There were two reasons I had to pass the 11+ to get to grammar school. One
was the fear of falling foul of the Jones twins at secondary modern who seemed to be the
local bullies at the time (I mentioned this to my cousin recently who is a fair
bit older and she retorted “Oh, they weren’t that bad!”); the other was the fact
that my elder brother Richard was already a pupil and I lapped up his accounts
of whatever he and his classmates were getting up to. It probably didn’t help
though with those masters he had fallen foul of! For Mum it was yet another
child to have to kit out at the outfitters in Aldershot. (†)
Thus I found myself in 2B with dear old Nuncs, and local chums Ted Neville,
Rodney Connor, David Hughes, Jeff Barnes, Ian Bonham…
I suffered in Latin, just couldn’t grasp it, and was invariably at the bottom of
the class, but once Nuncs asked the Latin for ‘in the city’, and it amazingly
came all the way down to me. It was probably the only thing I had grasped and I
piped up “urbe”, for which I was given sixpence and the whole class had to make
room for me to go to the top. It wasn’t long however before I was back where I
belonged. I remember his sponsoring a trip to Fleet Cinema to see Richard the
Third, which we were reading that year. Much later, in 1965, when plans to move
to Frankfurt were in the making I bumped into him in the paper shop in Fleet and
told him of my intentions. “Oh, you won’t be any good at German either” he
retorted, which I thought rather unkind, but I can since reassure him, in thought anyway.
I had a pretty good singing voice, used to have to sing solo at
prayers in primary school and was in most musicals we put on, plus church choir.
Thus it was that I fell foul of ‘Beeb’, that very strange individual. I enjoyed singing
(still do) and couldn’t seem to or didn’t want to pretend I couldn’t, just to
avoid his classes. He had me singing Händels Messiah, and tried to keep me late
to ‘practice’, but the excuse of my having to get the bus always seemed to work.
I can’t recall his ever being improper to me, but didn’t we have fun with him! I
remember friend Fish slapping his wrist and telling him to leave off, and Timbrell
putting a dead mouse into the piano and making a great fuss when Beeb
opened the top to discover why a couple of notes were dead. And the ‘Beeb
baiting’ with ball bearings, or names trampled in the snow outside his window.
All very strange and, with hindsight, sad. It wasn’t surprising, of course, that
few volunteered for the school choir, and I recall an attempt, I believe from
the Jab, to get those who sang in their church choirs to enlist. We even had to
confirm in writing whether we were in a local church choir or not.
I had no problem with Doc. Sewell, in fact I enjoyed his lessons. I never
experienced anything improper with him either, was no good at Maths, but
English language seemed to be one of my few stronger subjects. On my first visit
to East Berlin in 1966 I even found a bookshop with copies of ‘Black Beauty°,
published in the GDR but with notes in Russian. I bought two copies, one of
which was intended for him. I can’t recall getting one to him, perhaps he had
left the school by then.
Dickie (Richards) Junior
was much too nice, at least to begin with, but had to put up with
an awful lot of heckling in RE. A few terms later he seemed to have changed
completely, as though he had taken a course in toughness. It backfired
miserably, however, and I can only recall his being a very unhappy chap.
Tommy Junior, or Jo Thomas as my brother’s age group called him, was strict but
fair, and his cold showers after PT were something else. Again, I don’t think
there was any impropriety involved. He even complimented me once after a soccer
match in which I had scored a goal, and in which he was referee. You didn’t want
to fall foul of him during cadets of a Friday. It was bad enough having to dress
up as squaddies, especially if you had business in Aldershot after school with
all those officers about. My problem was that I never knew who to salute (and
that comes from a Major’s brat!). I failed miserably in my attempts to join the
band, avoided the radio squad and map reading, so that left hanging around the
rifle range, or doing nothing at all except wandering around the school with a
rifle cadged from the armoury. In fact, Tommy caught me once: “Where are you off
to Lathan?” “Rifle range, Sir”. It seemed to work. Field Day was always exciting,
because we got to fire real ·303s.
