Audley Junior School, 1972-1974…
A clearing-house system deposited a young, unprepared teacher at Audley Junior School, Stechford, Birmingham. This establishment lay close to my father’s brother’s house in Church Lane and was not far from my parents’ home in Shard End, where I was living in 1972. I was expected to teach a Year 5 class, or third year juniors, as we called such groups then but with no direction or planning at all. The phrase ‘in at the deep end’ was apt and so, armed with an ability to manage a passable voice impression of Frank Spencer, wearing slightly longer hair than most teachers, possessing a passion for sports, yet little, or no temper, I walked into the teaching profession.
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| CONFIRMATION OF MY FIRST JOB... |
One of the children in my class was Tracey Kenning, taller than most, whose parents were clients on my father’s Britannic Assurance round at the time and friends of his too, so a conflict of interests soon reared its head. Tracey and her smaller friend Tina Hughes were both always more coolly dressed than the other girls and they quickly became Bay City Rollers fans, often arriving at school bedecked in tiresome Rollers’ plaid, offering a solid argument for an equalising school uniform for all children.
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| TRACEY KENNING IS BACK ROW, FAR RIGHT, NEXT TO BEV SCOTT. TINA APPLEBY (SEE LATER IN THIS ARTICLE) WEARS PURPLE. |
I had only briefly met the headteacher Mr Davies, a sullen, dark-haired Brummie and to be honest, I rarely saw him again during the next two years. He was as charismatic as the lower end of a telegraph pole.
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| I WAS JUST OVER 22 YEARS OLD, I HAD WORKED A MONTH BEFORE MY FIRST WAGE WENT INTO THE BANK. I PICKED UP £72 FOR WORKING 4 WEEKS. |
With no help at all, I was catapulted into a classroom of more than thirty pupils and proceeded to work on their arithmetic, writing and spelling. However, reading seemed to be the magic wand which would conjure up evidence to the mostly disinterested mums and dads on parents’ evenings. The Schonell Reading Tests were kind of yesterday’s SATs on a single card and I recall with horror the errors the children made and the traps they inevitably fell into, as they attempted to pronounce words which they clearly used naturally in their everyday Brummie lives, like ‘procrastinate’... OK, maybe not... This was mental cruelty. For me too, as I listened.
Little was lickul, egg was eggs, sit was shit, frog was fog…
Bun became bum, flower was flowers, picture became the Brummie pictcha, something was some-think, shepherd was sheep-herds and thirsty turned into Thursday.
Sandwich was pronounced sam-witch, beginning ended up as begging, island was iz-land and saucer annoyingly became sugar for some inexplicable reason.
Angel became angle, ceiling became selling, gnome was name and canary became can arry. I used to think, “Can ‘Arry what?”
On we stumbled through knee-few for nephew, shoulder for smoulder, applause for applaud, orchester for orchestra, no-ledge for knowledge, fye-six for physics, company for campaign and chore for choir.
By this time, it was startling if a mispronunciation was not made and the correct usage of a word was actually heard by me, the examiner.
On we went with fask-in-ate for fascinate, four feet instead of forfeit, sage for siege, possible for plausible, col-on-ell for colonel and slow-venly for slovenly.
Satisfaction was often used for classification, pie-vot for pivot, con-science for conscience, anti-queue for antique, suspectable for susceptible and skin-tillate for scintillate.
Sar-bree was sabre, be-goole was used for beguile, grot-es-queue for grotesque, recent for rescind and the remarkable bye-blow-graf-he for bibliography.
The kids only began to pick out adamant when the Glam Rock singer Adam Adamant became famous...
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| ALAN STOKES (MENTIONED LATER) IS FAR LEFT, CRAIG POVEY & KEVIN BENBOW ARE EACH SIDE OF THE LAD IN THE SECOND ROW FROM THE TOP... |
I would sometimes sit in the staffroom and perform a typical rendition of a mistake-riddled test to amuse other members of staff and they reckoned I had it down to perfection. My claim to fame I suppose... After all, I remember doing the test myself as an eleven year old and having no idea what an ‘antique’ was, never mind how to pronounce it...
