KING EDWARD'S GRAMMAR SCHOOL ASTON: THE UPPER SCHOOL YEARS...

 K.E.G.S. Aston: the later years…

As a fifth former, I know my best work was in the sports arenas. I know also that I was befriended by the wrong lads though. They were Peter Allcock and Bernard Alsop, both very intelligent lads, studying Russian but highly cynical and with my background, I found them unusual I guess. They, in turn, seemed pleased to befriend a sports person… 

BEING MADE TO POSE IN THE BACK GARDEN...

I didn’t work with any effort at all for my ‘O’ levels but passed Maths, French, German and English, collecting English Literature surprisingly easily on a retake. I failed the General Paper but I had taken an ‘A’ level history course early and thus I didn’t have to take that subject at ‘O’ level, but I amassed enough marks in the ‘A’ level exam to merit an ‘O’ level pass. Rather poor overall…

My shocking results were due to me being so immature at that time, in fact awfully lacking in life skills really and my examination preparation and learning techniques were simply not good enough. 

YOU HAVE TO IMAGINE THE GLOVES, THE PADS & REALITY...

Having decided to take up ‘A’ level studies, heavy restrictions on subject choices at Aston left me with history, French literature and English literature, as well as General Studies as a package. I didn’t even want to do the two literature courses but I was unable to take maths and biology with history, due to timetable clashes, something typical of the school at that time. I am still confident to this day that I would have passed an ‘A’ level maths examination…

I gave up on French literature, never actually attempting to read the prescribed books, which left me cold, disinterested and feeling like a total failure. I rarely worked with any interest on English literature either but of course neither of those subjects had been chosen by me, but thrust upon me because there was nothing else available. Although I was really interested in Tudor history, I couldn’t raise any enthusiasm about European history and I was clearly destined to fail that ‘A’ level. 

Names of historical characters, places and dates could be learned like French or German vocabulary but no advice was ever offered me as to how to answer examination questions in essay form, or using sources, leaving my answers superficial. 

I even took Latin for two or three sessions but soon finished with that, for I had no confidence in myself at all, whilst the other lads taking the extra subject were academics anyway and I felt like the poor relation again.  

Strangely, I passed General Studies at ‘A’ level, despite my lack of interest in current affairs, for I rarely read any further forward than the sports pages in my father’s Daily Express (I’m pleased to admit..) and the fact that my general knowledge was poor. This all sounds dreadful but after applying to Bulmershe Teacher Training College in Reading (because of an unusual bright purple prospectus and the fact that Reading had a third division soccer team) my life totally changed at my interview there, before the ‘A’ level examinations even took place. 

I wanted to learn more about PE, which had been suggested to me by my sports teacher Harry Jessop. It was quite a late decision in truth but I could see no other option really and I don’t think I had ever even thought about career possibilities. I had received no advice from school and no support from home, just my father’s five letters spoken slowly right into my face: “T.H.I.N.K.” 

Thanks, dad…

My interview was partly a gymnastics test of rolls, springs and box-work, so I showed my party-piece: a very high thief-vault, thus I was accepted on the strength of my five ‘O’ levels and my PE agility and abilities. So, for my ‘A’ levels I didn’t revise with any conviction at all and suffered ugly results because of it. 

After all of my earlier successes at school, my immaturity, the doubtful characters who became my friends and my introverted antagonism towards an old-fashioned army loving father, I felt badly isolated again and worryingly alone.  

Sport was my saviour. My scarlet football socks which I used for tucking in my cricket trousers whilst wicket-keeping, my overall decent rugby play and Dai Cole, a history teacher who liked me, kept me afloat. He used to demonstrate imaginary cricket strokes to me in class as he explained facets of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign. Odd, but true… 

6-SIDE TEAM, ME SECOND FROM LEFT...

SO SMALL, I HAD TO SIT ON A WALL...

“Left-foot down and follow through, Ray…” Some Welsh accent, was that. 

MY DREAM: BEING AN ADULT WICKETKEEPER...

