Road to the Dales

by Gervase Phinn

  I recall one boy at a swimming gala asking Mr Davies, who was dressed in a blue blazer and white flannels for the occasion, if it was allowed for the swimmers to breathe underwater. Mr Davies shook his head and sighed. ‘And what do you think would happen, you silly boy, if you were to breathe underwater?’ The youth thought for a moment. ‘Would you be disqualified, sir?’

  Cliff Davies was in charge of making sure everyone was in school uniform. I knew there were boys in the school worse off than myself and they had free school meals but I wasn’t aware of any great differences – certainly not in the way we dressed. This was in part because Mr Davies made sure every boy in the school was well turned out, and he would frequently remind us that in the street we represented the school and needed to look smart. He would check the uniform religiously and, I learnt later when talking to one of my former teachers, would provide a black blazer with red badge, black and red striped tie, flannels and black shoes to any pupil whose parents couldn’t afford them. This made sense, for I remember once taking a parcel wrapped in brown paper from home addressed to Mr Davies. When I enquired of my mother what was inside she didn’t tell me. I guess it must have contained some of my school clothes that I had grown out of. In his room Mr Davies kept a box with shoe polish and brushes, and any boy wandering around the school with scuffed shoes was obliged to go and polish them.

  Bert Gravill, a former army major, with a spine as straight as a gun barrel, was in charge of music. In assembly he would sit on the stage behind the old upright piano banging out a hymn tune. I would stand outside the hall hearing the stirring music and loud singing, wishing I could be a part of it. I would hum along with ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ and ‘Fight the Good Fight’ and wonder why Protestants had all the best hymns.

  Mr Schofield was in charge of geography. He was a sensitive, tolerant man, always willing to listen but not a soft touch. He was never too preoccupied to talk informally to the pupils at breaktimes or too impatient to go over an explanation again if we were unsure. His classroom, decorated with great coloured maps, posters, newspaper cuttings, postcards and photographs, was kept neat and tidy. We would line up outside in silence, file in, stand behind our desks, wish him a ‘Good morning, sir’, and then be told to sit. Trained as a primary teacher, I guess he never possessed the letters after his name but he was a natural teacher who enjoyed teaching, handled dissenting voices with humour and always made us feel valued. Those of us who have been teachers know only too well how daunting it can be to stand in front of a group of large, volatile adolescents, not accustomed to sitting still and listening, and attempt to engage their attention and get them to do as they are told. It is important to appear strong and fearless, even if it is an act.

  Many years later Mr Schofield, then in his eighties, came to hear me when I appeared on stage at the Strode Theatre in Street. I sat in the bar after my performance with his wife and family and we reminisced. He reminded me of the time he joined in with the laughter when a boy by the name of Paul Watson asked about a particular rock that his father had sent into school to be identified. It had traces of a coloured metal in it.

  ‘Do you know what it is, sir?’ asked the pupil.

  The bright spark of the class, quick as a flash, shouted out, ‘It’s sedimentary, my dear Watson!’

  Eventually the manager of the theatre had to ask us to leave. Before he left I held my former teacher in my arms and acknowledged him as the great teacher he was. I wanted to repay that fondness and respect that he had showered on me. Sadly, Alan Schofield died the following year.

  Mr Jones was six foot three and a former Welsh Guards officer and only remained at the school for a short time. I guess he must have been filling in until he secured a more prestigious position in some public school, for he was certainly different from the other teachers. He was nicknamed ‘Bobbin’ John’ from his habit of walking briskly down the corridor with a spring in his step, an unusually straight back and his head in the air. He seemed to bob along. He had an inordinately white complexion, bloodless as a bone dug out of a dusty pit, and a wonderfully clipped accent. Everyone said he was a hero and had rows of medals, but we could never get him to talk about the war. He invariably wore a blue blazer with brash gold buttons, carefully pressed flannel trousers, a crisp white shirt, striped military tie and highly polished black shoes. The boys would mimic his ‘posh’ voice and his straight-backed walk but he never, as he could have, resorted to the cane, the slipper or the metre rule. Mr Jones taught me to play chess, and each weekday lunchtime in the library (little more than a large bookcase at the rear of Mr Pike’s English room) there would be pairs of serious-faced boys staring at each other across the tables with chessboards between them.