The Ladybird and Wide Range (green and blue) reading schemes were rife, offering stories which bore no relevance at all to the lives of my class of children from mostly council-owned homes in Stechford, Birmingham. There was an interesting tactic to use though: I would ask children who had just read to me to say a few words about the snippet of the story they had just completed. Generally they had no idea what the hell they had been reading about...
They could manage to stumble out most of the words but the intonation and meaning were usually way off beam. Unfortunately, parents were fixated upon their children finishing a book and getting the next one, before asking what reading age had been reached at one of the two parents’ evenings.
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| FAR LEFT AT THE FRONT ARE TINA HUGHES, BEV SCOTT & TRACEY KENNING. SPORTSPERSON KEVIN BENBOW WEARS A YELLOW JUMPER. 5TH FROM RIGHT IN THE BACK ROW IS ANDREW ARCHER... |
This made the drudgery of hearing children read a total bind and nearly cost me my NQT year’s pass. I encouraged the children to read at home to their parents as well as silently in class after finishing a piece of work but the deputy-head of the school, Jackie Allatt disliked my apparent popularity amongst the children. She randomly took in my reading records one day and informed Mr Davies that they were not up to date. They weren’t. This did not mean that the children were not reading...
A school inspector soon arrived to Audley to check this out and to meet me. He looked at my pupils’ work, told me that he was immensely satisfied, then listened to me reading a story to the children at the end of the afternoon, who appeared spellbound and amused, as they usually were following the quips made and asides we shared. Thus I passed my probationary year…
Allatt, somewhat obese and miserable was forced off my case and I relaxed. One slow learner, Andrew Archer, who looked both sleepy and mildly startled at the same time, whose family also knew my dad as their insurance man, was I think working on a low Wide Range reader at one time, which included stories involving a dog called Spot. Every now and again, the children in the story, or their parents, would suddenly exclaim, “Naughty Spot!”, which set me off into deep hilarity, mainly because the Audley parents would have used slightly different words in that same scenario, such as:
“You f…..’ arse of a dog…” Or other similar endearments…
Andrew knew that I was amused by the offending pair of words, so he memorised them and recognised them, so that I would stop the rest of my class while they were working and say, “In a moment, we must all join in with Andrew...” When it came to the special words, the others would hear Andrew’s hesitation and we would all roar, “NAUGHTY SPOT!” and crease up in amusement.
This went on for several weeks and if Andrew read a few paragraphs to me which did not include the immortal words, I would find another paragraph which did and he would willingly read more. He was happy, I was less bored, all the pupils were involved and it became a way of managing some of the twee nonsense those tough kids were forced to learn to read with. Andrew had found a catchphrase, he was a hero for twenty minutes at a time and often asked to come up and read to me again, even if it wasn’t his turn. It was brilliant...
Jackie Allatt, eat your spite...
Anyway, on my first day at Audley, the children wrote their names on exercise books, dictionaries were handed out, along with maths text books and reading books from their summer term in Year 4, then I tested them with a selection of sums written on the blackboard and gave them a random spelling test. These were enlightening, I would say...
I survived that first morning but cannot recall whether I ate a school dinner… I may have done but I had agreed to walk along to Auntie Cal’s house in Church Lane for a cup of tea during the lunch break which is what I did. A china cup and saucer were offered to me, we chatted about my first morning as a teacher and I returned to school for the afternoon session.
A trap awaited me, however...
I slipped through a gate into the schoolyard which separated the fence on Audley Road from a veranda, a lean-to from the school wall, protecting a corridor of classrooms of which mine was one. The windows were obviously clear of any display work, due to the time of year and I headed left towards a door in the lean-to, in order to reach my room, already marked with a clear ‘3R’. As I passed some children who were playing and maybe one or two dinner-ladies, sorry: ‘Lunchtime Supervisors’ as they are now known, a hefty fist hammered into the small of my back. I had been physically attacked and it bloody hurt. However, the assailant’s reactions were slower than mine, for unbeknown to him I was a wicketkeeper and a trained PE teacher...
