Gentlemen and others
I arrived at Tyersall as a Signalman – a private soldier, bottom of the heap (or salt of the earth, whatever your point of view). I left proudly bearing the same rank.
There’s a particular, maybe perverse pride for me in having done the whole of my National Service as one of the Her Majesty’s privates (as it were). I didn’t even make “Lance-jack” – the one stripe lance-corporal that was just one step up the ladder and was, actually, well within reach of any competent soldier within two years. That I couldn’t manage even that says a lot about my soldierly qualities.
So I stayed at the foot of the ladder, and compensated by being an inverted snob about it in the years immediately afterwards. In the post-National Service days, when people were still talking about their service, I often mixed with people who had been officers, and I never failed to let them know that I hadn’t lived a life of luxury in the officers’ mess. (Usually, interestingly enough, it was their wives and girl friends who were most impressed by this, because suddenly they had living proof that their husbands hadn’t been nearly as badly done by in the forces as they claimed.)
This preoccupation simply reflects life in the services, where your rank is what really matters. (Arguably, the same applies in civilian life, though not as much as it once did.) In the services, you wear your badges of rank, and when you meet someone else in uniform you know instantly whether they can give you orders or whether it’s the other way round. It all has to do, of course, with quick decision making under pressure, in battle.
To describe all of the ranks would probably be boring. There’s one dividing line, though – more of a gulf really – in the rank structure that you need to understand. It’s there in the each of the Services -- Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines -- and it’s that between commissioned officers and “other ranks.” It’s important in this story, because some National Servicemen were the one thing, and some (most, in fact) were the other. I harboured dreams of being one, but inevitably ended up as the other.
Of course, had I been offered the Queen’s commission when I went in, I’d have accepted it like a shot. I fancied the better uniform, the swagger stick, the nice peaked cap, being called “Sir” and the chance of being saluted in the street. In fact when I first went in I asked about it. After all, with three A Levels I was better qualified on paper than most recruits – than most officers in fact. But the officer interviewing me took one look, shook his head and said, “Maybe after three months you could apply.”
I guess he knew that it wouldn’t take me three months to realise that I was more likely to become Pope than receive the Queen’s commission.
It was all, you see, a matter of class. Up to then I’d had quite a sheltered upbringing as an only child in a mining family. I’d been to grammar school and passed a few exams, and been readily accepted by the middle class families of my friends -- suburban accountants, middle managers. To me, they were genuine posh people, the real thing. They lived in semi-detached houses with bay windows and had fitted carpets.
They were, I thought, the ones at the top. I simply hadn’t met the people further up the ladder, from whom most of the officer corps was drawn. Their children didn’t go to the schools we went to, and they certainly weren’t to be found doing the Veleta in a Church hall to a Dansette record player, which was our idea of a good night out. Those were the people who automatically assumed that they would become officers. Even the way they put it spoke volumes. They didn’t say, “I became an officer,” they said, “I took a commission.” It wasn’t an achievement you see, it was a right.
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Monkeys and Parrots 8. Chasing memories.
I did my National Service in Singapore. Over forty years later, I went back there. On my first morning I got up early, left my wife sleeping off jetlag and walked the short distance from the Shangri La Hotel into the top of Orchard Road. I was restless, and anxious to renew my acquaintance with the City.
For the moment it wasn’t too hot. The early mornings are the best time of the day in Singapore. Before the real heat arrives, the air’s like wine. It’s invariably still, too, and once upon a time there’d have been smoke rising from kampong (village) fires on the outskirts of the City, and spreading out sideways as it met the overnight temperature inversion a few feet up. No kampongs now though. Just acres of high buildings, villas, cultivated tropical gardens, roads, dual carriageways.
I turned from Orchard Road into Tanglin Road. I knew the way perfectly. The buildings were different – more so than I could have imagined. There was no Manchester United shop in Tanglin Road forty-three years before for one thing -- but the road layout underneath it all was as familiar as that of my home town, even though the roundabout I remembered at the start of Tanglin Road had been replaced by traffic lights.
I passed the gates of the Botanical Gardens – the gates were the same -- and a little further on headed off the Tanglin road to the right into Tyersall Avenue. There I started up the camcorder, the archetypal tourist. Now the heat was coming. Soon it would be very hot and very sweaty. In that respect, too, the place hadn’t changed since I’d been there all that time before.
