Michael,
I recently happened upon the SOP
website, and was amused to find that
(purely for alphabetical reasons) I
head up the list of those with 9 'O'
level passes in 1969.
I've never
understood how I managed to pass them all,
and have to confess that most of the
grades don't bear close scrutiny. (I
failed to pull off a repeat
performance two years later when I scraped two
passes at 'A' level).
On the left hand side of the same
document I spotted my brother Nick who is
five years my junior, and therefore
joined that year.
Before I came across the 'O' level
page, I had been trying to come up with
as many names of my contemporaries as
I could from the recesses of memory.
The list reminded me of a few others,
but I struggled vainly to put faces
to a lot of the names.
I joined Price's in the 4th year (4a)
in 1967 when my family moved from
Gloucestershire. Chris Ryan joined at
the same time, his family having just
returned from Singapore. Both he & I
'commuted' by rail, he from Netley, I
from Swanwick. Our fathers were both
from the Army, so we naturally formed
a friendship. Chris left after 'O'
levels, along with Dave Jarman, to
enter Welbeck, and they both went on
to join the Royal Corp of Signals to
the best of my recollection.
Names that I managed to recall
independently were the "genius set" - Gover,
'Sandy' Shore, Peter Wood, 'Muscles'
(Lamport I think), Martin Newbury, all
of whom impressed me no end by being
able to conduct games of chess without
the aid of a board. Wheeler, who was
just good at everything! John Fay, who
lived next door to the school playing
field. The explosive master Gilmour,
who's experiments with weed killer
nearly cost him an eye. 'Horse' Stribley
who bought 'Fred' Barker's Red Isetta
bubblecar, and tried to run it on
coal gas (the permanent attachment to
the chem. lab by rubber hose being a
bit of a drawback).
There was quite a contingent of three
wheelers in the sixth form of 70/71.
Stribley's Isetta, John Cope's
Berkeley Sports, a pale blue Heinkel (was it
Warwick's?), and my own red Trojan -
later sold for ten quid for spares.
I could hardly mention Stribley
without his arch nemesis, Holt, who's
greatest pleasure was to try and
entice Stribley on a lunchtime trip out to
some remote pub or other and then
endeavour to maroon him there by clearing
off in the only available transport.
He was often aided by a certain Berry
(I think he arrived in the L 6th),
who played Mutley to his Dick Darstedly.
I also recall the famous Stribley/Holt
scrap in the Library, which knocked
all the books of the shelves backing
on to the entry corridor.
Others who come to mind are Phil
Hannam, who risked life and limb in my
bubble car on occasions, and who had
ambitions to fly, along with Steve
Ward & Ian Virgo. I don't know
whether they achieved this.
I am probably best remembered by my
contemporaries as having joined the God
Squad sometime in the 5th year, and
being a royal pain in the anatomy th
ereafter. I got my just deserts in
the 6th when Eric Poyner gave me the
responsibility of the lesson reading
rota for assembly. As at least 30% of
those nominated failed to put in an
appearance, I ended up reading the
lesson every other day.
My brother
tells me that I was known as 'fringe' by
his classmates, as I had a long
fringe which I was forever pushing out of
my eyes whilst reading the lesson.
On the subject of staff, I remember
several with great affection,
particularly the good humoured Mr.
Stevens (Gremmie - from Gremlin I
think), my 4th yr form master and 5th
yr chemistry teacher, who accepted
the annual April 1st 'birthday'
present of a toothless comb with remarkably
good grace.
One episode I remember
was when he ignited rather too much
magnesium and aluminium powder in a
folded piece of asbestos paper and
disappeared completely in an acrid
cloud, eventually emerging covered in
grey ash.
Mathematics was and still is one of
my better subjects thanks largely to
the efforts of Messrs. Owens
('Porky') and Barker ('Fred' of the red
bubblecar)who both strove to extract
my best.
From my report dated February '68, it
would seem that my English made
rather a shaky start at Price's.
Until the arrival of Mr. Jones ('Merve')
my English master was a certain
'Trunk' - I don't remember his real name
which may be just as well.