I spun left and apprehended him so quickly that he was unable to disappear into the crowd. Then, what to do? The hushed playground of children and dinner-supervisors clearly awaited the rookie teacher’s next move. I was being tested and the offender, a kid named Billy was at my mercy. A talking-to? A ‘don’t do that again’ warning? Death from my fist between his frowning eyes?
Quickly I shifted the boy through the door and along the corridor as all the spectators ran across to the windows. There was utter silence outside. I moved him to my classroom door and in clear view of the fascinated spectators he was severely admonished…
Thus punished, Billy was returned to the doorway from whence I delivered him into the playground, scattering his close mates and the other onlookers. They had all been educated that this young bloke was not going to be intimidated by thuggish behaviour and en masse they skulked away, muttering. Billy had received a warning and we didn’t speak again, for he was not actually in my class anyway, merely a Year 6 thug, for it turned out that he was a bully and was regularly in trouble…
Me? I felt really bad. Nothing was ever said about the incident but the kid really had caught me napping and the pain from the punch took some while to fade. I never had any hassle from anybody else during my two years at Audley…
On the day Billy left the school, preparing for life in a secondary school, he turned up at my classroom door, voluntarily this time. I was taken aback. He came in and handed me a wrapped gift. And then apologised for punching me so long ago. I was stunned and truly humbled.
I never saw him again…
I had been at Audley for maybe a couple of weeks and had already been attached to one of the four house teams. Lions were red, Bears were green, Stags were yellow but I had been placed in the blue Leopards team. One lunchtime, a quiet knock was heard on my classroom door and when I opened it there stood a small, red-faced, fair-haired girl, clearly from Y3. She just stood there looking forlorn and I asked her what the problem was. In her anguish, she asked me quietly which house team I was in and I replied, “Leopards. Why?” But she simply turned and walked away. Scratching my head, puzzled I returned to whatever I was doing and forgot about the incident until a couple of days later, whilst sitting in the staffroom. A Y3 teacher was telling a colleague about a little girl called Helen in her class, who had refused to be in the house team chosen for her...
I listened intently to the story for the new Year 3 pupils had simply been told which house team they would be in from a register of names, rather like dealing a set of cards I guess and yet Helen had asked if she could be in Leopards instead of the team she had been attached to. She was quietly, respectfully insistent but when she was told that the list was finite, she had apparently became terribly upset, at which point the teacher agreed to allow this one child to choose her team. I sat, perplexed. And said nothing…
Sadly for the Lions, the Bears and the Stags, Helen turned out to be a fast athlete and an accumulator of many house points in class due to her brightness and helpfulness. Leopards would subsequently do rather well in team competitions during my two years at Audley…
Audley had once been a secondary school with a first-floor level, still displaying evidence of the old science laboratories with balances in glass cases and long tables once used for experimentation. I recall having to take my lads upstairs to attempt to make things, usually aeroplanes out of balsa wood. That was a murderous experience for a left-handed sports teacher, whose idea of artistic creativity was a pass inside a full-back.
Somehow we got through it but the results were really pathetic.
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| MY LADS PUT TOGETHER A MAINLY BALSA WOOD GYMNASTICS DISPLAY FOR AN EXHIBITION... (YEAH, I KNOW...) |
The bespectacled teacher Miss Glew had started at Audley after my first year had been successfully completed and it was in one of those upstairs rooms that my parting shot at the boring to the extent of coma Mr Davies was strategically placed. I was able to embarrass Miss Glew too…
Phil Gosling, a Yorkshireman and I had conned Miss Glew in around October 1973, that each year the staff took part in a pancake race on Shrove Tuesday and she appeared to believe us. I even made up a non-existent route as we were explaining it all to her. Everyone would be taking part, we assured her. Then we forgot all about it. She didn’t, however.
On the next Shrove Tuesday, she duly brought in her pancake mix. She had been totally fooled, although Phil and I had really not thought about the ruse for many weeks. She took it very well but the following week, a posted brown paper parcel appeared in the staffroom for me. It was soft and lumpy and when I opened it, I found a pair of cooked, cold and sloppy pancakes. Touché...
