(no subject)
Tuesday, November 8th, 2005 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanOver on his LJ, my old friend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
telemeister and I have been reminiscing about school days at Adams’ Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire back in the 70s. The days when the world was garish, the music glittery, shoes platformed and clothes flared.
The mullet was the hair style of choice for many a spotty oik, and those of us who didn’t have one generally had long hair with centre partings. I recall that we were not allowed to grow a beard at school (one or two of us thought we could, but they were distinctly nu-metal Belgian beards, and hideous). I myself, in one of those rebellious streaks that you spend the rest of your life regretting1, had sideburns that stopped exactly one razor’s width apart. You couldn’t call them mutton-chop sideburns unless you were taking your sheep from Belsen, but they would have been had my face follicles been more accommodating between the ages of 16 and 20.
My mother told me that I looked like an idiot, and Dad (unwittingly quoting Rod Stewart) said we looked ridiculous.
You have to remember that I was only half the man then that I am now, almost literally. (I believe the weight gain over the past 25 years puts me officially one steak dinner away from being two people – neither of them anorexic).
This has sent me into something of a reverie, as I am choosing to remember the bits I liked, or rather of which I have fond memories. My good friendtelemeister has rather darker memories of being bullied on occasion, but advancing senility has largely edited that sort of unpleasantness from my bonce. Thus it is that I can recall standing in the sun on the lawn behind Beaumaris House in the late summer of 1973 with a bunch of friends listening to Suzi Quatro singing Can the Can on the tranny,2.
The masters (for they were masters: no mere teachers for the likes of us) were an odd and unlikely bunch. Most of them (but not quite all) now retired, and many sadly deceased.
There was old Motty Mottershaw, the senior historian: a man with breath that could drop an elephant at twenty paces. His successor in waiting, one Rodney Rodders Jones, the cheery young history master who liked to pretend he was one of the chaps. A man who looked rather aghast when a friend of ours, John Cotterill (who later joined the army and who I believe is currently a major serving in Basra), hauled him over the coals in class for disparaging the achievements of the army in the First World War3.
And what of old Bernie Deakin, the world-weary giant of a chemistry teacher who would look balefully at miscreants and announce that he would “come down on them like a sack of bricks from a very, very great height” if they didn’t mend their ways?
There was, for a while, Tony Cave, the English Master who was also an Old Boy. This gave him an unfair advantage, because he always knew exactly where people went to skive off, carve their names in the masonry, or just have a smoke. He’s done it all himself ten years earlier. He like modern jazz, and drove around town in a half-timbered estate car with a double-bass sticking out of the back.
I think he may have been a Time Lord.
My favourite teacher was the eminently laidback Jerry Chambers, denizen of the art room and Beatle fan. He was permanently sad that the school no longer had a skiffle band, and bemoaned in a gentle way the fact that it (skiffle) had died out after a brief flowering, some 15 years earlier.
It transpired that my cousin was going out with, or was at least a friend of my old geography teacher, Tom “Master” Bate. In those days he was fresh from teacher training college and a dead shot at ten paces with a wooden board cleaner or piece of chalk. Of course, I had a certain licence in his class on account of my cousin. This was rather wasted by the fact that I quite liked geography, so paid attention instead of up.
Lastly, the man who closed the world of mathematics to me forever, with his cheerily boring lessons: Mr Edgoose, or Spock as he was known. He meant well, and wasn’t a particularly nasty man or anything like that. But Lord, could he bore for England. I do recall, though, his exasperated catch-phrase, “Watch the board while I go through it again.”
There were many, many more notably Flash Newton, the communist biology teacher who had the good grace not to mention to anyone outside the staff room that in one of my essays on bird reproduction, I had consistently used the word ‘clitoris’ instead of ‘cloacae’ much to my later mortification and his amusement. These are the incidents that scar us, and the fact that he didn’t take the piss out of me in front of my class mates gives me just about the only fond memory I have of that man.
Still, that’s all for another day.
1Largely because you are never entirely sure that you have destroyed all the photographs
2I have covered this ground in previous entries: in the far more naïve 1970s a tranny was a radio, not a bloke in a dress saving up for the operation.
3I believe Johnny came very close to accusing him of treason and calling him out.
telemeister and I have been reminiscing about school days at Adams’ Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire back in the 70s. The days when the world was garish, the music glittery, shoes platformed and clothes flared. The mullet was the hair style of choice for many a spotty oik, and those of us who didn’t have one generally had long hair with centre partings. I recall that we were not allowed to grow a beard at school (one or two of us thought we could, but they were distinctly nu-metal Belgian beards, and hideous). I myself, in one of those rebellious streaks that you spend the rest of your life regretting1, had sideburns that stopped exactly one razor’s width apart. You couldn’t call them mutton-chop sideburns unless you were taking your sheep from Belsen, but they would have been had my face follicles been more accommodating between the ages of 16 and 20.
