Open Writing

Some periods of your life are so unpleasant you blot them out. This was one of mine.

At the age of 11 I was required to sit the so called 11-plus examination. To the astonishment of Miss Verryl, the headmistress at the Prudhoe Elementary School, and my teacher, Mrs Jackson, I failed. They couldn’t believe it, and Miss Verryl in particular remonstrated with the Education Department.

I was given a supplementary examination. Miss Verryl required the whole school to pray for me at assembly. I passed easily. The system did not send me to Hexham Grammar School but to Lemington, to the east of Wylam, whereas I was from West Wylam, canny Wylam on the Tyne.

Lemington was a suburb of Newcastle and the kids were mainly coal miners’ sons and daughters from places like Throckley. The headmaster, Mr Farquar, always wore his academic gown.

There was a shocking system of bullying by the older boys. They would grab you from behind and push your head down the lavatory then pull the chain. This was considered hilarious. They would attack a kid for being cheeky and bash his head against the pavement. On a rainy day, we would be required to run the gauntlet. This was where we had to run through the aisles of the boys’ changing room while the bigger boys thrashed us with towels and belts. It was very ugly.

I dropped Latin to allow me to take violin lessons with a visiting teacher. The resident music teacher, a thin, tense woman, with green teeth, hated me for this. No one ever did enough practice for the visiting violin teacher’s requirements and my father objected to my poor playing, so I was on a losing streak with this, and the decision to drop Latin was a mistake.

One lunch time, I was playing with a paper airplane and it got stuck in a flowering crab apple tree. I reached up to tug at the branch, which snapped. So I used the broken branch to retrieve
my paper plane.

This incident was overlooked from the staff room, and when I reported for my English class after lunch, the English teacher gave a declamation about vandalism and the need to respect trees and about how disgusted with us she was. I put my hand up to explain it wasn’t really like that but she shushed me and I had to wear it.

In the next English lesson, there was a visiting teacher, Mr Yaffee, and I believe he was from one of the South American republics. He asked us to review a book we had enjoyed recently – and book would do, he said. I remembered a book I had read about Sudden, the outlaw, who had befriended an Indian. The Indian had been tortured by a Mexican to reveal the whereabouts of Indian gold. Sudden came across the torture scene and rescued the Indian, slapping the Mexican, who declared that he was a caballero, a descendant of old Spain. Sudden replied that old Spain or Old Nick, it was the same to him. There was to be no torturing of Indians.

I put in my homework and when Mr Yaffee took the class he declaimed at length about the evils of racism – clearly talking about my review of the Sudden book. That just about put me off English forever.

Fortunately, at this stage my parents had had enough of Prudhoe and moved to Northallerton, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, to be the tenants of the Buck Inn, and I was transferred to Northallerton Grammar School.

The headmaster was Mr A T Richardson. His qualifications were OBE, MA. He had a son, two classes in front of me, who was something of an athlete.

He was a most conscientious headmaster, not at all like Farquar. He used to give us little pep talks – for example, I know you students are bright. You wouldn’t be here I you weren’t. You are the cream of the county. But being bright isn’t enough. You have to do the work.

I’d go home and tell this to my father at the dinner table. His comment would be, “Our lad thinks he should have been born in Buckingham Palace.”

I’d say to my Mother later, What did I do wrong? She’d replay, your Dad is jealous. He never had a chance. He had to go to work at 14 and give all his pay to his mother, even though it was only one penny.

Miss Webster, the Latin teacher, said to me privately she would coach me at Latin, though I had missed a year through my misguided violin lessons. At this stage, the violin had been relegated to the coalhouse.

“No thanks, “I said. “I’ll do woodwork instead.” That was a very poor decision but typical of what happens when you give a decision to a 14 year old.

Northallerton Grammar had been established as a monastic school from the 11th Century and the names of all the headmasters were exhibited on all the walls in the assembly. There was a strong sense of place, of continuity. Locals told me that John Wesley had preached in the yard of our pub because he had disagreed with what was going on in the Anglican church, 100 metres north of us.

I loved Northallerton. I bought a pair of fantail pigeons from Jim McGurk, a boy in my class at school. And they brought home a stray pigeon, a blue bar, which I named Jimmy Rollicks. I used to feed them chick peas. Jimmy Rollicks used to feed the fantail babies. He was a really good pigeon.