I said nothing about it but threw one away and placed the other in a jar, tucked it away at the back of my art stock cupboard and allowed it to mould, unpleasantly. When it came to the end of the summer term and the exhibition of children’s work in the old science laboratories was to take place, I needed to take attention away from the rather weak output of craft-work by my boys and so I included the smelly, moulding pancake as an exhibit. It reeked. And it was a total if surprising hit with parents, for I had labelled it as a ‘mouldy pancake, as created by Miss Glew’. Mr Davies, the headteacher was confused, I smiled quietly and left the school for a promotion after the summer break.
We broke into Miss Glew’s room a few times that year too, changing the children’s desks around, or altering spellings on her blackboard, which caused mayhem, as well as encouraging the pupils to check everything they copied down in handwriting practice sessions.
Phil was a gentle beanpole of a chap, who played piano and had been forced to take hymn practice sessions, which he really didn’t enjoy much, as he was competing with the children’s indoctrination by the Bay City Rollers’ manufactured music. The children hated hymn practices. One day, I made the gruelling session lighter for Phil and the pupils by slipping through a side-door onto the stage, behind the piano-tinkling Phil. This of course had been a secondary school and the stage was a real bonus for us.
I found a cleaner’s broom leaning against a wall and poked it between the curtains, so that laughter began to ripple as more and more children noticed the broom-head with a crew-cut peeping and twisting. I withdrew it as Phil turned round then hid but I soon returned to the middle of the stage and slipped the broom beneath the curtains this time. The kids were really in bits at this juncture and soon Phil realised it was me and a huge beam appeared on his face too. The broom appeared stage right and left also, before I slipped back through the door and went away, without alerting the reclusive Mr Davies, who maybe popped his wavy hair round the staffroom door only once every two months, probably to check whether we were still working there or not.
On that stage, my class performed a class assembly, which was a modern day take on ‘The Good Samaritan’, using Dr Hook and the Medicine Show’s song, ‘Carrie Me, Carrie’. The children acted out the song’s lyrics with a narrator speaking the words. I never forgot that morning because of the silent reactions of the other children, who looked on, fascinated. The record played as the children filed into and out of assembly…
Ken Leeming was an 'old school' teacher who didn’t actually communicate with the schoolchildren but bellowed beyond them and had the aforementioned Billy in his class to deal with. He referred to the lad as ‘William’… Ken was like a wispy-haired, non-athletic, large-nosed cartoon character who ran the school’s soccer team but had little knowledge of the game. Thus I helped him by working for two years with the younger lads. Ken simply played them in his team when they reached Year 5 and Year 6.
I ran a cricket team though and I still have all of the scorebook evidence of the games we played. Ken had bought a number of pairs of running spikes for the Audley athletes though and those kids were almost unbeatable, even against Highfield School’s athletes, who ran on damp grass in plimsolls. Was it unfair to use spikes? Well there were some complaints of course but all schools could have bought spikes had they wanted to but Ken, for Audley, actually had. A few years on, Audley was banned from using them. Er, they still won races, however...
My cricket team played in the Saltley Schools League and I was blessed with several left-handed batsmen. Usually six or seven left-handers played in the same team. My two main bowlers were Kevin Benbow and Mark Reddington, who were simply accurate. Opposition bowlers, mostly right-handers had been told to bowl the ball to bounce just outside a right-hand batsman’s off-stump, so of course my left-handers confused those opponents, who fouled up their lines of bowling and my lads simply hooked the wayward deliveries away to the leg-side.
