I understand I first went to Longroyd nursery school when I was three years old. It was said that this was because my mother made a mistake about my age. She later caused a panic by informing them I’d had yellow fever. Jaundice was what she actually meant. I clearly remember having jaundice because during the day I was allowed to lie in Granny Annie’s bed in the front room with the fire lit. This luxury was unheard of. I was given medicine that I had to drink through a straw to stop it touching my teeth. I think it was quinine. Usually when we were ill Mam, would give us an eggcup full of ‘Fennings Fever Cure’. This stuff burnt the polish off your teeth, which wasn’t surprising. I was told later that it was dilute nitric acid. The principle was that it dissolved the top layer off your teeth and throat killing all the germs. I loved the taste. I lay there all yellow and they fed me oranges. I didn’t actually eat them I sucked them dry. The skin was pierced and I squeezed and sucked the juice out. The outside lav was miles away so I was allowed to use Grannies best po and not just to pee in.

I remember looking at the poo in the po and being alarmed I’d never seen it so close up. Because I was sucking orange juice my poo was not only orange but also round like an orange. It was as if my body was reconstituting the orange back to the solid. I was puzzled but it wasn’t a thing I ever mentioned to anyone, till now.

It wasn’t far to school and I don’t ever remember being taken there. I always went with my sister Doreen and the other kids. Mam just pushed us out of the door into the stream of sad kids heading towards the school and I assumed that’s where we’d arrive. If she pushed us out and the kids weren’t trudging past, we knew it was a holiday so we went back inside. Mam would look out to check and then let us stay. Otherwise it was off to school. On the way to school we passed through a derelict building we called the Mission. Apparently the demolition of this Primitive Methodist Mission Chapel had been started by a mini whirlwind in 1922. Obviously a sign from God that Thornhill Road didn’t need converting. It was here that we often played at night, lighting fires and assisting in God’s work by further demolishing the building. The spirit of Oliver Cromwell was with us. They now call it vandalism.

After passing through the Mission it was an uphill walk to the nursery. The nursery was at the lower end of the junior school. The entrance was at the top of a huge flight of stone steps. With my little legs it was like climbing a huge Ziggurat. Then when we got to the top what did we do? All I remember is, we were given cod liver oil capsules to stop us getting rickets and, I think, a red pill like a ‘Smarty.’ Then we were put on small camp beds and made to pretend we were asleep. Women walked up and down the ranks of beds looking for any signs of cheating. The women then clapped their hands and we all pretended to wake up and they sent us home. The joy of the kids running home with their Mac’s like cloaks fastened at the neck with one button, because we all knew heroes in a hurry always wear cloaks.

From the nursery school we went on to the junior infants in the main school. In the morning when we arrived in the school playground, we’d hang about doing whatever the season dictated; marbles, conkers, dead leg (kneeing someone on the thigh hard enough for the leg to go dead and they’d fall over) or cock fighting (a game which involved avoiding being kicked in the crutch). A teacher would come out of the school furtively and watch silently for any naughtinesses. (Incidentally the word, Naughtinesses, is a crossword puzzle clue for a three-letter word and it’s not SIN, but it is to do with saving souls.)

When the teacher was absolutely sure we were all fully occupied and happy in what we were doing and we had also completely forgotten we were at school, then, and not until then, she blew her ‘Acme Thunderer’ whistle. Instantly everyone froze as if in a photograph. No movement was allowed till the second whistle. We were kept in these poses and watched to make sure there was absolutely no movement, because it could be a while between the two whistles you quickly learnt it was a good idea, on hearing the first whistle, to strike a pose you could sustain. Preferably a pose that was not too exotic with both feet on the ground. Lying down was suspect and was not allowed otherwise when the whistle went, the yard would have look as if a bomb had gone off. I think the whole exercise was originally an early type of health test. If you fell over, you were a possible contagious case. So it was a good idea to spot the sickly before they got into the building.The school didn’t use my Granny’s doorstep Dettol dousing method of preventing germs entering the building so they had to be extra careful.

When the ‘All Seeing Eye’ was satisfied that all had been sufficiently Medusa’d. The second whistle sounded and we all, in absolute silence, scurried to our classes' line. When queuing, usually the idea is to be at the front, but on these occasions the reverse was true. No one wanted to be directly under the eye of the teachers. Much discreet positioning and tactics were involved. Suddenly lots of shoelaces needed retying and noses had to be picked. Kids’ brains went blank and they walked in the wrong direction like the Zombie Dead. These skills came in useful for some later in life, when they used them to avoided being first at the pub bar to buy a round of drinks. Eventually, we would all settle down and we’d look up and there would be Miss Milnes, the head mistress. She liked to tell us about cannibals and talked with relish about eating chubby children’s bottoms. She’d silently emerged from the depths of the school while we were doing the 'great silent pose'. The staff were all now standing like Indians round the rim of the canyon watching over us unarmed cowboys and girls. She’d nod to her lieutenant with the whistle. This meant she was taking over. Then she would address us, “Good morning children.” “Good morning Miss Milnes,” we’d all reply with one voice.

BAD SHIELD

Then she would present the, ‘Good Shield.’ It was shaped like a shield of old in lovely polished wood with shiny silver bits. This jewel was presented to the class with the best attendance. It was usually a lower form where abject terror was still rife.

Then came the, ‘Bad Shield’. Appropriately minimum effort had been put into making this badge of shame. It wasn’t even shield shaped. It was square, painted black, with a big white question mark on it, as if to say, ‘What the hell are you slackers playing at?”
This shield went to the class with the poorest attendance.

That was obviously the shortest queue, usually the queue that people like to be in, but not then. So the good kids that had turned up to school got the, ‘Bad Shield’. The hostages suffered the shame. The whistle was blown again and we all filed off to the cloakrooms, assembly and lessons. We seemed to spend most of our time learning our times tables ‘Parrot fashion’. One two’s two. Two two’s four. Three two’s six. My favourite of course was the five times table; five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty five, thirty, and I could do it backwards. This was a product of Mam attempting to teach me how to tell the time.

