On the Road to Adulthood part 2
In the Scott House was Kenny Alward who would have been better placed in the Hudson House as he let the house down many times, he was always up for a laugh though. Robert Banks loved his football and looked a right tough nut but was a nice lad really. Then there was my mad mate Albert Boyd who used to live in Everton Terrace and had a brother a year or so his senior. He was a smashing laugh but liked Peter Cook and Dudley Moor stuff which I just couldn,t stand when I was in my early teens. We use to hang around together a lot and if there was anything to laugh about you,d find Albert amongst the best of them. I met him in the early 70s when I was living in St Georges Heights and I nearly walked passed him in street; He was sporting a huge mop of afro style hair and a shrunken orange jumper that showed off his belly button, I couldn,t believe that this image was my best mate not a decade before. Talk about the David Bowie style wasn,t in it at all, I was gobsmacked, but he would have been better on the cover of the music album "Hair." Dennis Higham was a quieter, fun loving lad who had no side to him at all and lived on the left side of Heyworth Street in a small back street.
Robert Jacobs was the talk of the class right from the start as he was the most endowed male anyone in our class had ever seen before even at the tender age of eleven. He was to become the captain of our school in the final year, well he would wouldn,t he? while I was his second in command as school vice captain, well I would, wouldn,t I? Robert was a lovely lad, quiet, clean and smart always and the perfect gentleman a school ever had. He and his brother Barry who had a shock of red hair lived in Caird Street. Barry was a year Rob,s junior. I remember that Robert gave me a chemistry set once as a present and I blew a test tube of chemicals up in my bedroom in Dessy. There was such a mess on the wall but it wasn,t noticed amongst all the other mess. Robert and Barry went on to do well in life. Robert is married with two children and has a great career ahead and behind him whilst Barry holds a position in Liverpool that I wouldn,t like to meet in his official capacity.
Paul Kerr was another misplaced middle class lad in our form, but he only stayed a year or so and was off to better climes I thought. George Taylor was a smashin, lad with a goofy smile that reminded me of "Plug" in the Beezer or Topper or one of those comics. And then there was Roy Williams who was the Scott House mascot who should have been in Hudson too. It was in Roy,s house I was first taken when I went down Kepler Street with no brakes on my bike a year or so before. I still have the scars on my knee and forehead as a silent witness to that awful accident.
The Drake House consisted of Barry Cain who I remember swapping stamps with in our first Year, but he never followed us into the second year for some reason. David Connell who lived in Reservoir Street on my route to school and went to live in Cantril Farm in the sixties when his house came up for copulsary purchase by the council. Kenny Culshaw, no relation to Ray in our house, was a small dark haired lad who one sunday went over to New Brighton with me and mooched along the prom and visited the lighthouse and fort. David Grogan was another of my classmates who lived along my route to school and whom I called for now and again when I felt like it. Frank and David Owens, although not related were very good friends together. David was the son of a Liverpool Councillor. In the first or second year he and I fell out for some reason on the playing field in Dwerryhouse Lane and he gave me a punch in the face. I can,t remember what it was all about but we got over it. Robin Murphy was in todays streetspeak, one cool dude who went around in dark sunglasses. He had a celebrity presence about him. He had a pet snake and fed it a live mouse in front of me once, for this reason I kept him at arms length from then on and his presence faded in my eyes. Keith Ramsden was a character always a wide beaming smile on his face and a friendly open personality. George Wilkes was the last person in Drake House and a cousin of the Bennett Familt that lived over the road from me in Dessy. I,ve since contacted him on Friends Reunited and he drinks in the British Legion with my Uncle Bob and only just found out he was related to me.
