So why not an OAS Gliding Section?

DAVID SLOCOMBE (1965-1971)

I was introduced to gliding as a school cadet and my interest was revived in later life. If I can do it, so can you…

CALL it a muscle memory if you will, but when David Bush (Twig) demands homework, in the form of articles on hobbies (November 2022), how is one expected to resist?

Every year, amongst reports on Old Almondburians’ Badminton, Tennis and the Gothard Cup, there’s one glaring omission: a gliding section.

Let me explain. At the age of 13, three of us from 2 Alpha – Lawrence Morgan, Richard Stanley, and I – joined 59 Squadron of the Air Training Corps in Huddersfield.

Richard didn’t stay very long, but Lawrence and I very soon experienced the thrills of gliding and powered flight. Gliders in 1967 were neither fast nor particularly advanced but from a winch launch to around a thousand feet, the

Sedbergh , and Kirby Cadet Mk III gliders could stay aloft for five to ten minutes, cruising over RAF Linton-on-Ouse at a stately 28 miles per hour.

As a cadet, my most memorable flight was at RAF Bruggen in Germany in 1970, with a Lightning fighter pilot who, after the standard 1,000 ft winch launch, flew a loop and then landed in what remained of the runway from which we’d just taken off. It was to be my last glider flight until 1997. Powered aircraft followed – and then marriage and mortgage put an end to my flying.

On leaving KJGS in 1971, I gained a place at the National College of Air Traffic Control at Hurn Airport near Bournemouth. Despite enjoying training, I was not suited to the operational world of ATC and left in 1973. I literally drifted into the retail motor industry, and have been there ever since, the high- lights being over 30 years with the Alfa Romeo brand, and fourteen years with Ferrari, Aston Martin and Lotus . Working on stands at the British, Scottish, and Geneva motor shows, as well as regular factory visits, have provided a life of play with pay.

In 1997, looking for a novel venue for a marketing event, I dug out a leaflet inviting me to an evening at Burn Gliding Club near Selby. For the event I had in mind, it looked like a very promising site. A visit that weekend resulted in a guided tour by an instructor and a promise to take my proposal to the committee. A phone call followed and the plan progressed. We took 20 cars, a minibus, a chef, and 60 customers to Burn for a highly successful day, selling seven Alfa Romeos , feeding everyone and doing almost 200 test drives. And 42 people flew –including me, twice.

Upon returning home, I believe I did mention the business aspect briefly, but then rabbited on about gliding sufficiently to prompt my wife to buy me a week long residential flying course in Shropshire, and a year-long subscription at Burn starting on 1st September. I went solo on 27th December.

If ever you’re worried about broaching a plan involving spending money to your loved one, fear not. I’m a survivor of “darling, we need an aeroplane” not once but twice in the years which followed. Apparently, I’m worth it, as my wife Jan likes the man who comes home after flying: supposedly, I’m much more relaxed.

So to the present. I qualified as an instructor in 2021 and since then I’ve been instructing and giving air experience flights at both Burn, and Sutton Bank. In 2022 I carried out 250 flights; despite the cold temperatures, we do fly all year round! 2023 will see a few of us working to gain extra ratings onto our licences before we merge them with the power pilot community in the Autumn.

For me, this means taking the aerobatic instructor rating, and also moving onto a much more modern radio licence than the one I gained in 1971 that featured morse code as one of its constituent parts!

Remember the 28 mph cruising speed of those 1967 machines? My current glider is capable of a top speed of 156 knots, or 182 mph.

Amongst the 30 types of glider I’ve flown, the MDM Fox stands out. This trainer from the former East Germany was used by Soviet Bloc air forces to train fighter pilots without burning expensive jet fuel. The Fox is capable of both plus and minus 9G, during which the seven strap harness leaves the kind of bruises that make my wife laugh as I shower later. Apparently, I looked like a Union Jack!

So, is the Gliding Section an elite organisation? The answer is a most definite no, with pilots able to go solo at the age of 14, and continue for as long as they hold a driving licence. My mentor from my early years still flies aerobatics at 85, and regularly disappears for up to five hours on cross-country flights.

An idea of the modest costs of gliding might be helpful. Membership of a gliding club typically costs £300 to £500 a year and gliding training is provided free of charge. At my club, renting a glider for a flight costs around £11 for the winch launch plus around £40 per hour for the use of the glider.

Currently, gliding records stand at 77,600 feet for altitude, and over 3000 kilometres in a day. During my time in gliding, as many as eight of the world championship gold medals, from a total of eleven, have been held in the same year by British pilots. We are also lucky to be able to roam the skies above Yorkshire, surely the most beautiful county, with few geographical restrictions other than major airports and their surrounding control zones.

My best flight last year? Definitely the out and return from Sutton Bank near Thirsk to Castle Howard via Byland and Rievaulx Abbeys, Helmsley, Pickering, and Ampleforth School, with my wife Jan.

At the moment, the OAS Gliding Section –me – is looking for new members. I hope you may be tempted! n

The day a teacher lost control

From: Peter Tracey (1956-1963)

ANOTHER very fine edition of The Almondburian , very much appreciated. I look forward to the next edition which you say will include an article on Corporal Punishment!

I remember the atmosphere of discipline in my days at KJGS, largely imposed by formidable personalities. But I still cannot forget or forgive some of the actions of one or two of our ’masters’ then.

I became a teacher myself and determined never to inflict the pain or humiliation I witnessed at my school, on others in my charge.

One incident left a large impression on me as a young lad, and in truth it affected my whole approach to teaching later in life.

