Issue No. 14: FROM THE CRAVEN TO THE GRAVE

The most coveted role (and hated people) in my Junior School were the prefects. These were kids selected by the teachers from the final year pupils, usually ones from the top class. Their principal function was to control the other kids, especially stopping them entering the school at break or dinner (lunch) times. In effect, they were juvenile 'bouncers'.

However, the best job (if not the most prestigious) was to be a milk monitor. This required a couple of the boys counting out the third of a pint milk bottles into the required numbers for each class, loading them into milk crates, carrying them to the classrooms and then carrying back the 'empties' to the collection point.

Making Us Wait

I was lucky enough to be one of the school's two milk monitors, and we roved back and forth to each classroom, ensuring that we took the maximum alloted time to complete our task. Sometimes, when we knocked on the classroom doors, the teachers made us wait ages before letting us in. Maybe they thought that this was a way of showing us who was in charge. In reality, the more time we wasted the better we liked it. One teacher who did this regularly was called Miss Craven. When we were eventually allowed in, one of us would loudly say "Milk straight from the dairy, Miss Craven",which would always make the kids laugh. She could never understand why this remark caused so much mirth, and it increased her annoyance at us. The answer was right in front of her, with 40 odd milk bottles stamped 'Craven Dairies'. It was a kids' silly joke, continually enjoyable because the authoritarian adult it was aimed at didn't get it.

Sad Alvin

The saddest boy in my class was called Alvin Shipman, but his name was not the reason for his condition. We did not know it at the time but Alvin lived a double life. When he left off playing with his boisterous classmates and went home, he entered a world of sectarian and religious zealotry. Alvin's parents were devout Jehovah's Witnesses.

As kids, we did not know much about religion, especially the sects such as the Jehovah's Witnesses. What we did know came from our parents, who regarded them as people to avoid, like the so-called gypsy women who tried to sell them wooden clothes pegs for the washing line. Mam was terrified of being cursed by the 'gypsy women' if she didn't buy their pegs so, when they were about, she would run indoors and hide where she couldn't be seen from either doors or windows. Sometimes this didn't work or she wasn't quick enough to spot the danger. When this happened she reluctantly bought the pegs rather than take on the dreaded curse.

The Jehovah's Witnesses used to knock on doors in our street and, rather than do the sensible thing and run away, they would try to convert the hostile natives. Inevitably, these doorstep conversations (if they could not be avoided) used to turn to the question of blood transfusions (the JWs were against Christians receiving them) and allowing a relative to die because of the lack of them. Doors would be slammed in anger, oaths sworn and remarks passed such as "I should have cut their bloody wrists, then what would they do?"

Alvin, secretly and quietly, belonged to this world. However, even this did not mostly cause his sadness. What did was that Alvin's Dad died suddenly one Friday. That would be cause enough but, for reasons either practical or religious, his Dad was placed in the coffin and the coffin (it was said) was put in Alvin's bedroom until the funeral on the following Tuesday. Rumour has it (as it often does) that Alvin had to sleep in the room with the coffin under his bed. Whatever the true story, it was undoubtedly the case that Alvin emerged from the experience a much changed and sadder boy.

Maybe Alvin had to attend his Dad's funeral, which would also have been an alien and unnerving experience. I cannot recall any school friends being asked to go to a funeral; it was simply not reckoned to be part of a young person's expectations. Of course, it may not have been so bad because there was always the possibility of the dead person being cremated at the town's new, smart crematorium, as opposed to the macabre prospect of crowding around a deep hole in the ground in a vast, damp and mouldy cemetery.

South Shields Crematorium

The crematorium in South Shields was in landscaped grounds and looked rather like a fashionable bungalow. It is an interesting social development in post-war Britain that most modern crematoria are (or would be) pleasant places to visit with their airy design, sense of ordered informality and (in a sense) 'user friendliness'. Perhaps it would be a good idea to scour the country for examples of the best crematoria and to publish the top twelve in a special wall calendar. It could be titled 'Crematorium of the Month' or 'Crème de menthe' as the French would say. 