I had early suspicions about teachers when one lad, Melvin, came in from the yard saying he’d hurt his leg. Our class teacher a rangy young woman in a cotton frock said, it looked bad, because he’d got two large lumps on either side of his ankle. I pointed out that I'd got the same lumps on my ankle and I felt no pain. In fact I got them on both ankle.
‘Wasn’t I brave?”
Others in the class joined in to say they had the same lumps. After a quick check we found everybody had them, including Miss Cottonfrock. The mystery was that none of us had fallen over in the yard. Miss looked at Melvin’s other ankle to compare and found he had lumps on that as well. During the ensuing debate Melvin forgot which ankle he’d hurt. Miss said, "Never mind all was well and we must get back to lessons." All was not well. I now had doubts about her infallibility. Then she told us about the Great Exhibition how all the wonderful things were displayed in a place called the Crystal Palace. It was called the Crystal Palace because it was a great big building made of glass. One kid pointed out, if it was made of glass, there’d be no need to pay to get in to see the stuff. Miss Cottonfrock was stuck for an answer. Pausing to think, with a smile she said, “You couldn’t anyway it burnt down ages ago.”
A glass building burnt down, not likely, I thought.
She liked to tell her stories with a device made from a cardboard box. The box had a window cut in the side so it looked like a television set. This was very forward thinking of her because none of us had ever seen a television set. On either side of the window were wooden dowel rods, which held a scroll of paper across the window. The dowel rods stuck out of the top of the box each having a cotton reel pushed on it. By turning these cotton reels the scroll of paper moved in front of the opening revealing a crayoned picture of each stage of the story. This was the third bit of technology I’d come across as a child. The first was the washing mangle followed by the clock. This wasn’t as good as the mangle. Things were going down hill. The story I particularly remember, because it left me perplexed, was John the Baptist and Salome. Miss told the story of how John was imprisoned and Salome wanted the King to chop his head off. All the time Miss was winding different pictures into the frame to illustrate that part of the story. At the beginning of the story Miss told us that the King Herod had put John in prison because his wife said he had been rude to her. Salome didn’t think prison was enough, she wanted his head chopped off. He must have been really rude. Of course, there wasn’t a picture illustrating this act of rudeness. We had to know what he’d done that was so rude that he was put in gaol. Miss realised she would have to come up with an answer. She leaned forward conspiratorially. I leaned towards her determined not to miss anything. In a low voice she whispered,
“Salome said,”.....Pausing, she continued in an even lower voice, almost just mouthing it.
“John looked at her knickers”.
A stunned silence fell on the class. Here and there you could hear the voices of a kids who hadn’t been listening, or couldn’t lip-read, desperately pleading,
‘What did she say, what did she say?”
I think we expected she’d say that he’d stuck his tongue out at her but not this. I wasn’t convinced. Didn’t they all wear long frocks in the olden days? He’d have had to lie on the floor as she was walking past to look up her frock and see her knickers. She’d spot him straight off, if she didn’t trip over him. I suspected that she’d shown him her knickers deliberately and then told on him. I knew girls were like that. This hypothesis was born out at playtime when we lads had to avoid looking at the bolder girls doing cancan style flashes of their knickers accompanied by the terrifying cry of, “I’ll tell Miss of you.”

Trying to ignore them, we lads did what we nearly always did at break. We formed lines with our arms round each other shoulders. Then we charged or skipped round the yard chanting, “Anybody playing at cowboys and Indians ... but no lasses?” Others would join the end of line. Sometimes it reached terrifying proportions gathering would-be players. This was in fact the entire game, we never ever got round to playing cowboys and Indians. All of playtime was often spent in line prancing and chanting. It took our minds off school and it gave us a feeling of camaraderie, best of all it intimidated the girls. It was all very satisfactory. The girls couldn’t flash their knickers in front of a chorus line of stampeding, would-be cowboys, and live to tell Miss Cottonfrock. I finally lost all faith in Miss Cottonfrock on the day Melvin informed me that men were in outer space and had landed on the moon. This was 1948. I knew my family wasn’t in touch with all world events. We didn’t have a wireless, but I thought some one might have mentioned landing on the moon. I said it wasn’t true. To prove his point he produced a book with illustration of all these occurrences. I said it was just a storybook. He decided he’d call on a higher power to arbitrate. He chose Miss Cottonfrock, she of the great lumpy leg medical mystery. She studied the book, brought in evidence, very carefully. She pronounced her judgment. Her judgment was, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure ... I was, but I was no longer sure of Miss Cottonfrock. Melvin was sure. He eventually became a vicar.

The next memorable lesson was not with Miss Cottonfrock. It was higher up the school and the lesson was, ‘Telling the time’. You’ll note I didn’t say, learning to tell the time, I said, telling the time. A frightening woman, Miss Torquemada (not her real name). I’m still scared of her. First she made us all stand on our seats. Then using a white card board clock pinned to the blackboard, she would move the big and little hands to a time. She would then walk up and down between the rows of desks, while we quaked. A.D.S.( Attention Deficit Sydrome) was, at that time, not allowed. Stopping at the side of a child, always on her right, she’d look at the child and ask,
‘What time is it?”
If they got it right, they were allowed to sit down, if not, they had to carry on standing. The situation got more alarming, as she got frustrated with wrong answers and we realised why she was walking to our right. It was so she could give your left leg a really good smack. She strolled up and down the rows of bare legs. We all kept our eyes on her like mice watching a snake. She slivered down my row past me. I think she heard my relieved heart slow down because she paused in her prowl. Turning to look straight at me, she asked,
“What time is it?”
I looked from her face, with its slightly evil smirk, to the clock face. The big hand was at twelve and the little hand was at three. I couldn’t tell the time but I knew the hours, Mam had taught me. I was saved.
‘Three o’clock Miss,” I mumbled.
“Sit.” She responded, disappointed at my success. I sat down in a forest of skinny legs. The class knew the way of things now. As she approached them, they instinctively tried to protect their left legs from smacking by lifting them to make a smaller target. So instead of a forest of skinny legs it was like being amongst a flock of flinching frightened flamingos standing on one leg. She’d silently stand by a flamingo, who knowing that standing on one leg wasn’t allowed would, hoping for mercy, nervously lower it back towards the seat. Like a person testing the bath water with their big toe. Thinking it might just be all right if they put the foot down. Then quick as a flash,
“What’s the Time?”
“Er, er, threety.”
Thwack! She smacked them on the calf. Instantly they’d go back into the flamingo position this time clutching the leg with the mouth wide, open like an empty eggcup, in a silent scream. Audible screaming was not allowed. When morning milk break arrived the ones that had steadfastly refused to tell the time were allowed down off their rickety legs. The milk monitors would hand out the milk. They’d drink their milk thinking the ordeal was over, but it wasn’t. Before they went out to play, they were given a nice card with thick rough sisal string tied to it so it could hang round their necks. Printed on it in bold capitals was the word, 'DUNCE'. This woman terrorised me for a year. Then it was all over.

The rest of my junior school life was great. I was introduced to such luxuries as waxed paper straws and toilet paper printed with the command; ‘NOW WASH YOUR HANDS’.
Pretty scary, because there was no sink in the toilet. This toilet paper was available only on request from your class teacher. Never more than two sheets; if you needed more than two sheets you were considered ill. The toilets had screwed down seats shaped like a wooden horseshoe so you didn’t pee on the front bit.

This sign in a Gents public toilet baffled me as a kid. 'PLEASE ADJUST YOUR DRESS BEFORE LEAVING.'