  In 1961 the boys’ and the girls’ school amalgamated and women teachers, along with their pupils, made an appearance. Mrs Cartwright was already a teacher in the boys’ school and I looked forward to being taught by other attractive and youthful women teachers. The new women staff, however, proved to be something of a disappointment to a youngster full of testosterone. They appeared old and plain. But then there was the consolation of having lessons with girls.

  My favourite subjects at secondary school were English with Mr Dyeball and Mr Pike and history with Mr Firth. Although I passed my O levels (not all with flying colours, I should add), these were the only two subjects in which I showed any distinction. As Miss Greenhalgh had reminded me when I visited my former infant school, I wasn’t ‘top table’ material. I was a plodder, a trier, one who had a reasonable memory for facts, a determination to succeed and a fear of getting into trouble. I guess for most of my teachers I was a very indifferent sort of scholar.

  In the first two years at secondary school I had Mr Dyeball (Eddie) for English. He was a grammarian and a disciplinarian but he was fair, had no favourites and taught us the basics of grammar, punctuation and spelling with a real enthusiasm. He was a tall, slim man with jet black hair scraped back on his scalp and a neat parting to the side. He was always immaculately dressed, usually in dark suit, white shirt and college tie, and in the form picture taken at the end of my second year (when he was my form teacher) he sits in the middle of the rows of boys, knees together, arms folded tightly over his chest, smiling widely in his Prince of Wales check.

  I used to enjoy parsing sentences – noun, finite verb, limitation of finite verb, etc. – and I was good at it. I can’t see the point in mastering such a dry and esoteric practice now, but when you are good at something that others find difficult, you enjoy the success and feeling of superiority. It was the same with logarithms with Mr Duffield in maths. I have never ever in my life found occasion to use them, nor a slide rule, nor a simultaneous equation for that matter, but I enjoyed the challenge and the sense of achievement in getting things right. But I digress. Mr Dyeball gave me a solid grounding in the basics of the language which has been invaluable. He taught me the parts of speech, how to punctuate a sentence and how to spell. Every few weeks he would teach the class a spelling rule and give us a list of words to learn. I still have in my dusty old English book, rescued from the attic some years ago, the list of rules and the accompanying words to memorize, written in black ink and in carefully formed letters. He was a conscientious marker and corrector of work, and in red at the bottom of each of my essays he would write what he called his ‘ideas for improvement’, using phrases like ‘Your work contains a superabundance of expressive adjectives,’ or ‘You have a good eye for description but don’t overdo it.’

  I still possess my English exercise books, all backed in brown paper as was the requirement. In them are letters, compositions, dictations, punctuation exercises, spelling lists, handwriting practice, grammar exercises, all surprisingly neat for a twelve-year-old and all carefully marked. There were also listed at the back of the books a set of ‘Rules of Spelling’:

  ‘i’ before ‘e’

  Except after ‘c’

  (Or when it’s ‘eigh’,

  As in ‘n
eighbour’ or ‘weigh’).

  Then there were what the teacher called his ‘little wrinkles’. These were clever ways of remembering difficult spellings:

  The principal pal of the principal

  Is always polite on principle.

  NECESSARY: one coffee and two sugars

  ACCOMMODATION: two cottages and two mansions

  ACCELERATE: two cars and one lorry

  ACCEPT: two comics and one paper

  DEFINITE: definitely no letter ‘a’

  There were also acronyms to help us remember:

  BECAUSE: Big elephants can always understand small elephants.

  RHYTHM: Rejoice heartily, your teacher has measles.

  EMBARRASS: Every mother’s boy acts rather rudely after some sausages.

  WEIRD: When ever I run, disaster.

  DIARRHOEA: Died in a Rolls Royce having over-eaten again.

