Road to the Dales

by Gervase Phinn

  If there is to be smoking, drug-taking and bullying it is most likely to occur in the boys’ toilets and Mr Williams knew this. Many was the breaktime when the headmaster would stride in to ensure we were there for the purpose for which the facility was intended.

  T. W. walked the school each morning after the registers had been taken, peering in through each classroom window to ensure that the scholars were working and the teachers teaching. He would repeat this practice just before lunch and near the end of the day. Sometimes he would stride through the classroom door and ask the teacher what we were doing and occasionally he would join in the lesson, to recite a poem, tell us an interesting fact related to the subject or ask a question. I suppose there must have been ‘supply teachers’ in those days but I cannot recall any. If a member of staff was away, Mr Williams invariably ‘filled in’. I loved his quick wit, his wry sense of humour and I marvelled at his ability to tell a story. In those lessons he would take the opportunity to get to know about us and to discuss current affairs. Sometimes he would recite a poem, predictably by a Welsh poet – R. S. Thomas, Edward Thomas or Dylan Thomas – at other times he would relate a folk tale or tell a story.

  In one lesson he related the story of the duck that waddled around the farmyard quite content. A bemused visitor enquired why the duck didn’t fly away. It seemed in good health, with the wings to fly, but it made no attempt to take to the air. The farmer explained that as a duckling it had been tied to a post. At first it had tried to fly but the cord held it down. After many, many attempts the duck gave up. When it was free of its restraining cord the duck never tried to fly. You see it did not think it could. ‘It’s the same with you boys,’ said Mr Williams. ‘Never assume you are incapable of doing something. You must always try, have a go, chance your arm, try your wings. You might surprise yourself.’

  I still see him now, with his pale face, dark smiling eyes and silver hair, and hear that deep resonant voice filling the classroom. Mr Williams was a generous, good-natured and dedicated man and will be remembered with great affection by the many pupils who attended South Grove.

  There was not one subject I disliked at school. I loved art with the gently spoken Mr Cooper (Harry), in his old brown overall and polished black shoes. The art room was an Aladdin’s cave of skulls, feathers, stuffed animals, old clocks, bits of driftwood, shells, pebbles, rocks, broken pottery, tins, boxes and all manner of objects and artefacts which Mr Cooper had collected over the years and which he thought might be useful when we came to sketching and painting. I recall that once two student teachers from the Rotherham College of Art took us for a week while Mr Cooper was away. With the best of intentions they decided to tidy up the art room and get rid of much of the clutter. Mr Cooper was not best pleased when he returned. It wasn’t long before the room was back in its disorganized state. In the after-school art club, when a cleaner commented on the difficulty of cleaning such a messy room, Mr Cooper, tapping the ash from his cigarette (he would always light up after official school hours but constantly warned us of the dangers of ‘the noxious weed’), observed that ‘Genius is seldom tidy, my dear Mrs Sutton.’ What a school inspector would make of that jumble of detritus in this day and age, I can make a shrewd guess, but we produced some excellent pieces, many of which won national competitions and were displayed in the local library.

  It was not for Mr Cooper to have us copy out of books, trace figures, cut out shapes he had drawn, screw up tiny pieces of white tissue paper to stick on an outline of a sheep, or any of the other mindless activities I have sometimes witnessed in schools. We were shown how to mix paints, use a variety of pencils, mould clay, print fabrics and illuminate our calligraphy. We worked in inks, chalks, watercolours, poster paints, pencil, and always from first-hand experience, from the real thing, carefully observing, recreating in sharp detail, mixing the colours exactly.

  Alec, my brother, was his star pupil and went on to art school and a very successful career in painting and music. I remember that once at the after-school art club, when I was in the first year, Mr Cooper looked at my pathetic effort – a clumsy drawing of a green wine bottle and bowl of fruit – with a critical eye, a cigarette dangling from his lips. ‘I think the skill with the paintbrush stopped with your brother,’ he remarked sadly. When he had moved on to look at John Pacey’s work, I screwed up my painting, threw it in the bin and left the room, angry tears stinging my eyes. The next morning a school prefect came to fetch me at registration. I was to report to Mr Cooper. I knew I would be in trouble for storming out of the room and not clearing up all the paints and brushes I had used. I waited outside the art room, rehearsing in my head what I would say to him. The door opened and the teacher emerged.

