Pie 'n' Mash and Prefabs

by Norman Jacobs

  We all hated it and most boys took the chance that no teacher would see them and took them off once they were on the bus. If you were seen without your cap, it was instant detention. No appeal, straight in the next day. As we came out of school on our last day at the end of the fourth year, a large number of us threw our caps into the air and cheered. They landed in the road outside. To the applause of the rest of us, someone then lit a match and set fire to them, creating a big bonfire of caps in the middle of the public highway. Naturally, a few of the more daring boys waded into the pile to pick up some burning caps and hurl them around. A blazing-cap fight ensued until some of the teachers came out and put a stop to it. A spectacular end to the hated cap-wearing rule!

  Given how my future turned out, it is not surprising that my favourite subjects were English and History, and at the end of my fourth year I gained four O-levels in English Language, English Literature, History and, in spite of, rather than because of, Mr Engledow, French. Part of the O-level exam was an oral test when we had to speak to the examiner and answer questions in French. To prepare us for this, the school engaged a French student, whom we had to see once a week for about half an hour or so. During this session, we were only allowed to speak French. The problem was that she was an extremely attractive girl, only a couple of years older than us, and it was very difficult to concentrate on talking about Mrs Travendamp and her lost umbrella or whatever it was. Whoever thought that appointing a good-looking eighteen-or nineteen-year-old girl to engage with a group of spotty sixteen-year-old adolescent boys in an attempt to help them with their French obviously had no idea what thoughts went through the minds of such youngsters.

  I now had to make a decision about whether to continue at school or leave. Even though my friend John had gained seven O-levels, he decided it was time to get out and earn some money. It sounded quite tempting and I talked it over with Mum and Dad. They said it was up to me what I did but Dad in particular advised me very strongly to stay on as he hoped I would follow my brother John and go to university. His view was that he didn’t want me to finish up like him doing hard manual work all my life and that I should continue with my education to ensure this didn’t happen, something that was denied to him as he had had to leave school at the age of fourteen to earn money to help support his parents with their large family. After considering my options for a while, I decided to take Dad’s advice and stay on. The fact I only had four O-levels meant it was a bit touch and go whether I would be allowed to go straight on to take my A-levels but in the end the school agreed and I chose, not surprisingly, English, History and French. And so I moved on to the sixth form and became one of those six-foot-tall boys with whiskers and a deep voice who had so overawed me on my first day, all those years ago.

  Although now we were treated much more like adults and generally had an easier life, I became more and more disinterested in schoolwork. For me there were a lot more interesting things to do. French was still a bit of a problem, thanks to Mr Engledow, whom I thoroughly loathed, and English was good but a bit touch-and-go because one of our set books was Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, which I found unutterably boring and difficult to read. As it happened, the film Tom Jones, starring Albert Finney, came out while we were studying and was on at the Hackney Pavilion. Another friend of mine, Herb Tyler, was also doing English A-level and so we asked our teacher, Mr Quincey, if we could go and see it one afternoon instead of doing an English Literature lesson. We said it would help if we could visualise it as the book was so difficult but he refused. So, the next day, we went anyway. On our return to school the following day, Joe Quincey (as he was known) asked to see us and wanted to know why we had deliberately disobeyed his order.

  ‘I’m sorry, but we just felt it would help us pass our A-level,’ I said.

  Somewhat surprisingly, he merely replied, ‘Don’t be sorry.’

  There followed a strained silence as we didn’t know how to respond to this. Eventually, Mr Quincey broke it by saying, ‘Never say you’re sorry. If you do something, stick by it. If you think you are doing something wrong, don’t do it in the first place.’ After another short silence, he added, ‘Did the film help?’

  ‘Yes, I think I have a better understanding of what the book is about now,’ I told him.

  He told us to go back to our class and that was that.

  Although in fact I never really did get to grips with Tom Jones, Joe Quincey’s little discourse on ‘never saying sorry’ has stuck with me right until now. While I can’t agree that you should never say sorry, I have always taken the point that you shouldn’t do something in the first place if you feel you might be sorry for it later.