The school dinners were wonderful before eating we had to say ‘Grace’;
“For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.”
Or as we said it, “Haymen”, followed by a whispered, “Straw women”. We were taught how to hold our knives and forks. The fork, in the left hand was held like a pen. The knife in the right hand fist with the index finger pointing down it to give added pressure when cutting. That was the way, no other way was allowed. To hold a knife in the left hand was death. To this day I cringe if I see anyone deviating from this style. I really liked school dinners, they had that essential ingredient missing at home ... quantity. The puddings were eagerly awaited, such things as; ‘Babies Arm’, a kind of jam rolly polly or ‘Flies Graveyard’, a flat pudding with currants on top. Semolina was always served with a small dollop of jam in the middle. When it was served it was customary to recite a little poem to try to put you off eating it. I don’t know what the rhyme was called but it went like this:

Scab and matter custard, green phlegm pie.
All mixed up with a dead dogs eye.
A worm in the middle to make it look thick.
All washed down with a cup of cold sick.

While this chant was being ignored you would contemplate the semolina with it’s luxurious dollop of jam, I never found out which was the correct way to eat this. Did one eat the jam first then the semolina or eat the semolina leaving a little island of jam? Could you perhaps take a little jam on the tip of your spoon with a little semolina? Some kids obviously driven mad with indecision would violently stir the whole lot into a pale pink sludge whilst mumbling, “All mixed up with a dead dogs eye.”
If they were caught they were told never to do it again and informed by the teacher that, “If it was meant to be eaten like that it would have been served like that”.
These rebel freethinkers were in the mould of Wilber and Orville Wright who were told, “If we were meant to fly God would have given us wings.” Or lower down the scale, “If we were meant to smoke we’d all have chimneys.” They carried on mixing the jam into the semolina. The only pudding that appeared to be in short supply was prunes and custard. There was always plenty of custard but very rarely more than three or four prunes. This was probably to stop mass visits to the toilet and thus save precious toilet paper. Or was it a conspiracy war propaganda prune pudding. You see, as we ate the prunes, we put the stones on the side of the bowl. When we’d finished we’d say a poem counting on each stone to predict what we would be when we left school.

Propaganda Prune Poem.
Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor.
Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.
Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief.
Three prune stones meant you were going to be a soldier, four a sailor. Five a war profiteer. If you got more it meant there was a fifth columnist spy in the kitchen.

At dinner you had to have what was served. You could ask for a small portion, but you had to have some of every thing. All food, when it was put on your plate had to be eaten and you weren’t allowed to leave the dining room till your plate was empty. On occasions we all would leave the hall, while one sad child would be left gazing at a plate of gristle that looked like the cause of what killed the cow in the first place. Then one day I was that child. I normally ate my dinner with relish and was always first up for seconds. Until the day the cook put too much almond essence in the sponge pudding. Not paying attention I received a large lump. I just couldn’t eat it. When I brought the spoon towards my mouth, the almond smell made me retch, it was nearly as bad as the worst smell in the world; the milk monitors manky, wiping up cloth. Like opposing magnets, pushing apart, I couldn’t physically get the pudding in my mouth. I couldn’t get it near my mouth. I tried closing my eyes but the smell was too strong. The smell was the problem. I never got to know the taste because I couldn’t get it in my mouth. Now you may think, why didn’t I just give it to someone else so my plate was emptied? We all lived in such abject fear of catching diseases that we wouldn’t dream of eating some one else’s food. Especially when that person was retching over the plate and what was on the plate may have been eaten once and come up again.

The rest of the kids hadn’t a problem finished theirs and they all left for the playground. I felt every single eye on me as they walked to freedom. Some kids looking at me encouragingly whilst others were unable to conceal their glee at my discomfort. I avoided the girl’s looks. They all filed out full of the poison pudding. Teachers, dinner ladies, and teachers’ toadies busied themselves sorting out the room for the afternoon. Nothing was said to me. I knew I had to stay till the pudding was eaten. The tables were all cleared away. The big folding room divider was pulled across making the hall into two classrooms. I was then sat, with my spoon and plate of pudding; at a desk which was now at the back of some one else’s class room. All this business was going on around and all the time I was completely ignored. I had to eat the pudding and that was that. Then I was alone in the classroom. I could hear things going on outside. What was going to happen now? What had happened to the kid with the gristle? I didn’t remember ever seeing him again. Oh no! What had they done with him? The terrible thought crossed my mind. Was Miss Milnes really a cannibal that ate children’s chubby bottoms? Looking at the pudding, I knew there was no way I could eat it. The bowl had to be emptied. I could of course hide it in one of the desks. I knew God was watching me, but was anybody else. Before I could proceed with my plan the door opened and in walked, Miss Torquemada followed by her class. They all stood silently by their desks waiting for the instruction to sit. No one sat till Miss Torquemada sat, then
“Sit,” she’d say in a low voice.
They all dutifully sat. Except of course for the pretty girl whose desk I was sitting at. She was stuck up like a sore thumb and to make herself more visible she stuck her arm up and said,
“Please Miss?”
It was like baby bear discovering Goldilocks. This was real life though and I knew that real Mummy bears would eat Goldilocks, especially if they hadn’t eaten their pudding. Then a strange thing happened. She told me to come to the front of the class with my bowl and spoon. I walked the long walk towards her. My hand was uncontrollably shaking. The custard would have normally spilt but it had congealed, holding the pudding firmly in the centre of the bowl. It was the reverse of Oliver Twist; I didn’t want more I wanted less, in fact nothing at all. She took the pudding and spoon off me. Told me to go to my own classroom and not to forget to shut the door. I walked out waiting for the bullet in the back. Nothing happened. I was in the corridor and free although feeling a little peckish after my unexpected pudding pardon.

My classmates couldn’t believe it, not of Miss Torquemada, the Ghengis Can’t, of the classroom. They reckoned it was a cruel ruse, I was only on pudding parole. I was being allowed to think I’d got away with not eating my pudding but it would be waiting for me at the next dinner and every dinner afterwards, until I ate it, or it ended up like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake. That night, after a grovelling pudding praying and leaving out a blessing for the dinner ladies and teachers, I slept fitfully with the fingers on both hands crossed and touching the wooden headboard I hoped to evoke good luck.

Next day, at school dinners I can’t remember what the pudding of the day was, but there was no sign of the dreaded almond sponge. Salvation, I could now brag I’d lived through the pudding persecution and despite every thing I had dared not to eat my pudding. The incident was now to my advantage. I even hinted I’d done it on purpose. I was not a scared duffer. Granted some of my kudos was lost when some minor Sherlock Holmes pointed out that almond sponge was Miss Torquamadas favourite and she, like all vengeful people, liked it cold.

On a television show, Jeremy Beadle had an invention competition for children. Part of the prize was that I would build the winning invention. The winner was a bed for unwelcome guests, which I subsequently built. I wasn’t a judge, but my favourite entry was the second prizewinner. A doll designed by Sheila Hudson. The doll had a secret compartment for unwanted school dinners. The problem still goes on.

