43 Back to School

September 1965: same hut, same teacher, only I was now in Miss Rusted’s 4/2 class and – in common with most boys in the fourth year – wearing my first pair of long trousers. Other than a different desk arrangement (blocks of four instead of conventional rows) our classroom was much the same as it had been six weeks previously with a tall bookshelf at the back that we called our library and a table of artefacts that we called our museum.

Classmate Graham Deaville, one of the few boys still in short pants took advantage of the new desk arrangement to invite one of the girls to look at something under his desk. The girl looked… and immediately wished she hadn’t.

Assembly

 

Along with the other fourth year classes, we now lined up at the back of the hall in assembly, taking the wise old elephant picture that hung on the wall as our marker.  

School milk

 The boys of 4/2 got the job of distributing the daily delivery left by the milkman. John Greenland and I – selected by Miss Rusted to run the operation – had to get to school early, everyday, to organise things. Sixteen classes = sixteen crates of third pint bottles, with adjustments made as per pupils per class. On arrival our classmates were despatched, in twos, to deliver crates throughout the school and bring back the empty crates from the previous day. The last crate of milk, for our class, John and I took care of, along with any surplus.

Big boy status called again when Miss Rusted sent three of the taller boys in our class to do a job for Miss Holden, the 1/3 teacher. Her classroom, in the main body of the school, overlooked the field and amongst her brand new first year pupils was my brother Mike. Thus, as I stacked boxes on the upper shelves in the storeroom behind Miss Holden’s desk, I did so in full view of my grinning brother, who I waved at through the open storeroom door.

PE 

Once more the boys of my class did PE with the boys of Mister Turner’s class. Only when the teams (Seagull, Swan, Kingfisher and Robin) lined up in the playground for an outdoor lesson one afternoon, a headcount showed the teams were uneven. To help balance things up Mister Turner instructed me, at the back of the Seagull line, to join Robin. I was not happy. Not happy at all. I liked being a Seagull and I didn’t want to be anything else but fearful of annoying Mister Turner, I meekly lined up as a Robin… and stayed a Robin for the rest of my Twydall life.

I have no recollection of us ever playing organised football in PE, none whatsoever, yet Mister Turner did attempt to teach us the basics as once and once only, the boys of 4/1 and 4/2 crammed into a small, windowless room to see a black and white slide show. One of the slides showed a footballer demonstrating the correct way to kick a ball. ‘Does anyone recognise the footballer?’ Mister Turner asked.

‘Stanley Matthews,’ replied the enlightened few.

The name meant nothing to me, or Paul Parker.

Paul Parker: “It was a box room, small and dark. We only just managed to fit in. I’m so glad you remember it. So you were stupefied as well when everybody (less Lynch and Parker) knew who Stanley Matthews was.”

Craft

Also, as we’d done in the third year, the boys of 4/1 and 4/2 merged for Craft lessons in the 4/1 hut. Though respectful of 4/1 and admiring of the collage of newspaper pictures and headlines that they’d humorously matched, and displayed, in one corner of their classroom, I now found them less intimidating. As for the work we did, I vaguely remember that while some sculpted blocks of salt, others used chalk.

Graham Wilson: “I remember carving things out of chalk with a knife. We had to bring our own lumps of chalk to school and I remember mine came from the Darland Banks.”

Generally, we’d moved on from making futuristic cities with bog rolls, egg boxes and washing up liquid bottles. I was one of many who were now bringing Airfix kits into school to assemble, glue and paint. Sometimes this was achieved in one lesson, with predictably messy results. While some boys made aircraft and ships, others, like me, preferred historical figures. Julius Caesar, Napoleon and Richard the Lionheart were just three of the models I’d make that year.

In the playground

As fourth years we were now kings of the playground and playing games like All Across and Self Free.

All Across

Players had to run up/down the playground, swerving the catcher to reach the safety of the far white line. Those that were tagged became catchers themselves, making it progressively harder for those left in the game to make a clear run.  The winner, of course, was the last survivor; one contender being Paul Parker.

Paul Parker: “I was a good dodger and fast.”

Self Free

Self Free was a game of catchers and getawayers, the numbers depending on how many were playing. A getawayer, when tagged, had to go the bottom of the playground and hold onto the railings until freed by another getawayer (by touching hands). In theory the getwayers could have spent the entire playtime in sanctuary and the game would never have got going, but in practice, bravado from one side and goading from the other led to a constant stream of getawayers needing to be rescued from the railings. Clive Ward was particularly good at this game.

Elsewhere in the playground other kids played shadow chase. While some broke cover to give the catchers a chance, others stayed within the shadow of the toilet block and baited the catchers, whose repetitive stamping at the shadows of projecting limbs often led to aching feet. Kiss chase wasn’t unheard of but it was rare, as girls and boys tended to stick to their own playground activities. While the girls did girly things like skipping and jacks, and juggling and handstands, the boys played catching games, flicked cards, and pretended they weren’t interested in having a sly gawp at the knickers of the girls doing handstands.

Another game played was Sticky Glue Chase in which players, when tagged, had to remain still, as if standing in sticky glue, until someone crawled between their legs. Due to the playground’s abrasive surface this game, like Piggy Back Fights and Best Deaths, was best played on the field.

The Battle of the Bin Port

The Battle of the Bin Port was fought one afternoon playtime when the boys of 4/2 decided to play Union v Confederates. That the Confederates should take up a defensive position behind the dustbins, in the port at the rear of our hut, was soon established. Stephen Browning, Kevin Garlick, Anthony Gardener, Paul Parker, Bimbo Hollands, Graham Deaville, Brian Stammer, Nigel Robinson, Clive Ward, Graeme Stageman and the rest of our good southern boys were just as quick to decide which side they were on, which left me standing outside the bin port on my own. As a northern boy my natural sway was with the Union, and I was happy to lead an attack, but I could hardly launch it on my own. I waited patiently for reinforcements until the squabble that broke out in the gloom led to Ronald Cross and Graham Nunn being ejected. And lo, it came to pass that I led the two class weaklings into the bin port. On invisible horses we charged, sabres drawn, into a battle that saw the three of us get what amounted to a good hiding.  

Apples: When classmate Colin Clifford told us his mum was flogging apples at sixpence a bag, I wasn’t alone in my interest. After school next day a few of us – each with a tanner scrounged from our mothers – trundled down Milsted Road and cut across Beechings Way on our way to the back garden of Colin’s home in Eastling Close. There, Mrs Clifford – in full shopkeeper mode – bagged our apples, took our tanners and sent us on our way. I should have been happy but I was not. Whatever Mrs. Clifford gained in replacing a medium sized apple on her very precise measuring scale with a smaller one, she lost in goodwill. Even as I turned around to go home, I knew I wouldn’t be returning for more. 

Out of school: I went to the pictures and saw The Hallelujah Trail. It was okay but it didn’t impress me as much as it impressed classmate Anthony Gardner, who saw it that same week.

Out of school: I joined my good friend Kevin in attending gym classes, one evening a week at the gym club on Nile Road in Gillingham. It’d be fun for a few weeks, but we didn’t enjoy the exercise half as much as the peanut brittle we ate on the bus after, bought by Kev’s mum from the shop on the corner of Copenhagen Road.