IT SEEMS ONLY YESTERDAY.
As I entered the Staff Common Room the day after my interview at
Lydney Grammar School, the interrogation usual on such occasions began.
"Did you get it?"
"Well, er, I don't know yet; there was still another candidate to
be interviewed. The Headmaster said he would let me know as soon as possible".
They tried hard not to exchange knowing, sympathetic glances.
"What sort of a place is it?"
"Well, er, most of the classrooms seem to be, er, wooden -------".
"Made from mighty oaks dragged down from the Forest by slave-labour?" The
Common Room wag broke in good-naturedly to smother my awkwardness and (as he
thought) my disappointment, with a merry quip.
"Well, er, not exactly. I think------".
"What's their Rugger like?" A genuine inquiry this, from an
enthusiast.
"Well, er, I understand that their 1st XV has not been beaten at home for
several years."
No words could have expressed disbelief more palpably than the few seconds
of silence that followed.
"And what about the Soccer?" The kindly Deputy Head showed by his
tone that he wished me to know that he appreciated how easy it was for anybody
to misunderstand Rugby statistics.
"Well, er, actually the boys play Hockey not Soccer".
The kindly Deputy Head blanched. Next to his beloved Classics, Soccer was the
great passion of his life. In the 1919 Staff v School match he had kicked the
ball right over the top of the high granite buildings.
"I suppose they play cricket," said a more junior colleague, trying
to save us all from conversational catastrophe - it was unlikely that Cricket
was not played and Lydney, and almost beyond the bounds of possibility that the
1st X1 could have a ground record as immaculate as that the 1st XV. I was grateful
to the more junior colleague for his quick thinking.
"Well, er, yes, they do: and I gathered that they usually field quite good
teams".
The reaction was time was favourable:"usually" and"Quite
good" were seized on as indications of the normality and human fallibility
existing in a real school. I was saved momentarily from both the pity of some
colleagues for having suffered a bizarre experience, and the disapproval of
others for having tried a leg-pull about serious subjects so early in the morning
of a working-day. Momentarily! For with a youthful desire to tell the whole
truth, I blundered on.
"The Staff have a regular Cricket team, too. I think they play a match
almost every week".
The waves of pity and disapproval were coming at me again. But again a helpful
soul at the far end of the room tried to save me with a question to which there
could surely be no embarrassing consequence.
"How many boys are there?"
"Well, er, at the moment just over 250 - and about the same number of girls."
"GIRLS!" An explosion from the oldest member of Staff voiced the
agonised bewilderment of almost all present.
"Well, er, yes. Didn't't I tell you it was co-educational?"
The bell rang for Assembly, and we trooped silently to the Hall. My good colleagues
- for they really did have my welfare at heart - could now in more suitable
surroundings offer up a prayer that either I would not be offered the job,
or that if I were, the Almighty would give me strength to resist the temptation
of accepting it. Oh, how could I tell them that my prayer would be quite different?
Later that day my telegram arrived. I accepted the offer and moved to Lydney
in January 1954.
"You can call me ‘Hotch' of Joe," said my new Deputy
Head, Mr. S. J. Hotchkiss,"but please don't call me Sam." Joe
it was, and is. I had felt at my interview that L.G.S. was a friendly place.
By morning break on my first day I knew that I had been right.
I discovered that young Fay Hotchkiss was in the First Form, and I confess
that I was a bit apprehensive at the prospect of teaching her. (How easily
- and innocently - might my professional shortcomings be revealed!) But years
later, when she had taken her Degree in English, she asked if she could come
to do her Teaching Practice with me at my present school; a little later still
I gave her away when she married; and this afternoon she and her husband and
three daughters are coming to tea. So I suppose I need not have been too worried
back in January, 1954. At least,not at the prospect of teaching the Deputy
Head's daughter.
There were, of course, some things about which I had no worries whatsoever. For
example, in my application I had not volunteered to"Help with games",
and my incompetence at these activities was so manifest that I was never called
upon to have much to do with them. True I"appeared" in the annual
Staff v School Cricket matches; but as far as I was concerned they were splendid
social occasions, with magnificent strawberry-and-cream teas, and gatherings
in the Hall of colleagues, their families, and pupils. Happy times, which not
even my ever-present fear of being required to bat could mar. As for Rugby, the
1st XV remained undefeated at home despite my presence at the School - and, indeed,
maintained their remarkable record for several years after I had departed.