When, on two occasions parsnips were served at Hipperholme Grammar School, I’m proud to say I was the one of the few that could eat them. If those lads had been in an open boat with just parsnips they would all have died. For once at that school I felt some how superior. I’m glad to say my Achilles heel, the almond pudding was never served. Apart from the almond pudding and an early aversion to jelly, I could eat anything. Later I found that if I kept my mouth tight shut and squirted the jelly through the gaps in my teeth the lumpy jelly was reduced to a liquid and I could swallow it. So jelly was back on the menu.

Some of the kids at Longroyd Junior were from the local orphanage. They were brought to school in a large shooting brake car; I was quite jealous. They invited me back to the orphanage for tea. First we played with the vast quantity of toys they had, then we sat down to tea. On the table was a plate piled high with sandwiches cut diagonally into triangles. This was posh. They all sat there waiting for me to take the first sandwich from the top. I was the guest. After prompting by them, I took the first sandwich. Not one of them took a sandwich. They watched me. I was worried was there something wrong.
The kid next to me said, “Go on eat it.”
I thought they mustn’t be hungry. I was starving so I said, ‘What the ummer?”
When I bit into it, it was unfamiliar, strange and chewy. I liked it.
“What is it?” I asked.
They all leaned forward conspiratorially and mouthed quietly in unison. “It’s date.” Then poshly, one said, “Do have another.”
I took another; they all watched me eat the date sandwiches until there was just one left on that layer. The atmosphere was tense I couldn’t understand why was I eating alone. I picked up the last triangle. Instantly they were on to the pile like locusts. They were in a feeding frenzy. The layers of sandwiches went down before my eyes. Then just as quickly as they started they suddenly stopped. They were waiting and watching me again. I pick up a sandwich from the newly exposed layer and bit into it, a very familiar taste was in my mouth, it was date. The plan was revealed. Table manners dictated that they were only allowed to take sandwiches from the top of the pile; not one of them liked dates. I was their sandwich salvation. I never found out what was in the other sandwiches.

On television one Sunday evening there was an appeal for married couples to adopt children. The man finished the appeal by saying, “If you’re interested in adopting a child please send us a very large stamped envelope.”

Moving up into the higher school had its difficult moments. What I didn’t learn at school or pick up from my friends, I didn’t know. Not wanting to appear stupid, I often pretended I did know. Some of the things seem bizarre now. For example, when I first heard of fir trees or when the teacher told the class we were going to have a holiday, I thought it was something to do with the prickly holly bushes at the back of the school. Whatever it was, it was secret and we weren’t allowed in school while it went on. The word hobbies had me baffled. The teacher said,
“On Friday I want you all to bring your hobbies.”
I panicked, what was I going to do? The only hobby I’d heard of was the hobbyhorse in storybooks. I hadn’t got one. In fact I’d never seen one, except in nursery books. The only thing on our road anything like a hobbyhorse was Barraclough’s rocking horse and I couldn’t see him carrying that to school. Teacher had said, quite clearly,
“On Friday I want you all to bring your hobbies.”
This implied that all the kids had one but me. They’d all kept very quiet about them. I’d never seen anybody playing cowboys on one, which I didn’t find surprising; from what I could remember they were all covered in ribbons and bells, very girlie. Perhaps they cost loads of money? They had to be kept for best and only played with in the house. Anyway, I thought teachers weren’t keen on horses, weren’t they always saying they didn’t want any ‘Horse play’ or ‘Horsing about.’ It confused me because I’d never seen horses playing. After thinking about it, I assumed they meant pretending to be riding a horse; clicking your tongue to make the sound of hoof beats holding your left hand up as if holding the reins and smacking your bum with your other hand to make you go faster. What was a hobby? Mam and Dad hadn’t any idea what I was talking about. Because I was never sure which weekday it was, Friday came unrealised and I joined the procession to school. I saw various school chums with jigsaw puzzles and books. It must be a new craze I knew nothing about. When I inquired why they were taking them to school they asked if I'd forgotten it was hobby day. I stood back alarmed ... had they all got colds?
“Hobbyday?”
I was puzzled, “But why are you going to school and all taking jigsaw puzzles?”
“Because it’s hobby day.”
They replied as if talking to a moron. Hobbyday? Was it the pronunciation that had changed from holiday?
“Have you forgotten?” they said.
“This afternoon instead of lessons, we can do anything we like.”
I eventually cottoned on that a hobby was doing something you liked, or to be correct, some thing that you liked doing and was acceptable to adults. I approached David and said,
“I didn’t know you liked doing jigsaw puzzles Dave?”
“I don’t,” he said. “My Dad won’t let me bring my Meccano. He says, I’ll lose the little bits or get it all pinched.”
That was it, everybody hadn’t suddenly taken to doing jigsaws. Their parents wouldn’t let them out with anything valuable. They might lose it or get it pinched and unlike David’s Meccano, every jigsaw had a bit missing anyway. Some of the girls had wool and knitting needles stuck in corks. I think there was a rumour of a balaclava shortage. The week after, I tried to give the impression I’d always had an interesting hobby. I took a battery, wire and bulb, which was a big mistake. I wired up the bulb, it lit up. The girls went,
“Au !“
The boys went, “So what?”
They were right, the rest of the afternoon stretched before me. I hadn’t even a back up jigsaw to do. Miss realised my predicament and suggested perhaps I could just sit quietly and think how I could wire up the dolls house. The shame, I so much wanted to impress.

Other boys would casually make remarks, not realising how impressed I was. A boy across the road had a brother in the army. He came home on leave sometimes. I never saw him. I was totally amazed when I was told he’d brought his mother a box of chocolates. The only brown things I could get wrapped in silver paper were oxo cubes, which I would suck straight out of the packet. Frequently taking it out of my mouth for some relief from the powerful taste and also to admire the sucked rounded corners. Eventually it would end up as a small round black ball. An occasional cough and a spit near a passing adult would get a sympathetic disgusted look for the poor tubercular child.

Remember this was during rationing. They say Yorkshire puddings were invented to fill you up so you’d eat less meat. A local family that bought chocolate employed a similar idea. They’d break the chocolate into small bits and put it in sandwiches. We all know what a box of chocolates is now, but then I’d only ever seen bars of chocolate. This chap was in the army so the box of chocolates I envisaged was a wooden rifle box. The type I had seen on cowboy films. I dreamt about this box of chocolates. I could see it being opened with a lovely little crowbar specially made for the purpose. Well they had toffee hammers didn’t they? The lid would come off and there tightly packed would be rows of chocolate bars. I would look at them not wanting to remove one and spoil the opulent symmetry. It was not for eating it was for looking at, lusting after. I didn’t need to eat it the very fact that there was a lot gave a kind of satisfaction. Misers must feel that way. I knew I would never have a box of chocolate. I consoled myself by thinking a complete bottle of pop was a possibility. Uncle Wilf had loads of pop in his cellar, a sure sign of a man who’d made it. So little was available, we were like squirrels, we hoarded whatever we could find. Squirrels will hoard clothes pegs if there are a lot around just because they’re there.

