THE RAY/HEDGES FAMILY HISTORY BLOG...: MY THIRD TEACHING APPOINTMENT...

Teaching At At Blakesley Hall School, Early 1980s…

Derek Hall…

I taught his younger brother, who was something of a scallywag but Derek Hall was a natural sportsman. I managed the previously ailing East Area Primary Schools’ football team for a season before I left Blakesley Hall School and their fortunes improved, pleasingly. I chose a goalie, Paul Devall from a struggling school team on the Coventry Road, who did well for me but my skipper was Derek. It was all so easy for him; he was skilled and possessed fine timing, exuding a maturity which his cheeky sibling Gary lacked.

DEREK HALL STANDS NEXT TO ME & HIS DAFT BROTHER GARY IS THIRD FROM THE LEFT AT THE BACK...

I held a cricket practice after school one day before my second season there, although I was to leave the school before playing an actual match and Derek’s brother was keen to attend. Derek wasn’t. Unfortunately for the older brother, he was forced to stay behind anyway as he held the dubious honour of being responsible for getting Gary home and unlocking the front door after the school day. Initially, I allowed each boy just to use the bat with stumps leaning against a playground wall, following a simple demonstration of how to stand, hold the implement and when to back-lift it, allowing a swing and a follow-through, which would negate the typical last-second pull and swipe.

I was using a tennis-ball and it was patently obvious which boys possessed even a glimmer of hand-eye co-ordination and/or timing and which should have been scything hay on a Victorian farm instead. One or two lads had obviously used a cricket bat before but I could not tempt Derek to have a go. His mates finally encouraged him to try however and he succumbed to my gentle persuasion, despite the fact that he was clearly embarrassed that he had never before wielded such a lump of wood. I offered him a couple of pointers and then bowled a left-arm pitch to him, which Derek dispatched with a smoothly-timed half-volley straight back over my head, to thunderous cheers. I was shocked, Derek looked sheepish, so I sent down a quicker delivery to him, which he also smacked stylishly over my head.

Naturally gifted, Derek would have been my star batsman, with no coaching whatsoever. Sadly, his home background probably curbed his sporting talents eventually and I never heard of him again, after I had moved from the school.

We played three games during the first summer, with virtually no equipment, yet we won at Hillstone, drew an exciting match at Timberley but were well beaten by Bromford in our only other match.

We scored 52-9 (including 27 extras) in our 20 overs at Hillstone where Callaghan batted 6 runs for us then took 6 wickets for 9 runs as Hillstone were all out for 45. Nicholls, who had taken 4 wickets for 9 runs at Hillstone, then batted for 10 not out at Timberley, in a total of 53 for 8 wickets. Our hosts scored an identical 53 for 8 in their innings but we conceded 30 extras in that total.

Bromford crashed 74-5 in their 20 overs against us but we were skilled out for 23, although Blakesley’s Higgins took 4 Bromford wickets for 9 runs and also took two catches…

Derek Hall played in none of those matches and during the next summer would likely have been a real star…

The Headteacher…

The headteacher there was a chap named Egginton. He watched me teach at Firs, liked what he saw and asked me to interview for a Scale 3 position at his school. No-one else was interviewed, to my complete surprise and I managed to be offered the job, which I duly accepted. I was to work with gymnasts and a younger soccer team, as well as having responsibilities for Science but the enormity of the rather unreal everyday life at Blakesley was to surface rather quickly and make my four terms at the school somewhat puzzling.

Rumours of the spring term changes to school life had been heard being muttered in the staff-room, just after I had arrived in the January, including the word ‘operetta’. Those extravaganzas were apparently written, scored, produced and wallowed in by Egginton and as far as I could glean, teaching was a peripheral activity to him, for the success of the school’s representative groups and teams but mainly the magnificence of the lauded operetta and therefore his own brilliance, were paramount.

After Christmas, year-group teachers were handed typed, photocopied sheets of lyrics to unknown tunes, which each age-group of children needed to learn for the forthcoming operetta, by heart but as soon as possible too. Each year-group learned different songs. The first timetabled singing session was a complete shock to me. As my class and the other two Year 5 groups approached the hall, we could hear the piano banging out a catchy tune and there was Egginton, his back to us, blasting the keys like a mad professor attempting to awaken a long dead Vampire. I was amazed by the rumpus and before we had even squatted on the floor, he began bellowing over his shoulder that we should turn to a particular page, to a particular set of lyrics and join in.

Other members of staff stole glances at my incredulous expression. Join in? What? The pupils were poor at first and Egginton yelled at them for more effort, so I began to sing as well as I could, for fear that my class would be ostracised. It became chaotic as we suddenly moved onto a completely new song and Egginton simply bawled orders at us, over his bobbing shoulders, telling us which songs we would be expected to have practised for next time and that we would be tested too, a class at a time. It became frightening. The children were shit-scared of that crazy, disengaged, mad musician and those who could read the lyrics launched into full voice and those who couldn’t read at all made noises like Neanderthal Man at a wake.

MY CLASS AT BLAKESLEY HALL.
EMMA SANDERS IS 4TH FROM THE LEFT, SEATED ON A BENCH.
ONE OF THE TWINS, EXTREME LEFT OF THE TWO MIDDLE ROWS, HAS HER OWN STORY BELOW...