So what of upper school teachers at KEGS Aston?  Well, there was ‘Puffer’ Hayden, Owen Tudor and the most marvellous of all, Dave Buttress, ‘in fact…’ 

DAVE BUTTRESS...

This was an epic and legendary man. He ‘in fact’ taught me history and ‘in fact’ English too. He was red-faced and ‘in fact’ a little shy, perhaps. He used long words, not unusual for graduate-teachers of that type but he accentuated the words and seemed to flash an embarrassed smile at the class when he bellowed them out in his inimitable style.

Once, he umpired a cricket match, at KEGS Five Ways ‘in fact’ and I swear to this day that he was responsible for my early dismissal, due to my helplessness and mental collapse after I took guard to receive the bowling. 

I walked out to bat, checked the batting crease, placed my upright bat in a central position and asked Mr Buttress for ‘centre’, as many batters did. He was supposed to line up the vertical edge of my bat, so that it was directly in front of the middle stump. I would then mark the pitch by prodding my bat and use it to take guard as a bowler ran up to bowl… 

Mr B’s reply?  

“Centre, Ray? Yes, certainly. Ummmmn, ‘in fact’ a touch to the off. No, a little to the left ‘in fact’. No! Too far, ‘in fact’… More ‘in fact’ to the leg. Ah! That appears ‘in fact’ to be centre. Yes, that’s it, ‘in fact’, Ray!”  

I almost broke up completely. I was ‘out’ a couple of balls later…

‘In fact’ was his catch-phrase and my history class made the Birmingham Post newspaper, when it was discovered by a journalist parent that we were betting on the number of times Mr B would say those two little words in any one lesson… Well, £3 was worth winning and we were all quite superb at tallying, ‘in fact’.

I met him years later at a West Bromwich Albion game and also when I taught Local History to King Edward’s High School  in Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and there he was, in fact… He brought a group of fifteen or sixteen boys each Friday for about six consecutive weeks for me to teach. What a complete ‘character’ this guy was for me, the stuff school memories are made from. 

Puffer Hayden…

‘Puffer’ Hayden was an eccentric cyclist and English teacher, who looked like a wild scientist. His cheeks puffing out as he cycled to and from school earned him his nickname. The typical, well-scripted, badly dressed schoolmaster was modelled upon this man of no dress sense, colour co-ordination or neatness. He was oblivious to all about him and merely waxed lyrical as he managed the cross-country team. No coaching was actually needed however… Good job if you can get it, Puffer!  

What a difference Puffer was to Harry Tyson. I met him at a Villa game when I was teaching at the Museum and although he had mellowed, that investigative frown and pervading fear was still evident…

Yes, life with teachers at K.E.G.S. Aston was perhaps not quite as normal as at many other state schools.

ME, SEATED, FAR LEFT, NEXT TO S.P. SMITH WHO HAD FORGOTTEN HIS KIT...

THAT YEAR 9 IMAGE WHICH SMITH & I WERE TOLD OFF ABOUT.
YOU CAN SEE THE GRASS MARKS ON MY TROUSERS, BACK ROW, FAR LEFT, A RESULT OF PLAYING ON THE PREVIOUS SATURDAY & BOARDING AT LONGDON HALL AT THE TIME, SO THE 'WHITES' HADN'T BEEN WASHED...
SMITH IS TWO AWAY FROM ME & HIS TROUSERS MUST HAVE BEEN LEFT AT HIS MUM'S...

ME ON THE EDGE OF THINGS AGAIN...

ON THE EDGE BUT SEATED FAR RIGHT...

ONCE AGAIN, BACK ROW, FAR LEFT & WEARING MY COUSIN STEVE'S OLD CRICKET TROUSERS...

Quirks in upper school…

At the Aston Park end of Albert/Frederick Roads there was once a small local shop where we discovered one day that freshly baked loaves were delivered to. I recall Pete Alcock and I buying one and gobbling it in class when really we ought to have been listening/working. It shows how teaching was in those days though, for the master had no inkling about this rather sneaky snack.