“My old army camp was up this road,” I said, self consciously, into the camcorder mike. “I’m pretty sure it won’t be the same. Maybe it’ll be used for something else, or it might even be derelict.”
Tyersall Avenue’s quite a narrow road, much like an English lane with hedges, except that beyond the hedges instead of cows and fields, there’s dense tropical undergrowth – rain forest really.
In the Fifties, Tyersall Camp was perhaps half a mile up the Avenue, on the left after a series of bends, well out of sight of where I was standing when I first spoke into the microphone.
Tyersall wasn’t the most comfortable of Army camps. The huts were all wooden, and despite the slatted shutters, deep verandahs and ceiling fans, they were unbearable in the heat of the Singapore day. On balance, though, we were happy to be a mile or so away from the main Tanglin Barracks, where most of the GHQ staff were based, dominated by all the palaver and bull of a major HQ.
I kept walking, with the camcorder running. “I feel quite strange,” I said into the mike. “And I just don’t know what to expect.”
In truth I didn’t expect much, but I walked on, craning to look to my left where, in 1956, the camp would have been visible over the hedge. Now, in 2000, there was only jungle. Then, there would have been coming into view rows of huts arranged inside a perimeter road maybe half a mile in circumference that we called “Camp Circle”. In the middle of the Circle, and of the huts was the parade ground and the offices of the Colonel – Lieutenant-Colonel R.B.S. Eraut – and the fearsome Regimental Sergeant Major, WO1 P.E.A. Hall (and no, we daren’t call him ‘Pea’ even privately among ourselves.)
It couldn’t all have gone could it?
Yes, it could.
I walked the full length of the stretch of Tyersall Avenue where the camp entrance used to be – that wide turning into the camp, with a lifting barrier, and the guardroom. But there was absolutely nothing to be seen. The hedge by the road was continuous. The rainforest was intact right up to the hedge. A ditch bordered the road for the whole of its distance, offering no sign that it had ever been other than unbroken.
It was a surreal, science fiction moment. I didn’t expect to see Tyersall Camp intact. But I genuinely thought there’d be something to see – though more sensible members of my family always stumped me when they asked, “What, exactly?”
I suppose I thought there’d be, well, some open space with overgrown concrete bases and so on. Something to wander about in, no matter how derelict.
What there was, though, was what I least expected – which was absolutely nothing. Not so much as the slightest sign or mark on the landscape that there had ever been an army camp there, home to a thousand soldiers, a park full of vehicles, a parade ground, some offices, a little chapel. All was entirely vanished under the jungle.
I stood there gobsmacked for quite a while. Then I walked to and fro wondering if I’d got the right place – which, of course, I had. I was searching in that futile way that you do – like when you’ve lost your keys and you keep looking again and again in the same place, even though you know they aren’t there.
I knew Singapore had changed enormously. I knew I’d find big differences. This, though, was more than a big difference. This was going back to your old school and finding a reservoir or a cow pasture.
I felt strangely bereft, as if a bit of my past had been rubbed out.
For the moment it wasn’t too hot. The early mornings are the best time of the day in Singapore. Before the real heat arrives, the air’s like wine. It’s invariably still, too, and once upon a time there’d have been smoke rising from kampong (village) fires on the outskirts of the City, and spreading out sideways as it met the overnight temperature inversion a few feet up. No kampongs now though. Just acres of high buildings, villas, cultivated tropical gardens, roads, dual carriageways.
I turned from Orchard Road into Tanglin Road. I knew the way perfectly. The buildings were different – more so than I could have imagined. There was no Manchester United shop in Tanglin Road forty-three years before for one thing -- but the road layout underneath it all was as familiar as that of my home town, even though the roundabout I remembered at the start of Tanglin Road had been replaced by traffic lights.
I passed the gates of the Botanical Gardens – the gates were the same -- and a little further on headed off the Tanglin road to the right into Tyersall Avenue. There I started up the camcorder, the archetypal tourist. Now the heat was coming. Soon it would be very hot and very sweaty. In that respect, too, the place hadn’t changed since I’d been there all that time before.
