Biography, Autobiography, Old Steve of Scarborough, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom

1. Guess what and to this day I don't know how or why, but I sat an entrance exam for a Grammar School and got a place. I should have been proud and I suppose I was at the time but have often wished it could have been a lot different. To start with my father was not particularly interested and winged over what it would cost. My mother loved it because, at that time, only a couple of my cousins had gone to Grammar School, one paid for and the other, like myself, on a scholarship. You see in those days the education system was vastly different from what it is today. To start with there was no 'Eleven Plus.' You took a Grammar School Entrance Exam and if you passed then fine, if there were enough places left for you that is, after those who were prepared to pay for a place had all been accommodated. After that if you failed or there were no places available you went to the 'Secondary Modern School.' My mother could never have lived with that and for a time was as foul as her backside when all the places at the Bradford Grammar School had been taken and we were lead to believe so were all those for the Bingley Grammar School. So you can imagine her delight, after the disappointment of not getting into, the supposed superior, Bradford Grammar School, when two more places came up and the girl selected, chose to go to the Salts High School leaving the one remaining place at Bingley open for me and how often would those arseholes there remind me that I only got in there by the skin of my teeth and was, as far as they were concerned, a free loader, that they were obliged to take, when it was obvious that those who were paying were much preferred. With all that prejudice and the fact that we, my family, could not compete with them I had a hard time at Bingley and the day I walked out for the last time, I threw my cap over the nearest wall and never set foot in the place again. It was an institution run by the most antiquated, sadistic morons who ever drew breath and even the cap I threw away, when I left, will give you some small idea of what I mean. The war had not long been ended and things, such as school uniform were in short supply and the father of one of the pupils happened to be a local manufacturer and to show his appreciation of a wonderful school, or so they told us, in assembly, had acquired some suitable material and had had a quantity of school caps made up. All the boys of my age group were gathered in the main hall and in came the Headmaster with his boxes of caps. We were told they were ten shillings and sixpence each (52-1/2p) and I flinched at the thought of the reaction I would receive at home and where my pocket money was destined to go for quite some considerable time in the foreseeable future, as they were tried on heads. After only a short time I stood, cap on head, watching the others and awaiting developments, when the supply ran out with three or four still to go. No problem for the old blue nosed fart, he came straight over to me, grabbed my cap and saying, for the benefit of all present, that free loaders didn't deserve one, took it and gave it to one of the others. That upset me even though it did solve the ten and six cash bit, but it also meant that I then stood out as being one of very few without a cap and left me with all the hazards of constantly being pulled up by 'staff' and Prefects (little shits carefully selected to be trained and groomed into being bigger shits), for not wearing one. Shortly after that caps and school blazers started to turn up in the shops and I, along with several others, was given a letter to take home that said that if I didn't acquire the correct uniform very shortly then I would be suspended and not allowed back until properly attired. There was much bawling and screaming in our house that night and when I grew out of it and anything else for that matter, as one quickly and inevitably does as a teenager, then it would start all over again. Then there were the second hand rugby boots that hurt my feet and a couple of years later another pair that were far too big and caused blisters. You see, we played Rugby at Bingley or the daft bastards did who thought it was a jolly good 'man's' sport and far better than 'soccer,' that was played by the common masses. I couldn't play in the school Cricket Team, even if I had wanted to, because I didn't have any 'whites'. They were excused, because of cloths rationing, for ordinary games lessons, but not for the school team, and despite the fact that acquiring the necessary coupons, for the extra 'whites', was no problem to my father the cash was. But that didn't matter because I soon got the reputation for being a good scorer and so would volunteer to do that and found it a lot less hassle. I was always tall (six feet at age fourteen) and good at running and I had the shorts and vest, we had to have them for gym, and despite being a free loader, there were not many in my age group and above that, who could catch or out run me. Of all the sports I liked running and later went on to be a reasonably successful 'Harrier' with several local clubs but while at school I never volunteered to get involved because that meant spending more time there than I had to, and neither they or my parents would pay the bus fare. I hated swimming because I couldn't and never went on to learn at school and no one really bothered. If you could you were encouraged, if you couldn't you were ignored or ridiculed and they were good at the ridicule stuff. Later, when you got the option, you were encouraged to drop it and do something else and I did.