He was
quite badly victimised by certain boys,
and responded on occasions by a
virtual withdrawal, he would remain at his
desk and stare at the far wall for an
entire lesson. From the best of my
recollection, 'Trunk' remained with
us long enough to nominate Kipling's
'Kim' as our 'O' level examination
book. When 'Merve' succeeded him I
happened to be off sick for two or
three weeks. When I returned, having
ploughed my way through 'Kim', it was
to find that he had taken a class
vote, and the text had changed to
'Cider with Rosie'.
At the parent's evening preceding the
dreaded 'O' levels 'Merve' candidly
advised my Mother that I would fail
English Language if I didn't attend to
my punctuation. As it turned out
'Eng. Lang.' was my sole grade 1 pass!
My
brother cursed me for this, as
whenever he failed to perform to Mr. Jones
satisfaction, he was told he'd never
do as well as his brother if he didn't
"buck his ideas up".
Others have recalled the mysterious
Mr. O'neil. My recollection is that his
mottled and apparently insensitive
hands were rumoured to be due to an
episode on the wartime Arctic convoys
which he often referred to.
I
remember him saying that he once
awoke and thought he was paralysed down
one side, only to find that the
duffel coat in which he had been sleeping
was stuck to the steel bulkhead by
frozen condensation.
'Penguin' as he was
generally known, was relatively easy
to divert by the introduction of
certain subjects, the war being one,
and the electric chair another. He
could talk quite graphically on the
inhuman nature of this particular form
of capital punishment.
CCF 'memoirs':
I was in the Army section of the CCF,
and attained the dizzying rank of
Corporal, whilst my friend and
contemporary Chris Ryan made Sergeant.
I
recall a summer camp, probably 1968,
at the Junior Leaders Regiment in
Taunton. We travelled there (or
nearly there) by truck with Mr. Nash, who
contrived to drop us off somewhere
short of the destination, and we ended
up arriving on foot having marched
for what seemed like miles wearing
groundsheet capes, carrying rifles,
in persistent rain.
One of the 'high' points of the stay
at Taunton was the exercise which
degenerated to a cowboy & indians
style shootout across a field (blank
ammo), with cries of "you're dead" -
"no I'm not" etc. We spent the night
in a copse trying to sleep, wrapped
up shivering in our groundsheet capes
(no tents).
It started to rain in the
early hours, and someone who had
elected to sleep prone on his
groundsheet ended up with a puddle in the
small of his back. Who he I wonder?
(It is just possible that the march in
the rain was to the exercise site
rather than the camp, my memory is 50/50
on that).
Other remembrances of the camp were
getting to live fire the Bren gun and
SLR on the ranges, driving SWB Land
Rovers around the parade ground, and
the squad having to carry a telegraph
pole to and from the assault course,
for no particular reason. The years
have kindly erased any memory of the
assault course itself, but I am sure
I did very badly, as I was a bit of a
blob!
Another feature of the CCF was the
special sections that were forever being
set up, only to fizzle out a short
while later. One was the "Modern Weapons
Section" in which we became highly
proficient in stripping and reassembling
the SLR, mainly because the other
modern weapons we were promised never
materialised.
Then there was the Artillery section
which had a single visit to Larkhill
where we took turns to fire a 25
pounder at derelict vehicles the other
side of a valley. The rumour was that
we were then going to get a
decommissioned 25 pounder at Price's
for gun drills and displays, but that
also never turned up.
The one relatively useful section was
the 'First Aid' section, taught by an
officer from the Medical Corps. One
participant actually suffered some sort
of fainting fit during the lecture on
mouth to mouth resuscitation, so we
had an impromptu live demonstration
on the handling of the unconscious.
There is no intentional hyperbole in
the above, but mistakes there may well
be, memories being what they are. I
bow in all cases to those with superior
powers of recall.
I left Price's in 1971, grew my hair,
and went to Portsmouth Poly to study
engineering. I returned on one
occasion to collect some work for Nick who
was laid up with an ingrown toenail.
I made the obligatory call on Eric,
who's immortal utterance was 'ah yes,
I remember the face, but the name
escapes me'
I know that there is a panoramic
school photo circa 1970 at my Mother's
house. If I can lay my hands on it, I
will scan it and mail it to you.
Regards,
Andy Beckett