Postscript

Having presented the Jehovah's Witnesses in a bad light, it's only fair to do the same for the Mormons or, to give them their correct name, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

My encounter with them occurred much later, when I was seventeen, and intellectually flirting with a few diverse ideologies, including existentialism, communism and attaining spiritual enlightenment by lying all day in bed. Two young men, neat, well-dressed, extremely polite and from (I suppose) Salt Lake City in Utah knocked on my door one day and began a diverting conversation. I guess that I was interested in them because they were from the (to me) exotic USA and reminded me of the smooth, smart-suited individuals, like Robert Vaughn, in 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' on TV. 

After that first visit, they came a couple of more times to my door, and then I made the fatal mistake that you should never make with either religious zealots or vampires - I invited them in. Mam was busy in the kitchen, so I took them into the living room. To be honest, by this third visit I was growing bored with them and their insistent and drawling monomania, but I lacked both the experience and 'killer instinct' to tell them to 'bunk off'. At the end of the latest session, and much to my surprise, they stood up and invited me to join them in a prayer. They bowed their heads and closed their eyes as one of them intoned. I bowed my head too but kept my eyes open and then espied Mam entering the room, instantly taking in the scene before her and then silently and swiftly exiting. I recognised the look of awe and fear on her face. I knew what she was thinking: "Get out before they try to sell me some pegs!"

I finally managed to rid myself of them when they next visited. This required no special summoning of courage on my part. Being mere short-term visitors to the UK, they were totally unaware of the powerful subterranean forces driving the culture of the nation. They called on the Saturday afternoon of the FA Cup Final. No contest really.

Issue No. 13: THE MILESTONE MOMENT

Not the Levey Brothers......but like 'em.

The truly malevolent influence in our neighbourhood upon the young kids was the Levey boys.

As the early 1960s progressed, and as 'problem' families were relocated onto our estate by the Council, the estate, and our street in particular, acquired the reputation throughout the town as a violent and crime-ridden area.

The boisterous, yet innocent fun of a group of boys gradually became threatened and subverted by another group of boys who were, simultaneously, outwardly friendly but also intimidating. These boys were from seven families in my part of the street, and the epicentre of this group was the two Levey brothers. The worst was charming, smiling yet chillingly evil. He had an unusual name for those days, and one I had hitherto never come across before - Damien!

Our games were interrupted by the Levey gang and they forced their way into them. They contrived to be insulted so that fights would start. They were threatening and they carried out their threats with beatings. The level of violence increased as they grew into their teens. The crime in the area escalated and the never-before-experienced thieving from working class neighbours began. Eventually, the 'decent' families began a frantic scramble to be re-housed elsewhere. For us, this didn't happen until 1970.

Big Freddie

There was an odd aspect of this sinister development. One of the Levey Boys' gang members was a much older boy - in his mid-teens - called Big Freddie Freeman. He had a much lower mental age than his years and therefore always played with the younger kids. However, he was easily manipulated by the Leveys, who used his superior height, strength and weight to good effect as one of their 'enforcers' of punishments.

This seemed an ideal set up for the Leveys but Big Freddie had one fatal flaw - he was excessively scared of the spirit world or 'Ghostesses' as he would teeth-chatteringly stutter when 'the fear' descended upon him. This weakness did not stop Freddie from bashing other kids, especially in broad daylight. However, if the victims had the presence of mind, they would, in the midst of their pain and humiliation, say something foul and devilish to Freddie (but not terribly original), along the lines of "The Bogeyman will get you tonight!"  They could then nurse their injuries in the certain knowledge that - when darkness descended, and as cats wailed, dogs howled, floorboards creaked, doors slammed, mice scuttled, insects crawled up the walls and bats flew out silently on their nightly mission - Big Freddie would be cowering under the bedclothes, wide-eyed, shaking and twitching (and, we imagined, peeing himself) waiting for The Bogeyman to rip the sheets from his desperate clutches.

Pop Guns and Dustbin Lids

David Green had the first telly (TV) in our street. He was also the first person I knew who ate tinned spaghetti. Up until the time David's Mam rented her TV (no one could afford to buy one) all our entertainment, as kids, was the rumbustious kind we made up ourselves, including: street football and 'shoot-'em-up' games such as Cowboys & Indians, Cops & Robbers and English v Germans or 'Japs', our special re-enactment of World War 2.