But if I did nothing for, or to L.G.S. Rugby, it did something for, or to, me:
it turned me into a shameless boaster on the subject of L.G.S. Rugby. Many are
the Games Masters in the County of Devon who have had to listen to my tale of
that ground record, and to my casual,"Bev Dovey, Trevor Wintle, ‘Copper' Morris!
Oh yes, I taught them all!"
When I began writing this piece, I knew that a point would come at which I should
have to say,"I remember . ." That point has come; and if what follows
has a somewhat Chipsian ring, I am unrepentant. For I do remember, with pleasure
and affection . . .
. . . . . Going to the Wildfowl Trust at Slimbridge with Mr. Rowley and a party
of Second Formers; and finding as he and I rounded a corner, after seeing them
off the coaches, that they had vanished - taken to their heels (or wings?) .
My alarm and my fanciful train of thought must have been written on my face for
Mr. Rowley said calmly,"Don't worry, my dear chap, they will come
to roost." He was right of course: the whole flock was waiting patiently
at the entrance to the sanctuary when we eventually reached it.
. . . . . Hearing tales of the Annual Camp: of Advance Parties under the command
of Mr. Barlow; of early morning Cookhouse Duties and porridge with"just
the right ‘nutty' flavour"; of practical jokes played on the
Staff.
. . . . . Thinking that the Second Year Sixth would be too busy to take part
in my School Play, and putting up an audition notice that excluded them. Their
reaction was swift and emphatic. They sent a deputation."What about us?" they
said. It is hard to imagine what that production would have been like without
their participation on - and back-stage. Even more important than their splendid
contribution, however, was the fact that my predecessors had made Drama so important
in the School that not to be given the chance to be involved in a production
was unthinkable.
. . . . . Christmas Parties, with strenuous games in which people"wanted" extraordinary
collections of objects, or did violence with rolled-up newspapers.
. . . . . The tumultuous, splashing, good-humoured rivalry of a Swimming ‘Gala',
and the slip on the wet side of the pool that nearly made me an unofficial participant
in a relay race.
. . . . . Editing my first Lydney Grammar School magazine; and cycling to the
printer's at Coleford with the"copy" in my saddlebag.
. . . . . Excursions to Stratford-upon-Avon; on one of which three boys were
missing at the time when the coach was due to set off back to Lydney."We
last saw them in a boat on the river, sir." Visions of headlines in local
and national newspapers. The joy when the three returned, twenty minutes later."Well,
we wanted some fish and chips, and there was a long queue." Bless you my
children!
. . . . . Looking at the faded photograph of"Lydney", the pony given
by the School to Captain Scott's Antarctic Expedition.
. . . . . Discussing with an amiable gentleman, who had come on behalf of Her
Majesty and had just listened to me taking a poetry lesson, the value of learning
poems by heart."Try to imagine" he said,"one of your ex-pupils
standing on the bridge of a warship, on a dark stormy night, peering into the
black fury and repeating to himself".
. . . . ."I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills." I tried. Oh yes I did
try.
. . . . .School Debates, with as many as sixty or seventy pupils attending; Mr.
Laycock making powerful propositions with the aid of a trembling table; one of
my own few contributions from the floor:"Well, when I was in the Army,
one of my best friends was an ex-convict!" a clinching argument this, I
thought - though what it clinched I must confess I have forgotten).
. . . . . Bus Duty with Mr. Rowley on Mondays and, after the last vehicle had
roared off to the Soudley Valley, hearing him say,"Listen! Do you hear
that bird singing? That's a Goldfinch. I tell you these things because
they all add to the richness of life." How I thank him for making me listen.
. . . . . Crowded Speech Days in the Town Hall; the quiet wit of Mr. Beeley.
. . . . . Musical shows - Home Grown and G. and S. - with"casts of thousands" (including
Old Grammarians who couldn't keep away from the place).
. . . . . Taking a long farewell look, the day before moving to my new school
in Devon. It seems only yesterday: in fact it was sixteen years ago.
. . . . . I remember Lydney Grammar School.
Leslie Stewart
[Mr. L. F. Stewart was Head of English in the School for three years
only (1954-7), but in that short time he revolutionized his department
and set teaching standards in English which have been a constant inspiration
and encouragement ever since. Mr. Stewart is now Head of English at
Churston Ferrers Grammar School].
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