The Hudson House had all the dross of the class when brains were given out. Where Scott had all the bright sparks - Hudson had all the dim wits. Tommy Jones was tall and lanky and when he got stripped for showers - looked like a nude pin. He also had a body odour like baked beans. Tony Merret was oriental in appearance who always had an item of something to swop with someone. He reminded me of a "fagin type" character who was out "to do business" with everyone. I got a pair of dark blue swimming trunks from him one time, don,t know what I swopped him for them, probably my gran,s false teeth that she only used to seal the crusts on mince pies she made at Christmas. Although I had these trunks for a few years at school they were very itchy and were meant for a bigger person than me in many ways and areas. Danny Peters was the son of a building contractor from Rupert Lane ( lived in Rupert Lane and went to Prince Rupert School) He was quite a tall and beefy lad with a strange grin not unlike Bernie Winters the comedian, for those who remember him. Just looking at this guy brought tears to my eyes. Bringing up the last two souls in the Hudson House were twins Jimmy and Tommy Woods a sort of Kray Twins of Margaret Street. I was to see one of them or maybe a different one each time in the Liverpool Pub in James street many years later when I was working in the city centre in the early 1990s
Well that is the pupils of our class 1a in the first year of our Senior school. I wonder what another fellow pupil would say to describe me if he was doing a story like this. I can think of a few adjectives but I can only guess. Four eyes, freckle faced, freakish---- we will never know
Well a school can only be a school if there are teachers or masters so next time I,ll tell you about the real freaks in the school:PDT_Piratz_26:
On the road to adulthood year one and two
Our teacher Mr Postance was a right sight for sore eyes. To see him for the first time you had to rub your eyes to see if you actually was not imagining him. I mean after coming from a "normal" school with "normal" looking teachers
and then coming to Mr Postance for the first time was an incredable experience.
If I say he looked like Max Wall then that would give your imagination something to play with. Long hair red/fair hair, yellow corded drainpipe trousers, brown corded jacket with leather on the elbows and big black boots, well Coco the clown meets Mr Pecksniff down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. He had a habit of putting his tongue into his cheek when you were talking to him, and staring at you with big doleful eyes. And he wasn,t slim by any means of the word. This is the picture I,ve got after forty four years of last setting my eyes on the chap.
Now when you,ve laughed yourself silly and choked while hiccuping I must tell you what a smashing generous and gentle soul this teacher turned out to be. He was very fair in his dealings with us kids and treated us to the grammophone every now and again bringing with him from home, wherever that was, a rare and precious 78 inch record of his favourite composer or tune
I remember Peter and the Wolf being played and could be heard right along the upper corridor and down the stairs and into the foyer of the toilets once when I needed to go halfway through a particularly long rendition of his five best tunes.
His generousity to us kids had no bounds when he would buy for us a "jammie dodger" if we looked a bit hungry or sad that particular day. Now that was a nice twist to education a lad coming round with a tin of jammie dodgers for us kids to eat with our milk at only 1d each. I was to eat my way through many many many of those biscuits in the four years of my schooling at Prince Rupert Secondary Modern School for Boys, or Margy with a hard g. as we referred to it from the first day on. When through the ensuing years some of my fellow pupils would save up their pennies to buy "loosies" at the corner shop next to the playground, (a loosie being a loose ciggarette taken from a packet of five/ten/twenty wild woodbines) I and most of my pals would be spending our pennies on the moist, strawberry, salty yet sweet delights of the biscuit tin. And may I say in defence of my pals that there was not many lads in my class who did succumb to the dredded weed back in the early sixties. Alas, power in the guise of the vice captaincy of the school did bring me down when I confiscated a lads ciggarettes and told him that I wouldn,t report him in the punishment book but would smoke the ciggies myself. Thinking that this made me feel big and smart and grown up.
All good things come to an end of course and that includes good teachers, and one morning while waiting for our teacher to come into class we were instead visited by the head, Mr Williams; a very tall and grey looking and dressed man with a stern unfriendly and unwelcoming face to us "newbie" and scared looking frail schoolboys; And anounced that our loveable friendly teacher Mr Postance had passed away on the first January (1964) While in the first holiday, Christmas as well, of our first year.
Well we were astounded, gobsmacked and so very sad that this Dickens character of a smashing teacher had given up the Marley,s Ghost and left us poor weakling kids in the hands of the unknown. What had we done to the poor man to warrent an early death like this? were we that bad a rabble that were beyond teaching? Did we derserve to be flung to the mercey of the rest of the company of staff in Margy that some referred to as Teachers?
