Thanks John for your kind words.
The long dormant name Bevvers Lloyd rises from the murk that
passes for my boyhood memories. As I remember both he and Dickie
Harbour put paid to any aspirations I might have had for following a career in
science or engineering. Their lessons were demonstrations, not
practicals, the theory often as opaque as the contents of the two science texts
we had; I think entitled Electricity & Magnetism and Mechanics. Mr
Lloyd was, as I recall, just one step short of being totally unstable; Dickie
on the other hand seemed entirely impervious to any educational needs on my
part.
For me woodwork was another closed shop. I was as ham-fisted with a
chisel as any boy who had passed through the care of a dapper man called (I
think) Ray Jones. He said he was an assistant organist at the Abbey. His
dress, walk and manner always caused great amusement amongst some of my
more worldly-wise class mates - can't think why myself.
Spider Webb produced consistently excellent English Lit lessons.
Peter Coard was certainly the most inspirational (if rather laid back) teacher I have ever encountered (and I have been teaching now for 31 years). Alright, his disgusting pipe was not the best advertisement for a healthy lifestyle but his passion for architectural history and in particular the Georgian Bath vernacular was infectious.
By the way does anyone know what happened to the fragrant Mrs Williams?
Furthermore who can remember the painful rugby practices at Combe Down held during the frozen winter of 1962/3 or the attempted debagging of Mike Williams by an enormous boy called Dines during a match played that same winter?
Mike
As far as I remember, Wally taught maths (and I actually
understood his way of delivering quadratic equations et al), could be a little
irritable at times, was short of stature but I think he was essentially a good-hearted
bloke.
I think that a number of the teaching staff had had difficult wars and it is
hardly surprising that some of them could be a little flaky at times
(particularly if they had done time in Japanese POW camps).
Yes the preponderance of Welsh staff has always puzzled me - we thought that
after the war the school got a job-lot of unemployed ex-grammar boys from the
valleys to paper over the cracks of a threadbare teaching establishment - no
other reasonable explanation could be offered - certainly after a particularly
unpleasant training session with Leyshon the racist comments re our Celtic brethren
were rife. It was from him that I first encountered out and out prejudice.
I enjoyed Soccer at my old school and wondered why it was not possible to
run a team at B Tech - in a truly vitriolic outburst asked me why I wanted to
"play a game for girl guides".
Mike
- 7/23/2009 11:52:39 PM
I think we shall be getting an overtime bill from Bill soon for all this extra work on Friend Reunited and Pub Pals!!!