September 11 is a date that has gone down in history, for all the wrong reasons. To me it has rather different associations, for it was on Tuesday September 11, 1973 that I started my secondary education, at Sutton Coldfield’s ‘poshest’ seat of learning, Bishop Vesey’s Grammar. The school’s heritage went back to Tudor times. It would be unfair, if not entirely inaccurate to report the same of some of the teaching staff...
To get to Bishop Vesey, one had to pass the eleven plus exam which, for my generation, had been bumped on a year to the age of twelve. In practical terms, this meant wasting a pointless additional year at junior school: a year spent more or less treading water, educationally speaking. That’s not to see we didn’t enjoy it. During that final year, our teacher, Mr. Bashford, was a young, cool guy who, when he wasn’t strumming Simon and Garfunkel songs on his guitar or reading to us from a book of Brian Aldiss short stories, attempted to engage our curiosity by such endeavours as sawing a pig’s head in half (the head was already detached from the pig).
Mr. Bashford may have been a man of his time, but the teachers that awaited us at the Grammar School belonged to a different era. Every five years, a school photograph was taken – the classic line-up of pupils and masters with the school buildings as a backdrop – and each one duly took its place along the corridor walls, to be pored over while we waited to go into our lessons. Amongst the line-ups from the 40s and 50s were faces still recognisable if no longer so youthful. A couple of venerable types might even have been gathering dust since the 1920s.
Their teaching methods were every bit as archaic as one might expect. I recall my very first physics lesson, delivered by a balding, boffinish character called Crook, who looked almost exactly like the headmaster from the sitcom Please, Sir! He was probably better suited to dealing with sixth formers gearing up for university degress, but as far as I was concerned, his lessons were incomprehensible. He marked down my first attempt at homework, but failed to explain where I’d been going wrong.
Crook may have been boring and beyond comprehension, but at least he was reasonably civil, unlike the character who terrorised the biology department. In his old fashioned specs he bore a remarkable resemblance to gangster Ronnie Kray, and was every bit as feared by those unlucky enough to have him for a teacher. Fortunately, our biology master was somewhat more benign, and in his light cream suits looked more like a product of the early 70s. Rather than bawling at the class in the manner of his colleague, he adopted a manner of understated menace.
There was something about the sciences that seemed to foster eccentric or sociopathic tendencies in the teaching staff. Most of ours were either boring, bellowing or bonkers. ‘Dingle’ Dann was all three. I never had the dubious pleasure of being taught chemistry by this ageing boffin/buffoon, who came across as a kind of off-colour Charles Hawtrey, and became a butt for all manner of schoolboy pranks. In my first year, I was taught chemistry by the school’s then headmaster, nicknamed ‘Spock’. He was every inch the balding, slightly bonkers stereotype of the nutty professor, with a kind of manic quality but without the menacing air of some of his colleagues. For all that, his efforts to teach us stuff like the periodic table fell on deaf ears as far as I was concerned. When we returned after the summer break in 1974, it was to the news that ‘Spock’ had died during the vacation. He was replaced by a mathematician with a broad West Country accent and a bantering comic personality, whose most memorable moment was appearing on the BBC’s Ask the Family in 1977.
Not all the masters were knocking on heaven’s door. Some of them were fresh out of teacher training colleage, via Oxbridge (a mandatory requirement to secure a job on the staff). The best of this bunch earned our respect for their easygoing manner – step forward Mr. Fisher of the English department – while the worst came across as tyrants in waiting. Tempers would flare, but always ineffectually.
It wasn’t long before I took to caricaturing some of them. A master in the RE department was known for his prominent chin, and drawing him was easy. Balding, bespectacled history teacher Nick Malden was easier still: all you needed was an oval, a hint of hair at the temples, two blank spectacle lenses and a simple nose and mouth. These activities reached their natural conclusion in the sixth form when I presented an, ahem, entertainment based on imitations and drawings of selected members of staff. Such endeavours are often cited in the biographies of comedians like Steve Coogan. So what went wrong?
Let’s return to September 1973. I have surprisingly little recall of that first day and how it panned out. Somehow, we were allocated into forms – mine was 2.4 (styled as two/four). No ranking was implied by the numeric system – not this year at any rate. I found myself in a classroom at the dead end of the deepest and dingiest corridor in the whole building, under the form mastership of ‘Herr’ Arthur Cash (he taught German). Mr. Cash was one of the good guys, and as if in Karmic payback, would live to a ripe old age. Many years later, he came to the assistance of our mum when she suffered a fainting fit whilst waiting for a bus in Sutton Coldfield. He was that kind of man: helpful, never angry, endlessly patient and with a warm, avuncular personality.
I don’t remember if we had any actual lessons on that first day, but we would certainly have been issued with timetables which we dutifully filled out, probably copying it all down from the blackboard. I entered mine into my diary for the following year, and it’s reproduced here for what it’s worth. Monday was a horror: double physics first thing (little wonder I couldn’t get to grips with the subject) and the entire afternoon devoted to ‘games’. No self respecting grammar school allowed soccer on the curriculum, so rugby was the order of the day. Aged twelve, I had absolutely no appreciation of what a hard and violent game this was. I soon found out, and despise it to this day. During the winter months, it was either rugby or cross country on those afternoons, and cross country meant a mile walk to the nearby Sutton Park before the run even started. The route was specially chosen to include plenty of swampy, muddy terrain, and it was a long time before I could go back to Sutton Park without rekindling memories of those afternoons of torture.