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| THAT'S THE TROPHY WE WON FOR TOPPING OUR DIVISION... ANDREW CHAMBERS HOLDS IT TIGHT WITH KEVIN BENBOW... |
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| MY FAB POSING CRICKETERS... |
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| ...AND AGAIN... |
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| THE OFFICIAL SHOT: BACK: MYSELF, MIKE MACRITCHIE, DAVE COLEY, ? PRICE, ADRIAN RAVENSCROFT, MARTIN JONES, ANDREW BIGG; SEATED: CRAIG POVEY, PAUL ABRAHAM, ? LAWLER, ?KAFETZIS; FRONT: G JONES, MARK REDDINGTON, ANDREW CHAMBERS, KEVIN BENBOW. |
We made a cup final, beating Heathlands in the semi-final by 8 wickets but lost the final in a close finish against Shawhill, whose team was loaded with rather well built West Indian lads, whose birth certificates were likely in some doubt, even if they existed at all. It was the emerging moustaches which made me wonder...
One of my best batsman was on holiday for that game but the Audley children ran the more mature looking Shawhill team close. We made 31 all out but the opponents managed to get to 32 with 8 wickets down in a tense finish…
At that time Saltley’s Shawhill and Highfield schools had under-11 male athletes who were usually incredible at the area sports too, in races which seemed like men against boys…
I used to hold catching practices for my cricketers at lunchtimes, using a hard cricket ball which was also a kind of punishment for the bad lads who didn’t want to lose face by complaining about the sore hands, the bruised fingers and my hard throws. Great fun.
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| THE LADS SO DESERVED THEIR SUCCESS... |
One lunch-time, I took my cricketers down to Glebe Farm Park for some practice on grass and a Year 6 girl, the skipper of the rounders team asked if she could come along. The lads wanted her to bat and gods, did she whack my bowlers about… It was criminal that at that time girls were restricted to playing their games and boys theirs…
That brings me to my first car…
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| NOTE THE KROOKLOK... |
To get to Audley when I first started there, I caught a 55 bus to Cole Hall Lane which was a ten minute journey and then walked along the lane to cross a Bailey Bridge which spanned the River Cole, before cutting across Glebe Farm Park and past the local shops to reach the school. However, I had bought a car for £250, a Ford Anglia, rather like the one from the Harry Potter films.
I took no driving lessons at all but the car stayed on my future sister-in-law Josie’s drive, next door to my future mother-in-law’s house in Erdington. Josie’s husband Barry went out with me a few times, as did her older brother Roly, an ex-Aston Villa reserve player, who is still 9th on Hereford United’s all-time scoring list.
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| ON FUTURE SISTER-IN-LAW JOSIE'S DRIVE, THE RIDGWAY, ERDINGTON, BIRMINGHAM... |
However, Roly was harsh and took me driving along Witton Road, near Villa Park which always had parked vehicles on each side of it and buses running both ways along it. I hated that route, having to negotiate stopping, starting and squeezing between the parked vehicles.
I took my driving test on June 6th 1973 in my Ford Anglia, NAC 759 F and there was no chance of me passing it. I had never completed a turn in the road at all whilst practising and reversing round a corner was a real problem. However, I did drive a little with my father too when the test was nigh, which of course helped me not at all.
The test I took was a late afternoon event, the test centre was on the same row of shops as my dad’s insurance office and he waited there with Jenny, my girlfriend while I took the test, both having travelled to the centre in the car with me.
As the examiner and I left the office, there was one vehicle parked outside in a bay and the rather stern chap stopped me to ask me to read the number plate of “…that car…” which he pointed at.
“Which car?” I replied with typical good humour but the fellow simply pointed harder and retorted with some annoyance, “THAT one…” I read it to him as my heart sank. The chap was Mr Miserable…
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| THE TALL BUILDING RIGHT OF CENTRE IS THE FOX & GOOSE PUB. THE TEST CENTRE WAS SITUATED JUST THE OTHER SIDE OF THE INN... |
My car was lurking round the corner in Mickleover Road and we got in silently. I pulled on my seat belt and invited him to do the same but he refused the offer. I was astounded…
In those days one had to do a section of the test using hand signals but after I had reversed around a corner surprisingly successfully, he then told me to use hand signals. He asked me to stop and do a turn in the road, which threw me totally because I was still using hand signals. He told me to carry on using them and I was thus confused and panicky.
