When I was Eleven I took the Eleven Plus exam, if you passed it you went to the Grammar School. If you failed, it was off to the dreaded Spring Bank Secondary School, which was the equivalent of the Spring Bank Primary School, but for older kids. Secondary Schools were there to keep kids at school, but get them more into the technical side of things, learning trades etc. The girls ended up as shop assistants and the like. Elitism was alive and well in Britain in the swinging sixties.
New Mills Grammar School was a fairly old fashioned school, just coming to terms with the post war influx of (smarter?) kids from the hoi polloi. We had to wear blazers, long grey pants, caps and ties. It also had a Quadrangle’, Prefects and taught Latin to first formers, (which in my humble opinion, is like teaching hippopotami to tap dance) but at least it was co-ed.
My first day there was a bit traumatic as my blazer and cap were three sizes too big, but at least my Dad had taught me how to tie a double-windsor knot. When I got there after a 10-minute walk from home, I discovered that the rest of the kids my age were in the same predicament, except they couldn’t tie a double-windsor, so it wasn’t too bad.
By the time I was sixteen my blazer and cap had shrunk compared to me, it looked like I was wearing a yarmulke and the sleeves of the blazer barely reached the elbows, which was a thing to be proud of. I was also a prefect and had a class of thirty young kids to supervise, before the teacher arrived.
I couldn’t really be bothered and let them run riot until just before the master got there, when I threatened them with death through a slow form of torture. For this reason I was considered to be a ‘good’ prefect by the kids. The form master had his doubts.
Being a prefect and head of the table at lunchtime in the school canteen it was my responsibility to dole out the food for the younger plebs. The poor sods at the bottom of the table always got the smallest portions and the older you got the bigger the portion. Until you became a prefect, then you could pig out.
Mum used to pay five shillings a week for the lunch, but I never used to go there after the age of fifteen. I used to go to the pub with a couple of mates and have a pastie and a pint of beer, except for when there was Roast Beef or Apple Crumble on the menu, then I’d go to the dining room and get my pig’s share of it.
Cheers for now,
SkyBlueSkull.
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