  Some years later in a school I came across another acronym, perhaps rather more memorable but more risqué, for helping older pupils in a biology A level class to remember how to spell one of the difficult words: ‘Dash in a real rush, help, or exploding arse.’ I don’t think Mr Dyeball or Mrs Cartwright would have approved.

  In the exercise books there were also ‘Hints for Pronouncing “Ough”:

  Though the tough cough and hiccough plough me through,

  O’er life’s dark lough, my course I still pursue.

  Teachers like Mr Dyeball increased my fascination with this tricky, troublesome language. Should Mr Dyeball hear a boy using an expletive, however, the slipper would be produced. He had the remains of a plimsoll, just the thin rubber sole (nicknamed Sam) which he would use infrequently on any boy who misbehaved or used rude words. One day two boys felt it across their backsides for getting in a fight after school. Mr Dyeball turned the corner of the red brick building to find the two young pugilists, red-faced and furious, facing up to one another.

  ‘Don’t you call me a bastard, ya bastard!’ shouted one, holding his fist aloft just as the teacher appeared as if on cue, like the villain in a pantomime.

  ‘My room!’ ordered Mr Dyeball. Sam was produced from the bottom drawer of the desk and put to good use.

  Another time a pupil brought to school a small, multi-coloured ball called ‘Superball’; they were the rage at the time. When thrown down, this amazing ball bounced off the floor incredibly high and shot off in every direction. The boy was telling us about the amazing qualities of his ‘Superball’ when another pupil snatched it from his hand and threw it at the floor. To great cheers it bounced up high and ricocheted off the ceiling, bounced again and smashed the light fitting just as Mr Dyeball entered. He always seemed to appear at the opportune moment. The culprits owned up and received their punishment bravely, returning to their desks rubbing their rears and trying to stem the tears.

  On another occasion a boy stuffed a blackjack in his mouth just when the bell sounded for the end of break. Blackjacks were liquorice chews and could be bought for a penny each, and they turned the inside of your mouth a really ghastly black colour for several hours. Eddie’s pet hate was boys chewing in class.

  On this particular day it was unfortunate for the blackjack chewer that he was the one at whom Mr Dyeball directed his first question. Despite his heroic efforts, the boy was unable to disguise the fact that he had a mouthful of sticky black chew and when he began to speak he sounded like Charles Laughton playing Quasimodo in the film version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

  ‘Whatever is wrong with you this morning?’ demanded the teacher. ‘Spit it out, lad!’

  And the boy did just that – right across the desk. This was accompanied by loud ‘Uuuuurrrrghs’ and ‘Arrgggghhhs’ from the other pupils. Mr Dyeball opened his bottom drawer and we knew what was in store for the miscreant.

  Sam didn’t last much longer after this incident. One boy, I forget who it was now, but I guess it was one who had felt the stinging pain of the slipper across his backside in the past, crept into the classroom and posted Sam down the grille at the back of the classroom. Behind the grille there was a pipe leading down into the boiler room and the heating system. One cold afternoon, when the heating was full on, the most awful smell of burning rubber emanated from the grille. We all knew it was Sam slowly smouldering beneath us. Mr Dyeball never did find out.

  Ken Pike, who later went on to become the distinguished headteacher of Spurley Hey High School in Rotherham, taught me for my O levels in English Language and English Literature. He was an inspirational teacher who spoke with wonderful conviction and developed in me a love of language and a passion for literature.

  As an inspector I often used to think that if the material were to be appropriate to the age and maturity of the students, and if the teacher managed to interest and challenge them, if they possessed some sensitivity, understanding and had a sense of humour, there would be far fewer discipline problems in schools. It is often when the lessons are dull and the teacher lacklustre that poor discipline emerges. Mr Pike had a great sense of humour. It is of inestimable importance that teachers do have a sense of humour, indeed a sense of fun.

