More on School Days ...
Grammar schools were the place where higher achieving working class kids were supposed to be given a better education than those who failed the entry exam, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The pupils ranged from those who had ended up at the top of their classes at junior school by merit and those whose parents - unable to afford private education for their kids - had supplemented their primary education with private tutoring. So, you ended up with a mix of clever kids - generally identified by good brains and shabby uniforms - and middle-class kids, who were well dressed and thick as pig shit! Yet, as you can imagine, prefects, head boys and sports team captains all came from the latter group.
The teachers were almost a reflection of this as well. We had some teachers who were of far too high a quality to be teaching as such a school - "Tufty" Thompson, English teacher whose published books were an authority on the subject; "Pud" Perry, whose achievements in Physics, tracking satellites and space expeditions before NASA or the Soviets could, was world-acclaimed; a maths teacher (whose name escapes me) who was the best teacher I every knew (he managed to engage every pupil through his innovative ways of making the most boring tasks seem interesting); and two superb art teachers - "Jet" Harris and I. Leyton-Matthews (though this one was fairly mad!).
Then there were the other teachers - the ones who obviously couldn't make the grade in a decent public school sector, so took their indignation out on the children they (supposedly) taught. The Geography teachers - one who kept slipping out to the store room during lessons to take swigs of gin, and another who, in winter time, used to open all the windows so we froze, while he had a 3-bar electric fire under his desk pointing straight up at himself as he drank hot beverages from a flask!
Worst of all was "Stonewall" Jackson, alleged teacher of Technical Drawing and English Literature. Some days he would come into class and immediately address the assembled with a greeting such as: "Don't smoke bananas"! - they were the days we knew absolutely nothing would get done. (I will remember to my dying day the entire year we spent on one drawing - a truncated right cone - simply because he refused to move the class on before we all got it right - which, of course, was never going to happen, as many got fed up as soon as theirs had been rejected more than once.) But the worse days were his "black" ones. An old school mate, John Brzozowski, was almost beaten senseless by this man on more than one occasion - and he had fists like hams - but he was never dismissed, as he was a friend of the family to the headmaster.
The Headmaster himself, one "Pig" Steane, earned his nickname well by running the school his way. At one point there was a choice that had to be made as to whether the school invested in it's own swimming pool (the nearest one in the town being around two miles away) or to have an enormous, ghastly mosaic on the side of the main building. Yep! You guessed which one was chosen ... we never had swimming in senior school due to this (and I never gained my much-needed confidence in the water, having only just passed the necessary 25 yards certificate before leaving the juniors). I believe it was either Steane's wife or someone in their circle who got paid a fortune for the monstrosity we had to look at every time we entered the school grounds.
The Assistant Headmaster, "Tarzan" Cowell, was a more suitable man for the main job, but you could tell from his demeanour that he was never destined to be top at anything, just a loyal lackey in the true Sargeant Wilson style!
My memories are fairly vague on some of the things we got up to, but a few items spring to mind. Gary "Granny" Groves used to hide in a cupboard before a lesson began, then appear out of it halfway through ... much to the chagrin of teachers such as "Adolf" Evans. Or the misuse of school equipment during Chemistry (I once blew a test tube up and only realised a few minutes later that part of the broken glass had stuck to my next-to-new blazer! There was a hole around the size of an old two bob bit where the black of the blazer had disappeared exposing the shock white cotton beneath. I had to colour it in with a black permanent marker so it didn't get noticed until well into the term lest Mother should discover it and bemoan the worth of buying me anything decent.
In the first or second year, we used to pop over the spinney and onto the Kettering Rugby Club fields. In the off-season, they used to use a flammable substance to burn the grass off where the white lines needed to go. This, as you can imagine, went up very nicely when a lit match was applied to it! It was great to see the line of flame heading up the length of a pitch. During one of these forays we were confronted by a group of sixth-formers, sitting on the bank above the pitches smoking. They tried to scare us into believing they were going to take us to see Pig for what we were doing to the pitches. But one of our number pointed out that he would be obliged to tell Pig exactly what they were doing up there on the bank, so they gave up that idea and let us off with a kick in the pants as we scarpered.
The school had an underground "animal house" where they kept the poor creatures who were to be used in Biology classes and the like. This became a favourite hideout for card schools during break times - usually frequented by the kids who were more into their music than sports.
There was one time, just after I'd started the 3rd year seniors, when ~ during a Chemistry lesson ~ the lad next to me (Dave Coles) was chopsing away about something when the teacher decided to take umbridge with ME rather than him. This scrawny creature grabbed me by the collar and said he was going to take me to the headmaster. I admit to bricking it a little. He pulled me out of the classroom, on the second floor of the science block and nearly threw me down the first flight of stairs. I struggled to keep myself upright. But seeing he intended doing the same again for the next flight, I side-stepped him and he caught my foot, tumbling down the stairs himself. Well, I thought, that's the end of my school days!
However, seeing me run down the stairs (to see if he was alright, in fact) the weasel shyed away then told me to get my things and "fuck off out of his class and don't come back!". By no means more than a little surprised ~ and considering it to be a better outcome than a trip to see Pig ~ I marched back into the room, packed my stuff into my satchel, and headed out. A short while later a few others, who obviously thought this a good opportunity to get out of classes, joined me at the Electricity Board hut at the top of the playing field (the usual place to sit and smoke ~ alongside girls who ventured up there from the nearby High School).
I never did another Chemistry class, which I now regret, as I was pretty good at it and enjoyed the experiments. However, being "cock of the roost" for five minutes in those days meant a lot, and the future requirement of chemical knowledge didn't merit serious consideration.