My mother told me that I looked like an idiot, and Dad (unwittingly quoting Rod Stewart) said we looked ridiculous.
You have to remember that I was only half the man then that I am now, almost literally. (I believe the weight gain over the past 25 years puts me officially one steak dinner away from being two people – neither of them anorexic).
This has sent me into something of a reverie, as I am choosing to remember the bits I liked, or rather of which I have fond memories. My good friend
telemeister has rather darker memories of being bullied on occasion, but advancing senility has largely edited that sort of unpleasantness from my bonce. Thus it is that I can recall standing in the sun on the lawn behind Beaumaris House in the late summer of 1973 with a bunch of friends listening to Suzi Quatro singing Can the Can on the tranny,2.The masters (for they were masters: no mere teachers for the likes of us) were an odd and unlikely bunch. Most of them (but not quite all) now retired, and many sadly deceased.
There was old Motty Mottershaw, the senior historian: a man with breath that could drop an elephant at twenty paces. His successor in waiting, one Rodney Rodders Jones, the cheery young history master who liked to pretend he was one of the chaps. A man who looked rather aghast when a friend of ours, John Cotterill (who later joined the army and who I believe is currently a major serving in Basra), hauled him over the coals in class for disparaging the achievements of the army in the First World War3.
And what of old Bernie Deakin, the world-weary giant of a chemistry teacher who would look balefully at miscreants and announce that he would “come down on them like a sack of bricks from a very, very great height” if they didn’t mend their ways?
There was, for a while, Tony Cave, the English Master who was also an Old Boy. This gave him an unfair advantage, because he always knew exactly where people went to skive off, carve their names in the masonry, or just have a smoke. He’s done it all himself ten years earlier. He like modern jazz, and drove around town in a half-timbered estate car with a double-bass sticking out of the back.
I think he may have been a Time Lord.
My favourite teacher was the eminently laidback Jerry Chambers, denizen of the art room and Beatle fan. He was permanently sad that the school no longer had a skiffle band, and bemoaned in a gentle way the fact that it (skiffle) had died out after a brief flowering, some 15 years earlier.
It transpired that my cousin was going out with, or was at least a friend of my old geography teacher, Tom “Master” Bate. In those days he was fresh from teacher training college and a dead shot at ten paces with a wooden board cleaner or piece of chalk. Of course, I had a certain licence in his class on account of my cousin. This was rather wasted by the fact that I quite liked geography, so paid attention instead of up.
Lastly, the man who closed the world of mathematics to me forever, with his cheerily boring lessons: Mr Edgoose, or Spock as he was known. He meant well, and wasn’t a particularly nasty man or anything like that. But Lord, could he bore for England. I do recall, though, his exasperated catch-phrase, “Watch the board while I go through it again.”
There were many, many more notably Flash Newton, the communist biology teacher who had the good grace not to mention to anyone outside the staff room that in one of my essays on bird reproduction, I had consistently used the word ‘clitoris’ instead of ‘cloacae’ much to my later mortification and his amusement. These are the incidents that scar us, and the fact that he didn’t take the piss out of me in front of my class mates gives me just about the only fond memory I have of that man.
Still, that’s all for another day.
1Largely because you are never entirely sure that you have destroyed all the photographs
2I have covered this ground in previous entries: in the far more naïve 1970s a tranny was a radio, not a bloke in a dress saving up for the operation.
3I believe Johnny came very close to accusing him of treason and calling him out.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-08 11:59 pm (UTC)Mr Chambers I had in my first year for an art tutor. He was something of a beatnik if I remember correctly. Very smooth and suave. Funny chap - I never understood his jokes which I imagine to be a good thing. He was part time and left in 1995.
Deakin left in my second year (1996). I never had a lesson with him but I know that his latter days were filled with sarcastic wit and a general hatred of children. The nature of his lessons would be to hand out pieces of paper and then sit around in the small science block staff office whilst we'd run amuck or try and work.
MASTERBATE?!?!? Wow...he was still there but with INSANE mutton chops of which you speak in the first paragraph. He was a rugby master and word spread that he wasn't allowed to teach rubgy because he used to watch the boys in the showers. I don't believe a word - still, it's quite funny.