All of these games required much imagination and, more often than not, the 'six shooters' were our fingers and the rifles and tommy guns were powerfully visualised and made to sound as authentic as our voices could portray. However, birthdays and Christmases afforded some of us the luxury of acquiring such 'toys' as: Colt 45s and (in my case) a long-barrelled Wyatt Earp 'Buntline Special'; plastic, nerve-jangling machine guns; pop guns and plastic swords of various types. You could, of course, also get plastic bows and arrows, but it was best to make these yourself using bamboo canes from the local hardware shop and twine or string. The arrows were of a varying degree of danger. Swords too could be made from these bamboo canes. So, with makeshift swords, pop guns and bows and arrows in abundance, kids' games on my estate also had a high degree of lethalness about them.

The things that fired our imaginations, pre-TV, were the war stories in comics such as 'The Victor', in the countless pulp heroic war 'libraries' like 'Commando' and in the war films and westerns shown at the local cinema, 'The Palladium', along with the serial 'shorts' such as 'Zorro'. Radio was an interesting diversion and a good laugh on a Sunday, but it didn't spark us into frenzied action.

Even our gentler games had a hard edge to them, such as catching butterflies in our back field using steel dustbin lids. Surprisingly, these seemed to do little harm to the insects but were a constant danger to the groups of small boys silently creeping through the long grass and simultaneously jumping for the same prey, bin lids to the fore.

All of these games did not disappear overnight with the coming of the telly but, as more families acquired 'the box', inevitably more time spent watching it meant less time  playing outside .

David Green's telly was the milestone moment. The first day he got it, there were a dozen kids in his front room watching 'Champion the Wonder Horse'. He was the most popular kid in the street, at least until other families got their own sets.

During this period of popularity, all the kids were invited to David's birthday party, where we were served up tinned spaghetti on toast. None of us, other than David, had seen tinned spaghetti before. "What's that?" one of the lads asked, rather impolitely. "Worms!" David replied, getting a cuff on the ear from his mother for his response. It was enough to put some of us off, and we sat looking at our plates, waiting for signs of movement. Eventually, they were taken away and replaced by jelly and Bird's custard. We all wolfed this down and then surged from the table to crowd around the 12 inch TV screen. 'The Lone Ranger' was about to make his long-awaited first appearance before us.



'Hey ho Silver.....Away!'

Issue No. 12: THE WILDING BUNCH

We lived next door to the Wilding family. The Dad was James, or ‘Lucky Jim’ Wilding. He was a pitman and worked at the coalface. He had a brilliant, big tool shed. He was always taking wood into it but, strangely, he never brought out any finished article. I imagined he was sinking a deep shaft right there, like in the prisoner of war films or, maybe, just out of habit.

The Mam was ….(well, she had no first name, so was just known as ‘Mrs Wilding’). Their two elder daughters, Iris and Maureen, were both ‘lookers’ (and accomplished piano accordion players). Robert was their son. He was a year older than me. Mary, their youngest, was a year younger than me.

My brother was (and still is) nearly eight years older than me. When I was just twelve, he was already married. As I have no memory whatsoever of my existence before the day I started school, my memory of my brother and me in a shared ‘childhood’ only really lasted from when I was five to when he left school, when I was seven and a bit.

Sadly, (and for reasons I didn’t understand at the time but did many years later) he much preferred young Robert next door to the Robert he lived with. He called him Rob; I called him ‘Willy’, as my personal way of making him sound like he was rude. Willy was my deadly enemy, even if he didn’t realise it. He was always cheerful and smiling…..but in a cunning and evil way, I felt. I wanted to tell him and others what I really thought about him, like I thought he was a pig. The problem was that sort of talk could get you a ‘good hiding’ (a walloping), as it was both a social taboo and a working class convention to never say words like ‘pig’, whether it was in the home or outside. However, it was entirely acceptable to spell out the word in conversation. So, whilst I couldn’t say “Willy is a pig”, I could say “Willy is a P.I.G.” In fact, I would have probably got an extra jam sandwich because I had spelt out the word. I’m not at all sure, though, what I would have got as a reward for the other rude words which described him. Probably nothing as I couldn't spell them.

