Lessons

Art: My favourite subject, with Mister Brown of the bushy beard. Mister Brown wore hipsters and appeared to be more with it than many of his colleagues. Everything about him was relaxed, including his teaching style. On the outer wall of his classroom was the clock that overlooked the lower school playground.

Craft: Mister Peters taught craft (boys only) in a classroom high on the top floor. In one early lesson we had to bring a white tile to school, and paint a flower on it in pastel colours. The following week our kiln-fired tiles were returned. Mam said some nice things about mine and displayed it on the front room window sill, whereupon it disappeared shortly after and was never seen again. Other than a vague memory of making a wallet, and mental picture of Mister Peters hard at work with his shirt sleeves rolled up, I have no further recall of this subject.

Drama: Miss Fyshe taught drama in the school hall.  A posh lady of garrulous enthusiasm, she took us to a world somewhere between the realms of fantasy and the nut house. One minute we were kids in the school hall, the next minute we were rolling on the floor having bounced off the walls of imaginary glass boxes.

French and English: Miss Lake taught both from her upper floor classroom overlooking the centre of the lower school playground. Young and popular, Miss Lake had a mischievous sense of humour, as previously disclosed in the Shelley Jordan incident. Though I wasn’t very good at French, I spoke fluent je ne comprends pas.

Geography and Maths: Mister Potts, my 1A1 form teacher. When Mister Potts was good, he was very good and when he was bad; watch out.

History: High on the top floor, Mister Askew taught us about Richard the Lionheart and the crusades. I got off to a good start when he asked if anyone knew the name of the Muslim holy book. I was the only kid to raise my hand. I liked Mister Askew, a good humoured teacher of the firm but fair sort. His handling of front row chatterboxes Lindsay Hawkes and Ann Howe gave the class some wonderful entertainment. Indeed, we were highly amused when he renamed the former Lindsay Talks.

Music: Miss Rotherham. A bespectacled lady with a lovely smile, she appeared to be much older than her female colleagues. Probably because she had more wrinkles than a bowl of prunes. If ever a teacher loved her subject, Miss Rotherham did, but her efforts were wasted on the likes of me.

PE: Being a sports teacher gave Mister McDouall a head start in my likeability book. In his black tracksuit he looked the part, and so did we when we trotted onto the football pitches in coloured bibs that identified sides and positions. If only Mister McDouall wasn’t so whistle happy. His frustrating habit of stopping play to give someone a telling off for wandering out of position snuffed out many a promising attack, as when play resumed, the offender was back where he should be.

RE: The Catholic arrangement: every time my class had RE, I reported to Mister Carroll’s classroom. As instructed, I did not knock on the door. I simply walked in, helped myself to a questionnaire and a copy of that Sunday’s mass sheet from a shelf behind the door, and walked out, thereby minimising the disturbance of the sitting class. From there I’d go and sit in the canteen. As all the answers were to be found within the mass sheet I only had to find them and copy them onto a piece of paper. This exercise in futility kept me occupied till the end of the period, when I returned the paperwork to Mister Carroll’s classroom and rejoined my class.

Technical Drawing: I’d hoped to do well at technical drawing. Mister Elsgood was a good teacher and I was a willing pupil, but concentration was vital. One minute I’d be breezing along and feeling pleased with my third angle projection, then Sir would point out a critical error and I’d find myself rubbing out half a lesson’s work.

Science: Mister Berger was a dedicated teacher and a decent man. He just happened to teach the gloomiest, yawn-a-minute subject on the timetable, in a gloomy upper floor classroom on the gloomy side of the school. How I loathed Science.

Metalwork: Mister Twyman & Woodwork: Mister Coulson. Prior to the building of the new craft block, Metalwork and Woodwork classes were taken on the ground floor classrooms near the main entrance. Many boys will remember making a copper ash tray as their first project in Metalwork. Some finished the job by stamping the rim with flowery stencils; others used a planishing hammer to leave the rim with a rippled effect.

Needlework and Domestic Science: Taught by heaven knows who, these lessons occupied the girls when the boys of our class were doing metalwork and woodwork. In Needlework they made bags for their PE kits and in Domestic Science they made cakes. Whatever else they did remains a mystery.

A song Miss Lake taught us…