‘assembly’ each month for the Upper School pupils.  Usually I’d get away with just reading out the weekly sports reports but occasionally, the more reliable volunteers ran out of topics for the five-minute ‘reading.’  Generally, the speakers chose a subject that was inspiring or enlightening, so this invariably ended up as a few minutes describing a great feat of exploration, a wartime escapade or an against-the-odds sporting comeback.  Stuck with the challenge for this particular week, I decided to try and blend the theme of ‘resistance’ from ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ with the ‘human rights’ message from Jefferson’s American 1765 Declaration of Independence.  (‘We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness ... ‘).

To get their attention, I played The Who’s track loudly on the school record player and then came out with a whole load of pretentious, subversive rubbish that suggested to my fellow pupils that we shouldn’t just take it from the staff if we didn’t think it was fair.  Not exactly Lenin or Tony Wedgwood-Benn in full flow and luckily, as far as I know, there weren’t any teachers present to take exception.  It caused a bit of a stir with a few of my more switched-on peers but fortunately it had all been forgotten within a few days by everyone but me.

The song though still stirs a few seditious thoughts whenever I hear it.

Sir Keith Egerton

Picture a thin stick-like figure dressed in a teal blue corduroy jacket, purple shirt, corduroy tie and matching teal blue corduroy trousers and with sandals on the end of his drain-pipe legs.  Then imagine a head of tightly curling dark hair that seemed to extend backwards in a wedge to somewhere beyond his collar and add an equally curly, pointed beard to his angular chin.  The result resembles a character that might be more at home as a Gerald Scarfe cartoon or in a Roald Dahl children’s book.  But this was “Sir Keith”.

To add to the potential for ridicule, he drove to school in a Reliant Robin, a brown-boxed three-wheeler that most of us could probably beat in a sprint and was probably the most uncool car on the planet.

He joined the school as we entered our fourth year and our faces must have looked priceless when he walked into 4M in September 1973 and introduced himself, with a stutter,  as our new form teacher, adding that he would also be taking some of us for History. His resemblance to an eccentric aristocrat who’d fallen on harder times led us to christen him Sir Keith or SK for short.

It was impossible not to like him.  For all his idiosyncrasies he was able to gain control and respect of the class largely through his enthusiasm and the time he would give each pupil.   After a few weeks we’d figured out his boundaries, although it took a few test cases to establish the limits.  One afternoon lesson sticks in my mind when Dave “Simmo” Simpson was sent out of the room for farting, noisily and for a lengthy period.

’S-s-s Simpson, please leave the room until you’ve cleansed your bowels.’

Simmo saw himself as the class comedian and, as he combined this role with his undisputed title of school bully, it was usually sensible to laugh at his jokes.  This enabled him to be a potentially disruptive threat to any teacher and even at 14 years old, he looked intimidating, heavily-built with a full set of sideboards and a Teddy-boy style haircut.  Keith Egerton knew how to deal with him and didn’t allow any threat to escalate, although we’d all silently smirk whenever he momentarily lost it and shouted, ‘I don’t like s-s-shouting but…’  at us.

He had a certain style with any punishments that he brandished.  You never got away with just ‘lines’ or a ‘detention.’  Following a minor incident when Dave Hayes and I were talking rather than listening, (probably about the latest 10cc or Bowie single), he was annoyed enough to tell us to find a copy of Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ and stay behind after school one day the following week to copy it out in full.  (Never heard of it?  No?  Neither had I) It couldn’t even be found in the school library, which meant owning up to the misdemeanour to Mum and Dad and requesting a lift to Beeston Library to track it down.  Duly located, it was with some horror that I realised there were 31 verses. (I’ve just checked on the internet)  They took ages to transcribe.  Just for the record, here’s verse one:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

         The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea.

The plowman homeward plods his weary way,

         And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Clearly if he was prepared to give even ‘Sheefy’ and ‘Hazie’ detentions, he was not to be pushed too far.

For two years, SK steered us through the economic and social history of our nation.  From the Enclosures and Agricultural Revolution of the 18th Century, through the Industrial Revolution and Tolpuddle Martyrs in the 19th, to the birth of the Labour Party in the 20th, managing to pass on enough of his enthusiasm to ensure we had a fighting chance of a good grade.

He doubled up as the sixth-form A-Level Economics teacher.  It was a welcome change after five years of the same subjects to try a new one and, despite the endless possible variations on supply and demand curves or the definition intricacies of the Balance of Payments and GDP, he managed to make the topic interesting enough for me to consider it as a university degree option.  He’d start every lesson with a standard instruction, delivered with a straight face to ‘G-g-get your Nobbs (the standard text book) out!’ The mantra he’d force-feed us every few weeks, ‘It’s not about money’,  is still one of the basic economic tenets, although I’m not sure we were convinced at the time, struggling as most of us were to scrape enough cash together to buy the latest Pink Floyd album.