We collected; cigarette cards, cigarette boxes, stamps, foreign coins, rubber bands, silver paper, matchboxes etc., My collection of match boxes were all the same. To me it was the quantity that came first, not quality or variety, so strictly speaking it wasn’t a collection. It would have been more accurately described as ‘A lot of matchboxes.’ A mistake frequently made by collectors. I’d push each matchbox drawer halfway out and then join them end to end.

The only place I could keep this cardboard tower was under Mam’s bowlegged sideboard. When it started sticking out from under the ends of the sideboard, Mam made me stop and get rid of them. I saved a few boxes so I could blow the drawer out at people and for making ‘Mickey walks the tightrope,’ ear phones. One box of Pilot matches I carried with me. By placing my thumb over the steering wheel I could turn the sailor into a well-endowed self-abuser, my first dirty picture. With a ‘Captain Webb’ box of matches, a live match was pushed through a hole in the crutch of his swimming trunks so he appeared to have a little red willy. When you opened the box, the willy extended alarmingly. Mam wouldn’t let me start another matchbox collection.

One of the big lads told me that he collected beer mats.
I hadn’t a clue what a beer mat was. Kids never went in pubs then. He explained that they were the mats they

MICKEY WALKS THE TIGHT ROPE

put beer glasses on. The fact that he collected these was supposed to imply he was tough and he wasn’t scared to go in pubs. The only mats I knew were the crotchet lacy ones Granny put under all her vases. Pinch one of then at your peril. If beer mats were anything like Granny’s I thought anyone who collected them ought to keep quiet about it. Strange lad, he also told me he had a Sten gun, so I kept quiet about his hobby.

In the park bushes one day I came upon a construction of flat stones, probably sandstone roofing slates. They were all stood on their ends, forming a series of oblong containers. Each stone container was filled to the top with a different substance. One was full of iron fillings, another with part made pins. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to carry this lot up from the pin works. The other stone containers held stuff from closer at hand: crushed brick from the red rec., holly berries, leaves and sand. The only container not full, held lucky stones; these are beautiful shiny green striped stones. I took one. The whole thing was very neatly made, a thing to be proud of. Now they would call it, ‘Installation art.’ They would tell you how it spoke of deprivation, of a deep desire to control and possess things. To hoard and to have more than others, yet still to share, by displaying your excess, to elicit admiration at a price. In other words , it looked like some one was playing shop. All the stuff was worthless but there was a lot of it and it looked good. Doesn’t that mirror life?
I went back later to see if I could catch the creator, of this wonderful thing, playing shops. Sadly, some one was playing robbers. It was all gone, but I still had the lucky stone I thought wouldn’t be missed. This was to be my new hobby, collecting lucky stones. Come next hobby day, I took my lucky stones to school. Miss, hadn’t a clue what to say about these green glassy objects. Feigning interest she said,
“I think you ought to show these to Mr Plimsole.”
I walked the empty corridors to Mr Plimsole’s classroom scared stiff. I heard rumours about Plimy. It turned out he was really interested. The green stones were a kind of waste slag from the foundries. He told me studying stones was called geology.

From then on I wanted to be a geologist. Each week I took different stones to school, he always knew what they were and he never lost interest. One weekend I carefully looked at every piece of coal in the coalhole. Picking each piece up and placing it in another pile so I knew I’d examined it. I was looking for fossils. I didn’t find a single fossil but it was worth it, because I found a moon shaped piece of Iron Pyrites better known as, ‘Fools gold.’
Whenever I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, “A geologist.” That stopped the conversation stone dead.

I learned early on that when you hadn’t a clue about most things, it was always a good idea to start the conversation. Then you at least knew what the conversation was about. I don’t know if the rumours about Mr Plimsoll were true. I always found him a completely amiable chap. The rumour was that he had a big slipper and if you crossed him he’d belt you with it. I didn’t think Mr Plimsoll would sink so low. Mr Dunlop, it was said, had an enormous pump, one of a pair of pumps; the other having been wore out on the bottoms of small children. The scariest one was the teacher that had a piece of wood with a nail in it. I never saw the lump of wood with the nail in it. Occasionally, while teachers rummaged through their drawers, we had what appeared to be accidental glimpses of various dilapidated items of footwear. A murmur would go round the class. The teacher would look up and there would be instant silence. These glimpses kept the rumours going. I never all the time I was there met a child that had been punished with any of the implements or smacked. Except for the smacking Miss Torquemada in the lower school, of course.

In the upper school we learnt to write in ink. We were given wooden shafted, dip in pens and told to suck the new steel nib. This cleaned the anti-rust protective oil off and helped the pen to take up ink. Some kids thought you had to suck the nib after every dip of the pen. The ended up with dark blue tongues and lips. They took a lot of reassuring by Miss that they weren’t going to die. We weren’t convinced and added to their misery on the way home after school by telling them so. It was only when they came in the following day like a load of Captain Qates’, with paler blue lips that we thought they had a chance of surviving.

The writing lessons continued. We were only allowed to print. Joined up letters, loops on letters and sloping letters were strictly forbidden. We never had the lesson on joined up or loopy writing. Laboriously printing each letter was the way. This slowed us down, so we could contemplate the saying that was drummed into us daily. ‘Think before you ink.’ This of course went along with spelling tests. It was always handy to memorise a few alien words, teacher put in to catch you out. Two, I particularly remember, came up frequently, yacht and silhouette. When learned, they were quickly forgotten; yacht and silhouette didn’t fit easily into our every day conversations. The teacher would wait a while then put them into a new test with words like; separate, disappoint and disappear. Bollockings all round would ensue if we got them wrong.

Other lessons were more interesting. Growing mustard and cress in eggshells didn’t relieve the food crisis. In fact we didn’t know we were short of mustard and cress. I'd heard of mustard but I’d never heard of cress. Getting two eggshells for this project was a problem, not because eggs were scarce. Aunt Ethel had told Doreen that you had to make a hole in the shell because witches went to sea in them. I explained that if witches were so small you could tread on them, then perhaps it was a good idea they went to sea. Anyway an eggshell, full of muck and mustard and cress would sink. She relented. The mustard and cress was grown. We took it home cut it with scissors put it in a sandwich. The general opinion was we hadn’t been missing much. Another day we collected all the cream off the school milk. We sat for what seemed like hours shaking it in screw top jars. It eventually solidified we added a pinch of salt and we had what Miss said was butter. It wasn’t like any butter I’d tasted but then I didn’t know that I’d never tasted butter. What Mam called butter was margarine. The sign she used for butter was two finger pointed like a gun, scraped up and down on the open left hand as if buttering a slice of bread. Buttering bread involved spreading it on with the knife, then scraping off as much as you could. Leaving evidence that there had ever been butter on the bread was unheard of extravagance. After all the function of the butter was only to provide a damp course to stop the bread going soggy by soaking up too much precious jam. It was known for people to melt butter and paint it on the bread with a paintbrush. These economy methods are not entirely gone; cheapskate cafes use aerosol butter now.