Foster’s art classes were not to my liking, he always seemed bad-tempered, and I
got thumped once with a paint brush.
French with Charlie Upton was fine, but Charlie Sweet I did not get on with. Too
much of a stickler for pronunciation. “Ouvrez la porte” he would go, his long
thin nose quivering with anticipation, but he didn’t like what he heard.
However, since it was another of my better subjects, it must have helped.
I seem to remember table tennis sessions in the hall during lunch break, but was
rarely successful in getting a table. Roger Howells, an excellent player always
seemed to be able to bag the best table .
Former pupils who fell in action or were missing in action during WWII were listed on a Roll
of Honour in the hall. Later I was to work together with one of them, Tommy
Atkins, at FUDC. Lucky Tommy!
I once got into a fist flight with
poor Mackey, who broke my nose. No idea why we didn’t get on.
Someone brought a real boomerang to school, which started a
short-lived fad. Conkers didn’t last long either, nor
acorns. They even stopped us shoving the new Whizwheel cars along the gutters in
the quadrangles. We used to try to shut the classroom windows, nasty metal things,
from the outside. I duly lost a fingernail and had to go to hospital.
I recall a trip with Tom Pascoe to London, where we visited the Science Museum
and Fords at Dagenham. What a difference to a later visit to clean and shiny
Vauxhall at Luton. I had chosen his woodwork class rather than German (!)
because my brother used to bring home various things he’d made. But in truth it
was a waste of time because all we did was mess about, making sticky glue and
heating up coins for someone to pick up, etc.
I regretted not having been able to afford the Wales trip to Towyn etc. I
remember Baz Harris telling me about their visit to Danygraig railway shed
(87C) where some of my favourite saddle tanks were stabled.
Now and again I was chosen to play soccer for the school. We even beat
Winchester once, thanks in the main to Dick Letford,
Bob Croucher, the Rumble
twins. Years later, must have been 1972, I was at Glasgow Airport waiting for a
flight back to Heathrow when I saw someone I thought I recognized. I went over
and asked him: “Are you Mick or are you Mo?” No longer sure which of the twins
it was, but it was good to chat.
I can’t recall the purpose of being in ‘Houses’, nor how we were split amongst
them. I was in Kingsley, I think we wore green. I guess it was mainly for
inter-house sport, and was probably an attempt at
cross-class integration.
A couple of times I played truant, not just to miss the first lesson due to not
having done my homework, but a whole day out. I had fallen in love with the
Tiger Moths I had seen prancing about in the air at Fairoaks airfield, so one
day I was to be found thumbing a lift along the Chobham Road in Woking. A van
stopped, and the driver offered to take me to the village, from where I could do
the rest on foot. As soon as I got in I froze and was speechless. The driver was
non other than Alec Bedser (Surrey and England cricketer) who had an office
furniture firm in Woking with his brother Eric. I still have his autograph,
written in my green ink Biro. It took until 1993 for me to actually fly in a
Tiger Moth, a German-registered one, from a Russian Hind helicopter base in the
former East Germany! Fantastic!
The other time (let’s keep it to two!) I cycled to Heathrow and was on the north
side near the wartime building where VIPs were interviewed for ‘In Town Tonight’
or whatever, when Broderick Crawford (Highway Patrol, etc.) appeared, and we
were duly photographed together, me with trousers still tucked into socks! Happy days!
On the school bus we would invariably pass girls waiting at their bus stops
going to Aldershot High, and I took a liking to one particular young lady
waiting at the Farnborough cinema. Our method of communication was to wrap a message
in an eraser held by an elastic band and lob it out of the window, no mean feat.
After a few attempts it seemed to have worked and I believe Margaret and I
corresponded. I even cycled over to her place, but in the end was too shy to
make anything out of it.
On the last day of school it was tradition to throw one’s cap out of the bus
window into the Basingstoke canal. I had long since lost mine.
Happy memories remain.
† Edgar Jerome in the Shopping Arcade in Aldershot.
FUDC: Fleet Urban District Council.
Cinema: The long demolished Rex.
Alan Lathan : November 2013