  37

  For O level English Literature we studied Macbeth, A History of Mr Polly, an anthology of poems called Fresh Fields and a collection of extracts entitled The Comic World of Dickens. I had never read Dickens before but devoured the O level text from cover to cover the day it was given to me, staying up late to do so. Charles Dickens had an immediate and deep resonance for me. He was unlike any novelist I had read before, creating wonderfully descriptive and unusual characters whose names have become embedded in the national consciousness: Betsy Trotwood, Mr Murdstone, Fagin, Little Dorrit, Lord Deadlock, Sarah Gamp, Mr Pickwick.

  When, as an inspector of schools, I observed some tedious, ill-prepared lesson where the pupils trawled through Shakespeare or Seamus Heaney in maximum, pleasure-destroying detail, I would remember Mr Pike and think how lucky I was to have been taught by him. I could have listened to him for hours as he paced the front of the classroom declaiming Shakespeare or when he sat on the end of his desk reading the poetry or explaining some technicality in the English grammar system. His lessons were meticulously prepared, well taught and supported by invaluable notes, which I have to this day. Homework was set regularly and our books were marked rigorously (in pencil, not in red). On school inspections I used to dislike intensely the sight of children’s work covered in red pen, as if the teacher had bled over it. No editor to my knowledge ‘marks’ a writer’s work in red ink. My coveted distinction in English at O level was much to do with Mr Pike’s excellent teaching.

  Like all great teachers he did not stick slavishly to a script but would deviate and tell stories to arouse our interest. What I learnt from Ken Pike was the importance of young people having high expectations and self-belief.

  When he and his wife Margaret bought a new house on Herringthorpe Valley Road with a large square plot of land at the back resembling a bomb site, Mr Pike asked if I would like to earn some extra pocket money and help him dig it over. I spent many a Saturday, with my friend Raymond Sadler, forking out the couch grass and the stones, uncovering bones and bits of clay pipe, the occasional corroded coin and rusty shard of metal, all the while watched by Mr Pike’s three young sons. We talked as we dug, and I learned a great deal about books and literature. On those Saturday morning digs, my ongoing fascination with words and writing developed apace.

  Mr Pike started a book club when I was in the second year. Each week pupils could, if they wished, bring in sixpence or a shilling and receive a coloured stamp with a picture on the front of some famous writer. Of course, Shakespeare commanded the two-shilling stamp, then came Chaucer, then Dickens, and for sixpence (the least we could pay) we got poor old Emily Brontë. We would buy a stamp at the end of the lesson and stick it into a small square book. At the end of the month an order was placed and a week or two later a box arrived containing all the purchases. It sounds pretty tame these days, but b
ack then there was a deal of excitement when the brown box was delivered to the classroom and Mr Pike took out the contents and passed them around. He would handle each book almost lovingly, talk about it for a while and then dispense it to the boy who had bought it. I loved the smell of a new book and still do.

  My very first purchase was The Diary of Anne Frank. The description in the catalogue had said it was a powerful and poignant account in diary form set during the Second World War and was a story of great personal heroism and amazing courage. I didn’t take a great deal of notice of the title, which, with hindsight, wasn’t an altogether bad thing. I thought the book would be a rattling good action-packed war story, with lots of battles – a bit like D-Day Dawson, whose daring exploits I read each week in my comic. D-Day Dawson had a bullet lodged near his heart and could die at any moment, but, being the devil-may-care hero, he was totally fearless and carried on with winning the war, lobbing grenades at the Krauts, rattling his machine gun, creeping behind enemy lines, saving his pals and being bedecked with yet more medals for his outstanding bravery. D-Day Dawson was like all good British soldiers – he never did anything underhand or dishonourable. I was greatly disappointed when I started on the first page of The Diary of Anne Frank to discover it was a seemingly very ordinary account written by a girl who lived in an attic in Amsterdam. But I persevered and soon became intrigued by the details of everyday life, the petty squabbles, inconsequential conversations, small incidents and touches of humour, described by a bright, rather precocious girl spending her teenage years in a cramped apartment, while outside was the horror of the Occupation and the dreaded Gestapo. One entry I remember to this day: ‘Whoever is happy,’ wrote Anne, ‘makes others happy.’