  ‘I am sorry for what I said yesterday,’ Mr Cooper said quietly and rather shame-facedly. ‘I was in the wrong to compare you with your brother. I thought what a foolish thing it was to say as soon as I had said it and I meant to have a word with you at the end of the session but you went home. I can quite understand why you left. Anyway, I’m sorry. I hope you will accept my apology.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ I said. I could feel my heart thumping in my chest – a teacher apologizing to a pupil was unheard of.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and held out his hand for me to shake.

  ‘It was pretty poor though, sir, wasn’t it?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’m afraid it was,’ he replied, smiling.

  A teacher who admits to his mistakes and is prepared to apologize to a pupil gains infinitely more respect than one who is never in the wrong and sees the words ‘I’m sorry’ as a weakness. Mr Cooper went up greatly in my estimation that day.

  Mr Payne (Chipper), who taught woodwork, never compared me unfavourably with Alec but he kept a constant reminder of how much better my brother was in that subject. Just inside the door of the workshop was a large square cabinet displaying all the masterpieces created by the most talented pupils over the years. There were perfectly executed examples of dovetail and mortise and tenon joints, polished wooden bowls, table lamps, veneered chessboards, ebony paperknives, carefully crafted serviette rings and carved figures. In the centre, in pride of place, was a beautiful inlaid box in different coloured woods with brass hinges and catch. A small label told everyone that this was the work of Alec Phinn. I suppose Mr Payne thought that I would be ‘a chip off the old block’, but he was soon disabused when he examined my first pathetic efforts in wood. Over that first year the only ‘masterpiece’ I managed to produce was a shoeshine box in pine. It was a strange-looking container, with a lid and a raised piece in the shape of a shoe and a space beneath for the various polishes, dusters and brushes. ‘Unusual’ was Mr Payne’s assessment when I had completed this work of outstanding artistry. I took it home and proudly presented it to my father, who promptly tried it out by resting his foot on the raised piece. The construction collapsed under the weight, much to the amusement of my brothers and sister, who laughed heartily. I stormed upstairs, refusing Alec’s offer to try and repair it for me. I later threw the remains on the fire in the living room, watching the bits of wood crackle and burn.

  I was not a whole lot better at metalwork with Mr Blowfield (Gerry). He was a patient, good-natured man with fluffy outcrops of silver hair and a round rust-coloured face. He was never seen out of his steel grey overall. On playground duty or in assembly, on sports day and on parents’ evenings, he always wore his overall. Mr Blowfield had a display cabinet too, and my brother Alec’s bronze figure had pride of place within it, among all the masterpieces created by the most talented pupils over the years. After a year of cutting, filing, rasping and polishing I managed to produce a garden trowel (the handle later fell off) and a poker. The poker survived many years of constant use and proved an excellent implement when my father was making holes in the ground to plant his seeds.

  I was a very indifferent scholar when it came to science. I recall little of Nobby Clark’s lessons, but I do remember when one of the pupils (I shall save his embarr
assment by not naming him) was sent to the Rotherham abattoir to collect some cows’ eyes for dissection in the lesson. The boy kept a few of the eyeballs back and secreted them in a girl’s pencil case. At the beginning of the lesson, reaching for her pen, the poor girl picked up a large, slimy, bloodshot eyeball and screamed blue murder. Unfortunately for the prankster, he was discovered and for his pains received three strokes on the backside. But he felt it was worth it.