“My old army camp was up this road,” I said, self consciously, into the camcorder mike. “I’m pretty sure it won’t be the same. Maybe it’ll be used for something else, or it might even be derelict.”
Tyersall Avenue’s quite a narrow road, much like an English lane with hedges, except that beyond the hedges instead of cows and fields, there’s dense tropical undergrowth – rain forest really.
In the Fifties, Tyersall Camp was perhaps half a mile up the Avenue, on the left after a series of bends, well out of sight of where I was standing when I first spoke into the microphone.
Tyersall wasn’t the most comfortable of Army camps. The huts were all wooden, and despite the slatted shutters, deep verandahs and ceiling fans, they were unbearable in the heat of the Singapore day. On balance, though, we were happy to be a mile or so away from the main Tanglin Barracks, where most of the GHQ staff were based, dominated by all the palaver and bull of a major HQ.
I kept walking, with the camcorder running. “I feel quite strange,” I said into the mike. “And I just don’t know what to expect.”
In truth I didn’t expect much, but I walked on, craning to look to my left where, in 1956, the camp would have been visible over the hedge. Now, in 2000, there was only jungle. Then, there would have been coming into view rows of huts arranged inside a perimeter road maybe half a mile in circumference that we called “Camp Circle”. In the middle of the Circle, and of the huts was the parade ground and the offices of the Colonel – Lieutenant-Colonel R.B.S. Eraut – and the fearsome Regimental Sergeant Major, WO1 P.E.A. Hall (and no, we daren’t call him ‘Pea’ even privately among ourselves.)
It couldn’t all have gone could it?
Yes, it could.
I walked the full length of the stretch of Tyersall Avenue where the camp entrance used to be – that wide turning into the camp, with a lifting barrier, and the guardroom. But there was absolutely nothing to be seen. The hedge by the road was continuous. The rainforest was intact right up to the hedge. A ditch bordered the road for the whole of its distance, offering no sign that it had ever been other than unbroken.
It was a surreal, science fiction moment. I didn’t expect to see Tyersall Camp intact. But I genuinely thought there’d be something to see – though more sensible members of my family always stumped me when they asked, “What, exactly?”
I suppose I thought there’d be, well, some open space with overgrown concrete bases and so on. Something to wander about in, no matter how derelict.
What there was, though, was what I least expected – which was absolutely nothing. Not so much as the slightest sign or mark on the landscape that there had ever been an army camp there, home to a thousand soldiers, a park full of vehicles, a parade ground, some offices, a little chapel. All was entirely vanished under the jungle.
I stood there gobsmacked for quite a while. Then I walked to and fro wondering if I’d got the right place – which, of course, I had. I was searching in that futile way that you do – like when you’ve lost your keys and you keep looking again and again in the same place, even though you know they aren’t there.
I knew Singapore had changed enormously. I knew I’d find big differences. This, though, was more than a big difference. This was going back to your old school and finding a reservoir or a cow pasture.
I felt strangely bereft, as if a bit of my past had been rubbed out.
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Monkeys and Parrots 7. Let loose with a rifle.
Because I enjoyed drill, I became an unusual recruit. At what you might call static soldiery – keeping my kit, clothing and boots immaculate – I was inept. Everything – polish on the brasses, shine on the boots – was at the margin of acceptability, and until I got to the Far East, where there were lowly paid local people to look after me, I was something of what the Americans used to call “a sad sack.” At mobile soldiery, however – foot drill, rifle drill, marching – I was fine. I’d been a keen cyclist, and in the school cross-country running team. Most of the other lads had left school at fifteen and so had spent three years devoted to beer, cigarettes and the pursuit of girls. So I had no problem at all with the physical demands of soldiering.
We also, of course, were taught the basics of actually using our weapons -- how to handle and fire our rifles. And, yes, we really did have “Naming of Parts”, complete with “...the piling swivel, Which in your case you have not got.” (Henry Reed's World War II poem, “Naming of Parts”.)Every soldier then had a standard issue .303 rifle – really the one that had fought the First World War, with just some largely cosmetic changes. We learned to fire it, and were tested in our marksmanship on the rifle range. I have no memory of how good or bad I was, but I assume that I passed whatever standard was applied. I do remember, though, how cold it was on that range up on the Yorkshire Moors. I also fired the Sten gun – a clever little sub-machine gun of skeletal construction that was reputed to cost only a few bob to make.