Tall, pleasant rugby player Gordon Brown had become head boy of the school and one of the jobs he had to do was to read out notices, sports scores and the like during assemblies. However, in sketches rather like in Monty Python’s ‘Life Of Brian’, due to Brown’s slight speech impediment, the 6th formers who gave Gordon a list of their featured artists for Music Club each week, would make sure there were plenty of letter Rs in the names of the groups, making life rather awkward for Brown. However, he battled through Tyrannosaurus Rex, Rolling Stones, etc, although certain chaps at the back of the school hall could clearly be heard sniggering…

SEATED ON THE GROUND...

I was a Prefect for a time but as the months wore on, my only real interests were rugby and cricket… Despite the harsh but true comments by teachers about my immature writing, I had begun to write reports of professional football matches I had attended. Those were certainly written with thought and some insight, suggesting that my writing wasn’t quite so awful after all. It was the boring subject matter I was forced to write about  which caused my downfall, although in truth, I was badly let down by the style of teaching at that time…

I have written poetry and articles with some success since I was 18 years old…

No lunchtime snow fights or sledging down the Aston Park slopes towards Villa Park had been allowed for some years because one boy had broken an arm tobogganing one day when I was in Year 7 or Year 8. Once again, some laddish fun had been banned for everyone because of just one accident… 

Having heard somewhere that a small tipple of some types of alcohol might offer sportspersons some added impetus, on cold Saturday mornings after Christmas I would take a small glass of port or sherry from mum’s pantry, before leaving to catch buses to rugby matches. My father bought one bottle of each, annually, ready for our Boxing Day party for the extended family…

The Vine…

This pub was situated on the main Lichfield Road, just a short walk from the school and as 6th formers, two or three of us popped in for a quick drink a few times during lunchtimes.

LUNCH-TIME ABODE...

The staff there were not bothered at all and only one or two locals sat in the lounge anyway. What I recall most of all was the juke box there which contained ‘I Gotta Be Me’ by Sammy Davis Junior, which I came to really like and I shoved my cash into the machine each time we visited to play the song.

THE VINE'S LAST DAYS...

I reckon the title was a hint for me… 

Final words…

I am far from proud of my experiences in Aston’s  upper school, except that my sporting achievements were perhaps fairly memorable.

I hated that I was unable to play football though, for I am certain that I could have played at non-league level, being two-footed, quick, a fairly accurate passer of a ball and my tackling was generally well timed. The school was rugby biased however, with no soccer available and there was never even an opening for me to play football on Sundays, for I was isolated in Shard End and my father, rather surprisingly, made no effort to link me up with a team.

I was told years later by my father though that the school would have liked me to have attended Warwickshire Cricket Club for coaching as a wicket-keeper but that he had replied that my batting would not have been good enough. Thanks for that… The relevant word here was ‘coaching’… I guess that he was not keen on getting me to and from Edgbaston to attend the course…

I was unaware of the above at the time…

MY 'COLOURS'...

THE ABOVE SNIPPETS ARE FROM SCHOOL MAGAZINES...

My favourite thing? A cricketing catching cradle… Made like the frame of a small boat, it was crafted for catching practice. One stood some way back from it and threw a cricket ball to bounce off it and because of the elongated concave shape, formed of lengths of curved wood, the ball flew off at curious angles, meaning that when I had to catch the ball from the person I was using the cradle with, I ended up diving about, one of my favourite occupations.

A TYPICAL CATCHING CRADLE...

In a games lesson once, I was keeping wicket and a batsman edged and sliced the ball upwards and over my head but instinctively I threw myself at the ball with left hand uppermost and finished off having turned my body completely over and I  hit the ground with some confused difficulty upon my feet, in a rather untidy landing. A back somersault then. And I caught the ball… 

I was never forward, I never pushed myself and of course, that has been one of the main downfalls throughout my life. 

In my case, things never did come to he who waited…

Fact to recount? The science teacher in Year 7 was rabbiting on with little skill in the communication stakes but suddenly spouted: “And yes, Persil really does wash whiter…”

We stared blankly at him. I recall nothing else he mumbled at us for a whole year, except being told to memorise the periodic tables for tests. Most enlightening…

My mum was singularly unimpressed when I told her…

So, it was to Reading that I headed for a teacher training course…