childhood memories. part one/four

[chippie]

Ok so I didn't pass my two chances at the eleven plus. I was such a mediocre pupil at Heyworth Street School and I can truly say that my school life there was happy and trouble free. I was going to miss the school and half of the kids I grew up with from all round the area, but I wasn,t to know this yet untill well after the six weeks holidays that were looming up. Finishing junior school was a milestone in my life, already the first ten years of my life was over. What would become of me, would I be working, get married, live like the rest of the neighbours in our street? Us kids would discuss these topics as we sat around on the big removal like van parked on the oller at the bottom of our street.

I remember my gran telling me stories of the war years from her point of view. About how that our school was used as an air raid shelter and how they,d had to run all that way up Heyworth Street to get to it. I remember thinking at the time that by the time they got there, there would be planes overhead watching you. In fact one of the stories repeated by a woman who lived in our area was that she was caught in Everton Road during an air raid and that a bomber followed her along the street and verred away from her back to the dockland area. I heard Dora Caseupton tell that story many times in her reminices of her life in later years. My gran used to tell me that my dad had climbed up onto the roof of our school to dislodge an incendiary bomb that had fallen on a full shelter of people. But whether that was a true story or one just to make me proud of my dad or reinforce her love for him, I,ll never know now.

The school holidays were spent in the best ways possible, playing in the entries and ollers and empty houses around our area. I remember several houses that were like gold mines to us kids. One was on the main road, Breck Road and had been stripped of copper wire and doors and fire places. We rooted around some of the junk that had been left and abandoned of life and we found trinkets and pens and documents of all descriptions including photographs of the relatives of those that had lived there. It seemed to me at the time why had these people left legacies of their lives to be pinched and pilfered like this. It seemed like those war films I,d seen on the flix of those people being hounded out of their homes and taken into concentration camps. But Liverpool was a far cry from life like that, why had these possessions been left? Upstairs the bedrooms had been stripped of floorboards and us kids walked across the beams from one wall to another and had great fun playing in that particular house. Then there was the house in Whitefield Road that had been abandoned and in the cellar there was all kinds of army gear all over the place, phones, dials, speakers and petrol cans. We thought that there may have been a shop upstairs where they sold these items or that the owner was a secret spy and had been taken in by the mi5 and this was why the house was empty. Then there was a house in Queens Road a large three story dwelling where we found a stack of "dirty books " but we didn,t know how to make a profit with these items so we just looked through them and went "ooooh" and "yak" and such meanial noises.

Well as I said before I failed the Liverpool Education Committee,s eleven plus and the one from Huyton where I was when the social services got us together as a family for a short time. But I did go to a senior school that I felt comfortable in with some of my mates from Heyworth Street, and we started out together on the road to adulthood.

The school was a sandy bricked affair built about 40s or early 50s. The pupils were sectioned off into competative houses, Scott, Livingstone, Drake and Hudson. I knew about the first three explorers or adventurists, but Hudson?! didn,t know him then or now for that matter. Scott was red, Livingstone yellow, Drake blue and Hudson green. The brainy lads always seemed to end up in Scott while the dimwits were all in Hudson. I selected the Livingstone house and was the house captain throughout my four years in Prince Rupert Secondary Modern School for Boys with two gates, one facing Mill Road where the famous hospital was situated at the end of the road and where twenty years later I was to work and enjoy ten happy years of service under the guise of civil servant. The other gated entrance was in Margaret Street, once well known for its baths where many an Everton son had used to get a good bath in as there we,re not many households with a bathroom in our township.

In the Livingstone House were John Bennett who had become my cousin when my Uncle Albert married his sister Kitty. The whole family had flaming red hair and John was no exception. He was a crackin, lad and always game for a laugh as was Paul Breen and his mischievious grin, Raymond Culshaw who lived next to our old school in Heyworth Street, Tommy Evans a qieter, football crazy Liverpool enthusiast and his mate Billy Milner, Raymond McMahon another flaming redhead who later was to be my neighbour in St Georges Heights about five years later. Bringing up the last member of Livingstone House was a tall lad with ruddy cheeks, and his name was Robert Armstrong.

I,ll have to leave the story here this time as there are four ambulancemen and a cines boxer dog called neddy knocking on the fanlight window.

[PhilipG]

Chippie.
I've just read this thread from start to finish.
I don't know how I missed it before.
It was difficult to read at times because of the tears.
If it's any consolation, you were probably better being brought up surrounded by people who did love you, rather than being put into a clinical loveless Children's Home.

[chippie]

Philip, I,ve pm ed you about this so as not to bare my soul in public. But I,m not afraid to cry if I,ve been hurt; And believe me I and my siblings have been hurt, and their story is far greater than mine, far sadder, I don,t know how they can smile knowing their past.

I can only give you a big hug Philip.

[Gnomie]

Once again Chippie you amaze me. you are so brave showing us all this, i am total hooked on your story.

I feel i must buy you are beer one day mate

Tony

[chippie]

Thanks Tony, the best part of my story is probably the childhood memories, but there is one part I,d like to share on her with you all about my adult life and it,s very sad. The last year or so of my working life in fact. Its for the not too distant future.

Cheers mate.

[chippie]

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.

[chippie]

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