The school buildings, like the teaching staff, were an uncomfortable blend of ancient and modern. The oldest wing dated back to the 19th century and strongly resembled Colditz castle, which I knew well from the BBC series. It even had architectural features like light wells, which figured in at least one escape attempt (from Colditz, not school). The heart of the site comprised two wings that had been added on in the 1930s, and contained ‘Big School’ where assemblies for the older years were held. Former science classrooms had recently been turned over to other departments, which meant that our history room had a kind of miniature greenhouse window jutting out at the far end. From this block, a glazed link bridge allowed access to the almost brand-new science block, opened a mere six years earlier, where purpose built labs were available for physics, chemistry and biology. In addition, there was a large art room, complete with a north light – although it’s fair to say that subjects like art weren’t actively encouraged in a school that favoured hard academic subjects. The modern block also contained the school canteen, although modernity did not extend to the menu.
School dinners were dished up on a first come first served basis, with a rota system in operation. Each year would be allocated its place, with sixth formers free to come and go as they pleased. Anything half way decent like fish would soon ‘sell out’, whilst the likes of liver and onions would endure until the end of service, so it was pot luck if your year was last in the rota for the day. It was not unknown for some of us to come away with nothing more than a serving of mashed potato when the meat courses were just too awful to contemplate. Nothing tasted the way one expected. ‘Faggots’ were grey instead of brown, and tasted plain weird. Meat consisted of a lot of scrag end and fat. Even the fish was fake – the price of cod was being driven skywards by the so-called ‘Cod Wars’ of the era, so the education authority specified a cheaper alternative, ‘coley’. It was okay, but you had to watch out for the bones. If all the hot meals were unappealing, there was always the choice of a salad, but – and I’ll never understand how this was possible – school salads always, always tasted odd. They also came with hard boiled egg as standard, and to this day I can’t take hard boiled egg at any price. One was on slightly safer ground when it came to dessert, with a range of tray-baked sponge puddings proving popular (even if the custard tasted slightly odd). Semolina was the one everyone avoided. It might have been quite nice, although I kind of doubt it. It’s best described as white sludge with pink bits. I never indulged. If all else failed, there was always the reliable staple of cheese and biscuits, which came pre-packed in cellophane wrappers. The small oblongs of cheese had an unerring knack of finding their way onto the floor, or even into the water jugs. But at least they were edible. Just.
Like many others, the school was divided into ‘houses’, for the purpose of competitive sporting events. As I avoided sport wherever possible, I took little part in these activities. The junior years all wore ties with a coloured stripe identifying your house. Mine was ‘red’ (someone somewhere lacked imagination – at junior school, our houses had all been named after explorers). In all my years at the school, I think the only thing I ever ‘did for the house’ was to produce a play in 1977.
The regime was not entirely unlike what one might have expected to find in prison. Apart from houses, there were various clubs and societies which one could join, although I also avoided most of these, as meetings tended to be held at lunchtimes when there were often better things to do like, er, hanging around outside. One of the few societies I joined was the weekly film club, which hired out 16mm prints of movies to be projected in ‘Big School’ after hours on Friday afternoons. A few of these passed into school legend. One week, the schlock horror Theatre of Blood was on the schedule, but when the afternoon’s sport was rained off, it was shown to the second years, many of whom either fainted, vomited or both. Needless to say, no one else got to see it. Another entry, 1965’s One Way Pendulum caused a minor stir for being utterly incomprehensible, but I’d wisely chosen not to attend that week. I finally saw it last year, confirming the wisdom of my decision in 1973. It is the worst film ever produced.
The six years I spent at Grammar School feel, in retrospect, much as they did at the time: a kind of cross between Colditz and The Prisoner (we had black blazers but no big white balloons). I was not a number, but I wasn’t free either, and escaping was forbidden (although I don’t recall anyone actually being shot). Tuition methods were slowly adapting themselves to a more contemporary model, but the process was as slow as glaciation. I’ve read accounts of the school careers of writers and actors a couple of generations older than myself, and they tally very closely with my own recollections. The Grammar School experience hadn’t changed much in the hundred years before I started, but fifty years on is unrecognisable. In the 1970s, I used to draw comics at home as a hobby. Today, that would be on the curriculum, and don’t think I’m joking.
All that remains of my old school is the building itself, and the less said about school buildings, the better. Although heavily extended in the decades since we left, the original fabric remains intact: no mean feat considering some of the buildings date from the era of Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete. A quick visit online also reveals that the uniforms have stayed the same, rugby is still played, and the pupils, once exclusively male, now include girls. The school has also recently courted controversy over its decision to sell alcohol on the premises. Not, it should be stated, to pupils, but to parents during out of hours events.
As to the teachers, many are long dead, whilst others soldier on into retirement. History teacher Mr. Malden was sighted in the last ten years by my mother, who fell into conversation with him at the local bus stop. The man had a photographic memory for names and initials, and incredibly, after all that time, he still remembered my brother and myself: ‘P.J. Cater, brother of M.G.A.’
This essay is probably longer than anything I produced during my school career, and I have no doubt that the gimlet eye of 'Ron' Homer, one of our English masters, would still take me to task on the question of style if not grammar. I almost feel obliged to add a diagram of a castle keep or a drawing of the Egyptians building the pyramids...
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