The rifle was unsophisticated, reliable, lethal and accurate up to half a mile. It only fired single shots, though, and the magazine held a single clip of a handful of rounds (was it seven? Something like that) You fired, then you manipulated the bolt to get another round from the magazine into the breech so you could fire again. It didn’t take long to do that, but it wasn’t a machine gun. At that time, you see, it was thought that you couldn’t give ordinary soldiers automatic weapons as standard issue, because they would poop them off willy nilly, wasting ammunition and endangering everyone around. Now, though, presumably reflecting the advance of technology and improved training, standard infantry weapons are effectively sub-machine guns – and by all accounts they’re not as reliable as our venerable rifles were.
So there we were. After four weeks we could shoot, march, keep ourselves and our kit clean and smart and obey orders. We were real soldiers, fit to be let loose on leave in the Queen’s uniform.
We also, of course, were taught the basics of actually using our weapons -- how to handle and fire our rifles. And, yes, we really did have “Naming of Parts”, complete with “...the piling swivel, Which in your case you have not got.” (Henry Reed's World War II poem, “Naming of Parts”.)Every soldier then had a standard issue .303 rifle – really the one that had fought the First World War, with just some largely cosmetic changes. We learned to fire it, and were tested in our marksmanship on the rifle range. I have no memory of how good or bad I was, but I assume that I passed whatever standard was applied. I do remember, though, how cold it was on that range up on the Yorkshire Moors. I also fired the Sten gun – a clever little sub-machine gun of skeletal construction that was reputed to cost only a few bob to make.
The rifle was unsophisticated, reliable, lethal and accurate up to half a mile. It only fired single shots, though, and the magazine held a single clip of a handful of rounds (was it seven? Something like that) You fired, then you manipulated the bolt to get another round from the magazine into the breech so you could fire again. It didn’t take long to do that, but it wasn’t a machine gun. At that time, you see, it was thought that you couldn’t give ordinary soldiers automatic weapons as standard issue, because they would poop them off willy nilly, wasting ammunition and endangering everyone around. Now, though, presumably reflecting the advance of technology and improved training, standard infantry weapons are effectively sub-machine guns – and by all accounts they’re not as reliable as our venerable rifles were.
So there we were. After four weeks we could shoot, march, keep ourselves and our kit clean and smart and obey orders. We were real soldiers, fit to be let loose on leave in the Queen’s uniform.
Monday, 28 December 2009
Monkeys and Parrots 6 Stand by your beds.
This little bit of my memoir "Monkeys and Parrots", is about kit inspections at Catterick Camp. I actually still occasionally use the phrase "Stand by Your Beds" when I walk into a room, thus confirming the impression of geriatric lunacy that many people have of me.
“Stand by your beds!” The entry of an inspecting officer or NCO into the barrack room was always heralded by that cry, from one of the NCOs in attendance, followed a flurry of leaping to attention, and a deal of activity at the door as people of increasing importance came in – a corporal, a sergeant, perhaps a sergeant major -- and then stood back waiting for whoever was the senior to make an appearance. In basic training, routine inspections were carried out by your troop officer, usually a second lieutenant, although the company commander, a major, would make regular visits, and occasionally we’d see the CO of the Regiment, a lieutenant colonel. He’d peer at your name card.
“Haigh, eh! Where are you from?”
“Barnsley, Sir.”
“I see. Well, your kit seems OK. Keep it up, play fair with us and we’ll play fair with you. Any questions?”
“Please can I go home, Sir?” (Just joking. The real answer was --)
“No thank you Sir.”
“Good, good, carry on.”
If you were unlucky, the RSM, following along behind the Colonel, would look more closely at your kit.
“I can still see the joins in these bootlaces! You’re an idle soldier!”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Do them again and show them to your corporal this afternoon.”
“Yes, Sir, thank you Sir.”
“Don’t thank me. Just think yourself lucky you’re not parading at the orderly room to show them to me.
“Yes, Sir, thank you Sir. I mean just Yes Sir, without the thank you, Sir.”
“Are you taking the piss, Signalman.”