I can,t for the life of me remember who did take us for the rest of the term but according to my file and my report book it was a certain Eric Whitby who was a younger chap with mustache and grey sports jacket with leather elbow pads. Now we wondered if Mr Postance or Charlie, as he was affectionately known, bequeath those elbow patches to Eric or did Eric come from the same "teacher factory" as Charlie, one never knew. Mr Whitby reached the end of term with no points against him as he was only feeling his way amongst us at that period. So we broke up and had a brilliant summer holiday and started back to school refreshed and yearning to go a step nearer to being old hands in the school
Now going back, we knew that we were not the newbies any more so we could play tricks on the new intake just as we had tricks played on us, like, head down the toilet if we looked cute or soft or stupid. I wouldn,t dare do such a thing myself I,d be too scared the newbie would turn the tables and put my head down the bowl instead, I was such a weedy boy in my grey shorts and black blazer and black front scraped shoes.
Our new teacher was Eric Whitby again and under his leadership my english exam results shot up to a considerable good mark. And the second year whizzed through without much mishap or of any noticeable misfortunes by any of us pupils or teachers. One of my recollections with Eric Whitby was that I asked him to type a forward for a very long composition I,d written after seeing a film at the flix. I was a very impressionable child back in the 60s, I still am today my granmother would argue. Anyway after a week or two I kept asking Mr Whitby had he typed my forward that I had written out for him, and he would reply to the negative each time. Until one day as I was reading a passage in a book, he placed a piece of typed paper on the top of my desk and silently walked off back to his desk and put his head into the Financial Times or Titbits or some other notorious publication. I read the forward I had written and looked up at him in bewilderment. His typed forward was not in straight lines and most of it was spelt wrong. At the end f the lesson I went to him and asked him about it and he just smirked and said that it was what I,d asked him to do and he,d done it. I thought he was mad or something, I couldn,t put that in my composition as a project. We went out and went to our next lesson which was on the same corridor and in the last classroom. We sat down to maths with another Mr Williams and as we sat there for a minute or two, Mr Williams called me out and said he had a message for me. I went to his desk and he handed me a piece of paper on which was written the typed out forward I,d asked Mr Whitby to do for me. Mr Williams told me that someone had left it for me, did I understand? "Yes sir" I beamed, and went back to my seat delighted.
On the road to adulthood year three
In Mr Whitby,s class I started doing better. English went from me being 18th in class to 4th in class and maths, well I was a right tinhead in arithmetic. I did,nt know my times tables at all except the five times table which was easy. Other subjects I was interested in and not bad at was German language and science. Physical Education was always a nonstarter with me, I was next to useless in the gym and nearly broke my neck trying to do a somersault on the trampoline and I could never get to the end of walking across the beam. Mind you I did get to see the gym teachers naughty bits when he asked me to hold his legs straight whilst showing the class a handstand. Mr Hardon (didn,t) was his name and was small in all senses of the word.
John Schober was one of the young teachers at the time who took us for science and I loved this topic and took a steady interest throughout the four years in school. I think it helped a lot ifyou could get on with the teacher and liked them and not be scared of them like Ted Makin in the third year. Uncle Ronnie warned me about him. He was a very strict teacher who liked to use the cane a lot and put the fear of God into his pupils.
It was after the summer of 1966 that we were all dreading going back to school to be in Ted,s class. Ted the Terrible, a slight balding man with a half halo of slipped hair round his neck who always wore the same blue suit since we started school till we finished four years later. We were all trembling as we went into class for the first time and we were still trembling when we left for the last time a year later. I got caned a few times in his class but he instilled in me a sort of discipline that at least made me learn my times table and get even better English results.
Life was pretty grim in this period. I couldn,t bring any friends back to our house with the state it was in and they wouldn,t have been allowed in anyway. Any bonds I had made with other pupils had to be either in school and remain in school or go to their house or back to Heyworth Street School,s play centre and socialise there instead.