The Wilding's had a pet dog called Butch. He was a cross between a Boxer and a Dalmatian, with possibly a bit of Great Dane thrown in. He looked like a Boxer, but with black and white spots and patches. He lived in an enormous kennel in the back garden. I never saw Mr Wilding making this kennel in or out of his shed, so maybe Butch built it himself. He was a very self-sufficient and capable dog and no doubt very handy with a hammer and a mouth full of nails. I was terrified of him, but never let on. I’d been told that if you showed fear, a dog would attack you and go for your throat …or maybe it wasn’t a dog but a tiger.…or a ferret.

Butch was not only a resourceful dog but also a born leader, a 'fixer', a manipulator, the sort of dog who, fifty years later (and if he was human) would make millions as a matter of routine. In fact, if he had been human and living in 2013, he would be Simon Cowell. I can imagine him being the Svengali behind erratic and egotistical canine superstars, such as 'The Dog Formerly Known as Prince'.

One day, Butch was out on an important errand; he may even have gone to work. Anyway, when Butch was out, I crawled into his kennel with Mary. I forget the preliminary chat, but soon I blurted out (entirely out of character but driven by childish curiosity rather than infantile lust) “Will you show iz your bum?”

Mary wasn’t a conversationalist. She didn’t even say ‘OK’. She just set about meeting my request.

It was a task never completed. We were interrupted by loud and raucous hootings and catcalls. We crawled - me red-faced - out of the kennel. It was Willy and his gang of pals. They were all smiling… evilly, Willy in particular.

Westoe Colliery

Willy was always smiling, except once. One night I was woken up in the early hours of the morning and a tearful Willy and a distraught Mary were ushered into my bedroom by my Mam. I was embarrassed because I was wearing pyjamas, so coyly pulled the blankets up to my chin. Their dad, ‘Lucky Jim’, was so called because he’d survived two cave-ins at Westoe Colliery, which went out for miles under the North Sea. He hadn’t survived the third cave-in that night.

Childhood - for the Wilding's if not for me - seemed to end that night. Mrs Wilding turned to drink. The two elder daughters soon got married. The eldest, Iris, had four kids and an unhappy marriage. Maureen entered into a long courtship with a bus driver. He parked his blue and yellow Corporation double- decker bus outside of her house every dinner time. Luckily, there were no passengers on board.

Willy converted his Dad’s magnificent tool shed into a pigeon cree. The pigeons thanked him by depositing huge mounds of guano on top of it and on all the surrounding house roofs. They were always falling down our chimney, and had to be rescued, sometimes dead, sometimes alive. I’ve no idea of what became of Mary.

Issue No. 11: HAND TO MOUTH

Stephen Starkie and Fred Collins were both bright kids. Stephen was from a middle class household, Fred was from a Council house.

Stephen was marked down as 'different' or 'apart' from the rest of us in a number of respects. We had no uniform in our school, but Stephen's parents insisted on dressing him in polished brogues, nice thick, good quality socks, pressed short trousers, ironed shirts, knotted ties and a black overcoat. Atop this, though, was his trademark, a bright red school cap. The cap apart, it's fair to say that the other kids from middle class homes, as you would expect, were better turned out than the rest of us. Fred Collins, like most of the working class kids, wore generally clean clothes, although not as neat, pressed or co-ordinated as his better off school chums.

The main difference between Stephen and Fred was that Fred was popular but Stephen was not. Stephen's disposition was argumentative and sullen; Fred's was optimistic and cheeky. They became rivals but didn't fight much physically, relying mostly on insults. Stephen was far superior at this game and was always quicker by seconds to land the verbal blows, outwitting, outthinking and outpunching Fred. Whenever I now picture Stephen, it is seeing his face set in a bad-tempered frown, his brows crossly knitted together and his mouth open, ready to spit out some insult. If this had been a long-running boxing match, Fred would have been losing heavily on points and desperate for a lucky knock out punch.