“No, Sir. Sorry Sir.”
“I’m watching you. Remember that!”
“Sir! Yes Sir!”
Your own troop officer, a National Service second lieutenant, would be following behind. If he was the right kind of young officer, who’d got to know you, he would, after hearing an exchange like that, give you a crafty wink and a grin. (In his own training, it has to be said, he’d certainly had worse experiences. But because he’d been to public school he was used to it. )
The remarkable thing about all of it was that it was entirely ritualised. It could have been scripted, and it was often delivered with an undertone of genuine humour.
So familiar did the order, “Stand by your beds!” become to all ex-servicemen (and women) that it passed into the language. People used it when they walked into workplaces, raising a rueful smile of reminiscence. Even now, you hear it from time to time. Now it’s a joke. Then, it could loosen strong men’s bowels.
“Stand by your beds!” The entry of an inspecting officer or NCO into the barrack room was always heralded by that cry, from one of the NCOs in attendance, followed a flurry of leaping to attention, and a deal of activity at the door as people of increasing importance came in – a corporal, a sergeant, perhaps a sergeant major -- and then stood back waiting for whoever was the senior to make an appearance. In basic training, routine inspections were carried out by your troop officer, usually a second lieutenant, although the company commander, a major, would make regular visits, and occasionally we’d see the CO of the Regiment, a lieutenant colonel. He’d peer at your name card.
“Haigh, eh! Where are you from?”
“Barnsley, Sir.”
“I see. Well, your kit seems OK. Keep it up, play fair with us and we’ll play fair with you. Any questions?”
“Please can I go home, Sir?” (Just joking. The real answer was --)
“No thank you Sir.”
“Good, good, carry on.”
If you were unlucky, the RSM, following along behind the Colonel, would look more closely at your kit.
“I can still see the joins in these bootlaces! You’re an idle soldier!”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Do them again and show them to your corporal this afternoon.”
“Yes, Sir, thank you Sir.”
“Don’t thank me. Just think yourself lucky you’re not parading at the orderly room to show them to me.
“Yes, Sir, thank you Sir. I mean just Yes Sir, without the thank you, Sir.”
“Are you taking the piss, Signalman.”
“No, Sir. Sorry Sir.”
“I’m watching you. Remember that!”
“Sir! Yes Sir!”
Your own troop officer, a National Service second lieutenant, would be following behind. If he was the right kind of young officer, who’d got to know you, he would, after hearing an exchange like that, give you a crafty wink and a grin. (In his own training, it has to be said, he’d certainly had worse experiences. But because he’d been to public school he was used to it. )
The remarkable thing about all of it was that it was entirely ritualised. It could have been scripted, and it was often delivered with an undertone of genuine humour.
So familiar did the order, “Stand by your beds!” become to all ex-servicemen (and women) that it passed into the language. People used it when they walked into workplaces, raising a rueful smile of reminiscence. Even now, you hear it from time to time. Now it’s a joke. Then, it could loosen strong men’s bowels.
Monday, 21 December 2009
Monkeys and Parrots 5.
How to display your bootlaces.
Quite a lot of my "Monkeys and Parrots" memoir -- most of it in fact, as it currently stands -- is about my National Service with the Royal Corps of Signals. There's a longish section on the basic training we had at Catterick Camp in North Yorkshire, in the freezing Winter of 55 -- 56. There are a few paragraphs about the rigours of kit inspection, and this little snippet describes how we had to display our spare bootlaces.
Spare bootlaces. The dividing line between spare bootlaces and insanity is finer than you think. That’s because this is how, in 1955, with the Cold War at its height, the Royal Corps of Signals, at the very core of the Free World’s communications systems, displayed its spare bootlaces for inspection.
First, you took your bootlace -- which was of leather and maybe two or three millimetres square in section – and coiled it tightly so that it became a flat disc a little larger than an old penny. Then, using a piece of black cotton, you tied it so that it would stay coiled.
That was just the start, the easy bit. The object now was to treat the coiled bootlace in such a way that the coils themselves – and, if possible, the cotton thread -- became invisible, and you were left holding a shining black disc. This you achieved first by ironing the bootlace disc on both sides with a hot iron, and then by polishing it with boot polish. The process was repeated until you had an object of beauty the real nature of which could not have been guessed by anyone outside of the madhouse which was the armed forces in the Nineteen Fifties.