We started going on trips out in the third year. One day we went to see "The Mikado" operetta in the Royal Court Theatre which not only got us out of the stuffy classroom but showed us a bit of culture of Japan. It turned out to be a very enjoyable day out by me anyway. Most of the other lads didn,t appreciate it as it didn,t have a football in it, or was too prissy, but I followed it quite well and was uplifted by it at the end. I can still remember songs from it now. We went twice I think it was to the Philharmonic Hall to hear various pieces from Mozart and Strauss of which I can,t possibly remember now as classical music always put me to sleep. I,ve got a note that we also visited the Everyman Theatre but can not remember what iconic play we went to see there.
It was the summer of that year that I had saved up enough money from my weekend job as a greengrocery delivery boy at the corner shop of May Dreaper and Harry Howarth, and was allowed to go on the schools summer camp to the Isle of Man. Oh what a trip, I,d never been away from Liverpool up till then and was looking forward to it immensely. I had to buy a tin mug and plate, get a sleeping bag and have fresh clothes to wear.
The day arrived and I was excited as anything, like a kid with a new puppy ready to go on my big adventure to a foreign land, away from home for the first time, what a thrill. The trip over on the Manx Maid was brilliant, no land for hours and a tuck shop on board where there was sweets galore and fizzy drinks. The voyage was like a holiday in itself. A team of staff and lads had gone over the week before to set up camp in a field outside Peel and it was all ready for us when we arrived after getting a bus from Douglas. We were allocated a huge bell tent for about eight or ten of us, and the fun just begun.
I remember the stream where we were to wash in the morning and swim if we could stand the cold running water, the hot mugs of cocoa or drinking chocolate on alternative nights before we settled down for bed, the comraderie with the rest of the boys from the whole school and not just our class, the teachers in their mufti and being civil to us although still clearly in authority, the laughter and tears, the adventures, the days out to see Radio Caroline transmitting illegally in "foreign" waters, The Laxey Wheel, the Calf of Man, Castletown, Snaefell the highest hill on the isle and many more memories of delightful times that come to mind every now and again.
And then there was the bad times.
One of my pals fell over his suitcase and the lock on it cut open his right shoulder ripping his skin wide open and revealing white muscle underneath, yak. He had to be whisked away to hospital right away to be stitched up and made better. It didn,t ruin his holiday though as he was a bright and cheerful soul who grinned it away and got right back into his holiday.
Then there was the night someone in the tent was telling jokes and making fun of the teachers. In the middle of one really dirty joke that a big hairy hand came into the tent from under the flaps and grabbed hold of my head and shouting "Got yer, it,s you, get out now!" everyone fell silent and I got up in me birthday suit and went outside. (well where was I going to get a pair of pyjamas, me who never even had underpants because my gran was so poor) I was asked was it me who was telling filthy jokes to which I relied the negative, so the whole tent had to parade outside till the joker owned up. He or they never did so we all got whacked with a rubber pump or plimsole across the bum and went back to our sleeping bags and never uttered another word that night.
The last bad thing or blot on the holiday was when a group of us went into Peel and visited the castle. Some of the group were rambling over the cliffs and some were swimming and mucking about. One of the lads, George Taylor got into difficulties on the rocks climbing onto a rock near to the cliff. He couldn,t get from the rock back to the cliff and the tide was gushing in all around him, he was scared and began to cry. Some other lads were trying to help but they too were beginning to get scared because of the oncoming gushing swirling current just below them. I was high above them and shouted that I would run for help but fear had gripped me on the cliff and found it very difficult to pull myself up off the cliff to the top. I had frozen in a panic and was mortified that my arms and legs were stuck in fright. I looked at the three boys on the cliff, I looked at the swirling waters, I looked at George in mortal fear and I dragged myself up with all my joints clenched in fear and lay on top of the cliff in relief. After a few seconds I got up and ran, but stopped after a shout from below, "He,s done it, he,s o.k." Crickey I was relieved, but not as relieved as those three lads climbing back up from the cliff and out of danger.
Nothing was said about the incident back at camp, but the following school term there was stories and jokes about it for a few weeks untill we knuckled down into our final year. The last year in school then we would be free to go out into the big wide world and join the workforce and be men.:034: