FIRS JUNIOR SCHOOL (1974-81):
The characters…
I remember visiting the school, whilst still at Audley and wandering into a hut to meet my new class, which was going to be moving up to Year 5. Their teacher, a laid-back kind of guy, who had married a member of staff from Firs, introduced me to the motley crew and I recall that in mid-conversation he berated Gary Warner: “Gary, stop fiddling with Rosina...”
The class laughed as one but interestingly, Gary’s London born dad had been at school with Harry Webb, also known as Cliff Richard and I would later meet Gary’s younger sister Lesley, who would follow me up and down the touchline if I was running the line during a school soccer game. Her often difficult brother Gary was a decent footballer but he was also a Blues fan... The class teacher I replaced ended up teaching in Bordesley Green, following an odd career, giving up senior management simply to teach a class again…
The infants were always kept separate from the juniors at Firs and I never got to know any members of staff from the other side of the two separate playgrounds.
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| EARLY DAYS AT FIRS: MY HAIR SEEMS RATHER LONG... |
The house teams at Firs were of course Pine (green), Spruce (blue), Cedar (red) and my team Larch (yellow). When the school sports were approaching, which took place mainly on the playground but also on our small piece of grass, I would ask the Larch children in a house meeting who would like to take part. All of them wanted to, whilst kids from the other houses were often coerced into it due to a lack of volunteers. Larch practised too after school, having a go at the high jump onto a gym mat, the standing long jump on the grass and even getting used to the changeovers in the shuttle relays across the playground.
The other teachers hated it all. Larch always won the team trophies and those who weren’t running or jumping, etc, would cheer on and chant for their team-mates to claim points for us in all the events.
The headteacher loathed that. He would use a microphone to announce the winners of events and usually it was someone from Larch…
I loved it…
Headteacher Trevor Rees, who had stumbled into teaching following time in the RAF during WW2, looked like ‘Blakey’ from ‘On the Buses’ and was a Morris Dancer. Some pen picture that,…
His wife had died some time before I arrived at the school following an illness and he was thin, bespectacled, a Methodist and he always wore the same dull green suit, until Judy Caddick arrived as his Deputy… He spruced himself up somewhat then, but most despicably, he was a Birmingham City supporter. Clearly he knew precious little about football...
Rees would clench his hands together in prayer and screw up his eyes behind his glasses during his interminably boring assemblies, which often fell back onto his speciality, a particularly long-fingered version of the ‘finger family’ story. Tommy Thumb, Peter Pointer, Toby Tall and Ruby Ring all professed their importance until Baby Small pointed out that he must have been the most important of them all because he was the furthest from the worshipper but also therefore the closest to God when in prayer... Brilliant. But SO repetitive.
An assembly, broadcast on BBC radio was forced upon the children one morning per week and because Rees was no handyman, although he professed to be, things tended to go wrong for him. At Firs, I once saw him fall off the stage-blocks whilst rushing to set up the radio programme, then stride desperately in and out of the hall, to and from the actual radio which was plugged in inside the secretary’s room. Rees was attempting to get some sort of sound from the wired loudspeakers but having failed in his red-faced attempts to make the equipment work, he reverted to a story about, er, the finger family. Again...
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| THE HEADTEACHER TREVOR REES, MAX FAWCETT & ELAINE HAYLER... |
He did not like me, he resented my sense of humour, the fact that I watched Aston Villa play and of course my lack of classroom wall-decoration, caused by the fact that I had so little spare time. Or artistic talent…
One year, he decided that a parents’ evening should fall unusually on a Wednesday evening, when Aston Villa were playing an important European football tie, which I had already bought a ticket for. I asked him politely if he might be willing to change the day but he refused and so I stuck to my guns too and was grudgingly allowed to send a letter home to my pupils’ parents to ask them to attend during the following evening. Subsequently, I went to the match and pleasingly, I had a larger percentage of parents at my session than any other teacher managed on the previous day. Rees never chose a Wednesday for parents’ evenings again. I have no idea why…
My nickname for the headteacher was Clever Trevor, from Ian Dury’s song of the same name and when I was once asked to put some music together because the staff would be eating together in the staffroom after a parents’ evening, I included that song, which of course set off a degree of giggling…
Finally about Rees and possibly my best memory of him was actually not concerning a jape planned by me… Rare, yes, but this incident went down in Firs folklore. The milkman would arrive at school early each morning very early and deliver his crates of milk but he would often nip into the Gents’ staff loo for a shit… Consequently, the smell in there was rotten when the staff needed to use it.
I took it upon myself one evening before I went home to lock the cubicle from the inside and climb out over the door. This was my ruse to prevent the milkman from dropping his alternative delivery at the school…
However, the following morning I worked with Gym Club in the school hall and forgot about the loo door. Around 10am, a written message arrived in my classroom from the secretary, Mrs Smith, asking me to rush to the Gents and rescue Rees, who had needed a shit but obviously was unable to access the cubicle. Unfortunately he had attempted to climb over the door and become stuck, before aborting his attempt. I quickly dodged past his room and slipped into the toilet, climbed the door, unlocked it and raced back to my classroom.
Nothing was said about it at the time, probably because Clever Trevor was too embarrassed to admit his plight. The staff all knew though… Good old Mrs Smith…
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| BACK ROW: FAR LEFT IS LINDA WRIGHT; THIRD FROM LEFT IS CYNTHIA POUNTNEY (LATER ALLEN); PLUS ME & THE DOG... FRONT: JUDY PENZER, MARY BAILEY & SECRETARY MRS SMITH... |
Eventually I mentioned my ruse to keep the stinky milkman out of the loo in the staffroom, where Rees heard my explanation and seemed to realise that I hadn’t done it just to cause him problems… Two birds with one stone, eh?
Judy Penzer always taught in Year 3. She was like an Aunt to members of staff, she had no ambition but exuded a kind of importance, amassed gossip and lived in a nice house in Hodge Hill with two daughters and her husband, a secondary school teacher called, er, Brian. I was always uncertain about her loyalties, however. I truly feel she had a great loyalty to herself though.…
Pat Green, P. Green hilariously, was a decent woman, who married a guy called Gabb but we were friends, despite the day when I confiscated a rubber snake from a child and hurriedly chucked it into the staff-room right onto her lap albeit quite accidentally. I had no idea that she hated snakes and I swear she rose vertically out of her chair. Thus I was more pleased than anyone when the ‘animal man’, Roger Pearson brought in a real snake and Pat handled it, curing her of a deep seated fear.
The Yorkshire woman Linda Wright, whose dad had appeared on TV, claiming to have invented the Flowerpot Men’s language from his children’s attempts to blow water bubbles in the bath, was pleasant but ended up surprisingly married to fellow staff member Martin Cross, who was from Sussex.
He was not sporty like Linda but was more into camping and stage lighting. I used to egg Martin on to ask Linda out and invented a relationship for them in jest, until I was taken aside in frustration by Martin and was told that they were already dating and that nobody should know, especially Judy Penzer...
The two of them accompanied Jenny and myself to London, where we saw Villa play at Chelsea, which was their first proper trip out together. I believe they eventually ended up in Yorkshire, Martin becoming a headteacher but they were to divorce in time, I understand. Linda though soon moved on from Firs to Mapledene on the fringes of Birmingham Airport’s runways, to make the blossoming relationship between Martin and herself easier to manage.
Martin was generally OK and we were involved in a number of japes, including carrying a toilet, which had been removed for junk out of the boys’ lavatories. We hauled it from outside the building into Rees’ office, where we placed it in front of his chair, with his black plimsolls placed apart either side of it. We collapsed laughing because it looked like Rees had been blown upwards out of the pan… We both looked for a hole in the ceiling…
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| BACK ROW: MARTIN CROSS, ME & ARCHIE RUDDOCK; CENTRE ROW MIDDLE IS PAM SMITH; FRONT ROW IS PAT GREEN (LATER GABB), JUDY PENZER, CLEVER TREVOR REES, JUDY CADDICK & SECRETARY MRS SMITH... |
Martin escaped free but I received a dour note via the school’s secretary Mrs Smith, suggesting that I removed the toilet from Mr Rees’ room immediately. Nothing more was said about it. Funny though…
Martin played guitar and lived alone near Marston Green, which a couple of Year 6 girls would clean for him sometimes on Saturdays, with their parents’ permission of course.
Martin and I performed the ‘There’s A Hole In My Bucket’ song for the school one day. No idea why but it went down well (not THE well, of course…)
Although he liked to control things, we actually worked well together on school productions, for he organised the lighting and music accompaniment but I wrote the scripts and worked on the acting side of things. He organised a couple of camping holidays, which I went on too, providing the entertainment for the kids, who needed a holiday from the drudgery of the Firs Estate and those breaks were so successful.
One was to Sussex, where Martin managed to borrow tents from his old Scout group and the second camp was in Somerset, resulting in a fatal visit to Butlin’s at Minehead.
I went on a camp in my first year at Firs too, with my new colleagues but recall getting angry there about the constant playing of a Harry Nilsson album by the camp organisers, which was meant to be a disco for the kids. I also went a couple of times to a fine hostel, which was I think Freshwater House overlooking Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight.
A tall ex-policewoman came to join the staff at Firs but she possessed so little humour. Why leave the force then? She worked with a bunch of bright children, forming a team to win the Saltley area’s Law and Order quiz. This was a coup but it called only for the memorisation of facts, which the hand-picked Firs children did really well at. And of course, their team coach had recently been a policewoman… Much kudos was attached to this competition because I wasn’t involved in it, nor was sport. Thanks Rees…
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| THE EX-COP, WHOSE NAME ESCAPES ME... |
Rees also forced my tougher and generally poorly behaved footballers to join his Morris Dancing group, practising during some lunchtimes in the hall, in preparation for the school’s May Day celebrations. However, he had previously threatened them with not being able to play football for me any longer unless they agreed to prance, much to their peers’ harrowing laughter. That, I have to admit, was cruel.
Paul Cohen, a solidly built central-defender in my team slapping sticks and skipping as a Morris dancer was no preparation for life after Firs. Maybe housebreaking tips would have been more appropriate for some of my footballers…
Elaine Hayler was a likeable colleague, rather tame and a slow-speaking Brummie, who rose later in her career to the higher echelons of education, I believe. Other members of staff included the very placid, dark-bearded, rather foppish Dave Loxton, who played the piano with creepy hands. I gave him some real stick much of the time but when a teacher called Mandy Eames arrived from Bromford Junior School, mainly because her marriage had broken up and she needed to change her name and teach elsewhere, she wound him up unmercifully, professing her lust for him on regular occasions. The staff was shocked, although they loved it of course, especially Mrs Penzer…
Mandy was raucous and Dave soaked it all up like a piece of damp blotting paper. Mandy was a daughter of Birmingham’s Councillor Eames and she moved off to Court Farm Primary School later in her career, to join, oddly, Eddie McEnery, my ex-Audley colleague, who was by then headteacher there and they really enjoyed their visits to Aston Hall, where I eventually taught groups from their school.
And of course, there was Archie Ruddock. Archie came from Ireland, I believe and he was a real character. Whenever I see the BBC’s Will Gompertz, I think of Archie and I dubbed him Archie McRuddock. No idea why.
We had a brilliant time at Martin Cross’ second camp, details of which will be discussed later but his demeanour in school was, er, eccentric. His wispy hair, slim build and stooge-like personage was a godsend for me. He started off by hanging children’s work on strings, like Christmas decorations from his classroom ceiling. This work was glued to sheets of white backing paper in the shapes of articles of clothing. It was a washing line, in effect. Brilliant…
A couple of times I grabbed his keys from the staffroom rack, opened up his classroom, left the key in the lock on the inside of the door and climbed out of his window. He was unable to get in of course and was forced to walk round the outside of the school buildings, climb in through the window and unlock his door for the children, who loved those kinds of pranks… Few of the kids stayed off school, in case they missed something…
One time, I nabbed a gigantic red bra from the leftovers following a Firs jumble sale, which were usually like obstacle races for some of the parents. They generally dived into the bundles on the table, like there was a coin or two hiding somewhere beneath the often evil-smelling cloth which was piled up in unpleasant mountains.
I broke into Archie’s room before school on the following morning and placed the bra in one of his desk drawers. The joke backfired on me however. The most vociferous Y3 child in his class, who I was, er, fortunate enough to teach when she was older, Michelle Kilgallon, was Archie’s ‘weather monitor’ and as she delved in his drawers for the relevant wooden sign saying ‘RAIN’, or ‘WINDY’, her hand dropped onto the bra... Archie responded instantly to Michelle’s:
“What’s this, Mr Ruddock?” with:
“Ah, that must be Mr Ray’s. Take it down to his room please, Michelle...”
He didn’t break his face apparently but Michelle really enjoyed bringing the offending article to me, which thoroughly amused my class too...
Judy Caddick was a decent woman but I kept clear of her really, for she was clearly a career woman, often rather serious, who kept her distance from Rees and she ended up as the headteacher at Short Heath Primary School, whose children I also taught at the Museum later in my career.
I had intended to cause Rees the Head a problem in assembly one day by writing a ‘10 Metres’ swimming certificate out for Arthur Negus, the famous TV personality and antiques expert, whose name was legendary. I was so desperate to see his reaction as he called out the name but unfortunately, Rees handed the job of taking assembly on that day to Miss Caddick and I squirmed in my chair for I could do nothing about reclaiming the certificate from the pile she was about to award.
When she came to the name, she declared:
“Arthur Negus, 10 metres. Well done, Arth... Ah, I think Arthur must be absent today…”
And she glanced at me… I nodded in agreement and nothing was ever mentioned about it again, as the other staff members wiped tears from their eyes and the children looked around them in a forlorn attempt to identify the fictitious Arthur Negus...
Martin Cross and I worked a ruse on Archie too, for a period of several days, following one particular morning when we were sitting either side of him in assembly. When Rees the Head clasped his hands together and screwed up his eyes in prayer, we lifted the wooden bars joining the front and back legs of Archie’s chair simultaneously, as he prayed. He was suspended five or six centimetres from the floor and was stunned into fear, totally unable to move. Other staff members were trying not to laugh out loud as Archie wobbled through the Lord’s Prayer, before we lowered him at: “...for ever and ever...”
He was red-faced and shaking, no children witnessed the jape and so we repeated it a few times. If he held back to allow everyone else to sit down in assembly first, so that he could slip into a free, safe, seat, as Rees the Head walked in, the two members of staff sitting either side of him would simply stand up, Martin and I would replace them and they would sit in our seats, whilst Rees looked on perplexed. Then, like before, during prayers Archie would begin to ascend towards heaven’s gates... Other staff members would have handkerchiefs to mouths and eyes, attempting to control their laughter. Rees never knew…
Mary Bailey was a character. She was a bespectacled female with black hair who liked sports… She married Steve Perring, a Manchester United supporter who rather unusually actually hailed from Manchester. Nice guy. He was in industry then took on a teaching course and the pair still live close to me now in Solihull. Mary’s vehicle, an orange Mini-van, was to be utilised by Archie and me on one of the school camps, where Brian Penzer spent camp-time out of his wife’s way tending the campfire, surely to avoid her…
The caretaker, who would now be termed: ‘Site Manager’, Mr Sandford was an odd little chap, with a high-pitched voice, voyeuristic spectacles straight from a German WW2 quartermaster’s stores, a downtrodden manner and the appearance of cowering. Monty Python’s team would have loved him…
His wife was bigger than him, looked well beyond her years but was pleasant enough. It was said that Mr Sandford kept girlie magazines in his boiler room but who am I to speculate? Oddly, when I left the school, they bought me a gift, wrote an ode about me and their very shy, hermit of a daughter told me she thought that I was funny, apparently, even though I recall never speaking to her. She must have been an isolated child at secondary school and was surely teased and bullied unmercifully. The Sandfords eventually retired to a neat house along the Heath Way in Shard End. And they liked me but I realised that too late...