Like a number of teachers, SK was prepared to muck in with the extra-curricular stuff.  He launched the Chess Club, a sport to which he seemed ideally suited, and would take the three or four pupils in the team to away matches in the infamous Robin.  Additionally, he would sometimes be seen referring a house football or rugby match - a strange sight indeed, as a less likely sportsman is almost impossible to imagine.

Eccentric, encouraging, engaged and enthusiastic, SK ensured that my basic affinity with his subjects was expanded sufficiently to reach an end result of an A in History O-Level and a B in Economics A-Level. 

I just wish there was a photo of him out there somewhere.

Dai Williams

Let’s be clear.  I did not like this guy.

I’ve never had much of a talent for DIY and my early years in the woodwork classroom only served to confirm this shortcoming.  The teacher given the challenge of teaching me some basic skills that might be of some use in later life was a Welshman.  In his mid-thirties, always smartly turned out with a tie and jacket, he was rumoured to have just missed out on playing rugby for Wales and seemed to have a chip on his shoulder about it.  Absolutely passionate about rugby, the fact that he was now reduced to teaching English boys woodwork and running the 3rd year XV meant he probably felt he had plenty to be aggrieved about.

Lessons weren’t particularly inspiring.  ‘Gather round and watch me. This is how to mark a straight line. A neat, deep, straight, accurate knife line. This is how to use a tenon saw.  Only take small bites with the chisel.  Okay your turn.’

We’d work in pairs, sharing a workbench and tools, and Dai patrolled the room offering advice or criticism.  For some inexplicable reason I always struggled to saw straight, hammer nails vertically or even tighten the vice properly.  Consequently I was often the star example to demonstrate how not to perform a task.  This reached its ultimate nadir in one double-lesson as we neared the final stages of the task to design and construct a wooden box capable of storing pens, pencils, sharpeners and other useful items like compasses and protractors.

Having sourced the wood from the store, sawn the pieces, chiselled the joints and then assembled it all together with some strategically placed small nails, all that remained was to plane the edges smooth.  Apparently there’s something called a ‘nail punch’ used to tap the nail heads so they sit below the surface level before starting to use the plane or there will be a horrible sound of metal on metal and the plane blade might break.  I’d missed this key stage and my buddy hadn’t bothered to notice.  Dai was on me like a demented Welsh dragon.

Everyone gathered round to witness my humiliation and learn the lesson provided by my omission.  Grabbing me by the hair from the opposite side of the bench, I was effectively draped over the bench with my nose only a few inches from my crime.

‘Sheath!  Some people are born thick, some acquire thickness and some have thickness thrust upon them.  Sheath, you’re greedy!  You’ve had all three!’

He’d probably be sacked these days for such abuse.  On the positive side I now remember what a nail punch is used for even though I’ve never used one since.  All of his four reports covering my first two years were identical and warranted only one word. ‘Satisfactory.’  I was happy to escape to Art as soon as we had an option in the 3rd year.

It wasn’t the end of the relationship however.  Dai ran the 3rd-Year Rugby XV and he inherited a squad that contained a mix of some talented individuals such as Ian ‘Dickie’ Dunbar who played for English Schools the following year and a bunch of enthusiastic other players who just enjoyed playing any form of sport.  We were drilled, coached and hardened and eventually achieved something close to his high standards, going the whole season unbeaten.  I was scrum-half, sharing the duties occasionally with Steve Baines, and I’m sure he’d have replaced both of us if he’d been able to find anyone better.  He’d probably identified that I wasn’t hard enough, no doubt correctly spotting a reluctance to tackle any big opposition forwards, but I remained in the role as I was quick and could pass the ball well to Dave Ward the fly-half, who could make a lot more happen than me.  I don’t think he was too bothered when I, and a few others, opted to play football the following year.

We fell out again over one situation that ended up with an exchange of letters between the Head and my parents.  I’d been selected to swim for the County in an event that required me to travel in the morning, thereby being unavailable for the school rugby match that day.  The rule was that school took priority and because the selection was for the main County Junior team rather than the County Schools team, Dai argued I should be playing rugby for the school, even though I’d be swimming at a much higher level.  It was too principled a stand and it didn’t make sense so he was eventually overruled.

I didn’t have much to do with him in subsequent years.  However, it’s fair to say that he didn’t seem to hold grudges.  In fact, after a decent set of O-Level results, my growing swimming achievements and the fact that I was also running cross-country for Notts at the English Schools’ Championships, he seemed to recognise that I might possess talents in fields other than the woodwork room and started to actually acknowledge me if we passed in the corridor.

But there’s no hiding from the fact he was old-school and a bully and, whilst the results might have been achieved, they were at the expense of any real enjoyment.