From your two spare bootlaces you crafted two of these jewel-like objects, and displayed them proudly, in their allocated correct positions, on your kit layout.
The really, really, sad thing about this was that you could get really absorbed in the task -- relishing the challenge of producing the best spare bootlace display in the Regiment.
All of this kind of thing has been described many times, and I only mention it here so as to confirm its truth, in support of all those National Service veterans who are assumed to be rambling and senile when they tell their tales. Don’t trouble your head wondering at the sense of it all, because there never was any. However incredible the stories you hear of bullshit in the barrack rooms, don’t doubt, only believe.
How to display your bootlaces.
Quite a lot of my "Monkeys and Parrots" memoir -- most of it in fact, as it currently stands -- is about my National Service with the Royal Corps of Signals. There's a longish section on the basic training we had at Catterick Camp in North Yorkshire, in the freezing Winter of 55 -- 56. There are a few paragraphs about the rigours of kit inspection, and this little snippet describes how we had to display our spare bootlaces.
Spare bootlaces. The dividing line between spare bootlaces and insanity is finer than you think. That’s because this is how, in 1955, with the Cold War at its height, the Royal Corps of Signals, at the very core of the Free World’s communications systems, displayed its spare bootlaces for inspection.
First, you took your bootlace -- which was of leather and maybe two or three millimetres square in section – and coiled it tightly so that it became a flat disc a little larger than an old penny. Then, using a piece of black cotton, you tied it so that it would stay coiled.
That was just the start, the easy bit. The object now was to treat the coiled bootlace in such a way that the coils themselves – and, if possible, the cotton thread -- became invisible, and you were left holding a shining black disc. This you achieved first by ironing the bootlace disc on both sides with a hot iron, and then by polishing it with boot polish. The process was repeated until you had an object of beauty the real nature of which could not have been guessed by anyone outside of the madhouse which was the armed forces in the Nineteen Fifties.
From your two spare bootlaces you crafted two of these jewel-like objects, and displayed them proudly, in their allocated correct positions, on your kit layout.
The really, really, sad thing about this was that you could get really absorbed in the task -- relishing the challenge of producing the best spare bootlace display in the Regiment.
All of this kind of thing has been described many times, and I only mention it here so as to confirm its truth, in support of all those National Service veterans who are assumed to be rambling and senile when they tell their tales. Don’t trouble your head wondering at the sense of it all, because there never was any. However incredible the stories you hear of bullshit in the barrack rooms, don’t doubt, only believe.
Thursday, 10 December 2009
Monkeys and Parrots 4
I'm posting excerpts -- and they are excerpts, just tasters -- from my unpublished account of the years when I in my teens and early twenties, at a time when the world was a different place. This one is called --
A small reunion.
In 2007 a handful – maybe a dozen – elderly people gathered at a pleasant Yorkshire hotel on a beautiful Summer day. I’d helped to bring them together, and they are all my friends, although we meet but rarely. What we have in common is that we were all in the same form at school. In those days, secondary schools like ours – a local authority grammar school – didn’t have the kind of flexible timetables that allow different kinds of grouping through the day. You stayed with your form all day, for almost everything. As a result you became a very close knit band. Just how close is best shown by the fact that in about 1990 we had a proper reunion which was attended by all but two of the original class of thirty.
There weren’t that many of us there in 2007 – maybe a dozen, and about the same number the following year when we met again at the house of one of our number. Both gatherings were sparked off by the knowledge that during 2006 two of our number had died, the beginning, we accepted, of a steady attrition that will gradually accelerate now towards its natural end.
The 2007 reunion, full of memories of the ones who had died, was quite beautiful, really, like a scene from a tranquil, life-affirming English film. It was so wonderful to see these old friends, very much in their prime, smiling, relaxed, entirely comfortable with each other. It was, I should have explained, a mixed school that we went to, and so we were a mixed group of elderly folk. Now, though, we were free of the adolescent hormonal tides and tensions that flowed through us in those far-off school days. Well, almost at any rate. I, for one, and I guess this applied to everyone, was conscious all the time that many of us knew toe-curlingly embarrassing things about each other, all not so much suppressed as deliberately dismissed as irrelevant. Only occasionally, perhaps, did someone wonder why the person across the table smiled in a certain way, or suddenly went mentally into another place.