The Ragman's Horse

This arrived one day as we were going home for dinner - in the unlikely form of the ragman's horse. I won't bore you with details of the ragman (or rag & bone man), let's just say that he was a local 'Steptoe' and collected junk as he toured the estate's streets, loudly announcing his presence. Stephen and Fred had been trading insults all morning and, as usual, Stephen was in the ascendancy. The argument continued on through the school gates and out into Park Avenue. Stephen was unstoppable, Fred was in retreat. Then Fred, no doubt driven to the point of desperation, espied the ragman's horse, or rather what it had left behind. In one movement he had (we didn't know how he could!) scooped up a clump of horse dung, spun round and flung it at Stephen. As luck would have it, Stephen was opening his mouth for another tirade and the dung found a hole in one. He choked, spat and then poked out bits of the turd with his fingers. That one act turned the tables irrevocably. Stephen would, forever onwards, be known as 'Gobshite Starkie'.

Mad Alfie

Alfie Agnew was the oddest and most frightening boy I ever met (you have encountered him already in Issue No. 11 in the Burmese jungle).

He looked exactly like a fair-headed 'Dennis the Menace', with his staring eyes, shock of straw-coloured hair and air of single-minded yet warped determination. He wasn't really evil, just plain crackers. He did really bad things because he couldn't help himself. Unfortunately, it appeared that his Mam, Dad and younger sister were equally barmy. All four of them were marked by wild, staring eyes, which were surrounded by deep, dark rings of - what? Sadness? Despair? Hopelessness? Madness?

Alfie was a natural loner, but nevertheless his strangeness acted as a magnet on the other kids, who were drawn to witness his insane acts. I was in his back garden one day. He said that he didn't want to go to school anymore. I said that they would make him and he would have to go, or his parents would be put in prison. (Why I would venture this opinion, aged 8 or 9, is a mystery). He asked if there was a way of not going to school which would avoid this (I'm paraphrasing here). I said only if he was very sick. Thereupon, he knelt down, looked around and then picked up a half brick. Gripping it tightly, he suddenly brought it down full force on the back of his other hand - again and again. He didn't cry out as he mangled his bloody hand, he just looked up, grinned the theatrically wicked Dennis grin, and said 'That'll do it!"

After just two years the Agnews moved away. Neighbours said that they had done a 'moonlight flit', moved home in the middle of the night owing the rent. I never saw Alfie again.

However, there was one good thing that came out of my brief encounter with Alfie and his kin folk. Mam rescued our second cat, Tinker, from them, as the family were cheerfully engaged in the collective act of drowning him and all of his sibling kittens.

Issue No. 10: THE QUEEN, WYATT EARP AND THE GUNFIGHT IN THE JUNGLE

The visit of the Queen and Prince Philip to South Shields in the early 1960s, to open something or other*, caused a mild ripple of interest in the populace, not least on our estate, as they were to drive down King George Road, en route from Sunderland.

Britain wasn't as security conscious then, and so the timing of the Queen's visit and the drive past were well known in advance. About half an hour beforehand, small groups of adults and children began crossing the dual carriageway of King George Road, dutifully clutching little cloth and paper Union Jacks on wooden sticks.

King George Road swept down the hill from Cleadon Village and bordered the whole western length of our housing estate. It was a broad, concrete thoroughfare, with its south and north-bound carriageways separated by a wide 'central reservation' consisting of a dense expanse of trees and shrubbery.

It was the intention of our small group of boys to also cross the road in order to wave to the Queen. However, for some inexplicable reason, we only made half the crossing and then found ourselves up to our knees in a swamp and enveloped in the mosquito-infested, leech-sucking and beetle-scuttling world of the Burmese jungle, surrounded by murderous Japanese soldiers.

Our jungle was narrow yet very long, perhaps as much as 400 yards. The two-lane carriageways either side transformed into a treacherous fast-flowing river on one side and a deadly minefield on the other. To run from the jungle meant to risk death, in both the real and imaginary worlds.