Mam once sent me to the Co-op for butter. The Co-op was right on the end of Thornhill Rd it had a lovely stone carving of bees buzzing round a hive above the door. Our family dividend number was engraved on my brain, 150321. They would write it on small pale yellow perforated receipt tickets that they’d tear off a larger sheet to give to you. They used copy ink pencils, which were just like normal pencils till you licked them and they changed and wrote like ink. I asked for a quarter of a pound of butter. The woman cut a lump of stuff off a bigger lump of stuff wrapped it then asked me for an enormous sum of money. I hadn’t enough, this was unheard of; Mam always gave me the exact amount of money. What had happened? Things were always the same price it never changed. Fish were sixpence chips were three pence; it had always been so and would always be so. The woman asked if I was sure I wanted butter. Yes I was sure Mam had said butter but the stuff we usually got came in oblong blocks. The woman said,
“I think you want margarine.” I’d never heard of margarine. “No”. I said, “Butter.”
She said, “I think you want margarine.” I wasn’t convinced. I left empty-handed, while the disgruntled woman stuck the butter back on the big lump. I told Mam they’d sold out. We had lard instead, lovely with a little salt almost like proper beef dripping.

Years later at Hipperholme Grammar, Dizzy Day, the geography teacher, told us how the people of Tibet put butter in their tea. He painted a vivid word picture of them shivering whilst drinking tea in the freezing mountain air. Their uncontrollable shaking hands spilling the drink down their chests. The buttery liquid would be left to set in the cold Tibetian air helping to keep out the chill. Come the next tea break they would scrape it off with a knife and slop it back in the teapot. After school I tried it. I made the same mistake once again of thinking margarine was butter. The tea had the molten margarine floating on the top like diesel oil. I drank it. I was left with a faint yellow moustache and I was ever so sick, it must be an acquired taste I thought.
Back at school we were now growing a bean between the inside of a jam jar and a piece of soggy blotting paper. It seemed particularly cruel. The idea was to show that the bean knew which way was up. We attempted to confuse it by turning it round. Clever little bean, it didn’t know much, but it certainly knew which way was up.

We were required to know more than this; the production of coal gas was explained. We were told if you put little pieces of coal in cocoa tin and punched holes in the lid. Then put the tin on a lit gas ring, little jets of gas would come out of the holes and you could light them. After school, the minute I got home I insisted that the school had said I got to do this experiment. To Mam, if school said it had to be done, it had to be done: Authority had to be obeyed. An oblong Rowntree’s cocoa tin was emptied and the teacher’s instructions followed. I lit the little holes and it worked. The flames were just like the cookers. It was a great anti climax, now what? There was the cooker with a little cooker on top It was like those boxes you open and there’s another one inside you open that and there’s another one and so on. Should I now put a smaller tin of coal on top of the cocoa tin and light that. I thought about it then turned the gas off and threw the lot away.

I was also disappointed when we were told we were going to be allowed, as a treat, to play on the school stilts. These turned out to be two-pound treacle tins with string threaded through holes in them. The idea was you stood on the treacle tins and held them tight against your feet with the loop of string. This wasn’t my idea of stilts. Stilts made you really tall. I wanted to be tall. These were vertigo stilts for kids scared of heights. Which soon I found out I was.

Music lessons were a misery. I think Britain had captured a German freighter of triangles and castanets, because the school was full of them. In every music lesson I was either in the massed triangle section or the massed castanets section. Never got my hands on any thing else not even a girlie tambourine. The castanets were not for the macho type. They were not the ones seen in the films. The ones that stiff backed Spanish dancers had in each hand. Ours were similar to them but tied to a stick, probably so we wouldn’t lose or pinch them. Despite the vast quantity they were rationed, they couldn’t shake the habit. Teacher only allowed us one each. They made the same sound as knick- knack bones but they lacked the panache. School castanets were like rattling your Grannies teeth on a stick. You’d have thought that with all the school dinners they served they would have had plenty of knick-knack bones, but no. The only consolation was, when playing the castanets you sort of rattled along most of the time. Not on the triangles though, it was all counting bars. Lots of little mouths, moving silently, counting. Triangles held a loft. Shiny plinker, poised bobbing in time to the rhythm and the counting. I dreamt of a huge orchestral triangle that made a sound like the cowboys’ chuck wagon cook made, bashing a lump of metal, when the beans were boiled.

Gabby Hayes wouldn’t have been seen dead with my triangle. Hopalong Cassidy would laugh himself silly if he could see me counting up to the plink. You’d think the moment to plink was arriving, then the doubt set in. Were you on the right bar? The uncertainty, the hesitation, I’d looked round at the many poised plinkers dithering and then, Plink! Bugger! Another kid plinked before you. The rest of the massed triangles follow like lemmings in a cacophony of plinks, with the odd out of tune plonk. Some kids just couldn’t hold a triangle properly. You look round, self-satisfied and glad it was over. A job badly done, but done. Then surprise, a lonely single plink, crystal clear and perfect rings across the room. We all smirk, he’s late, we all turn and look in the direction of the sound. Damn, it was the kid that always got it right. He’d been demoted for the day for improvising on the drums. He continues, smugly, silently, counting the bars to his next triumphant plink. We were all completely lost; he’d be back on the drums next week, lucky sod.

The other lessons were much more interesting. We were introduced to pointillism and colour theory. Mixing yellow and blue crayon dots, we saw that from a distance they looked green. The classroom vibrated with us all dotting our pictures of a thatched cottage. Apparently pointillism didn’t lend itself to smokey Yorkshire scenes. That’s why it was more popular abroad and down south. We were all being gently persuaded out of the, “Kipper School,” of drawing and painting. That is with both eyes on the same side of the nose, despite Mr. Picasso’s attempts to popularise it.

Measured perspective appealed to those that needed rules. The first lesson was how to draw a road Disappearing into the distance with one bend. The class was amazed they’d achieved this artistic optical effect with a ruler. To me it still looks like a Ku Klux Klansman in a wind.