  History was my best subject but even here there was a problem. We were studying for three papers, the first two on Modern British History and Modern Europe, both of which I felt very comfortable with, but the third paper was on Roman Britain. Our main book for this was Roman Britain by Professor Ian Richmond. Early on in the book, describing the position before the Roman conquest, Richmond wrote that the leader of the Catuvellauni tribe, Cunobelinus, held ‘virtual suzerainty of south-eastern Britain’. I had no idea what this meant as I had never come across the word suzerainty before and it just made me lose all interest in the Romans. This might sound very silly, looking back on it. I could have guessed what it meant from the context; I could have looked it up in the dictionary; I could have asked Mr Simms, but, because I was rapidly losing interest in school, I couldn’t really be bothered even with a subject I enjoyed.

  One thing I did like about History was our visits out to various places, though two of these were a bit fraught. The first was when Mr Simms arranged for the History A-level group to visit Parliament. This was due to take place on 21 January 1965. A few days before the due date, it was announced that Sir Winston Churchill was very ill and it was expected that he could die at any time. We were hoping and praying that he would last out till after 21 January for we knew that, as soon as he died, Parliament would be suspended and a period of mourning announced. As it happened, he lived for a few more days, dying on 24 January, so we got to Parliament and saw the House of Commons in action, something I did find very interesting.

  When Churchill died, there was lot of discussion among us about his contribution to the War effort. I knew that people of my parents’ generation greatly revered Churchill as the man who won the War and that without his foresight, energy, tactical planning and morale-raising speeches we would surely have lost to Hitler. And this went for everyone, even Labour supporters: Dad, for example, who I am certain voted Labour in 1945, nevertheless gave the Conservative Churchill full credit for winning the War. However, the general opinion among my generation when he died was that others could have done the same job – Labour leader Clement Attlee, for example. Although I personally did not agree with this view, I think it proved a significant watershed in the post-war era in lessening the impact made by the War on our everyday life. In the 1950s, it was all-pervasive, but now the generation of political satire and Beatlemania had found its own voice and a new era was dawning, ‘forged in the white heat of technology’, as our new Prime Minister, the Labour Party’s Harold Wilson, put it, that owed nothing to the Second World War.

  The other visit was to the Roman Villa at Lullingstone in Kent. Before we went, Herb and I asked if we were covered by insurance in case anything happened to us while out on the trip and we were told we wouldn’t be. We decided not to go and instead visited the London Museum on our own. On our arrival at school the next day, Mr Engledow, who was by then our form master, asked where we had been the day before and we told him we’d been to the London Museum. He said that counted as an unauthorised absence and demanded a letter from our parents, telling him where we were.

  I had, over the years, given Dad the benefit of my views on Mr Engledow and he saw this as his opportunity to get even with him on my behalf, so he wrote a letter back demanding to know why he was asking for a letter as I had already told him where I was and
he wanted to know why he didn’t believe me. He then added a few more comments about his opinions on Mr Engledow’s teaching skills just for good measure. The next day, Mr Engledow told me that the Headmaster was dealing with my father’s ‘objectionable letter’. I shrugged and said I knew nothing about it. The following day, Dad received a letter from Mr Hopkins, which started by saying, ‘I must say quite plainly that never before can I remember reading such an objectionable letter from the parent of a boy in my school…’

  Dad opened and read the letter in front of me and I thought he was going to have a heart attack. He went into a sheer paroxysm of rage and bellowed, ‘How dare he! Who does he think he is? If he thinks that letter was objectionable, wait till he sees my next one!’

  He immediately reached for a piece of paper and I think I could literally see the sparks flying from the pen as he wrote back. It began,

  Dear Sir,

  I received your letter this morning and quite frankly, I was appalled. It appeared to me as if you rushed it out just to appease Mr Engledow, the parent’s point of view did not matter. Mr Engledow told my son that you were dealing with ‘that objectionable letter’, coincidence you should use that word. He should have said nothing to my son who, after all, did not know what I had written; that is rather objectionable.