Six boys entered the jungle and instantly became three 'Chindit' commandoes and three Japanese snipers. There was no distinction between the hunters and the hunted, we were both.

You would think that, with three on each side, the conflict wouldn't last long before victory for one group or the other. However, in that dank and malevolent place, dark and Satanic forces were at work. Quite often, the dead would be resurrected and re-appear as combatants. This would cause obvious consternation:

'Hey, you're dead. I killed you back there.'

'Yeah, but now I'm another one, and you're dead now.'

In this way, the rapid cycle of death and re-birth would ensure that each 'army' was replenished and the game could go on endlessly.

The real world would, momentarily, flash into view, as we ran full tilt from one part of the shrubbery, yelling gutteral death threats in English and mock Japanese, across a grassed area where the flag-waving crowds were visible (across the river on the opposite bank) and crashed back into the jungle on the other side of the 'clearing', oblivious to the stunned, staring faces of the witnessing Royalists.

Our noisy war startled the starlings and frightened the fruit bats from their perches and they flew raucously over the jungle canopy. We had to watch out for the fruit bats particularly because they were vampire fruit bats, not averse to sucking human blood before moving on to dessert.

Weaponry

Both sides had an array of impressive weapons, including pop guns (which fired cork bullets, lethal at a range of up to three feet), plastic swords and knives, a long-barelled Wyatt Earp Buntline Special cap gun (my prize possession, a present from my brother, Tom), plastic, noisy sub-machine guns, catapults and pea shooters (for despatching deadly, rapid-onset-of-death poison darts). We also carried life-saving Tizer in plastic water cans. However, the Chindits' deadliest enemy was Alfie Agnew, who leaped out of the thickest and thorniest bushes and smothered his victims in his woolly jumper, a martial arts technique little known outside of the Shetland Islands. Alfie was a psychotic killer, feared even by his own side.

We played for hours and, when we emerged from the jungle, sweating, muddy, cut and bruised, both the crowds and the Queen had long departed. We shrugged our shoulders resignedly and all tramped home. Well, I say 'all'. Actually, only five of us emerged. Alfie was nowhere to be seen. I never saw him again - his family did a 'moonlight flit' a few days later because (it was said) they owed the rent. But maybe, just maybe, Alfie is still there, in the jungle, living off berries and beetles, and hoping to smother one last Englishman for the honour of the Emperor.

BANZAI!

* Footnote

I suppose it's part of the myth-making and choreography of monarchy that the members of the Royal Family are always linked with the new, the innovative and the hope that these bring. Hence they are always invited and appear to open something new. It is a form of continual renewal of the sovereign institution by association. Perhaps it's too much to hope that they could reflect the 'down' side of life too, and turn up to close things, like factories, schools and old persons' homes.  

Issue No. 9: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE

One of my earliest memories is being chased by girls or, to be precise, by one girl in particular. It was an unnerving experience.

As part of the gym lesson in the Infants School, we had a rather bizarre and sexist routine. All of the boys had to remove their jumpers (pullovers) and shirts. All of the girls had to go the extra mile and strip down to their vests and baggy, heavy-duty, navy-coloured knickers (or did they wear these especially for gym?). We then had to play a strange mixture of Cowboys and Indians and patients and nurses.

The boys (or Cowboys) had to run round and round the school hall, where we held our gym lessons, to the accompaniment of loud (and untuneful) piano music. The girls (or Red Indians) had to chase them. When the music stopped, the boys (as patients) had to lie down, feigning injury, and the girls (as nurses) had to administer to them. This last bit never really developed properly and the skills of the nurses were never tested, as the music quickly started up again, causing all the boys a Lazarus-like revival.

Beryl O'Donnell, for some unknown reason, took a shine to me and insisted on being my combined Indian enemy and devoted nurse. My problem wasn't with Beryl's looks, it was her smell! I was, perhaps, the only boy in the class who didn't know her nickname - 'Smelly Belly'. One close encounter was enough for me but not, unfortunately, for Beryl. I cruelly tried to pre-arrange never to partner Beryl again and steeled myself against her sad and crestfallen looks. However, no other boys particularly wanted Smelly Belly hanging over them either, tending to their imaginary wounds, and so it was that, eventually, she and I would once again be thrown together - or not!

