It is funny how my recollections of Prices always seem to go back to my
earlier days there around 1963 or 64. The old school building, later demolished,
was a three-storey affair with a black painted fire escape down the school side.
Heavy wooden (though rather narrow) stairs mostly marked its interior, and on
the ground floor there was a cramped dining hall and kitchen. If you dared to
venture into this kitchen during the lunch hour then you were met with a scene
from Dante’s Inferno – huge quantities of steam and noise and a half a dozen
gnarled dinner ladies ready to throw you out.
Classrooms above were mostly
characterised by dusty floorboards and iron tie bars which ran across the
ceilings to hold the place together. But the one place in the whole building
that really concerned us all was the tuck shop. This consisted of a room
separated off from the main corridor on the ground floor by a heavy wooden
counter and partition, and situated just opposite to the kitchen adjacent to the
dining hall. Every break time all hell would break lose as dozens and dozens of
boys all fought to get to the counter to get spud puffs, fig rolls or individual
packets of biscuits. Such was the crush that it was possible to get into the
full scrum and find yourself literally carried past the counter in a solid mass
of blue blazers and boys. The best idea I discovered was to fold your arms in
front of you to minimise the chances of being crushed and just to dive in – or
give up altogether and go out to the crates of free milk (which always seemed to
be frozen or warm) and try to make that last until lunchtime.
Lunchtime of course came at twenty to one. For many of us school dinners
in those days were in the incredibly cramped dining hall. I remember seeing Mr
George with legs wide apart trying in vain to fit at the head of one of the
benches (‘Look’ came a voice, ‘he’s sh..ing the table’.). I actually ate in one
of the terrapin huts just across from the main building – classrooms which were
rapidly transformed each lunchtime into a place to eat. Each room contained
perhaps four or five tables, and each table seated, I believe, seven lower
school boys with a prefect from the sixth form at the end of the table to
supervise (Roy King comes to mind as our prefect). Food, which was always ample
and stodgy, was brought over from the kitchen on old metal trolleys. Of course
there still wasn’t enough room and lunches were organised into two sittings. For
some reason, those of us in second sittings had a constant dread of being
‘captured’ by the prefects who would come out from first sittings to grab boys
to fill up empty places on their tables. Why we didn’t just have two dinners I
can’t imagine.
In 1963 the prefects had an old green metal hut just by the 1C
classroom (room 5, I think) and it was assumed that they used this as a sort of
clubroom. It seemed to be the place of first years to taunt the prefects outside
of this hut – but every now and then the prefects would come out, grab someone,
and take him inside for a general ‘roughing up’. On one occasion Steve Redaway
(who I have heard is sadly no longer with us) got such a thump that he spent the
entire ensuing prize giving (that afternoon) in a complete daze, and sort of
propped up between two of us.
In the 90 degree angle between the outside of the 1C classroom and the
library was a drainage gutter, running along the base of the wall. Here we used
to play a ball game, which we called guttersnipe. The idea was simple
enough – you simply had to kick a tennis ball against the wall and get it to
rebound without it ending up in the gutter. The game became incredibly popular
for a while and I later discovered that the name had been lifted from an
entirely different game played at one of our old public schools.
Later in my schooldays, probably around 1967 there was the School Film.
My memories of this are rather vague, but I do remember that the start of
the film showed Jim Smith, who was brilliant at cross-country, running along
part of the school cross-country route. When the film was shown the running
sequence (which I suppose was meant to show the striving of ‘Prices boy’) went
on interminably, so that the whole thing became quite comical. I had a part in
the film - I was shown emerging from the toilet. This was entirely appropriate
because I did most of my homework in the toilet!
Too many more memories to go into here – but who cannot remember the whole
school trekking down to the two grass banks on the side of Pook Lane to watch
the annual cross country race. I don’t think I actually remember seeing
any of the races finish because on arrival at Pook Lane I use to keep walking as
fast as possible over the top of Portsdown hill to my home in Portchester –
anything for a ‘skive!’ Then of course there was CCF, the shooting
range, and the ghastly school swimming pool (‘non-swimmers line up
with their backs to the pool – now dive in backwards’) – but somebody else must
remember more of these than I do! Oh yes – and that day out at Browndown which
my right ear never recovered from, and geography field trips, and Wise chasing
us through the showers and……
But now I have a terrible confession to make! As anyone who was in
Blackbrook house in the late 60s will remember, we were not a house of sporting
geniuses. Somehow, anyone slightly good at sports (and I apologise if you were
one of the one or two exceptions) seemed to end up in Cams, School or Westbury.
Now one of the cups awarded on sports day would be awarded to the house that not
only performed well on the day, but had accumulated points in the preceding
weeks by getting members of the house to achieve sporting ‘standards’ at after
school trials. As a senior member of the house (around 1969) it was my job
(together with another who shall be nameless!) to supervise after school minors
standards, informing a housemaster when each boy had achieved the standard. On
this particular evening, Mr Smith (Smudge) was to keep score. Well, we managed
to drag a dozen or so first years out on to the field and we discovered that a
few of them might actually achieve long and high jump standards. A plan emerged
– the supervising master did not seem to be paying that much attention on this
occasion – all we had to do was cause enough confusion to get the boys who could
achieve the standard to do the same standard over and over again, with the rest
of the boys acting as a distraction. By the time certain boys had been through 2
or 3 times Mr Smith was becoming suspicious - and after another couple of
rotations he actually started to protest! But we got the points. Even then I
don’t think we won the cup.
A sexual revolution took place in the 60s and 70s, and today we take it for
granted that our young people are educated, sexually sensible, and know as much
as us about the ways of the world! But things were different in the early 60s,
and I think we were all a bit naïve. Sex education at Prices was such
that most of us left the school thinking that reproduction only happened
in rats. Now it so happened that in 1963 Mr Openshaw, the 1C form master and
Latin master, was away for the day, and ‘deadly’ Headley the biology teacher
told us to put our Latin books away. He immediately drew a picture of two mating
frogs on the board and told us he was going to do – reproduction! It was the
quietest Latin lesson ever, but when the bell went Mr Headley promised he would
go on from frogs to ‘higher’ creatures as soon as we had another Latin lesson
cancelled – but we never did.
Things moved on, and by 2C or 3C we were all interested in what little
boys are interested in! ‘Music appreciation’ was held on the stage in those days,
and Mr Smith (Smudge) would get us to sit and listen to records played on the school
radiogram – while the odd boy or two would find out more about the facts of life in
the back row!
On one occasion Mr Smith became suspicious – he actually became annoyed!
‘Stand up that boy!’ But of course he couldn’t without showing his er..
embarrassment! Smudge got even more irate – ‘Stand up and come here!’ Fortunately for
all the boy was wearing a long jumper….. You know that old radiogram was very
loud – I wonder how many of us went deaf?
Times moved on and by 4C somebody managed to acquire what we used to euphemistically call ‘a pack of three.’ Now, being young men at a boys
grammar school someone did what any one of us would have done – he blew them up
and let them float across a cricket house match! Shrieks of laughter when one
burst around mid wicket. Of course, by then we were getting the odd biology lesson on
the subject. To this day I remember Mr Parfitt (Rastus) finishing the lesson
with ‘If the man and woman reach this peak together it can be very pleasurable…….or so
I understand!
Thousands more memories – but come on, someone else have a go now.
Rob Scammell, Prices 1963 - 1970