Incredibly, despite the handicap, I realised that I had turned the car without mishap and knew that an emergency stop and a hill start were left to do.
The examiner finally slapped his hands on the dashboard to signify an emergency stop and I obliged but his arms thumped against my windscreen and I grinned, recalling asking him earlier whether he wished to use a seat-belt…
The hill start took place on Bromford Road, close to where my kids would later attend Bromford Infant and Junior Schools, later to be renamed Hodge Hill Primary School. I managed that and by the time I was returning to Mickleover Road, I realised that I had actually driven better than I had driven before, although I was still not confident that I would pass my test.
When I parked up, the examiner asked me several questions about my car and then about the Highway Code, before staring at his clipboard and saying in a dismissive, gruff voice, “I’m pleased to say that you have passed your test…”, before asking for a signature and exiting my car.
I couldn’t believe it… I just sat there. I was a qualified driver, thanks to hand signals, I guess…
I started my Anglia, drove round the corner and drew up in front of dad’s office where he and Jenny simply stared in disbelief, realising that I had been a successful candidate. I drove them home to Nearmoor Road and ate dinner there…
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| MY CARD OF CONGRATULATIONS FROM ROLY, HIS WIFE JAN & THEIR THREE KIDS: MICHELLE, BEVERLEY & IAN... |
The only real skid I had ever suffered was in a 1973-74 winter frost, as I approached the Cole Hall Lane roundabout. It must have been black ice, for as I braked, ready to enter the roundabout and turn left, the car did a 360 degree turn and stopped facing the way I had started. Shaken, I turned left and drove on to school.
Hence in the summers of 1973 & 1974, my Ford Anglia would be transport for seven or eight of my cricketers for the short journey to play cricket at Stechford Playing Fields. Two on the front seat, five, maybe six on the rear seat, whilst another teacher would often take the other four, or I would have to abandon those I had already deposited and return for the others…
My father actually called on the Audley caretaker, sorry, site manager, for insurance purposes at that time but it really felt at times like I was being spied upon…
Eight Or Nine
They wave enthusiastically
And I wave back,
Almost sadly,
Knowing what they must feel;
Such merriment,
Now turning,
Swinging Teddy high…
Laughing faces.
Skipping gaily.
A pity this must cease
Very soon now…
How suddenly those
Charming, girlish expressions
Disappear into blank,
Ordinary
Emptiness:
The sullen youth…
Moments
To savour.
Certainly…
Pete Ray
1974; revamped March 2007
Children left the classroom to go to lunch. Looked back and waved the hands of time over my mind.
There had been a 5-a-side football tournament for both boys and girls during my second year, the games being played during lunch-times over a period of a few weeks and this culminated in two finals.
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| THE AUDLEY STAFF WINNERS: BACK: 007 PHIL GOSLING, 710 KEN (WEAR MY TIE AT ALL COSTS) LEEMING, WHO WAS THE SPORTS TEACHER & FINALLY THE HEADTEACHER MR DAVIES, IN WHITE PLIMSOLLS; FRONT: 17 MYSELF & 0 DAVE GOTHERIDGE (AN EPILEPTIC, WHOSE CLASS WAS ALWAYS BRIEFED ABOUT WHAT TO DO IN AN EMERGENCY...) |
The children entered their own teams but one of the prizes was a match against the staff. It was billed as a real crunch game and Mr Davies actually took part, Phil Gosling did too and the game was incredible. The staff-team consisted of me and four non-footballing players and we were losing by one goal until the final two minutes, when I battled hard to score an equaliser, before picking up the ball again on the left and smashing a left-footer across the kids’ goalie, who could only stand and gape as the ball ripped into the top right corner of the 5-a-side goal-net.
It was a hot day, I knew I was going to throw up and so I raced into the gents’ toilet at the final whistle, vomited and then confronted the wry and disbelieving faces of the really good lads’ team who all thought they were going to embarrass the teachers with a thrashing. I really enjoyed that.