My fear of being subjected to Beryl's body odour so gripped me that, one day, I kept on running when the music stopped. As the cowboys dutifully dropped to the floor and their nurses knelt beside them, I continued to gallop ever faster around the hall, sometimes vaulting over the prone couples, but always pursued by the dogged Beryl, determined to get her man. The teacher shouted at me, the cowboys and nurses all laughed and cheered and Beryl grew ever more fretful. I wouldn't let the varmint catch me and would have eventually disappeared over the horizon in a cloud of dust, had not the school bell rung to signal the end of the lesson.

In Harness

Our school was predominantly made up of working class kids, but there was, nevertheless, a substantial number of middle class boys and girls from private (as opposed to Council) houses on the edge of our estate, at The Ridgeway, from the adjoining 'Sunniside' estate and from the two streets of private houses oddly situated in the middle of the estate - Hawthorne Avenue and Elm Grove. Inevitably, most of these kids occupied the top places in the top classes throughout the school. The exotically named Erica Robb was the top girl, until she and her parents moved away. She was replaced by Jane Hamill ('Hamill the Camel') who co-ruled for a few years with Derek 'Fatty' Lawrence, before she too moved away and was replaced by the greengrocer's daughter, Catherine Colley.

I remember that Catherine was especially chummy with two working class girls from my street, the Oates twins, Nellie and Jennifer. Every dinner (i.e. lunch) time, the twins would interlink their arms behind their backs and Catherine would use their skipping ropes to hitch them as her team of horses. The twins would snort, prance and neigh until Catherine shouted 'Gee up', shook the ropes, and off the twins would trot in perfect, straight-backed, high-kneed action, with Catherine running behind as their driver. After dinner, and suitably watered and fed (and no doubt brushed down too), they would return in similar fashion, neighing and pawing the air until Catherine un-hitched them and they could return to human form. The routine was also repeated at the end of every school day. This game, although new to me, had a long history.

 I was never sure of the reason for the twins' devotion to Catherine (free carrots from her Dad's shop?) but, inevitably, after a couple of years, the trotting came to an end; Catherine put aside the skipping ropes and began to be groomed for the reins of power, and the twins were destined for pastures new.

Issue No. 8: THAT SINKING FEELING

Throughout my time at Junior School, handicrafts were encouraged.

A lesson I particularly hated was the making of model ships, mostly ocean liners or cargo steamers. Essentially this was a practical exercise in measurement and in following precise instructions, and it took many long and laborious weeks to complete.The materials were cardboard of various thicknesses, gummed brown paper, a few wooden dowels and thread for the masts and rigging, and oil paints.

We worked in pairs, first making one partner's ship and then the other's. I was okay(ish) with the measurements but useless at folding the cardboard and joining the various parts together with the 'gummy' paper, which you had to lick, manoeuvre into place and then stick down. I was not naturally dexterous and, more often than not, the gummy paper would stick to my arm or on my jumper rather than the cardboard.

I suppose, as we lived in a town bordered by the sea and the river, with a busy port and ship repair yards, making model ships could be considered a 'good thing' to do. I learnt a lot. For example, a capstan wasn't the chain-smoking first mate of a ship; a derrick wasn't just the name of the fat boy who always came top of our class and that, as a first principle of naval architecture, the toilets on all ships are situated on the poop deck.

The ultimate goal of our endeavours was to produce such a stunning model that it was exhibited in the town's annual summer flower show. I knew mine would never make it that far, but I was particularly keen to take it home to show the family that I could produce something with my hands. Eventually, mine was finished. It was a tramp steamer which, to be honest, looked like it was on its final voyage to the breaker's yard. I asked my co-worker, Alister, if the red and black paint was waterproof. He was a very tall, thin, bespectacled and studious middle class boy. He thought for a long moment and then emphatically said 'Yes'. That was good enough for me. Alister had the alluring assurance of an intellectual. He was the sort of British 'boffin' that had cracked the German Enigma code and invented the bouncing bomb. I could fully imagine him, even at ten years old, going home from school, putting on his slippers, sitting in his favourite leather armchair, lighting his pipe and setting about solving 'The Times' crossword before tea.