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| THE TRIUMPHANT STAFF SOCCER TEAM v THE LADS... THE EXCELLENT ALAN MOON IS SECOND FROM THE RIGHT AT THE FRONT. BACK-ROW: MARTIN CROSS (IN RATHER, ER, UNUSUAL KIT), REES IN BLACK PLIMSOLS, THE REVEREND JOHN MARCH IN CRICKET SWEATER & ME... IN FRONT OF US IS OUR GOALIE, THE GUEST JOHN MORRISSEY, WHO WOULD DIE FOLLOWING A CAR CRASH PRIOR TO JOINING THE ARMY... |
The Reverend John March would often take assemblies, ending with a suggestion that the children should do the right thing, not so that it would be seen by others to be right but ‘because it was the right thing to do’. I remembered that. He also helped a Labour candidate to oust a Conservative MP from his Hodge Hill constituency, at a time when the Tories took wholesale seats from the Labour party. I was impressed. John was a nice guy, bearded, bespectacled, a musician too and he thought I taught Firs kids in the right manner and with humour… His support was vital for me. Rees the Blakey look-alike was always ready to put me down though…
I used to write daft reports about the other teachers’ assemblies too and post them on the staff-room wall. They were meant to be a bit of fun and the teachers would always keep them afterwards. Pam Smith, an arty English major failed to appreciate my humour however. She didn’t sleep for several nights before taking one assembly and told Rees that she was afraid of my article about her story... He therefore asked me not to write anything. Why didn’t she just ask me not to write anything about her assembly? Simple enough…
Her assembly turned out fine. She also cried to him behind my back when we put on a grand show for parents, saying that she couldn’t work with me rehearsing the play, even though I had written the script, because the children would only ever listen to me. I walked away. But I was begged by Rees to rescue her as time went on because, strangely, the children wouldn’t listen to her. Or behave… She was older than me. I even taught a class of hers at Birmingham Museum later in my career and she was fine with me. She was an unusual character… My assemblies were also reported on by others and I have one such document to this day.
I had found a pull-along cuddly dog on wheels at a school jumble sale and snaffled him for myself. He appeared on staff photos and I would pull him into my assemblies, stroke him and tell him to stay, then I would tell the children a story with some kind of moral.
I would also take a number of other items into the hall with me as props, place them down onto the stage-blocks in silence, whilst the children were simply hushed, wondering which items would be utilised, but I rarely used even one of them.
It’s what I did. I wrote my own prayers and chose my favourite hymns to add to the show. Rees could say nothing. He hated me, my assemblies and my humour but knew also that the children listened to me and understood the points of my stories. So he said absolutely nothing…
One class assembly, performed by my children, even brought instantaneous applause from the invited parents, which had never happened before at all. And Rees, the Methodist hated that too...
In another class assembly several children were dressed as plants, meant to be the types of children seen around a school. They were interviewed in turn by one of my girls, as if for a television programme. There was a litter plant covered in sweet wrappers, crisp bags and the like, who ripped off the bits from the costume and chucked them about. There was the playground tale-teller and another one with no manners. The footballer, played by Alan Moon, a Birmingham City fan was dressed in his kit and waved a rattle noisily.
He had to reply to the interviewer’s questions by simply saying, “When’s the next game? When’s the next game?” Many of the lads did that whenever they saw me and frustrated, I would always point them in the direction of the sports notice board. Alan was supposed to whirl his rattle at that point but when he did, it fell apart and flew in all directions. The audience of parents roared with laughter at this accidental mishap, which became even more raucous when I stepped onto the stage and declared:
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| ALAN MOON, SECOND FROM LEFT IN THE BACK ROW... |
“Well, what did you expect? It was a Blues rattle...”
Rees was beside himself with anger but the parents, the children and the staff had all loved what the children had done and he could say nothing…
I felt the Two Finger Family about to be launched from my left hand in Rees’ direction...
Cynthia Pountney, later Allen was a part-time teacher who played the piano and also worked with small groups of children to help them with their reading. My father knew her when she was a child because he called on her parents to collect their insurance premiums. He recalled her sitting at a piano in the house, learning how to play. She married Ant Allen, who was a drinking mate of Firs teacher Max Fawcett, who left soon after I arrived and became a headteacher, late in his career.
Both Max and Ant were Villa supporters… Ant and Cynthia lived in Bromford Road near where I lived when I returned to Birmingham from Tamworth and I was impressed by one of the cars on their drive: B 52 BOM… Some number plate, that…
Next: the three school summer holidays for the Firs kids…
