Between the ages of eleven and fifteen I attended Charterhouse Road Secondary School in Orpington. In my first year we were taught by Miss Stevenson. She was, I believe, of French extraction and certainly taught French as her main subject. She was a typical school teacher of the era, 1947, who seemed to care little for her appearance and showed little sign of her femininity.
On the day in question a boy came into the classroom about an hour late. This was totally out of character, for he was a pleasant, bright boy who seldom put a foot wrong. The teacher rounded on him angrily, “Why are you late? How dare you come to school at this hour?”. The poor child looked up at her wanly and whispered, “Please Miss, my mother died this morning”. All her womanhood and all her dormant maternal instinct came to the fore with a rush. She gathered the child into her arms, saying “Oh you poor, poor little boy!”. He, of course, was sobbing his heart out, and the rest of us were just stunned. (The tears have been coursing down my face as I wrote these words, but I am now back in control) Just imagine, the child’s mother died that morning and someone sent him to school!
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Another teacher at this school was one ‘Jock’ Robertson, a P.T. teacher who had in a former life played professional football for the Scottish club Queen’s Park. As you might expect, he was an arrogant bully of a man, over six feet tall and hard. He used to take great delight in beating the boys on the buttocks with the largest rubber-soled plimsoll he could find. Try it today, mister!
However, there is one particular incident I want to tell you about. High up on the end wall of the school hall, which doubled as the gymnasium, was a clock. You know, boys, the one you all had to stand and watch when you were ‘kept-in’ after school for some misdemeanour! One morning, when we went into the hall for P.E. (it was called physical training in those days) Jock noticed that the clock had stopped. He instructed a number of boys to position the ‘box’ against the wall, directly under the clock, whereupon he jumped up onto it. He then called the smallest boy, by the name of Stringer, to climb up beside him. Facing the wall, he now reached down and formed a platform with his left hand and ordered the unfortunate child to stand on it. Instructing the boy to put his hands on the wall, Jock proceeded to hoist him aloft until his left arm was at full stretch above his head. “Feel on top of the clock and you will find the key. Now wind the clock and put it right!” The petrified child managed to carry out these instructions and was then lowered to the ground. The clock must have been fifteen to sixteen feet above the floor. This show-off no doubt considered that he was one hell of a hero. I thought then, as I do now that it was an irresponsible act of gross stupidity!