2. The Sports Master was a Semi-professional Rugby Player with a Bradford Team, and that was considered to be very good for the image of the school, but he didn't give a damn about anything except going to visit the Gym Mistress when the girls were in the Gym. He was also a sadistic shit and much too free with a gym shoe. I never once saw him out of shorts or without the gym shoe in his hand and more often than not he would have a whistle either in his mouth or hung round his neck. He was a sloppy sod yet the girls loved him. It's perhaps as well that I didn't go back as a mature adult otherwise he would have been the first to have that gym shoe wrapped round his head and the whistle stuffed where it wouldn't easily be found. But he was not alone; the vast majority were as bad or came a close second. Herbert, one of the science masters who, had his brain been dynamite would not have had enough to blow off his mortarboard (the silly square topped cap, with tassel, that they wore), as he stalked around, armed with a length of rubber gas piping that he folded in two and would use to strike any flat surfaces or any poor, unsuspecting victim that took his fancy. The girls were lucky as he never dare strike them but the lads would often carry round a weald that would be visible for days following some very minor misdemeanour. He, along with all the other sadistic shits, called it discipline and they all had their favourites to administer it to and it never seemed to include those pupils who's parents patronised teachers on open days or in other ways. Funny how their off-springs never seemed to warrant the same discipline or were singled out and treated better than the rest. I suppose that is what is called democracy and the stern, stiff upper lip, British way of doing things? All the time I was at Grammar School my mother never set foot in the place and my father only went once and then took the piss out of everything and everyone both openly and behind their backs. So I was fair game for Herbert and his ilk and would love to have taken that length of rubber pipe and wrapped it so tight round his chalk stained neck that he would never have been able to remove it. Incidentally there was one youth in my age group but not in my class that gave a couple of them a damned good hiding on the day he left, so I was not biased in my sentiments towards some of them.

3. My first Form Master was the only one out of the whole lot who 'very slightly' resembled a human being. He had been an Army Pilot in the First World War and told many stories of being shot down and walking back to his own lines, which were usually only a few miles away and if he got stopped his knowledge of German and his claim to be from an obscure part of Germany or one of it's allies, got him past. He actually taught French and Maths to the junior classes at Grammar School and prior to that had been in charge of the, then defunct, Junior School, where paying pupils from the age of eight had been accepted and guaranteed a place in the upper school. He would also tell of dropping bombs on the enemy that were held in the aircraft, in a beer bottle crate, between his feet and the method used to drop them was to hold them over the side and just let them go. But he was exceptional, the rest often indescribable. There was a maths master, 'Jarrett the Parrot,' because of his monstrous nose and the fact that every teacher had to have a nickname, passed down from one generation to the next. Priscilla Brown, a geography master, who was a proper Priscilla and years later, believe it or not, went on to become the Headmaster after having given years of entertainment to generations of pupils, and no doubt to staff alike, as he minced along the corridors. Tits the gym mistress, who only taught the girls and who bounced like a sack of Ferrets in her gym vest. A hunch backed weirdo, Wilson, who was the music teacher; always wore a gown with a white fur collar and could only play the first few bars, of most tunes, on his piano and used a gramophone for all his other lessons. He told me I couldn't sing and that I was to mime in all his lessons. I have never sung since and don't really know if I can or cannot. Then there was a completely mad, tiny, bottle blond, woman who claimed to teach maths but who, to me, spent more time crying and rushing out of class where, just to add to her agony, her class would run riot until someone, like one of the senior masters, would come in and give us a test on something we hadn't covered and then because of the abysmal results would either put us all in detention or give us extra homework.

PATRONS.

FAVOURITES.