1966 and memories of 4L
This week Stephen Willoughby's recollections reach 1966 and his fourth year at the Gilberd school. I am so grateful to Stephen for taking the trouble to write these articles because he really is painting a picture of the school and the teachers who taught there during the 1960s - it is wonderful to 'meet' "Killer" Jones this week. The highlight for me of this episode though is a classic story of miscommunication which you'll find in the final paragraph - just thinking about it makes me laugh out loud...
September 1966 was the start of my fourth year at the Gilberd, continuing in the Latin stream within 4L. Our home for the next two years was to be with Mr Mervyn “Killer” Jones in his room on the second floor of the main building, directly above Conrad Cole’s Room 19.
“Killer” was a stickler for punctuality so to be on the safe side we would endeavour to arrive early for morning registration. While waiting for the day to begin we would amuse ourselves by flicking through the collection of old colour weekend newspaper supplements which accumulated in desks with hinged lids and old-style inkwell holders. I think supplements like these had first been introduced around 1962, and they were primarily an advertising medium promoting an aspirational lifestyle. Alcohol and tobacco products were prominent among the items being plugged (there was scant regulation around advertising in those days), and I sometimes wonder to what extent our lives might have been influenced by the daily exposure to this material!
It was often difficult to read Killer: his mood would vacillate from being charming and laid back on the one hand to being very bad tempered and unreasonable on the other. He was known to be a Christadelphian, something we learned from some sixth formers (mostly girls) in whom he had confided. Regardless of Killer’s mood swings, I think we all benefited from his teaching of English Literature, especially Shakespeare, as we prepared for the O-level exam to come.
Our other teachers were as before with the exception of Maths which saw us with Bob Taylor in place of Beaky Howells. My report form shows that Maths in those days consisted of arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry which were treated as separate subjects. Maths with Bob was held in one of the Medway huts at the top of the school site. These were heated by powerful gas-fired heaters which were attractive to sit next to during the winter months. Unfortunately, on one occasion I rested my bag on one those heaters thereby destroying all the plastic items within it, together with its carrying handle!
I note from my Games report that I was commended for being a “useful swimmer”, which reminds me that by this time we had regular swimming sessions in the Garrison swimming pool to which we travelled by coach. Swimming was about the only physical activity I was remotely good at, and I remember representing the school in an inter-school gala, though not sufficiently well to bring back a trophy.
I think it was in this year that I got involved in two other extra curricular activities: the school play and the film club.
The drama group was run by Sheila Allison, a highly enthusiastic teacher who set very high standards and directed the annual school play held in the main hall. A friend of mine, Gerald Callen, and I volunteered to supply the sounds effects for the production of “Sweeney Todd the Barber”, a task which involved recording suitable sounds on tape (digital equipment was some decades away) from the radio and various other sources. I remember us going to St Michael’s church at Mile End, where I was a chorister and knew my way around, to record me ringing some of the bells. We were lucky not to get caught. All the tapes had to be cut, spliced and arranged in the sequence needed for the play. Some effects, notably a gun shot which we got by firing a blank from a starting pistol, could be delivered live. Unfortunately, the firing of the pistol was seldom in synch with the action on the stage, resulting in the actor reacting to the shot before it was actually fired! I think the following year we did “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” for which gun shots were not required. The Drama and Music departments were often at loggerheads whenever play rehearsals intensified, since several members of the choir were also involved in the play; tensions were often palpable!
The film club was also run by Gerald and me, and was altogether a different type of gathering held from time to time after school. We had no budget so we had to rely on films available free of charge from various sources. Among these was the “gas film” which we frequently hired from the Eastern Gas Board and which explained how gas was extracted from coal and, best of all, how to read a gas meter. We became experts on threading 35mm film through the projector’s complex mechanism, a skill which teachers who were less familiar with the process would sometimes call upon us for help. I remember Beaky Howells a couple of years later asking me to be projectionist for an after school meeting he was holding, for which he paid me a generous 2/6d – enough for 20 No.6 or a pint of Double Diamond!
Assemblies continued to be held twice a week in St Peter’s church over the road, and I scored credibility points with my peers by playing “A Whiter Shade of Pale” on one occasion while everyone was gathering. I was expecting to be rebuked by Mr Sprason or Miss Twyman but nothing was said. I think it was around this time that Bernard “Bernie” Crowther, a chemistry teacher with an Evangelical outlook on life, sometimes delivered fiery addresses at these assemblies. It was known that Bernie had a close friendship with one of our contemporaries, and I have since learned that they were subsequently married.
One other memory from this time is the use of St Peter’s Church Hall as an overflow classroom and, in particular, somewhere in which both internal and external exams were held. There is a legendary tale about Mr Hugh Jones being asked to return the tables from the church hall to the men’s staff room at the end of a maths exam in preparation for the following day. The story goes that the following morning the staff room was so crammed with furniture that no-one could get in. “Tables” was meant to refer to those booklets of logarithms, geometrical functions and so on that we used before the invention of calculators. There lies an example of how important it is to avoid ambiguity if one might exist!
5L next...O-level year!
N.B. The chap sitting in front of Killer Jones was a French exchange student whose name I can't recall. I think he joined us for one term.
UPDATE 9th May 2022
I'm very grateful to Jerry Goodenough for sending in a clipping from the Essex County Standard about the Gilberd prize giving ceremony at the ABC Cinema on November 18, 1966. David Forder (the actor/manager and leader of Colchester Repertory Theatre, and later manager of the Mercury Theatre) was the prize giver at this event. If you click on the article below you can view a larger version of the article.
Comments
Post a Comment