My favourite lesson though was my introduction to papier-mâché. We had to make a mask. A figure eight was constructed with a clay snake. This instantly made the mask with its eyeholes. We then proceeded to cover this mould with small pieces of newspaper stuck on with flour and water paste alternating the layers with school toilet paper. Brefni had his mask covered in loads of paste and was smoothing it up and down. The shape was reminiscent of a ladies

hour- glass shapely figure. This had not gone unnoticed. He was smoothing the paste up and down whilst giving me knowing winks. Thus I was introduced to eroticism and papier-mâché an obsession that stayed with me all my life. That is an obsession for papier-mâché. I don’t know though. Brefni being more in touch with the adult world told me the second joke I’d heard as a child. It was about the boy that went home crying. His mother asked why? He replied, “Is Amsterdam swearing?”
His mother said, “No.”
He asked, “Is Rotterdam swearing?”
“No,” she said.
He then told her, the teacher had taken his sweets from him and smacked him and all he’d said was,
“I hope the sweets Rotterdam teeth.”
The first joke I knew was,
“Adam and Eve and Nipmewell went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve fell in.
Who do you think was saved?”
Of course you’d reply, “Nipmewell.”
Where upon your bum would be savagely pinched.

The final year teacher at Longroyd was Miss Pring. I came to her attention early when she pointed out to the class that my hair was not ginger, a great surprise to all of us She meant it wasn’t the beige colour of ginger spice. My hair she said was the same colour as the painter Titian’s. So my nickname changed from Willy and from then on I was known as Tish. It wasn’t so bad. It was better than ‘Clutchit’ the lad who wanted to wee all the time or ‘Peelow’ one of the less successful up the lavy wall peeing contestants. Ann Gill ended up being called Penelope after a lesson on Greek legend. Girls are called that now, it’s usually shortened to Penny but then it was completely unheard of.
Miss Pring told us Brighouse was called Brighouse because there used to be a house by the bridge, thus bridge house, Brighouse. This information gave birth to a life long interest in how names came about. Most people haven’t any interest but you’d think someone living in a place called Chickenly would be curious. I tried to find out from an inhabitant why the place was called Chickenly. Attempting jocularity I asked if he noticed a lot of huts or chicken wire fences where he lived?
“No.”
“Was it the way people walked?” I inquired.
He had no idea why the place was called Chickenly and he’d never been curious to know or thought it at all strange or funny. I considered, how this could be, then I realised I done the same thing myself. I would never have thought of asking, about hen huts or, “Is it the way people walk?” in Henley. I don’t know why, but chickens are funny and hens are not I suppose that’s why you can get rubber chickens and not rubber hens.

‘There was a cow that wouldn’t yield, it adn’t ad its Uddersfield.’

Miss Pring’s classroom was wonderland to me. It was like a magician’s show, when the curtain goes back to reveal a stage set out with things you eagerly wait to be demonstrated. On the windowsills were dioramas of biblical scenes cut out of plywood; Jonah being swallowed by the whale, Jesus walking on water, the tower of Babel. I though crikey we’re never going to be able to make such great things. I was right we never did. We’d ask when we were going to start and she’d say,
‘When we’re ready.”
I suspect the models had been left there long ago by Druid children and she had no idea how to make them. They just stood around as monuments to what you could achieve with a fret saw if you really tried. Trying, that was her constant theme. She’d set a task, you were in the doghouse if you said, you couldn’t do it, you had to say, you’d try.
She would take us to the swimming baths in Brighouse; we’d line up in twos with our towels in home made drawstring pump bags. All the boys walked with boys and the girls with girls. I was secretly glad of this tradition because, I suppose, I had my first girlfriend at this time. She was called Kay Franklin and she embarrassed me no end. Walking home from school she insisted we hold hands. Imagine walking to the baths holding hands with a girl. Before setting off to the baths we were instructed that if we met any adults on the way we had to step into the road and allow them to pass on the pavement. Older folk who’d survived childhood made the rules; they must be respected and allowed longer productive life. It didn’t seem to matter that a whole class of kids was put at risk for the sake of manners. We were dispensable. Had it not been so since the days of child sacrifice? So we had to step into the road. The only people we ever met were old women or housewives. The only young men about in during the day were either burglars or off sick from work, in which case they had to stay indoors. Old men sat in the ‘Old Men’s Parliaments’ unsuccessfully trying to kipper themselves against the diseases of old age, by smoking themselves silly.

At the baths the boys had to get changed in the curtained cubicles on the right side of the bath. The girls had to change in the cubicles, facing them, on the left side of the baths. This separation failed in its intention because being opposite each other it was easy to look under the curtains and see the girls taking their knickers off. That’s of course if you wanted to. The girls would emerge in their one-piece costumes wearing swimming caps almost like rubber balaclavas with a chinstrap. They were absolutely not allowed in the water with out them. This was something to do with long hairs getting in the water I think. Long hairs in the water must have been a serious threat to something and they were not allowed. The attendant had a long pole with a tin on the end for scooping out old sticky plasters and other bits that dropped off bathers. Mam didn’t mind us going to the baths because the water had so much chlorine in it germs couldn’t survive. It was clever really the town was disinfecting its population and getting them to pay for it themselves, thinking it was entertainment. Rather like getting the sheep to pay for the sheep dip. The water killed every thing except of course the dreaded verucca, of which I can say nothing, I never got one.

When at the baths, it was the usual thing with Miss Pring. You weren’t allowed to say, you couldn’t swim, you had to say you’d try. After a few standing shivering, swimming lessons in the three foot end, strange how all the skinny kids that couldn’t swim huddled in the corner at the shallow end shivering, just like the chickens in a hot hen house she lined us up at the four foot six deep bit and informed us, we could now swim, and we had to jump in. I had confidence in her confidence, so I jumped in. She was wrong, I couldn’t swim and I now knew I wasn’t four foot six tall. My feet were standing on the bottom but my head was under water and I wasn’t floating. I instantly sprang up on one foot and my head broke the surface. I managed to cross the width of the bath in a series of forward hops assisted slightly by a kind of token breaststroke. Grabbing the bar at the other end I pulled my self out scraping my chest on the concrete surround. This was my first remembered ordeal at the baths.
The wartime ban on embroidery had been lifted for some time. Doreen learned how to do chain stitch embroidery. Wanting to put her newly found skill to use she embroidered a yellow ‘W’ on the front of my maroon coloured trunks. I wasn’t too happy disporting myself in my customised swimwear with it’s unfortunately placed ‘W’. The embarrassment was added to when I trapped my foot in the bath inlet pipe.
Later my arm got caught under the bar running round the bath. Every time someone jumped in, the water rose and my head went under. The attendant eventually rescued me, not in a spirit of the 'Good Samaritan' or because he'd heard my screams over the din, he knew by the shade of blue my wrinkled skin had gone, (I think he had a shade card.) that I’d obviously been in longer than I’d paid for. The final indignity was the day I went to the baths and nothing went wrong in the bath and I managed to get dried and dressed without incident. Feeling confident I decided to squander a penny and use one of the latest coin operated hair driers. They had installed two, one on each side of the little wringing machine you used for squeezing the water out of your cossie. The machines were on sprung hinged bars attached to the wall. You put your penny in the slot and it started blowing hot air. Then you pulled it down close to your head. I put my penny in and it started blowing. I reached up to pull it down and before I touched it, it dropped like a giant mallet on my head knocking me out. The screw on the end punched a tiny dint in my head. Some bastard had unhitched the spring. The kind of guy who unscrewed the top of the salt pot so you ended up with salt all over your dinner. He’d have been watching me with his mouth under water so he wouldn’t be spotted, bubbling with mirth. That was the last time I ever went to Brighouse Swimming Baths to swim.