  After a few more pleasantries of this sort, Dad finished up by saying,

  I, sir, have nothing to thank Mr Engledow for. He has caused me, indirectly, a lot of mental anguish. I am today a very sad man and receiving such a letter from a headmaster has certainly not improved matters.

  Neither Mr Hopkins nor Mr Engledow ever mentioned the matter again, either to Dad or me. Funnily enough it reminded me of my last year at Rushmore when Dad had had the argument with the Head over my non-prize and the 11-plus result. What a way to finish up at both schools!

  In the second year of sixth form, we were allowed some special privileges. One of these was the use of Room 24. Although we had a form room in the main building, there was also a basement room, set aside as a more casual common room for us in the house next door to the school at 24 Approach Road, where the caretaker lived. It was supposed to be used as a place for quiet study but I can’t remember anyone ever actually studying in there. We used to go there when we didn’t have any lessons and used it mainly to discuss sport or politics, listen to music and have a cup of coffee and a fag. I don’t ever remember a teacher venturing down there, which is why we were left free to do much as we liked there.

  At first, we used to listen to pop music, the Beatles especially, but one day Pete Scott brought in two Bob Dylan LPs, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and The Times They Are a-Changin’, and we were all converted in varying degrees to folk music. The records of singers like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez chimed precisely with our political view on the world. Many were about the fight for civil rights in America and, as time went on, about the Vietnam War. Thanks in part to the new wave of American protest singers, folk music as a whole began a revival in this country and a number of folk songs reached the Top 20. For a while, it was a big thing and many new folk clubs opened up, while the leading singers appeared on television. Folk music played a big part in politicising the youth of this country in the mid-sixties. I became a big fan of the whole scene and got very involved, not only with the protest movement but also with British and Irish traditional folk music. I started buying records and going to concerts and folk clubs. Eventually, I even became part of a folk duo – the Norman half of Robin and Norman – and appeared at a number of folk clubs in and around London and East Anglia (vocals, guitar and tin whistle).

  At lunchtime, we would more often than not repair to the pub, not The Approach, as we didn’t want any teachers seeing us, but to a pub just round the corner, the Prince of Wales. Here we’d usually have a half pint of brown, or if we had time and money it would sometimes stretch to a whole pint. One day, after saving up for some time, I decided I would try something a bit different. As it happened, I arrived later than the others at the pub that day and, as I walked in, Herb, who had got in the round for everyone, asked me what I wanted. ‘It’s okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll get my own today.’ So I went up to the bar and ordered a vodka and lime. It cost 2/6d and I paid for it with five sixpenny pieces. As I sat down at the table, the others all gave me funny looks until someone said, ‘You flash git!’ and we all laughed. After I drank it, I wished I’d stuck to the brown ale.

  Although we were now in the sixth form and specialising in our A-levels, we still had a games afternoon at our sports ground. However, there were a couple of times when we missed the coach because we left the pub too late. On those occasions, we just went back to Room 24. None of the teachers ever said anything. I think they assumed, or maybe hoped, we’d missed games because we were studying.

  It was during one of those afternoons in Room 24 after a longer-than-usual visit to the pub that we came up with a plan to kidnap Alan Oland. Alan was a bit of a loner and didn’t really have many friends. He wasn’t unpleasant or anything, but, no doubt with the assistance of some alcohol, we thought it would be a good idea to play a trick on him. It was agreed that Clive Smith, who had passed his driving test and sometimes came to school by car, would pick him up at the bus stop and offer him a lift to school. He would then drive him to the other side of Victoria Park, throw him out and make him walk back to school, by which time he would be very late.

