Open Writing

Through the September morning mist a lone figure plodded hesitantly up the long school driveway to Royds Hall.

Apprehension clouded the 11-year-old boy’s face as he made his way towards the school buildings which began to take shape amid the grey gloom.

A brand-new brown satchel dangled from his shoulder to match the equally pristine tie in the blue and brown colours of the grammar school he was just about to join.

Even now, more than 50 years on, I am haunted by the memory of that daunting walk into the unknown.

Other new boys, I discovered later, had ganged up with mates from the same primary school for their first-day journey to Royds.

For me there was no such company. I was on my own, simply because nobody else was on the move from the tiny Colne Valley school at West Slaithwaite.

So the trolley bus journey from Marsden, changing at Longroyd Bridge, was made without the reassuring presence of a companion making a similar foray into a whole new world.

Strange as it may seem, recalling those events of 1944, I am unable to remember seeing any other Royds Hall pupils on my way to school that day.

There must have been some, even allowing for the fact that I set off at an ungodly hour, long before I needed to. Perhaps they simply merged into the mist.

Coming from a little school with pocket-sized playground that doubled up as an arena for both cricket and football, the playing fields alongside the Royds Hall drive looked incredibly vast to my disbelieving eyes.

I didn’t know at the time, of course, that those cricket and soccer pitches were destined to be the stage for some of the happiest days of my life until I left school for good five years later.

Especially the cricket field, where on one lovely summer’s day I had the satisfaction of taking two catches before lunch in the staff versus school match.

That newish looking building on the left, I was to discover, housed on the ground floor the laboratories where experiments in chemistry and physics left my head spinning as I fought a hopeless battle to grasp even the elementary scientific basics.

Beyond the imposing façade of what used to be a private mansion was an equally impressive entrance hall.

And tucked away in a cosy little corner was the geography master’s classroom where he kept us entertained for hours with tales of holidays in faraway places - complete with detailed instructions on how to avoid getting sunburned.

At the top of the grand staircase was the domain of the hard-of-hearing maths wizard, whose dry sense of humour surfaced with his invitations to “join my little tea-party’’ when he was really saying we were being kept in after school.

And just a little bit further along the corridor was the most dreaded place of all, where the head master with a wooden leg let you know there was nothing artificial about his ability to wield the cane.

Outside again and connected to the main building by a little wooden tunnel was the gym block, scene of many an early-morning nightmare as the PT master slumped, head in hands, victim of a mysterious malaise from which he slowly recovered with the help of lots of black coffee.

Silence was apparently also essential to his recuperative repose on the bench. So the daily dozen was transformed into the daily hundred as we quietly went through our exercise routine. And there was always the infamous slipper close at hand if some misguided youth disturbed his bit of shuteye.

Alongside the gym were the tennis courts whose high walls provided a convenient but not completely secure hiding place for young tobacco addicts seeking a quick drag at break time.

And beyond them, on the very perimeter of the school grounds, lay the air-raid shelters.

Ah yes, the good old shelters. Never used, so far as I know, for the purpose they were intended. But put to extensive use for much more frivolous pursuits.

For all the pitch black darkness I learned more about the female human anatomy during a single session in the shelters than in a whole term’s biology lessons.

Well, school is supposed to be about educating kids for life. So what’s wrong with a nice bit of homework now and again, I ask myself.