I'd come to the conclusion that having a sister wasn't so bad.
At school: The boys of 4/2 got a surprise after dinner one day. Miss Rusted was nowhere to be seen as we trooped into our classroom, where a large wooden crate had appeared. Open at the front, the crate contained balls of clay, like cannonballs, that were crying out to be picked up, handled and hurled back into the crate.
Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat!
Miss Rusted was not amused. Neither was Miss Fines. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to separate and roll the clay into balls. Miss Fines probably, a student teacher who’d been brought in to give us a first lesson in modelling clay. The lesson hadn’t got off to the best of starts but I liked Miss Fines and I enjoyed making a vase built up in coils that constantly needed wetting and smoothing over.
‘Oh, you genius!’ she said when she saw my finished vase.
Though I tried not to look smug about it, inside I was ecstatic. Indeed,
I was quite a modest genius.
The following week Miss Fines was back. Given the freedom to make
whatever we wanted, I chose to make a Brontosaurus and impressive it was, even
if one of its back legs was a bit spindly. Too bad it snapped off on the day I
took it home.
Another visitor to our classroom was a balding chap that came in
specifically for Art lessons. Occasionally there’d be a small monetary reward,
as happened when he gave me a tanner for my vulture painting. Another time we
had to put folds in a sheet of paper, then unfold it and paint a pattern between
the creases using our initials; a tedious task for Paul Parker and anyone else
whose Christian name and surname began with the same letter. Though Paul was
given permission to use someone else’s initials, it needed Clive Ward to
suggest Ron Newman, a Gillingham footballer,
before Paul could set to work. In another lesson we had to paint a portrait of
the person opposite us (our desks were arranged in clusters of four, two facing
two, throughout the classroom). In my case that meant painting Ronald Bradshaw,
a newcomer to the school who’d joined our class in that final year.
How I loved Art. In my eagerness to get cracking I once misspelled my name
at the top of the paper. The clanger went unnoticed until midway through the
lesson when Miss Rusted remarked over my shoulder ‘very good Gerarard.’ Confusion
quickly turned to embarrassment when I realised what I’d done, to the amusement of my
classmates. One of them, Graham Deaville, would greet me by that name when I
bumped into him years later.
Good old Miss Rusted. How blessed we were to have her as our form teacher
for a second successive year, which maintained a classroom ambience in which I
and many others thrived. As one of the taller kids in the class I was regularly
summoned to clean the blackboard. A privilege, I believed, until I disappeared in
a cloud of chalk dust for the umpteenth time. Though I have no recollection of
Miss Rusted enforcing discipline with anything other than a frosty look, Paul
Parker recalls a time when he was sent to bring a plimsoll from the
cloakroom.
Paul Parker: “I remember coat pegs either on the wall or on a wire
partition. I vividly remember having to take my plimsoll from a cloth bag my
mum made me which was hanging on a peg. A minute later I was being hit with it
across the backside by Miss Rusted!”
History, Geography, Arithmetic, Comprehension, Scripture; with good old Miss
Rusted in charge there wasn’t a lesson to dislike. We learned about Columbus, Cortez,
Magellan, Drake… the Seven Wonders of the World…
fractions… decimals… everything. We learned about Grace Darling too, which led
to a school trip to the North Foreland Lighthouse.
The entire class clomped up the spiral staircase to the top, where we
got a lecture from the lighthouse keeper as we looked out to sea. Exciting,
yes, and just as exciting was the visit we made to Pegwell Bay
on the return journey, to see a real Viking ship.
‘Wow!’
A BBC Schools radio programme was another regular lesson. Nature Study,
a late afternoon broadcast on the Home service, featured a knowledgeable old chap
and a young boy called Tony. Typically, the pair would take a trail through
woodland and discover all kinds of exciting things like animal tracks. Whilst
listening to the broadcast we were able to see pictures of the animal tracks in
the brand new, fresh smelling pages of the accompanying BBC pamphlets. These,
like every pamphlet ever issued at Twydall Juniors, were shared one between
two.
As a follow on from one of these Nature Study broadcasts the class split
into small groups to stroll across the field and pick a leaf from one of the
trees that lined the fence on Romany
Road. A leaf impression was made in a plasticine
mould, which was then filled with plaster of Paris and left to dry on a
classroom windowsill.
Days later, the plasticine was removed and the casting painted before
being returned to the window for the paint to dry.
My group’s horse chestnut leaf looked really good; one of the best, I
thought, when I picked it up a day or two later to admire the finished article,
yet I was quick to put it back in the window when I saw what some swine had
scratched on the underside.