  On the appointed morning, a big mass of sixth formers waited at the school gate. Mr Engledow came out and asked what we were doing there. Clive said, ‘Oland’s late. I kidnapped him.’ To his credit, Mr Engledow just laughed and said we could stay and wait. Alan eventually arrived to a big cheer and went off to report to the Headmaster for being late. Mr Hopkins solemnly wrote down in the late book, ‘Alan Oland. Reason for being late: Kidnapped’. As it happened, Alan took it all in good part and saw the funny side of the whole incident. As, fortunately, did the Head and Mr Engledow.

  Although I was thoroughly enjoying the social side of school life, I really had to consider what I was going to do when I left school, a day that was rapidly becoming imminent. I was fairly sure that I wasn’t going to get good enough A-level grades to go to university, if indeed I actually passed any at all.

  As the thought of going out to work straight from school didn’t really appeal to me either, I opted for what was then seen as the next best option to university, teacher training college. I spoke to my teachers and my parents about this. My teachers readily agreed it was probably my best bet. Mum and Dad were a bit disappointed that I didn’t feel I was going to get good enough grades to go to university, especially as John had gained his B.A. in English Literature at Cambridge, but in the end they agreed to support me.

  At that time, the application form allowed you to apply for six colleges: two first choices and four second choices. My first choices were Borough Road, Isleworth, and Keswick Hall, on the outskirts of Norwich. The former because it had the best name as a teacher training college, the latter because it meant I would be able to go to speedway at Norwich. I suppose it was asking a bit much to be considered suitable for the best college in the country and, indeed, my application was turned down without even an interview.

  Not long after sending off my form, however, I received a letter from Keswick Hall, asking me to come for an interview. On the appointed day, I set off for Liverpool Street station by bus to catch the train to Norwich. I had to go through three interviews and an oral English test – the only part of which I can remember now is that I was asked the meaning of undulating. I replied, ‘Something that goes up and down,’ and moved my hand in a wave motion to demonstrate what I meant. The woman interviewing me said, ‘Every single person I have asked has done the same thing with their hand.’

  One of the fellow interviewees I met on my visit to Norwich was Dave Gale, who was to become my best friend at college.

  At the end of the day, I had no idea how I had done but about a week later I received a conditional offer of a
place, the condition being that I gained at least one more O-level. I had four O-levels and the minimum entry requirement was five. Of course, an A-level would have been enough, but I wasn’t confident I was going to pass any so I spoke to Mr Engledow and asked if he could suggest an O-level I might study, along with my A-levels. After some thought and discussion, we decided on the rather esoteric-sounding Greek Literature in Translation, as this was something that combined my liking for English and History. I started studying for this in January 1965, with just six months to complete what would normally be a two-year course. I had special lessons with Charlie Bowen, our Latin teacher, and I concentrated on getting this O-level. Now that I knew I only needed this to get to college, I took even less interest in my A-levels, giving up French altogether.

  In the end, I got a grade C in Greek Literature and O-level passes in English and History, which meant I was on my way to Norwich, though there was a bit of a bombshell when it was announced later on that year that Norwich Speedway was to close and the stadium sold for a housing development. So I never did get to see speedway there!

  CHAPTER TEN

  MICK MCMANUS, JUKE BOX JURY AND BREAKING THE LAW

  To start with, my elevation to grammar school didn’t alter the general weekend routine, but, by the time 1960 came around and I was moving into my teenage years, the idea of doing the weekly shopping up Chatsworth Road appealed less and less to me and I decided to stay at home on Saturday mornings. It was on those occasions that for the first time I was really able to listen to pop music at home. Saturday Skiffle Club, introduced by Brian Matthew, had started on the Light Programme in 1957, but by 1959 had dropped ‘Skiffle’ from its title and was reaching an audience of something like five million listeners in its two-hour slot from 10am to 12 noon. It was exciting, listening to British singers such as Adam Faith, Marty Wilde, Billy Fury and Terry Dene, along with American rock stars like Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochrane, Bobby Darin and the Everly Brothers.