Cockeyed Optimist

Now read on …

As the War broke out, I has already been attending Infants School for a few months. After the first couple of days, when my Mum took me, I walked to and from school, nearly a mile each way. It was entirely normal for five- and six-year olds to do this back then, there was no real reason not to. When we had to cross a busy street (such as High Street Orpington) en route, there was either a policeman or a special crossing lady to help, or we could go a little way to the traffic lights to cross over. And there were interesting shops on the way, a baker’s who sold bread rolls still warm from the oven, for instance (if you put a ha’penny chocolate bar in the middle, it would melt deliciously), and a sweet-shop, and a newsagent who sold comics, such as “Dandy” and “Beano.”

I don’t remember a great deal about that first school, but I can relate a couple of anecdotes. Once we had learnt basic writing, we had to put our names on the top of our worksheets, and one unfortunate little boy one day wrote “Brain” instead of “Brian”, to the amusement of all. Another source of interest was the periodic visit to the school of a public-health nurse, who was mainly checking for conditions arising from poor hygiene (some of my schoolmates came from very poor homes), such as lice, impetigo and infected eyes and ears. She was called “Nitty Nora”, which I took at the time to be a reference to the knitting needle (dipped in disinfectant) that she used to search through the children’s hair; it wasn’t till later that I heard of ‘nits’.

After a couple of years, I progressed to “The Big School”, catering for grades 3 to 6, which was adjacent to “the Infants”. By that time I must have already been developing the reputation of being a “swot” or a “bright child” (according to your point of view). The Headmaster, Mr Boots (honestly!), took me under his wing to the extent of lending me books from his private library to take home, such as Kipling’s Jungle Book, and a fascinating book about seashells whose title I forget (it was 67 years ago, or thereabouts!).

I wasn’t particularly interested in girls at that time, but there were two in my class who were impressive, both called Sheila; one was robust and dark-haired, the other an elegant blonde. I don’t suppose I ever talked to either of them.

As I approached 11, the “Scholarship” exam loomed up (it was later called the “Eleven-plus”). This would decide whether I would move on to the generalist Central School, the Technical School, or the academically-inclined Grammar School. My parents, especially Dad, were very keen for me to do well, and expected me to go to the Grammar School. There were two such that were possible for people living in Orpington, Bromley Grammar and the impressively-named Chislehurst and Sidcup County Grammar School for Boys (which both had Girls’ counterparts - not much co-education in those days, except for the Central School, I think).

The exam had two parts, I recall, one language-based and the other dealing with arithmetic and such. There was a correction applied to the results to account for the spread of age; I suppose a few months were still significant at that stage of our schooling. Anyway, I scored 94% in each component, and was given twelve extra marks because of my age, so scoring 200 altogether - 100%! So I duly entered Chislehurst and Sidcup County Grammar School for Boys at the beginning of the school year in September 1944.

At that time there were still fees to be paid at the school, unless, like me, you had passed “The Scholarship”. School fees for Government schools were abolished soon afterwards, as one of the reforms introduced at the end of the War, by the 1944 Education Act, which provided free universal secondary education. Elementary education had been free in England since an Act of 1870.

I was somewhat of a wuss at school, at least as far as physical prowess was concerned; I hated football (for some reason our school played Soccer in the Autumn term and Rugby in the Spring), and would do all I could to get out of it. This aversion was intensified by the fact that on the afternoons set down for football, there were not enough boys to make up a complete set of games, so there was one made up of ‘left-overs’ like me. This also applied to the unfortunate master who was rostered to supervise that game; it was felt to be somewhat of a disgrace, and the master’s mood reflected this. After a few years our school introduced Lacrosse (this was very strange, I don’t know of any other schools in the South of England that played, so that our first twelve (or however many there are in a side) had to play men’s clubs. I actually opted for lacrosse, mainly because it wasn’t football, and really half-enjoyed playing.

In the summer, it was cricket, of course. Again I was a left-over, but since much of the time during a cricket match needs to involve only two or three players, I could cope. Besides, the somewhat glamourous Biology teacher was often rostered for our game, so we could spend the idle time making daisy-chains to put round her neck.

It was a single-sex school, as I have said, and in normal times all the teachers would have been men, but in my early years there, there were still several female teachers filling the places of their male colleagues in the Forces. I have mentioned the Biology teacher, there was also a formidable lady who taught us Latin; she would stalk about the classroom swinging the sleeve of her academic gown (yes, teachers at Grammar schools wore them proudly) into which she had dropped a heavy wooden blackboard cleaner. When she brought this down on your desk, you knew about it!

I will skip over my years at this school fairly quickly; after five years we sat for the School Certificate (which soon afterwards morphed into the GCE, the General Certificate of Education). There were nine subjects, and I scored Distinctions in Maths, Physics, Chemistry, English Language, and Latin, and Credits in History, Geography, English Literature and French (as far as I can remember). Some boys left at that stage, but I stayed on for a further two years, for the GCE Advanced and Scholarship levels. With a State Scholarship you could get into University free (with a living allowance as well), and I got one!

But before I could go to Cambridge (I had to jump a couple more hurdles to get there), there was National Service. You will have to wait for the next installment to hear about my exploits in The Royal Air Force.

If you liked this, why not treat me to a coffee (or a bone for Kafka)? Thanks, mate!

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