And do you know, the other thing about being free of the hormone thing is that we saw each other so much more clearly. We were free of adolescent self-obsessed posturing and inhibitions, and frankly I think we’ve mostly turned out to be nicer people than we were in those far off days. Nothing to prove now, I suppose.
Something else struck me, too. It was that some people were instantly recognizable, little changed in over fifty years. Others were the exact opposite – you could stare for ever and not see any sign of the younger version. What does that signify? Well, nothing really, except that people are different from each other.
What did we talk about? Why, school of course. What else? Our memories were the usual ones – this or that teacher, what happened to old so-and-so. There were revelations – things you didn’t know about people, including the stories that everybody except you knew at the time. We all had slightly different takes on our teachers, because we weren’t all equally good at everything. So there were those who really liked our Latin teacher, to me a fearsome lady who gave me nightmares.
On the whole, though, the memories were good ones.
A small reunion.
In 2007 a handful – maybe a dozen – elderly people gathered at a pleasant Yorkshire hotel on a beautiful Summer day. I’d helped to bring them together, and they are all my friends, although we meet but rarely. What we have in common is that we were all in the same form at school. In those days, secondary schools like ours – a local authority grammar school – didn’t have the kind of flexible timetables that allow different kinds of grouping through the day. You stayed with your form all day, for almost everything. As a result you became a very close knit band. Just how close is best shown by the fact that in about 1990 we had a proper reunion which was attended by all but two of the original class of thirty.
There weren’t that many of us there in 2007 – maybe a dozen, and about the same number the following year when we met again at the house of one of our number. Both gatherings were sparked off by the knowledge that during 2006 two of our number had died, the beginning, we accepted, of a steady attrition that will gradually accelerate now towards its natural end.
The 2007 reunion, full of memories of the ones who had died, was quite beautiful, really, like a scene from a tranquil, life-affirming English film. It was so wonderful to see these old friends, very much in their prime, smiling, relaxed, entirely comfortable with each other. It was, I should have explained, a mixed school that we went to, and so we were a mixed group of elderly folk. Now, though, we were free of the adolescent hormonal tides and tensions that flowed through us in those far-off school days. Well, almost at any rate. I, for one, and I guess this applied to everyone, was conscious all the time that many of us knew toe-curlingly embarrassing things about each other, all not so much suppressed as deliberately dismissed as irrelevant. Only occasionally, perhaps, did someone wonder why the person across the table smiled in a certain way, or suddenly went mentally into another place.
And do you know, the other thing about being free of the hormone thing is that we saw each other so much more clearly. We were free of adolescent self-obsessed posturing and inhibitions, and frankly I think we’ve mostly turned out to be nicer people than we were in those far off days. Nothing to prove now, I suppose.
Something else struck me, too. It was that some people were instantly recognizable, little changed in over fifty years. Others were the exact opposite – you could stare for ever and not see any sign of the younger version. What does that signify? Well, nothing really, except that people are different from each other.
What did we talk about? Why, school of course. What else? Our memories were the usual ones – this or that teacher, what happened to old so-and-so. There were revelations – things you didn’t know about people, including the stories that everybody except you knew at the time. We all had slightly different takes on our teachers, because we weren’t all equally good at everything. So there were those who really liked our Latin teacher, to me a fearsome lady who gave me nightmares.
On the whole, though, the memories were good ones.
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Monkeys and Parrots 3
The centre of my existence for quite a long time at school was a small room in one of the classroom blocks. I had an interest in model aeroplanes at the time, and I and a group of like-minded nerds asked the head if we could have an aeromodelling club at school. He agreed, and actually gave us our little room. We proposed to use it, so we said, for building models, and we were allowed to go there at lunchtimes.