The songs were bludgeoned into the pupils’ heads and those with learning difficulties simply mouthed their inanities, in an attempt not to be spotted slacking by the wizard with eyes in the back of his balding head.

Timetabling was turned upside-down, for I was so frightened that my class would let me down in front of the mad musical professor, we sang lots during the days ahead. And more... In fact, one could hear other terrified teachers winding up their classes to chant and sing, as one took one’s class to games outside, or simply held a spelling test. The building became like a music school without talent. The hall was closed for P.E. lessons during the afternoons, for Egginton bashed on with all four year-groups, the piano straining under his Keith Moon-type physical abuse, except that the Who's drummer paled in comparison to Egginton...

Egginton wrote the scripts well in advance obviously, plus the lyrics and the music and he knew which children would be expected to audition for which starring roles and those children would find that their academic years had been largely curtailed after January. These pupils were removed from their classes whenever Egginton wanted them and the staff-room became a den for costume makers, like an Indian sweat-shop without the children, as parents were gathered in and given copious numbers of costumes to create. Even chorus members were to be clothed. It was incredible...

The operettas? Magnificent. Even the worst-behaved boys found themselves cast as clowning idiots, leaving them even more difficult to control when they returned to class, due to their impending fame and Year 3 girls’ fan-worship.

Characters, table tennis and raising money for the school…

One of the twins in my class once messed up a piece of work, not for the first time either and so when she brought it out to show me what she had done, I tore the offending page from her exercise book, also the loose leaf left behind at the back. I screwed up the two pages into a ball and threw it vertically upwards but as it came down, I volleyed it over my own head with my left foot.

The children were all watching and looked on in disbelief as the paper ball looped back upwards towards the ceiling and dropped perfectly into the waste paper basket near the blackboard. Neither they, nor I could believe it but I said straight away, "And I can do that every single time. Now get on with your work..."

The twins' mum later remarried and one of the children from that marriage ended up in one of my own kids' classes, so that the twins, Emma and Clare, then in their teens, would often chat to me when we met in the playground at Bromford School...

One child in my class was keen to go to a grammar school and her parents asked me for help with preparing her for the entrance examination and so I bought some typical ‘11+’ booklets which she worked on at home and I marked them in my own time.

Emma Sanders made it to King Edward’s High School for Girls after I had left Blakesley Hall and I received a fabulous thank-you letter from her parents…

She was also chosen as ‘Penny’, the leading role in the operetta ‘The Prince & The Butterfly’…

Headteacher Egginton’s wife was generally seen around school, as were his dogs, which his good lady and also favoured little girls would take for walks. Egginton’s office angled left into what were clearly living quarters, where he slept overnight sometimes, after penning his operettas late into the evenings and it was too late for him to drive home out of Birmingham. After divorcing himself for two terms from actually running his school, Egginton would invite the elite of the inspectorate, councillors and ‘important people’ to have prime seats at the performances and the lucky actors revelled in the attention. The chorus members became totally pigged off though and the teachers hated it all. Egginton was a fake. He was a composer and a musical director, not a headteacher. Blakesley Hall was splashed as brilliant. It wasn’t…

I ran a table-tennis club too and the kids did well, beating Timberley 8 games to 2, with both Chris Massey winning all three of his games, David Dunckley and Gary Hall two each. The doubles match was won by Chris and Dave too. However, after my ‘A’ team beat Wyndcliffe School near St Andrews, the cursed Birmingham City soccer ground by 7-3 (Greg Causer and John Turner won all three of their matches, plus together the doubles game) our Year 5 team was thrashed. The Asian kids there were unbelievably good at table-tennis and my players were hammered 10-0 by some fast, slick play by our hosts…

MY TABLE-TENNIS SQUAD...

I will never forget that evening…

I ran the 1982 Birmingham Marathon whilst teaching at Blakesley Hall and in aid of the school’s fund, I was sponsored. One teacher took a couple of photos of me as I was running, which was useful…

RUNNING THAT MARATHON...

The story of that marathon, the training for it and my subsequent return to playing football will be explored in another article…

My time, with no stops at all, was just over 3 & a half hours, although the start in the centre of Birmingham was so crowded that it was five minutes or so before I actually began to jog, then eventually run…

The school benefitted though…

Gymnastics & representative football...

A lot of children took part in gymnastics and we went places to display the work the children could do. A female teacher and I worked together on this.

THE WELL TURNED OUT BLAKESLEY GYMNASTS...

THE DISPLAY TEAM...

The East Birmingham football team which I ran for one season was tough because of the small number of schools in the area and and several of those housed a large number of Asian lads, whose main sport at that time was cricket.

THE EAST BIRMINGHAM SQUAD...

However, I held trials and managed to piece together a squad for our five matches. Quite clearly Aston, South and West were rather stronger than my Derek Hall inspired team and we lost 2-0 to Aston, 3-1 to West and 5-2 to South, before the lads did brilliantly to win 4-0 v Harborne and 1-2 on the road v Sheldon...

THE SQUAD AGAIN WITH GARY HALL INCLUDED, FAR RIGHT, FRONT ROW...

Derek Hall was joined in the team by younger brother Gary for the final three matches...

My own Y5 footballers would become a really decent Y6 team for the soccer teacher at the school and we played in a 7-a-side tournament, finishing runners-up to Alston, who beat us 1-0 in the final.