Last time I brought you to where I got a lousy start at school.
The best I could do was get my head down and learn. But there were some kids I remember in particular - Catherine Geall, the oldest girl in the class; Gerard Howson and Mario Coggins, who were good at running like me, and Narinder Kaila, a young Asian lad. And I remember some teachers, too. There was Mrs Banks who lived next door to us (what could be worse, eh?) and Miss Brown (later Mrs Brewin) who was a right b*tch and told me to 'Take the plum out of my mouth' just because I spoke differently, and also once said the word 'crap' in front of a class of six and seven year olds.
The way the schools were near me back then meant I had to go the nearby Mayflower Junior School when I was seven. The head was a guy called Fred Oram and he was OK. It was the dreadful Miss Kettleband that put the wind up everyone. She was obsessed with your school tie even though it was invisible under the school jumper, and woe betide you if you didn't have it on. The sour faced old bag taught dancing amongst other things (fear, mostly) and I've had three left feet ever since. I did excel at maths and what passed for science, though. And there was a girl back then, too. Gail, her name was. A chubby blonde thing that I liked. I was right mug there and it preceded seven years of girl-free education.
You see, little did I know that at the age of eleven there was a test called the 11+, basically an IQ test where you had to score over 112 to go to a grammar school, which were single sex, and avoid the hideous Crown Hills Secondary Modern School. I achieved this, one of 39 to do so that year (1971). I went to Wyggeston Boys' Grammar School (now Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College), and one of a choice of four, where my uncle John had gone thirteen years before me. The most famous alumni are David and Richard Attenborough, by the way.
More in a later blog!
Jack Orchison, December 24, 2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment