|
 | |  | |
Mealtime for people not local to Bosworth was organised by several dinner ladies and the food was dished out by members of the staff on a rota basis. It was then passed to the head of the table by a prefect such as me. Vegetables were already on the tables and pupils helped themselves but no one started until grace had been said.
Seating was at long benches, which occasioned opportunities for some mild unbalancing. Girls and boys were segregated and the babies had a table with chairs.
The cost per week was two shillings and twopence, collected by one's Form master/mistress on Monday mornings. The change from the half a crown gave me a chance to indulge in sweets at the local shop.
The meal always included a pudding of some sort, one continuing disappointment being the provision of spotted dick made with brown flour and served with Demerara sugar. There was always a mental comparison with the home-cooked variety as soon as the pudding appeared.
I cannot remember ever having chips with anything nor of course did we know about such things as hamburgers. I suppose that meatballs were the nearest we ever got to present-day foods. I don't remember being supplied with fresh fruit either. Perhaps I must draw a veil over mealtimes.
Homework was a compulsory imposition and officially the quota per night was three subjects with a time span of half an hour each.
Trying to study in the kitchen at home in the farmhouse whilst occupied by other people was extremely difficult, and so the homework took a great deal longer than the supposed time. When the subject matter refused to enter the brain, the added knowledge of one's isolation from other schoolfellows became insufferable and panic would set in, making the study that much more worrying.
Mother's compassion and obvious distress at being unable to help only made matters worse, and to be told at eleven o clock that I really had to go to bed often resulted in tears. {Sudden flash! Why didn't I enlist the help of Con or Madge?}
Preparation, as it was described in the school brochure, was a difficult process to assess. For example, should one prepare one, two or three pages of Ovid or Julius Caesar, and what about the other subjects?
With Maths at least we had a clear-cut number of questions set by Mr Webb. This was usually the solving of problems discussed in the class that day, and often led to panic attacks when the procedure was forgotten and no notes were available.
The progress of Latin with the headmaster depended on so many unknowns. Would he select one of the top section of the class or horror of horrors select a girl from the rump end. If the former, the sentences would be skipped over with derivations, tenses, etc being trotted out and everyone feeling quite happy; but if the selection fell upon one or two of the girls then the class would tense up and wait for the inevitable explosion and a storming out by this enraged being.
Then would begin the agony of waiting. The number of minutes to end of period was known so we became whispering clock watchers, trying to tell the ignorant girls what they should be saying. The Head's door was always left ajar and so we were never clear as to whether or not he was lurking behind it ready to pounce on anyone talking too loudly.
On reflection, the Latin lesson was a complete farce but because of the Head's attitude the top section of the class made a point of ensuring that everyone in that group was fully briefed and a page ahead of the learning stage. Another problem we found with the Head was that he, being a Latin scholar, was always liable to ask obtuse questions not really suited to 15 year olds. I hope he got his comeuppance.
In the lower class, children were always addressed by their Christian names but, once Form II was reached, the boys received the formal approach by surname, or if there were several siblings in the school, this or that major or minor. Girls on the other hand were addressed by their Christian names. At all times I think the Head preferred to use surnames for everyone. A rather curious situation.
Many of the children, being fee paying and often with older siblings either at school or university, had a softer relationship with the staff so us scholarship kids felt just a little out of things.
Fortunately by the time second year arrived, I was able to claw myself up into the upper section of the class and was soon appointed as a prefect, which became an ongoing role, and I became part of the establishment.
Mr Smith was known to all as the 'Boss' and the words were spoken with awe. I don't recall ever seeing a Mrs Smith but if there was she kept herself hidden away during school hours. He lived in a flat located over his ground floor office but if he had a garden it must have been in the area of the staff houses and beyond the carpentry shed.
He had an extremely short temper, for example when I was joint head boy with Rex England, I was called in to his study which was a few yards away from our room. As I entered he was sitting at the far end of his desk and he addressed me thus: 'Ah! Hill, I am thinking of giving careers advice and wonder if you have any idea what you intend to do when you leave.'
'Well sir I have had a few thoughts about being a civil engineer.'
'Oh yes and have you been in touch with any one like Loughborough college or The Institute.'
'Er, no sir I was just thinking about it.'
'Well if that's all you have done there is no need to continue this conversation: send England in to see me.'
There were six pupils in the sixth form, four of whom were girls but I have only hazy thoughts of how we were being taught. Most of the time we seemed to be seated in that form room reading books.
When I left the Gables Farm, Desford in 1940 to live in Leicester it was impossible to cycle to school so I became a bussed man.
I recall once when England and I were sitting side by side wrestling a bottle of red ink when suddenly the cork came out and my lap was filled with the red stuff. The embarrassment of walking to the bus and then having to alight in Leicester and walk home along Gimson Road was huge, even though I was able to hide most of the mess behind my trusty leather satchel.
Further to the talk about being a civil engineer, I had no idea of the role of an Architect but had been able to experience some work on a building site by courtesy of Dad's cousin Edgar Stevens. Uncle Edgar had been a farmer near to the Industrial School but was in debt and unfortunately staged his daughter's wedding in grand style with top hats and morning suits, so his creditors decided to hit him for six.
He came to live with us for several months and during that time he started building a group of luxury houses near to the Red Cow in L Forest East. How a bankrupt could do that I can't imagine, but he would take me in his car, and I helped him to lay bricks on the inner skin of the cavity walls.
I also had an inkling of house construction by dint of having played many times on the building site opposite to the Gables Farm where I lived, and had found it fascinating.
I also learned how to steal timber by watching Tommy Law our next-door neighbour. He would wait till the workmen had gone home then he would pop over and grab a few lengths of softwood, hurry back home and immediately paint them with primer to conceal their identity.
Back to school. I didn't have many weeks of the sixth form and ringing the bell for period changes, as the Manager at National Provincial Bank in Leicester via Dad offered me a job at the bank. A career in banking was deemed very prestigious, so it was too good an offer to miss. Thus I didn't need Frank Smith's advice after all. I just left at the end of one week without fuss and that was the end of school.
| |  | |  |
To add a comment you must first login or join for free, up in the top left corner.
|
|