My Report on some of the others

Now let’s take a look at an old school report on some other teachers I crossed paths with on the journey to O-Levels.  Did they take the opportunity to 'make a difference'?

BRAMCOTE  HILLS  COMPREHENSIVE  SCHOOL

Report for   1970 -1975 Form   1B, 2B, 3G, 4M, 5M.

Number in Year   118  Number in Form 30

SUBJECT     TEACHER     GRADE     PUPIL’S  COMMENTS

Religion:          ‘Tash’ Roberts              C            

Dull and prescriptive, making no attempt to explore other faiths or challenge thinking. I only tried in his lesson because he ran the cricket team.

Geography:           ‘Tim’ Taylor                 A             

Younger member of staff who related well to the pupils, especially the girls.  Two field trips were memorable for his tolerant attitude towards under-age drinking. He steered most of us to decent O and A level grades.

French:                Pam Marshall              A     

A young, pretty redhead whose talents I didn’t fully appreciate in my first two years.  She wrote on my 2B report 'he could offer more in oral work than he does.' 

Apart from a vocabulary I still use occasionally on French holidays I regret the missed opportunity to learn a language. If she'd been my 5th form teacher I may well have opted to do an A Level.

Maths:                 ‘Tinky’ Rogerson           B     

Functional and boring, patient and fair.  Worked to a consistently good standard. I wanted an A at O-Level and he helped deliver it.

Biology               Beryl Downing              B       

Came over as rather an ‘old maid’ though she had no problem delivering the sex education lessons to slightly  embarrassed, sniggering 12-year olds. Steady progress in lessons and achieved a solid B.

Chemistry             ‘Gabby’ Hayes                  A     

A class favourite.  He looked ancient and we were  surprised he hadn’t already retired (he was still there years after I  left).                                                     

He made potentially dull lessons tolerable with an enthusiastic ‘mad-prof’ approach to experiments and formulae. He tried hard and deserved his B at O-Level.

Physics:            Mr Yates                 C         

Completely failed to convert my interest in science  and space into an understanding of how it all works. Uninspiring, impatient and incomprehensible. A light-year away from being a Brian Cox or Carl Sagan.  I blame him for  wasting an opportunity to learn.

Music:              ‘G-string’ Geeson              D          

The words ‘rock’ or even ‘pop’ were not in his vocabulary. All that mattered were minims and crotchets, orchestral instruments and the school choir.  Consequently he managed to exclude 80% of his pupils. Dropped in Year 3.

Art:                        Ma and Pa Cox               B           

An entertaining double act who managed to help our  clumsy attempts at painting and pottery achieve a standard we were quite proud of. 

A safe B at O-Level, despite the time spent discussing politics with pupils.

Deputy Head Comment: ‘Flange’ Parsons

The scariest woman in the school, the word ‘battle-axe’ was invented to describe her.  A common warning in the corridors was ‘Look Out!  Here comes Flange!’

Headmaster:                  H R ‘Ben’ Lyons 

‘Well Done.’  

A cold, gown-wearing traditionalist who rarely appeared, other than at Assembly. He led a strong team, fostering a successful encouraging and firm environment for all those pupils who could stay inside the behavioural boundaries.  I’m not sure his approach would work in the 21st Century.

In May 1975 we all walked out of the doors, the dreaded O-Levels only a few weeks away.  A big chunk of the year group would not return, choosing non-academic paths, FE College or apprenticeships. The rest of us were planning on a return in September and to actually be allowed to enter via the main front doors as new members of the Sixth-Form.

The 11-year journey from a little five-year old to a teenager about to enter Sixth-Form has provided plenty of information to be crunched and experiences to be evaluated.  The computer has assessed the years of my compulsory schooling and has generated a report analysing whether I maximised my educational potential. The synopsis of the report reveals:

1.         Parental support      - Excellent.

2.         Influence of friends  - Positive.

Behavioural risks were controlled by offering sport as a safety-valve and subconscious competition between peers encouraged  an adequate work ethic.

3.        Teachers  - Generally of a good standard.

      Some were outstanding, some were barely satisfactory.  Almost all  managed to add some value.

Possibly the best conclusion can be drawn from my final report and assessment.

It is with slight embarrassment that I discovered my Spring Term 1975 report contained an ‘A’ grade in all ten subjects.  I didn’t view myself as particularly ‘swotty’ and would have hated to be regarded as ‘sucking up’ to the teachers but have got to admit now that this report must have taken me close to those categories. 

The state education system had done its job so far.  What happened next was going to require more input from me.  But a long summer stretched ahead and the chapters on Sixth-Form and University can wait.

Images removed to avoid copyright risk: Ladybird book, Look and Learn comic, Stig of the Dump cover, Blue Peter badge, Barton bus, 11+ paper, Reliant Robin, A –Level Economics Jack Nobbs.

Just paste into Google images for a brief nostalgia trip.