I did appreciate my two years at Audley but I eventually applied for a job at Firs Junior School, mainly because I would be in charge of all the sports teams there and partly because it was a promotion to a Scale 2 position. The headteacher Mr Rees, a ‘Blakey’ from ‘On the Buses’ lookalike, drove to Audley to watch me teach and invited me for an interview. I was the only candidate and I was offered the job. I accepted it. It was weird though, for I had already applied for a similar job at a school in Yardley, called Oaklands. The headteacher was Miss Stitt, my old headmistress from my infant days at Sladefield Road but I had heard nothing back from her at all, after she had met me.
So, I then applied for the Firs job, was offered it and accepted it and informed Miss Stitt out of good manners what had occurred, for I had still heard no word from her at all. She replied with a very unpleasant letter, stating that she had wanted me for the Oaklands job and was going to invite me for interview. That was naughty of her but after I wrote back explaining my actions, an uneasy peace soon ensued…
The second of the lads against the staff soccer games ended in a resounding victory for the teachers. The boys were too often confronted by a long pair of teachers’ legs, finding no room to move and basically the staff players simply got in the way. A fine tactic… I netted an early penalty past Adrian Ravenscroft in the lads’ goal and after Adrian had made several good saves, our own goalie Ken Leeming raced out too far and Kevin Benbow squeezed a difficult shot into the net for 1-1. I netted twice more, Eddie McEnery crashed home a fierce shot and it was 4-1 to the staff at the break. Too many teachers’ shots flew wide in the second period, Adrian made some brilliant saves and the lads fought tooth and nail, until I squeezed home the 5th goal. The headteacher netted an opportunist’s strike and Adrian could only push one of my efforts into his net to make it 7-1. Our change-goalie Phil Gosling kicked Kevin Benbow’s penalty away and the boys were soundly beaten.
Dave Coley, Andrew Ells in defence, Craig Povey and Mike MacRitchie in midfield with Kevin up front did so well for the boys but Adrian was the star in goal. Mr Lewis swept up in the staff defence and the others were simply too strong for the pupils, despite lacking any football skills.
Final score: Stechford Strikers 1 Staff Stars 7…
During that second year at Audley, the lads in my class were left with me for one afternoon per week, whilst the girls went off to do needlework with a peripatetic teacher. However, because we were in a classroom hut away from the main school, there was a hidden part of the infants’ playground behind our own base. So, instead of doing woodwork or craft with the boys during the winter and spring terms, which I was unable to offer much help with anyway, we abandoned the classroom and I coached the lads at football…
Nobody ever found out as far as I am aware, not even the girls, for the lads had started to place cardboard, scissors, wood and glue out on their desks before the girls were collected for their sewing sessions. This led to panic in the summer term, as something needed to be produced for the end of year exhibition, so that the lads, most of them by then rather proficient at football, rushed to get some models completed in every spare moment to get something sorted out for the display…
Brum School Sounds: How It Used To Be…
The school corridor in the middle of the day
Echoes with sounds as I make my way
To my classroom, wondering at the cause
And thus I choose to listen, think and pause:
Teachers’ voices
Making choices,
Spelling words
Of kinds of birds;
Children’s feet
Rapped a beat
Along the floors,
Then banging doors;
Scraping chairs
And “Sir, it’s not fair…”
A desk lid slams
During class exams,
As children concentrate…
Running taps,
Odd loud claps,
To clear up neatly
Or sit up sweetly;
Chattering lips
As class-fool trips
But Sir’s loud shout
Results in a clout
On idiot’s leg,
Brightening it red:
Which means the class sits up straight…
Pencils scribbling,
Sandwich-nibbling,
Girls a-giggling,
Restless wriggling;
Brushes shifting,
Furniture lifting,
Gymnasts obeying,
Buyers paying
For daily lunch
Of Crunchy Munch;
White straws draining
Milk, but it’s raining;
Doors are slammed
And cupboards are jammed
With too much classroom junk…
Squelchy wiping,
Secretary typing
Words galore:
A repetitive chore.
Plates a-rattling,
Stereo crackling,
Pages flapping,
Rulers tapping;
Words of warning,
Hidden yawning,
Unkind teasing,
Coughing, sneezing
And “Please can I go to the toilet?”