  It was at secondary school that I started to enjoy mathematics. This was because the teacher, Mr Duffield (Ted), made the lessons interesting and unthreatening. He was an even-tempered, immensely patient and good-natured man who used a very adroit and successful teaching technique. He would explain a mathematical concept clearly and slowly on the blackboard, twirling the chalk around in his fingers, and then ask, ‘Put your hand up if you have understood what I have just said?’ Of course most teachers would ask the opposite, ‘Put your hand up if you do not understand,’ and it would take a pretty confident pupil to raise a hand and display his ignorance to all the class. Mr Duffield’s question was clever. One or two hands might be raised tentatively from the more confi-dent among us. He would then ask a pupil to come out to the front of the class and teach the lesson again, stepping in on occasions to tweak or elaborate on the explanation. Then he would ask again. ‘Put your hand up now if you understand.’ It might take several re-runs of the lesson but in the end we had a firm grasp of the concept.

  I started getting really good marks in maths. My mental arithmetic improved: ‘Practice makes perfect,’ Mr Duffield would say, ‘so never miss an opportunity of working things out in your head at the shops, on the bus, before you go to sleep.’ I soon mastered logarithms, sines and cosines, trigonometry and mensuration and found geometry fascinating.

  But then, with O levels looming, I had to face my béte noire – algebra. I just could not get my head around it. I would sit there at the table staring at the equations but not knowing where to start.

  Express b in terms of A, a and h

  My brother Michael would try to help and sit with me going through the problem, but to little avail.

  A few months before I sat my O levels I was on prefect duty in the yard when Mr Duffield approached. ‘We have to do something about your Achilles’ heel,’ he said.

  I glanced down at my feet, never having come across this expression before.

  ‘Pardon, sir?’

  ‘Your vulnerable part,’ the teacher explained. ‘Your weakness. Algebra.’ The very word made me shudder. ‘Once you have grasped the idea it’s relatively easy, but we need to work at it. What about spending a few lunchtimes going through some problems with me?’

  It was the last thing I wanted, but how could I refuse? ‘Yes, sir,’ I agreed, unenthusiastically.

  ‘Tuesday suit?’

  ‘I have chess club,’ I explained.

  ‘Wednesday?’

  ‘I’m on prefect duty, sir.’

  ‘Thursday?’

  I could see I couldn’t wriggle out of this one. He was nothing if not persistent.

  ‘Thursday’s fine, sir.’

  The following Thursday I duly presented myself at Mr Duffield’s classroom for my first experience of private tuition.

  Mathematics was taught at the back of the hall. A partition made of wood and glass would be slid across the middle of the hall after assembly and the desks and chairs rearranged to form a classroom. That first session was memorable not because I learnt much about algebra but because I was privy to an altercation between Mr Firth and a recalcitrant pupil who had been caught bullying a younger boy.

  I had just started on a question with Mr Duffield – one of those deeply uninteresting and problematical kinds: ‘A man goes into an ironmonger’s shop and buys 4lb (four pounds) of rivets at 3/2 (three and tuppence) per pound; in a second shop he buys 2lbs (two pounds) of similar rivets at 3/6 (three and sixpence) per pound. What was the average price in shillings per pound paid for the rivets? How many pounds of rivets could be bought for one pound at this average price?’

  Being of an imaginative disposition, my first observation was why would the man want to buy the same rivets from two different shops? Secondly, when he found that the second iron-monger charged more for the very same rivets why didn’t he complain or return to the previous shop and buy his rivets there? These mathematical questions about dripping taps and fish swimming against the current always seemed to me to be silly.

  This lesson to me was far from riveting until there was an almighty crash against the partition. The wood shuddered, the glass rattled and from the side of the structure came Mr Firth’s booming voice.

  ‘I’ll teach you to bully people!’ came his thunderous tones. Thump, bang, rattle, shudder. ‘It’s not nice to be bullied, is it?’ Thump, bang, rattle, shudder. ‘You touch him again and I’ll have your guts for garters!’ Thump, bang, rattle, shudder.

  A moment later a round red head appeared around the door.

  ‘I trust I didn’t disturb you too much, Mr Duffield?’ asked Mr Firth.