I had a plan in mind. I carried the ship gingerly back home. I filled the bath and carefully lowered it in. The ship was huge but just cleared the top and bottom of the bath. It looked fantastic. I wanted Mam to see it the way it should naturally look, rather than sitting on top of a table.  I went away for a few minutes to make myself a celebratory jam sandwich. I returned to find that the ship had sunk, leaving soggy cardboard debris floating on the surface, just like on the war films after the U Boat attack. Inevitably, Mam appeared at that very moment, looked into the bathroom, sighed  and said 'Clear up that damned mess!'

A Moment of Triumph

Despite the pressure to succeed in the last two years of the Junior School, I did find that there were occasions when I loved being there. I was not the top boy by any means and sat, in the strict order determined by annual academic results, in the second row of six rows of desks. The top boy was Derek 'Fatty' Lawrence.

The two things I liked the most, and which have stayed with me over the years, were listening to music (on the BBC Schools' Broadcast on the radio) and writing essays. We were not taught to play musical instruments, as far as I can remember (if you discount the triangle and tambourine), but we were allowed to listen to various pieces of classical music on the school's radio set, put atop Mr Crusher's desk, and followed the lessons using the accompanying BBC pamphlets. Sometimes we sang along to various pieces, such as Schubert's 'Trout Quintet' (Did you know it had words?). I suppose this was a very early form of media interaction and, in my case, it worked, in as much as I liked what I heard. Unfortunately, at home, we didn't own a gramophone or a record player and therefore there was no chance of going out and actually buying the records and playing them at leisure.

Eric Shipton

I also enjoyed writing stories and essays. I thought my 'breakthrough moment' had occurred when we had to write an essay for overnight homework on Eric Shipton, the famous montaineer, after we had heard a programme about him on the schools' radio broadcast. I toiled away for hours at that essay but couldn't get it right. Then, after I had gone to bed, all the pieces fell into place. I got up immediately and re-wrote the essay, finishing around midnight.

A couple of days later, the results of the marking of the essays were to be announced in class. I was quivering with excitement because I simply knew that I had produced a very good essay. Mr Crusher handed back the homework books, announcing the marks as he progressed. Fatty Lawrence's was the penultimate book he handed back. He had got 45 out of 50 for the essay. No boy ever bettered his marks. Mine was the only book Mr Crusher retained. He then sat down and said:

"Now class, there is one pupil whose essay I haven't handed back. This is because this essay is so outstanding that it merits a special word."

He paused. I held my breath in delighted anticipation. He continued:

"Robert Fenwick has achieved 49 out of 50 marks for his essay, and would have got full marks but for a grammatical mistake. [Rats!] Nevertheless, it is one of the best essays I have ever read from a pupil and it is exceptionally mature."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing and felt myself turning a deep crimson as all the eyes of my classmates were upon me. Mr Crusher concluded:

Well done, Robert" and he added "....although I'm sure you had some considerable help from your mother or father."

That was it. My moment of triumph had been snatched away from me. I was completely deflated. I shook my head in denial of his last remarks but could not speak, such was the injustice. My classmates all smirked at me, some even put their tongues out. Fatty Lawrence smiled imperiously.

I suppose Mr Crusher and his fellow teachers were of their time. They had to achieve results and they employed the methods allowed, including corporal punishment. They didn't need to empathise or connect with the kids, just get them through the system. However, it's fair to say that Mr Crusher did have one abiding passion he wished to share with us - his new car. In 1962, he bought a new maroon and white Ford Classic. He was a very proud owner, and he was particularly chuffed that it was the first car he had owned with what he termed 'synchromesh gears'. He wittered on for ages about these, and explained in detail that now he didn't need to 'double de-clutch'. Only a handful of kids had parents who owned a car. None of what he said made the slightest sense to us. However, instinctively, we all smiled and nodded at him, encouraging him into even greater technical details. If he was talking to us we wouldn't be punished.