The End of an Aura

At the end of an extended assembly on the last day of term, headmaster Mister McVie announced some goodbyes. Amongst other notables, Geoff Bray was leaving to become an apprentice professional at Gillingham Football Club. The humiliation of the ink incident was forgotten as I joined in with a big round of applause.

‘A professional footballer – wow!’

As my first year at Upbury Manor came to an end I looked forward to the long summer break. No more pencils, no more books, no more homework… then Mister Potts teamed the unlikely trio of me, Trevor Hickson and Richard Pascall together to complete a Geography project over the holiday. Working from contour lines on an Ordnance Survey map, each group had to build a layered model of the hills and valleys in the local area.

Oh no!

Trevor and I couldn't believe our luck when Richard volunteered to manage and co-ordinate the assignment. Happy to be honorary members of the project, we left him to it.

First year round up

Presenting these tales in their correct sequence is a bit hit and hope after so many years. Thankfully, enough markers remain to join the dots here and there, and produce something that is fluid and reasonably accurate, yet I’m left with the following loose ends.

Sometime during the first year... I witnessed a lightning fast Clover Burnett, a black, upper school pupil blow everyone away on the running track. She was outstanding. 

Sometime during the first year… a group of us boys found ourselves gathered around a weighing machine, probably on a school trip, possibly at a service station. Amidst much laughter, each of us took it in turn to drop a penny in the slot. Not surprisingly, Richard Pascall got the biggest cheer when the indicator flew over ten stone.

Sometime during the first year… our history class was interrupted when Ed Kitto, a senior pupil, knocked on the door and presented himself to Mister Askew. We knew he was in trouble when Mister Askew produced a text book and expressed his disgust at something he’d found inside the back cover. After a venomous thwack across the backside from Mister Askew’s stoolball bat, the sheepish Kitto was sent on his way, but it ruined the lesson for me as I just couldn’t stop speculating what was in the back of that book.

At the back end of the first year (or second year, possibly)… two of my classmates raided Mister Coulson’s unattended woodwork storeroom, stealing pencils and rulers and such. When reminded of it years later I had no recall of the incident or the consequences, but it rang a bell and after many hours of intense concentration; this much came to mind; at my instigation Peter Burtenshaw and I, as witnesses to what had happened, did what I considered to be the right thing and informed Mister Coulson.

And sometime during the first year… at home one evening I heard an American kid in a film on the telly ask ‘What does Ren-dez-vuss mean?’ To which an adult/adults laughed and explained what rendezvous meant.

I don’t know what film it was. I wasn’t even watching it. I just happened to be in the living room at that moment and couldn’t help hearing it.

The following day in the 1A1 classroom, my ears pricked up when I overheard someone say ‘What does Ren-dez-vuss mean?’ It was Vicki Crook, laughing and telling someone about the film the night before.

Why I should remember something as small and trivial as that I don’t know, but there it is.