And Mr Newton...he used to smoke constantly in the school car park (as was then and probably still is, situated halfway between the side entrance and the back entrance). We used to watch him trot between cars looking inside and every now and again testing the door handles on Mr North (Geography teacher) or Mr Church's (Music teacher's) cars (they had all the good shit in them). On one occassion in my first year in Talbot house, he decided to take a certain dislike to a Mr Hollington; a rather rolly-polly, small, iritating chap who smelt like twiglets and used to cry a lot. He hung him from the back of the Biology dept room (probably not there in your time, a new addition in the mid-80s I believe) by his new maroon blazer. About 20 minutes later, due to the child's weight, we heard a thud and the peg on the door had pulled through the stitching on the back of poor Hollington's jacket. I don't think he ever told his mother. Mr Newton also married a younger Asian lady and had lots of small half-cast children I believe. He also drove a Volvo.
Any other teachers of note that may have been there in your days; Mr North (Geography), Mr Banks (English), Mrs Jopling (English) and Dr Machen (Physics). And that damned outdoor pool. I still resent the school for keeping that open.
Wow - what a place. I'm gonna have to do a reminder of my great days there one day.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 12:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 12:37 am (UTC)Jerry Chambers was a really great bloke; beatnik is about right, though. I went back a few times in the early 80s to chat with him and take the piss out of Flash - it's funny how different the teachers treat you when you've left.
Old Tom Bate isn't that sort of chap, I'm sure of it. As for Rodders, well, I rather didn't think he had it in him to sire children. I didn't think he went in for that sort of thing, if you catch my drift. He was great friends with a French teacher called Terry Mack who did go in for it, and who had the most gorgeous procession of French birds in tow. Nice bloke, but one of those people whose 5 'o' clock shadow would reappear while he was putting his razor away.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 12:38 am (UTC)Sad git, ent I?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 12:51 am (UTC)Banko went loony a few years back. Between my sixth form years, he and his daughters (the love Liz and Victoria) went only a 1 month trip around the world. He was a reserved fellow; he came back with two earrings and wearing sandals and orange Hawaiian shorts (so my English teacher source tells me). The second day of teacher training before term started, the headmaster and his two deputies both came in with clip-on earrings and in loud Hawaiian shirts. Banko walked out and never came back. Frightening. He will always be remembered for his reenactment of Grendel from some boring story I was made to regurgitate for my year 7. Marvelous fellow mind.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 12:52 am (UTC)You hear any really sad stories about people that went when you were there? One chap turned to drugs and killed himself within the two months of getting to uni and another ended up on children's TV. I don't know which was worse.
Joking of course.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 01:16 am (UTC)Before then we'd be told to dive in by the sadistic Jesse James, the then games master (he died of a heart attack around 1982 doing pressups in a half frozen muddy pool at Longford, or so my sources tell me. I've always ben rather ambivalent how I feel about that). I can still remember forgetting how to breathe for what seemed like an eternity while all the heat was sucked out of my body.
They always forgot to put chlorine in it, and by late March it always looked like a decent electric current would bring it to life as the Swamp Thing.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 07:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 09:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 10:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 11:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 12:23 pm (UTC)Did they ever make you do the "Boughey Road Run"? It was a lap out the back gates, turn right, turn left as if up to Longford but then a first left up Boughey Road, right to the end by the Girls' High, back onto the High Street and Back Home. 2 miles - used to take me half hour. And there was no crafty fags involved!
AND did you have Cross Country when you were there? It was about 7 miles in my first year and took me about 3 hours to complete. I thought they were joking when they handed us the course. We complained so it was taken to 2 complete laps of Longford grounds. Even that was a fair distance.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 12:48 pm (UTC)There were several routes, depending upon how insane the staff were feeling at the time. I think there must have been a set of tables in the masters' common room, correlating and cross referencing cross country routes, weather forecasts and general mean-spiritedness.
We never ran down the High Street. One route went up Broughey Lane, veered off to the right, up on to the main Newport - Telford road past Chetwynd End, back right down to the back of Longford on the Edgmond Road, and then back onto Longford Road and on to Newport.
There was another run that took in Edgmond Hill and the canal/Strine Brook route if the run started from Longford Hall.
We used to walk the route, take short cuts and generally natter unless Rodney was following on his bike, and even then we would only jog while he was in sight. The trick was to hold your breath while youy jogged back up the drive way to the pavilion so you got there looking as though you'd actually done the whole run.
Once, we took too many short cuts and got back ahead of the serious runners. I was picked for the Aston House cross country team much to my horror on the back of that. I walked the course on sports day and finished in a leisurely three hours.
I was never selected again.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-09 02:12 pm (UTC)I seem to remember going down Longford drive, turning right onto Longford Road (?) and then through some fields on the right (where my old Maths teacher, Mr Hibbert would play sax on a hill) and then further and further until we reached what is now the Telford bypass near Edgmond. Then there was a canal and that was it.