The last part of our school day was usually spent doing a page of twenty
mathematical problems taken from a text book. ‘If it takes fifteen men three
days to dig a field, how long would the same job take ten men?’ being one
example. A time for deep thought and furrowed brows, the lesson passed in
virtual silence, save for the odd murmur between us when, on completion,
someone took their work to Miss Rusted for marking. Getting them all right,
first time, was unheard of. Most returned to their desks with three or four
corrections to think about but with a hint or two from Miss Rusted and a bit of
perseverance, we usually completed the task before home time.
In a one act pirate play, performed by the boys of 4/2, our classroom became
a tavern with empty milk bottles taking the place of noggins of beer. Written
by me and heavily influenced by the Long John Silver TV series, it gave us an
excuse to dab stubble on our faces with felt tip pens and have a lot of fun.
With me as Long John – complete with crutch and an unbuttoned coat that
concealed a leg strapped halfway up my backside with a belt, Ronald Cross as
Jim Hawkins, and Lavinia Heath (or Angela Slociak) as Miss Purity the barmaid,
there was great merriment in the tavern. Then Jim lad appeared and when he was
set upon by a couple of ne’er do wells, it sparked mayhem. And yes, there was much
belaying and avasting as the scurvy dogs were taught a lesson.
The shadow play: Why Andrew
Akehurst, Kevin Garlick and I should be sent by Miss Rusted to Mrs Illingworth
(formerly Miss Tapsell) was mystifying. Had we done something wrong? We had not. Far from being in trouble, we
were asked if we’d like to perform a shadow play, on stage, in front of the
school.
How Mrs. Illingworth – a music teacher – came to be involved in such a
project we could only wonder. At least she knew what a shadow play was, which
was more than we did, until she explained. Why we’d been chosen above the top
dogs in 4/1 was another mystery but most of all there was excitement and, of
course, we accepted.
Thus, it came to pass that we gave not one performance, but two – to half
the school at a time – so that everyone got a good view and sat within hearing
distance of the stage.
Outside the stage door, in full view of the audience hung a sign saying
‘Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde.’ Beneath it, Andrew and I in white coats
greeted Mister Broad, who – with a bandage over his head that was tied under
his jaw – told us he had a terrible toothache. Once we’d ushered him through
the stage door and beyond sight of the audience, he settled down on a chair
while Andrew and I led Kevin – Mister Broad’s understudy – onto the stage,
where we laid him out on the operating table. Using various props for body
parts and a variety of large tools, Andrew and I proceeded to cut, chop and
butcher the substitute Mister Broad while the real Mister Broad sat in a chair
and howled at appropriate moments. In due course, once surgery was over and the
patient had been sewn up, the play closed with us escorting the real Mister
Broad out of the stage door where he fled through the audience to escape into
the corridor with Andrew and me in hot pursuit. The three of us then returned
to the front of the hall to take a bow. Mrs Illingworth was full of praise for
us later, though I could have kicked myself when she said we didn’t put the
lungs (balloons) back in during the second performance.
A more familiar role for Mrs Illingworth was that of music teacher,
which usually meant her playing the piano in the hall while the class – strung
out in a line – sang songs like Donkey
Riding, Bobby Shaftoe and Oh my little Augustin (which some mischievously sang
as Oh my little Disgusting). The lyrics to these songs could be found in pamphlets
which, once more, were shared one between two. More than once I found myself
sharing a pamphlet with Kim Erswell, who habitually sang ruin in the A’ roving song as ru-eye-in,
no matter how incorrect it sounded.
Once in a while though, Mrs. Illingworth wheeled out a trolley full of
percussion instruments. Sometimes I got a tambourine and once, I was given the castanets.
Most times though, I and the vast majority ended up with a triangle. Not once
did I get a drum, not ever. But then, one very special day…
‘Gerard, get a drum.’
Whoosh! For once I wouldn’t be sitting cross legged with the multitude,
waiting to ding a rotten triangle. Bursting with excitement I slung the drum
strap over my shoulder and took my place, one of six drummers standing proudly at
the back of the class, just itching to boom away.
Boom, boom, boom went my drum.
Boom, boom, boom! Oh what happy, delirious,
super duper joy, but then…
Boom, boom, bosh!
‘Oh no!’
I’d put a drumstick through the canvas. Aghast, I could do no more than
go through the motions of beating a drum with no resonance until the end of a
painfully long lesson. Though I sneaked the damaged drum back on the trolley after,
the wave of guilt that came over me as I stepped out into the corridor made me turn
around and go back. Mrs. Illingworth praised me for owning up, for which I was
grateful, but nothing could lift the gloom of knowing I wouldn’t be entrusted
with a drum again.
Kevin Garlick: “I wanted a drum but
I usually got a poxy triangle. I remember getting into trouble when
ringing it like it was chow time on the Ponderosa.”
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