  ‘No, not at all,’ replied Mr Duffield calmly. ‘Now, young Phinn, let’s get back to the rivets.’

  36

  Cliff Davies, the P.E. and games teacher, was a muscular little individual with a real smoker’s habit. His white moustache was edged with a brown nicotine stain, and many was the time I saw him with an untipped, harsh, ill-named Woodbine (‘coffin stick’) dangling from his lips. He was a remarkably agile man and in P.E. he would demonstrate handstands and flick-flacks, rope climbing and vaulting in his baggy blue tracksuit before we were encouraged to try. He took up golf when he was fifty and won every trophy at Sitwell Golf Club. I tried at P.E. but was pretty useless. I could just about manage a handstand, a forward roll, a clumsy leap over the vaulting horse and a slow climb up the ropes, but I could do little else. I could never emulate my friend Peter’s feats of athleticism, but my incapacities never incurred criticism from Mr Davies.

  South Grove had no playing fields, just a tarmacadam yard at the top of which were the old air raid shelters in which we changed for P.E., which took place in the all-purpose hall. There were no showers, so after our physical exertions there was quite a smell of sweaty bodies in the classroom.

  For games we trekked through town and up to Herring-thorpe playing fields, come rain or shine, to use the pitches there. When we came to a road Mr Davies would march into the middle, hold up his hand and stop the traffic so we could cross. I enjoyed football but, as Mr Davies described me on my report, I was ‘a boy who always tries his best but is a middling player’. His assessment was on the generous side. I was not a middling player, I was a poor player, a blundering liability in the team, always in the way of a pass or unintentionally blocking an open lane. Wearing my father’s old football boots with the long laces and bulbous toe caps and leather studs, baggy black shorts and an old T-shirt, I galloped up and down the field on scraggy legs like a frightened rabbit, chasing a ball with which I never seemed to come into contact. The more I tried the more I was ignored. Many of the other players were really good, in fact several went on in later life to play for professional teams, but I always ended up in what they called ‘the scrags’, the last few to be picked by the team captains. I would stand there with the small, the fat, the clumsy and the apathetic and always be placed as a full back, out of the way, where I could do least harm. I still recall that heavy sodden leather ball arching its way through the air towards me and Mr Davies shouting from the touchline, ‘Get stuck in, Phinn! Boot the ball, lad!’ I was slow, clumsy and not over-keen on tackling the big lads wearing massive boots like Desperate Dan’s in the comics. It was my distinction that after five years of playing football once a week, I never scored a goal.

  It was quite a common occurrence when the match was in full play for a woman pushing a pram to take a short cut across the playing fields and walk straight across the pitch, weaving in and out of the players quite oblivious of the danger. We often had a stray d
og join the game and run round the field after the players and ball, barking madly and causing mayhem until it was chased off.

  Since I was so poor at sports and gymnastics, it came as a surprise in the fifth year when Mr Davies told me I was to be Captain of House. There were four houses at South Grove, named after four stately homes, Chatsworth, Welbeck, Sandbeck and Wentworth, and I was told I would be Captain of Chats-worth. Despite my protestations that I was unfit for such a position, being a pretty hopeless sportsman, I was given a little green metal shield to pin on my blazer lapel with ‘House Captain’ on it. Mr Davies explained that the position of house captain was more than just competing in the various sporting events. He wanted someone reliable, well-organized and popular with the other boys, who was able to ‘rally the troops’. I felt very uncomfortable in this new role, particularly since the other house captains were extremely good at sport. What I found remarkable was that there was no resentment from boys much better suited than I to hold such a position. They were generous in their congratulations.

  The only sporting contest I took part in was the swimming and I hardly distinguished myself, coming in second or third in most events. I did come first by sheer chance in the breast-stroke once when the swimmer streaking out in front (he literally did streak out in front) suddenly slowed down because his trunks slid down his legs and, much to the spectators’ amusement and his embarrassment, he stopped to retrieve them.