There was one chap (a border friend who came from Nottingham of all places) who was 'the boy that acted as if he were 70'. Loved classical music, went the church every week and was well into Physics and Psychology (and could run rings around us on any intellectual test). Every year he would try and finish at least 30 minutes behind the last person and then collapse on the line for about an hour after we'd gone home. There became a special ceremony as to who could get the best picture of him practically dead every year. I seem to remember the house master would win (by cheekily hiding his camera down his sleeve whilst tending to the poor child).
He is now a Priest.
AGS memories
Date: 2005-11-09 02:24 pm (UTC)To respond to all these references, I really ought to post something, but I think I've rattled on too much already on my page about AGS memories.
I will say, though, that my darkest memories are not of being bullied by other boys (it only happened occasionally), but of the asinine AGS system itself: CCF, cross-country runs and other shitty sports, and some of the teachers.
Ribble, you may want to research our respective pages for previous posts and exchanges regarding our school days, and how the heck did you know we were ex-AGS?
Re: AGS memories
Date: 2005-11-09 02:26 pm (UTC)I can field that one. When I noticed that LJ had included a schools section of the information page, the completist in me insisted that I add in a reference.
Re: AGS memories
Date: 2005-11-09 02:35 pm (UTC)CCF. Goodness gracious. The dear chap in charge of our CCF back in the day was none other than Business Studies teacher Brian "Bwi" Thompstone (so named due to his speech impediment). On my first day he found out I could play sax and drums and tried to co-opt me into joining. Until my mother came to pick me up after school one day when I was 12 and gave him a proper dressing down about trying to force small children into doing things they didn't want to. That small man marked CCF out for the rest of my days. Although his daughter was very pretty and a year older than I. I remember her and I getting along very well on a skiing trip in my 3rd year. I still see her from time to time.
I'll have a read Mr Telemeister (and also, I am a Tele man myself - here is a pic of myself sporting a Natural Ash American Deluxe) and have a laugh. I sense I may be posting up a few more AGS related stories over the next few days.
Indeed - for some reason, you were both marked up on the "search schools" page. I went from there!
Re: AGS memories
Date: 2005-11-09 02:59 pm (UTC)I'm on the "search schools" page? Yikes, I don't know how that happened, but I must remove myself immediately. Don't wish to associate myself with that place except to say unpleasant things about it.
Re: AGS memories
Date: 2005-11-09 06:05 pm (UTC)What kind of music can be found on The Legion Of Doom Myspace Page. Have a listen - I severely doubt it'll be of interest unless you still count Black Sabbath as Blues (which I do). Same with the SanZen Myspace page which is another band I've just joined.
Gear? If it's not my Tele, it's an Ibanez (I know) or a PRS (I'd recommend one) through a Marshall JCM900. Sound ballsy enough without being too nu-metal and processed like a Mesa Boogie or ENGL. Thinking about a Peavey 6505 (5150 essentially).
There's nothing wrong with saying unpleasant things about the school. I was on the slightly un-cool 'can't be arsed with Rugby so you become a social outcast' kind of chap. Did you used to drink in the local pubs? If so, which ones?
Re: AGS memories
Date: 2005-11-09 06:31 pm (UTC)I like PRS beasts, but can't afford one - can't even afford to re-fret my Strat. My amps are of the Fender variety, except for a grand old MusicMan 65-212 which seems to be the illegitimate issue of a night of unbridled lust between a Fender Twin and a Marshall of indeterminate parentage.
I see you have added me to your friends list. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Re: AGS memories
Date: 2005-11-09 06:48 pm (UTC)Indeed; he's a hopeless old curmudgeon. But if you find the rants getting too much, just mention sloppy joes, Mountain Dew, and pretty much any food from Mexico and the chap will calm down again.
He knows what he likes, does our
Re: AGS memories
Date: 2005-11-09 06:51 pm (UTC)Re: AGS memories
Date: 2005-11-09 08:58 pm (UTC)As my mates all lived outside town, I didn't go to the pub with them of an evening. After we left school and went our separate ways, I went to a few with other pals, but none specifically. I remember the Barley Mow, another at the bottom of Forton Rd and the Railway by the Wellington Rd. Never been an enthusiastic drinker, and decent dry cider is like gold dust over here.
Re: AGS memories
Date: 2005-11-09 09:34 pm (UTC)The Railway was a cracking spot. I remember a very good night in there.
The one of Forton Road - could it be The Kings Head? Or The Bridge? If not, The Swan, Victora Inn, Peacock and Shakespeare Inn are other favourites.
Re: AGS memories
Date: 2005-11-09 09:35 pm (UTC)Re: AGS memories
Date: 2005-11-09 09:37 pm (UTC)