Other Kids

The Twydall connection and the merging of the 1A1 and 1A2 boys in PE had widened my social circle. Through friends of friends, and football, that circle expanded further as I settled into life at Upbury Manor. Stephen Deacon, Conway Lapping, Ian Ballard and Alan Greenstreet were just some of the kids I got to know. Others I knew only by sight, like Rex Cardy the kid with the red face, or Joanne Parker the girl with the blondest of long blonde hair.

Then there were those who, for various reasons, I couldn’t fail to notice…

Jeremy Brougham: the plummy voiced favourite of Miss Fyshe the Drama teacher. In his first six months at Upbury he made more stage appearances than Arthur Askey.

John Wells; a fifth year was another who was stage struck. When our class walked through the hall on our way to PE we frequently saw people of stage rehearsing. More often than not, one of them was John.

Marie Webster: a third year. Poor Marie was a polio victim who walked with a slouch and suffered from terrible acne.

Josephine Wheatley: a loud second year girl with big hair, a big chest and a big basket for carrying her stuff around. She frightened the life out of me.

Mary Giles: the head girl. The tennis court was seldom used. On the few occasions I saw it in use it always seemed to be Mary and other fifth formers that were playing.

Geoff Bray: head boy and star footballer. I once saw him playing in all green kit and assumed he was in Mill House, as a green kit was highly unusual (no, he wasn’t a goalkeeper.)

A rugby team picture from 65/66.  These lads were the big kids of the second year that ruled the lower school playground 1966/67. I knew Robert ‘Doc’ Docherty fairly well and though I remember others, I only knew them by sight. Ken Haynes played in goal for the football team and big Jim Foad was the brother of Patricia, who was in my class.

Others kids I knew, or knew of, in that year – discounting those previously mentioned in The Sirens story – included Paul Grigg, Paul Trice, Robert Harding, Gary Winter, Nigel Preece, Clive Boothroyd, Jinx Jenkins, Jamie Montgomery, Kelvin Quinn, another Reeves (a fatty with blond curls), Lesley Ring, Ramon Zerafa, Stephen Austin and Stephen Bonneywell.

Many of those lads spent break times playing Kingy, a chasing game played with a tennis ball. After a count of ten that gave everyone time to disperse across the playground, the boy chosen to be ‘on’ went in pursuit of his first victim. He could throw the ball at anyone, from any distance, but to get closer to his target he had to bounce the ball as he ran. Anyone struck by the ball had to team up with the chaser in his pursuit of the rest. Thus, the number of chasers grew as the game progressed, making it harder for those that were left, whose only defence of an incoming strike was to dodge out of the way or beat the ball away with a fist. Slowly but surely the remaining few were picked off, one by one, often trapped into a corner, where the last act of many was to protect the head and knackers from a point blank, super strength throw. The winner, of course, was the last man standing.

And speaking of tennis balls…. one or two brave souls were known to chuck balls at the discs on the playground clock. When a disc was hit it made a loud clank! Brave, yes. And risky too, if a twitching moustache was to suddenly appear at a window.