Changes

Finishing time: Upbury's school day now ended at ten to four, instead of four o'clock.

School milk: the national policy of giving all schoolchildren a bottle of milk (third of a pint) at morning break had been scrapped.

Maths: After a year of maths with the volatile Mister Potts we now had Miss Bridgen. A smiling lady teacher made a wonderful change. And I got to sit with my mate Burty.

English: Mister Hedges, a well spoken suave type.

Metalwork/Woodwork: Mister Twyman and Mister Coulson again, in a brand new craft block.

Art: Though we still had Mister Brown, he'd relocated to a ground floor classroom near the main entrance. What a surprise it was to hear Sergeant Pepper in an Upbury Manor classroom, in successive lessons.  Perhaps Upbury’s trendiest teacher believed it would assist our creativity. The more attuned pupils seemed happy to work in a psychedelic environment, but I thought it strange.

Dinnertime: I landed on first dinners again and was pleased to have Kim Weobley (pronounced Webly) of 2A2 as a table mate.

As second year boys it was our turn to be top dogs in the lower school playground. There was always the odd stroppy first year kid but most of them knew their place and fitted in around us, as we’d had to do in our first year. A year older, stronger and more cunning, we played Kingy with the freedom of the playground. While the chasers worked as a team, those on the run dodged and ran, and did everything they could to avoid being cornered and subjected to a ball being hurled at the head, or knackers, from close range; which was, of course, all part of the fun.

Of the three netball courts marked on the playground, we sometimes used the one in the upper corner (1) as our football pitch, though the game frequently got held up when the ball went over the wall and had to be fished out of the pool. For that reason we favoured the one running up and down the slope (2). And sometimes, we just played with one goal (at position 3); using the same two concrete fence posts.  The only challenge to our playground supremacy came from Mrs Chamberlain, who soon moved us on if she was taking a netball practice.

A new term meant organised football again.

‘Hooray!’

But no, Mister Charlesworth had other ideas. He opted for Rugby in our first PE lesson and a big surprise was waiting for us on the field – a scrum machine, he called it, only it wasn’t a machine at all. It was big heavy obstacle that looked like it had been constructed from railways sleepers with a bit of padding added as an afterthought. In an earlier life it might have had wheels and supported a medieval catapult. The curse of being tall struck when I was nominated as a prop – yet again – and instructed to take my place on the front row. ‘Great,’ I thought, as we stooped to wedge our heads between lumps of padded timber. Once the second row and our number eight were locked tight, we heaved altogether. It took a huge effort but when the obstacle started sliding on the grass, Mister Charlesworth encouraged us to keep it going. ‘Well done,’ he said when he’d seen enough. Though there was some satisfaction in that, I can’t say having my collarbone crunched against the thing was a pleasant experience.

Assembly: The privilege of sitting on the steps, backs to the stage, was inherited by the new 1A1, 1A2 and 1B1 classes. Second year status for us meant taking our place in the multitude and having to cross legged on the floor in the intervals between prayer and hymns. Apart from the discomfort, self control wasn’t so manageable and in a school of a thousand pupils, the odd fart was bound to escape. Some were more obvious than others, and some more toxic, and though the perpetrators often wore a mask of innocence, they were usually given away by the sniggers and disgusted looks of those in the immediate proximity.

And some things remained the same. As a Catholic kid at Upbury, I couldn’t understand why the children of the damned were excluded from assembly twice a week when Sikhs, amongst others, were welcomed.  Once again I had to report to Mister Carroll’s classroom for prayers on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. It kept someone happy, I suppose, but it certainly wasn’t me.

Come the first RE lesson of the new term I sloped off to Mister Carroll’s science lab. Same routine; don’t knock; just go in and help yourself to a Mass sheet and questionnaire from the shelf behind the door, and piss off.

For once I wasn’t alone in the canteen. A new kid was sitting at a table near the school’s main doors. One of the new first years, I guessed, as I zig-zagged my way to a table in the middle.

Filling in those questionnaires couldn’t have been easier; it just required a lot of concentration to battle through the tedium. Since all the answers to the questions could all be found on the Mass sheet I could dash it off in ten minutes, if I put my mind to it, so I rattled it off quickly, put my pen down and went for a chat with the new kid.

‘Are you a Catholic, too?’

‘No’

If he hadn’t been so bright and confident that might have been the end of the conversation, but he seemed happy to talk and tell me about a leg plastered up to the knee. He couldn’t get up the stairs for lessons on the first floor, and as ground floor lessons were few and far between, he spent most of his day working alone in the canteen, and he didn’t look unhappy about it.

‘What’s your name?’

‘John… John Busby.’

Busby! Wow, I’d never met a Busby before. Blinded by stardust, I asked if he was related to Matt Busby, the Manchester United manager.

‘My uncle,’ he said, with convincing nonchalance.

‘Wow!’

Dinner time couldn’t come fast enough. I couldn’t wait to tell everyone I’d met Matt Busby’s nephew.

Matt Busby