>>>>gt;>>t;>>>>>>>>Four years seems like a long time when you're eleven years old, but in the blink of an eye it was gone. This is all that's left.

Friday, 3 August 2012

Life with Mister Potts

Mister Potts was my maths teacher, geography teacher and my form teacher, which added up to lot of nervous hours in the classroom of a man whose mood changed like the weather. When he was good, he was very good; as he was on the morning he introduced us to Katie, our form prefect. Mister Potts smiled as he told us Katie was there to help us find our way around the school. ‘If there’s anything you need to know, just ask Katie,’ he said, to which Katie smiled a TV hostess type smile. Together they looked a picture of delight; such a nice man; and what a pleasant girl.

In a relaxed mood Mister Potts opened his window overlooking The Lines. ‘How far do you think it is to the ground from this window ledge?’ he asked. When nobody volunteered an answer, we were encouraged to make a guess. Being clueless, I played safe and went for forty feet, an answer midway between other guesses. The correct answer was revealed when Mister Potts took a tape measure from his desk and dangled it out of the window. ‘Sixteen feet!’ he announced. ‘Sixteen feet!’ he repeated with a smile.

Titter titter.


The charm offensive continued with a demonstration in backing our exercise books with wallpaper. In a matter of days almost everyone had followed his recommendation, and the results were impressive.

‘Did anyone see ‘Meet the Wife?’ last night?’ Mister Potts asked. With a chuckle he recounted a scene from the television comedy starring Thora Hird and Freddie Frinton.


Most of us had, and how we laughed at Mister Potts’s retelling. Then he went on to give us the latest news on Francis Chichester, who at that time was stuck in the middle of an ocean on a round the world yacht trip. Though I didn’t share Mister Potts’s enthusiasm for the exploits of Francis Chichester, at least I understood. But when Mister Potts spoke with assumption of the pleasures of driving around in the car at weekends and visiting delightful places in the Sussex countryside, he lost me, as he did when he held up his passport to quote its ‘without let or hindrance’ wording when speaking of foreign travel. To someone from the Twydall Estate, such things were as familiar as life on Mars.

For all his jollity there was a volatile side to Mister Potts, a side that kept us on edge. Few dared to whisper in his class, not even when he disappeared into the storeroom behind his desk to slip on his gleaming white overall; kept on a coat hanger, no doubt, when it wasn’t keeping chalk dust off his suit. A man of immaculate appearance, Mister Potts set his standards high and demanded the same of his pupils. While an incorrect answer was tolerated, sloppy work was not and he was quick to jump on anybody who fell short of his expectations. Everything had to be neat, tidy and precise; from our names in the bottom left hand corner of a sheet of paper, to the day and date in the bottom right. In his classroom he was God, and his power was absolute.

Mister Potts’s methods worked. My presentation of cloud formations, on an A2 sized sheet of paper, surpassed anything I’d done in junior school and I looked upon it with pride. Everything was laid out nicely, with diagrams carefully drawn and inked lettering neatly spaced between perfectly straight pencil lines.

Days later, morning break. As we drifted out of the classroom me, Charlie Titheridge, Peter Burtenshaw and other dawdlers were shuffling past the huge drawers at the side of the room when we spotted a big pile of papers; our cloud formations, no less, and they’d been marked. As Mister Potts appeared to have hopped it with the rest, we were tempted to have a quick peep at the marks he’d given us. Oh dear. Mister Potts’s precise whereabouts became clear within seconds of our rummaging, when an outraged voice exploded from behind.

‘How dare you rifle through people’s work!’ Mister Potts lashed out, cracking each of us around the head as he dragged us away and then bundled us out of the classroom. I can’t speak for the others, but I came very close to peeing myself in fright.

As head of the lower school (first and second years) Mister Potts was responsible for discipline and punishment. Any kid sent to him was in big trouble as a typical hearing was short, one sided and full of vitriol. Then Sir went to his storeroom and we all knew what was coming. Mister Potts was ruthless in his application of the cane. Though disturbing to witness, I told myself the offender was only getting what he deserved. Probably. Perhaps. Moving on to a lesson elsewhere helped banish the misery of it, but if the next lesson should happen to be in our own classroom, with a still highly charged Mister Potts, then a dark cloud hung over the class for the entire wretched period.

Then one day it was Katie’s turn. In front of the entire class Mister Potts bawled her out. Though she was clearly distressed, Mister Potts did not relent. Not until he’d finished snarling and barking at her, and left her in floods of tears. What she’d done wrong was unclear but I suspected it was very little. It all seemed so cruel and unnecessary. Whatever our form prefect had done, she didn’t deserve to be humiliated like that. Nobody did.

Leave her alone you bully

From thereon life with Mister Potts was all about survival. I’d say yes sir and no sir. I’d work hard. And I’d laugh politely at his poxy jokes. But would that be enough to keep me out of trouble?  Only time would tell.



Left to right: half of Diane Jarrett, Mister Potts, Vicki Crook, Susan Johnson
Front kneeling/sitting:  Lindsay Hawkes, Diane Clark, Deborah Byerley


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