I did go back as a teacher with a class of kids from Rastrick Common Secondary School. I’m glad to say it was strictly forbidden for teachers to go in the water. At the time Miss Pring was also teaching there. I don’t think she remembered me.
From the day of the hair drier incident I didn’t enter the water of a swimming bath for nearly thirty years till 1981 in Liverpool baths. I was dressed as an Edwardian bather and was demonstrating a swimming machine invention for television. The machine didn’t work and I had to be rescued, exhausted, by Peter Wragg a special effects guy. He had to continue the demonstration for the under water shots. On the film you see red haired me paddling away on the surface then it cuts to the under water shots of a pair of black hairy legs, Peter’s. From that day to this I have not returned to the water.

One morning our class didn’t go to our school. We went instead up the steps past Brook Street to Rastrick Common Secondary School to do the ‘Eleven plus’ exam. Miss Pring always encouraged us to try. When we were told of the impending exam one brave lad told Miss that his parents didn’t want him to take the test. I always wondered why.
We were all sat in desks one yard apart, to prevent copying. That’s all I remember about the exam, apart from the lad that sat to my right. He was called Bins. I passed the exam and opted to go to Hipperholme Grammar School because I was told they taught German. Someone asked Mam if they were paying for me to go. The implication being the children of deaf parents should be too thick to pass exams. It certainly cost a lot to kit me out. Mam was sent a list of things I had to have. It was an official list so Mam had to get everything new. On the list were underpants, an unheard of luxury for little boys of my ilk.

After the summer holidays I arrived at the school full of confidence. That soon went out of the window. Everyone was clever and most were a lot cleverer. It was misery from the start. I might have passed the ‘Eleven Plus’ but I still didn’t know the months of the year, the alphabet or how to tell the time. I was in trouble straight away.
I was in Mr Conrys class. I entered nervously. I’d been told he was called ‘Killer Corny’ which didn’t help. The first thing he did was to inform us that he was filling in the class register, in alphabetical order. I started to panic. Then he confused me about Christian and surnames. Was it the ‘W’ or the ‘L’ he wanted? Eventually my name was put in the register when he said,
“Anyone I’ve missed?”
I put my hand up Killer Conry wasn’t pleased.
Bins the lad who’d sat next to me in the exam was in the same class. He not only knew the alphabet but he could recite it belching. ‘Killer Conry’ when he heard I was called Lunn told the class about the bun called a ‘Sally Lunn’ after the nineteenth century pastry cook from Bath. From that moment until I left school I was called ‘Sally.’ For some reason it never bothered me. Unlike the lad called ‘Sir’ which doesn’t seem offensive till you know he was so called because he was a large chap and it was short for, ‘Circumference’. All the teachers were addressed as just Sir except the French teacher Monsieur Viette. We gave him his full title, ‘Serviette.’
I remember ‘Killer’ asking me what I’d got for Christmas. Certain I’d impress him and the class, I proudly said, “A Black and Decker electric drill”. He then deflated me when he said, “That’s nice, do you think you could make me a piano?”
I have the drill to this day and it’s still working, I wonder if ‘Killer’ is?
We didn’t do German, we did French, with ‘Killer Conry.’ I was familiar with French, because one side of our H.P. sauce bottle was all in French. Earlier bottles had ‘Garton’s H.P. Sauce’ on the front. I think this was removed because it spells ‘Snotrag’ backwards.

‘Killer’ explained that in French there are two words for ‘The’. All nouns are either masculine or feminine each having its own ‘The’. They are; le or la. He then told us most feminine nouns end with an ‘E’. Our first homework was to put all the le’s and la’s with a list of masculine and feminine nouns. He’d said feminine ended in ‘E’, so I reckoned, le, must be feminine. That’s why I got my entire French homework wrong and my first detention in the first week. It was downhill from then on.

Each morning started with a religious assembly; we were stood in lines patrolled by prefects. We were given free Bibles by the British and Foreign Bible Society. These were mainly used by the prefects for bashing you on the head for any minor infringement of their rules, such as, looking happy. They would bash you quite hard with their Bibles. Perhaps the idea was to raise lumps in certain positions on your head to make you more intelligent? Was it a way of artificially acquiring intelligence phrenologically? It was after all a very old fashioned school. These Biblical bashings caused me to have biblical bumps I got ‘Furunculosis’ (Boils in my ears). I really did! (Job.Chap.2. Verse7.)
Recommended cheery reading when you’re down in the dumps. Fortunately the Doctor didn’t recommend Job’s method; scraping them off with a bit of broken pot. I got penicillin in a tube with a long nozzle.
Because I used Granddad’s medical books for reference when writing my own school notes I liked to use scientific words new to me. I of course didn’t know how to pronounce them. I got caught out when I thought I’d upgrade my cold to ‘Nasal catarrh’ when asked I said I’d had ‘Naz-hal cat-harra.’ The most sickening time I did this was when I thought I'd use the correct full name for an indicator ‘Soduim Dimethylamenoazobenzenasulphonate.’ I spelt sodium wrong.

'YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY IF YOU'RE NOT CAREFUL.'The phrenological balaclava and
a school bible used to raise lumps.

I seemed to remember all the things that didn’t matter like ‘Becker and Stahl’s phlogiston theory.’ It was all done to cover my lack of knowledge by knowing about things no one else gave a toss about. (Anorackiosis.)

Joke: A boy’s mother arrived at the school, she said to the master, “I’ve come to tell you our Stanley’s can’t come he’s got diarrhoea.” The master replied, “You needn’t have come all the way to school you could have sent a note.” “If I could’ve spelt it I would have.”

We had to learn the school song in Latin. Our class didn’t do Latin so we had no idea what we were singing. I have on occasions, just as people are about to eat said, “Is anyone going to say Grace?” This always causes an embarrassed silence; I would offer to do it. Imagine how impressed they are when I do it at length in Latin, reciting the school song.
They were very strict about school uniform, it had to be worn including the cap. Tall gangling youths could be seen wearing old tiny shabby school caps on the back of their heads like skullcaps. I was the only one that got away with not wearing the school tie. I wore a black one. A master told me after I’d left school that nothing had been said to me because they thought there had been a death in the family. In a way they were right, nobody in the family had died but my interest in this kind of education had.

Wilf's new book 'My Best Cellar' (his autobiography up to the age of eleven) can now be ordered online. £ 9.99   download book sample here

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