Reminiscences Reminiscences
‘4th March... a date that I don’t think I could write much about my was drummed into me at my junior school. memories, because it It was a Saturday, 1972. I was 11 was very long time ago.
and scared half to death.
However, I do remember being in the Officer Training Corps which took place on Tuesday afternoons I think. I don’t suppose there is one now.
I was dropped off to take an exam, in order that I might get a place at this school. I’d read Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Just William and all those tales of tuck shops, canes, wizard wheezes and prefects, fagging, lines and being ‘one of the chaps’!
I was in the Army section first. I think our Officer Commanding was Major Gregory (ie the teacher, Mr Gregory, in uniform).
‘If you want a bookish education, Latin, Greek, all that, then this is the place for you’. Mr. Jackson, my affable class teacher told me. Did I want this?
We had annual Field Days and on one of them, around 1951 or ‘52 we had a training exercise on Spaniorum Hill near Easter Compton. I enjoyed that day also good views!! After a year or so you could change to the RAF or to the Naval Section which was commanded by Mr Dyson.
My parents thought I did, and here I was. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know anything about Latin apart from a few mottos my Dad knew and an explanation of the word ‘via’ by my best friend. He was already doing Latin at Clifton College and anyway was far more brainy ever than I. I hoped there wouldn’t be a Latin exam today.
Or anything about Greeks. I knew a joke about Grecian Urns from Morecambe and Wise but that was it. I sat at my desk in the hall and worried that I would be marched out halfway through with all these other boys sniggering at my lack of knowledge. Then I sat an English paper and some Verbal Reasoning and we were allowed out into the playground - the teacher in his long black cloak called it the ‘Quad’. I went to the loo and got a drink, and came back outside. Nobody was there!! I panicked and saw an open door, running for it with my heart in my mouth. The teacher was gesturing and frowning, I hoped he wouldn’t cane me but he just bellowed ‘come here, boy!!’ The room was quiet but all eyes were on me as I trotted to my desk. Frowning was big in that hall. Another two papers, one Maths and the other Comprehension. Thank God there was no Latin. Or French - although I’d practised
I chose the latter and I remember that for one Field Day we went to Portsmouth where we visited HMS Belfast and we went on a cruise on her in Southampton Water.
Geoff Herbert
(1949-1957) ..................................................
Bristolienses - Issue 61
26