In fact, we did no model building there at all. We brought half-built models in from home and left them around. We even put on a special exhibition of our work one day, which gained us considerable, and much needed brownie points, even though not one stick of what we exhibited had originated in school. No, the modelry was where we spent all our time nattering and laughing, indulging, as teenagers always have done, in what one of my friends always called “erotic parlance”. The room was always known as “The Modelry” and was effectively our common room, a sort of disreputable alternative to the prefects’ room, of which, needless, to say, I was never a member. The de facto leader of our band of brigands was a very big boy always known as “Boris” (His name was actually David, but not many people knew it -- teachers always used surnames in those days anyway) At fourteen Boris was six feet four inches tall and weighed fourteen stone - a good lad to be friends with. He was an expert builder of model planes, a good cyclist, and competent pianist and was very, very funny. He was also, in his spare time, a flight sergeant in the Air Training Corps. His descriptions, with sound effects and facial grimaces, of the conduct and habits of the young louts he took to annual camp had us in stitches.
Tragically, and short-sightedly, the school establishment didn’t rate him at all, because, well, he didn’t fit the mould. Even his leadership of the model club, with the exhibition which he organised, was looked on with patronising amusement. Of his Air Cadet activities the school knew nothing, yet he'd gathered lots of serious qualifications as a Cadet. He was one of the few to become a cadet senior NCO, so it was clear the Corps respected him and gave him responsibility. Yet he was a thorn in the flesh of his teachers and left school before taking any exams. Why did they let that happen? Eventually, he went into the Royal Air Force where he became an Air Electronics Officer, flying with the “V” Force of advanced jet bombers, Victor, Valiant and Vulcan, that carried our nuclear deterrent. He'd simply got his education elsewhere, in a different way.
So the years passed, and in no time we were sixteen, ready to go into the sixth form. Our form members knew each other very well by then, and we were, by modern standards, young men and women. The implications of that, however, will have to wait till next time.
The story of Boris will be recognisable to many. The student who's rebellious at school but has a different sort of life outside -- in sport, maybe, or a band, or a cheerleader group. Fortunately Boris's outside life led directly and seamlessly to a worthwhile technical career. These days, I suppose -- I hope -- that a school would know about Boris's ATC life, would celebrate it, and add it to his portfolio in some way.
In fact, we did no model building there at all. We brought half-built models in from home and left them around. We even put on a special exhibition of our work one day, which gained us considerable, and much needed brownie points, even though not one stick of what we exhibited had originated in school. No, the modelry was where we spent all our time nattering and laughing, indulging, as teenagers always have done, in what one of my friends always called “erotic parlance”. The room was always known as “The Modelry” and was effectively our common room, a sort of disreputable alternative to the prefects’ room, of which, needless, to say, I was never a member. The de facto leader of our band of brigands was a very big boy always known as “Boris” (His name was actually David, but not many people knew it -- teachers always used surnames in those days anyway) At fourteen Boris was six feet four inches tall and weighed fourteen stone - a good lad to be friends with. He was an expert builder of model planes, a good cyclist, and competent pianist and was very, very funny. He was also, in his spare time, a flight sergeant in the Air Training Corps. His descriptions, with sound effects and facial grimaces, of the conduct and habits of the young louts he took to annual camp had us in stitches.
Tragically, and short-sightedly, the school establishment didn’t rate him at all, because, well, he didn’t fit the mould. Even his leadership of the model club, with the exhibition which he organised, was looked on with patronising amusement. Of his Air Cadet activities the school knew nothing, yet he'd gathered lots of serious qualifications as a Cadet. He was one of the few to become a cadet senior NCO, so it was clear the Corps respected him and gave him responsibility. Yet he was a thorn in the flesh of his teachers and left school before taking any exams. Why did they let that happen? Eventually, he went into the Royal Air Force where he became an Air Electronics Officer, flying with the “V” Force of advanced jet bombers, Victor, Valiant and Vulcan, that carried our nuclear deterrent. He'd simply got his education elsewhere, in a different way.
So the years passed, and in no time we were sixteen, ready to go into the sixth form. Our form members knew each other very well by then, and we were, by modern standards, young men and women. The implications of that, however, will have to wait till next time.
The story of Boris will be recognisable to many. The student who's rebellious at school but has a different sort of life outside -- in sport, maybe, or a band, or a cheerleader group. Fortunately Boris's outside life led directly and seamlessly to a worthwhile technical career. These days, I suppose -- I hope -- that a school would know about Boris's ATC life, would celebrate it, and add it to his portfolio in some way.
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