Balls hitting walls,
“Be quiet!” teacher calls;
A whistle is blown,
Methods are shown,
Hockey stick is flying,
Bruises appear and crying
Out “Teacher’s insane,
Doing games in the rain…”
Then a sigh of relief as the bell rings…
Then they all go home
And the place falls short
Of a noisy zoo:
Now a silent court,
With chairs on desks and lights struck out…
Rooms of darkness with sawdust smell,
Cleanliness, loneliness and much to tell
Of sounds they had held during the day,
Of bellowing children with too much to say;
But the school’s now empty and silent lies,
Where sound curls up and quietly dies….
Pete Ray
Having been taught in Birmingham schools (Sladefield Road Infants, Hillstone J&I, then King Edward’s Aston)
those sounds were normal to me.
They returned to my life when I taught in Birmingham schools as an adult…
However back at Audley, my girls’ needlework display was superb and really showed up what my lads had produced. All my fault, too…
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| NETBALLERS: TRACEY KENNING IS 2ND FROM THE LEFT AT THE BACK, NEXT TO TEACHER MAGGIE PEACH. 2ND FROM LEFT AT THE FRONT IS BEV SCOTT, NEXT TO LINDA TREADWELL... (MY DAD CALLED ON THE TREADWELL FAMILY FOR INSURANCE AS WELL!) |
The siblings Albert, Alan and Christina Stokes were rare characters at Audley… I taught the middle one, Alan and then his younger sister Christina. I was unfortunate not to be able to teach their older brother Albert but whilst watching him in assembly he seemed in a world of his own, staring in wonder at the ceiling and the upper walls of the hall. Christina simply grinned at people but Alan was cute in a rough kind of way, with his crew-cut hair and a more natural smile. They were perhaps not well looked after at home though…
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| ALAN, ALBERT & CHRISTINA STOKES... |
Tina Appleby was a very decent girl in my first ever class. She had a younger sister but also brilliant parents who had moved out of the area to Polesworth, just off the A5 near Tamworth but they had wanted the girls to stay at Audley.
The girls were brought into Stechford early every morning and Tina became a real helper, always tidying up, doing jobs and being useful before the rest of the children arrived. How times have changed… She continued to do this when she was in Year 6, making sure that my blackboards were clean, spare pencils sharpened, etc, every day.
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| MY YEAR 4 CLASS AT AUDLEY, BEFORE I LEFT... SAMMY RASHID IS FAR RIGHT ON THE BACK ROW, ONE OF THE LADS WHOSE CRAFT LESSONS WERE ACTUALLY FOOTBALL LESSONS... |
I often wonder what happened to the pair of them…
However, I must refer to one of lads, Kevin Benbow and the mate he sat next to in my class...
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| MIKE MACRITCHIE, KEVIN BENBOW & MARK REDDINGTON: ALL GREAT KIDS & ALL SELECTED TO THE SALTLEY CRICKET TEAM... (AND MY FATHER EVEN CALLED ON THE REDDINGTON FAMILY FOR INSURANCE TOO!) |
The two lads together in my first ever class, near the back of the room and an incident occurred which haunts me still. The kids were working quietly enough but I had to check the two lads twice because they were nattering, then sniggering, so when the third distraction arrived, I picked up a confiscated tennis ball from my desk and from a seated position, chucked it at the lads.
The ball bounced off Kevin’s head which made both of them jump but then to my dismay, it flew upwards towards the corner of a window, where a long window pole was leaning. What happened next was just like slow motion, as the ball dislodged the pole, which toppled. I was in awe as it fell silently towards the two lads then smashed onto the classroom floor behind their chairs and they shot up onto their feet like they had been electrocuted…
I reacted instantly with, “Sit down you two… And shut up both of you because I can do that every single time…” There was no further trouble from the terrified pair and I breathed a deep sigh of relief, before instructing them to replace the pole…
However, I moved on for the 1974-75 school year, to Firs Junior School in Castle Bromwich…
