September 1968

Mam said we needed a bigger dining table, or at least a bigger table top, and asked if I could make one at school. At the next woodwork lesson I asked Mister Coulson.

‘Of course you can,’ he replied, ‘but you’ll have to supply your own Formica. There’s a little shop down the road that sells it, on Green Street.’

In due course I found the shop and bought a big sheet of wood grain Formica. Operation Tabletop was underway, but big projects like this weren’t completed overnight. Mam would have to be patient.

Mister Rye was every bit as fearsome as his reputation. In his classroom, high on the top floor, the whole class jerked to attention when he growled ‘you boy, take your elbows off the desk and sit up straight.’

‘Rates… does anyone know what rates are?’ he asked, as he prowled between our desks. ‘Ask your parents,’ he said to a sea of blank faces. ‘They’ll tell you what rates are.’

Such was our introduction to ratios.

New boy Davinder Kooner helped himself to a desk on the front row. Madness I thought, but no, it was a measure of his enthusiasm for Maths. As it turned out, Davinder was a maths wizard who got everything right. Mister Rye was clearly impressed and in no time, the old growler was looking to Davinder to confirm his own blackboard calculations.

‘Is that what you make it, Kooner?’

‘Yes Sir.’

‘Good.’

When we asked Davinder how come he was so good at maths, he laughed. ‘Where I went to school they used to beat us with a stick every time we got one wrong.’

Fair enough.

Davinder was alright, even if his breath hummed. Curry, I guessed. Whatever it was, it hadn’t done his teeth any harm; they were gleaming. He was pretty good at sports too, though he never got changed with us. He said he wasn’t allowed. He changed privately, in Mister Charlesworth’s room. Strange, I thought, but religion was religion, and religion had a way of complicating things.

As usual the Catholic kids skipped assembly on Tuesdays and Thursdays to attend Catholic prayers with Mister Carroll. While Davinder and everyone else recited the Lord’s Prayer in the hall, we Catholics recited the same prayer in Mister Carroll’s laboratory; the only difference being that our version ended abruptly on deliver us from evil, without thine is the kingdom etc. Yet on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we thined in the hall with everyone else.

As third years in the upper school we now had Mister Carroll for Science. Grown up science too, in the lab with dual gas taps spaced out along communal benches. For some strange reason we lost our girls. God knows why, but they no longer did science with us.

Mister Carroll issued a stern warning about the gas taps. They were never, ever to be touched without his permission. And I never would, but others were just itching to try a quick hiss.

I liked Mister Carroll. It was impossible not make an effort for him, but goodwill was no substitute for application and the Catholic connection counted for nothing once a lesson got underway. Science perplexed me, as Sir surely guessed when he noticed my furrowed brow.

‘Gerard, if you were ever to play the part of an old man in a play, you’d need no make up whatsoever,’ he dryly observed.

As the 3A1 boys laughed and Mister Carroll allowed himself a little grin, I responded with a sheepish smile. Mister Carroll was a good bloke. I just didn’t care for Science.

 

Some things never changed, like Music with Miss Rotherham. Just when it seemed she’d exhausted every way of making me drowsy she came up with another – a metronome, a little gadget she perched on top of the piano. We were supposed to keep an eye on it and count beats to a bar. Some did, with great success. Others, like me, went into a trance.

Out of school… though I regularly walked home from school, I caught the bus sometimes, usually at the depot. Two years after its implementation, M&D’s decision to use the depot as a stop for all buses was still causing confusion. Catching a 1, 1A or 1B was easy; the hard part was working out which direction it was going in.

Everyone stepped back when David ‘Woody’ Wood, a first year boy from Twydall, hopped on a bus after school one afternoon. We suspected the bus was going the wrong way, but nobody could be sure. We were still uncertain when it pulled out of the depot and stopped at the traffic lights on Duncan Road. If the bus turned right, down Gillingham Road, Woody would have made mugs of us. A big cheer went up when the bus turned left. Two minutes later there was another big cheer when the breathless Woody came running back.

At Priestfield Stadium… on Saturday September 14^th I saw Gillingham wallop Brighton 5-0. Carl Gilbert scored twice. Chuffed to have seen so many goals, I left the ground very happy indeed. Little did I know that my Priestfield afternoons had just come to an end.

In the news… Paul McCartney was sniffing around Mary Hopkin, and appeared to be pulling a few strings.