The incident in question occurred one afternoon during a difficult lesson, with our form of lads being harangued by the teacher about a text that was difficult and in which, to be truth, there was very little interest or enthusiasm. The teacher was clearly getting frustrated and exasperated at the listless lack of response, and sarcasm was on the rise.

No-one wanted to contribute to the lesson, as I recall. The teacher found no common ground there. It was a bit of an embarrassing impasse, until one of our class muttered something to another that caused a small titter to ripple down the row.

The boy in question was one of the slightest in build. He was a reluctant student at the best of times and rarely offered any contribution to classes. He was happiest at the end of each day when he could get out and enjoy running, at which he was excellent, and often represented the School.

The teacher hauled him to the front and belittled him in no uncertain terms. The poor lad had nothing to say. What could he say? The teacher was failing in the class. We all knew it. He knew it. We wanted it over. And then an explosion of anger in which the teacher swung a heavy hand across the lad’s ear, sending him tumbling into a desk. It was quite vicious and certainly violent. Tears followed and then a red mark.

I remember being frightened, and certainly glad it was not me. The bell rang soon after, and there was a merciful hasty release. The teacher never recovered the respect of the class, and lessons thereafter were always awkward.

When I qualified as a High School teacher some 10 or more years later, and began work in Newcastle, there was, in the staff room ethos there, still a tolerance of physical chastisement , not to say bullying. But that one incident involving my friend in class had left a mark, and I am happy to say that I learned a lesson from the failed lesson.

Teachers do sometimes face very difficult situations. With up to 30 children in a stuffy classroom, with a topic that might not be as interesting as they would like, it can be taxing in the extreme to keep them all engaged and on task. But that is what teachers are supposed to do, and be trained for. Corporal punishment or physical bullying has no part to play in a child’s education. Discipline by force of personality, structure, suitability of materials, variety, engagement, involvement are far better tools than the rod.

Some say, of corporal/physical punishment that “It never hurt me”. The lad in question above got out of school as fast as he could. I don’t know what his job/career path was. But his treatment at the hands of the teacher that day did hurt.

Whitley Bay,Tyne and Wear

Corporal punishment? Not the school I remember

From: John Eastwood (1950-1958)

Ialways receive my magazine with a slight flush of excitement and put off whatever I was intending to do to have a quick browse preparatory to a couple of hours of close reading. Always interesting and stimulating, in this edition you have excelled.

Dorabella is a minor masterstroke. It’s such an amusing novelty and Froufrou Eastwood similarly ignores her scratching post preferring our upholstered furniture, imports her garden captures to be released indoors and disappear under our large Edwardian sideboard, and drinks from the tap exactly as in the photograph. Your article on my good friend John Sharp’s all consuming hobby does justice to his lifelong commitment to the design and construction of various powered gearboxes and transmissions, compact enough to fit in working models. This is little, if at all, short of genius and has rightly earned him a worldwide reputation.

George Beach never taught me, but as a member at both junior and senior level of the School chess teams I had frequent contact with him. I was saddened by what I inferred from David’s article that he felt his father had not been held in high regard by some students. I never understood why he was given the pejorative nickname by some and certainly not by the chess fraternity. He was approachable and friendly and introduced me to a game which I still enjoy. Modesty does not prevent me from saying that having learned my chess in ’The Small’ at lunchtimes, I was a member of all conquering School teams travelling to all parts of the West Riding and do not recall us ever losing. I reached the Huddersfield under 18 semifinal, and the School won the Sunday Times national schools championship in I think 1957. It would have been David’s uncle John who came about that time to play a simultaneous game with some twenty of us in the Library, where all home games were played. All this down to George, so for David I have to say we held his father in very high regard. I was also in his scratch orchestra of 1957 when we played part of Haydn’s ’Surprise’ symphony at the School fair, and George hand wrote out my part for the saxophone. I had left the School in 1958 while Simon Thackray did not start until 1965. I find what he writes disturbing. He says ’corporal punishment was prevalent and condoned and administered from the top down’. He describes a school ’where bullying was rife’ in a ’climate of fear that prevailed’, ’that there was a climate of fear that existed in KJGS in the 1960s –created by those who freely administered corporal punishment in all its different forms’.

This is not the School I remember, but, of course I had left by then. In the course of my work as a teacher in schools between 1962 and 1990, before and after the abolition of corporal punishment, before and after the raising of the school leaving age to 16, I never came across anything like what Simon Thackray describes. Such corporal punishment as there was involved limited authorised teachers, a formal punishment book and its use as a last resort, often as an alternative to suspension from school. Perhaps by the time Simon Thackray went to KJGS, the teachers I knew when I was there had left to be replaced by a different breed.

Sowerby Bridge,WestYorkshire

A working Meccano steam engine

JOHN SHARP ’s article in T he Almondburian (March 2023) on Meccano reminded me not only of my own enjoyment with an early set, acquired by my father (probably secondhand) during the 1940s, but also of the much larger collection inherited by my wife from her father, and dating back to his youth in the 1920s.

Among the prize pieces, now a delight to our grandson, is a Meccano steam engine. Although his preference is for Lego, with which he builds replica two- and four-stroke engines, complete with gears, clutches and turbo chargers (all powered by suction from a vacuum cleaner), he also delights to fire up and run the steam engine. Here is a picture of him with it. Thanks for yet another interesting Magazine.

Royal Leamington Spa,Warwickshire

In praise of George Beach

From: Douglas Kaye (1949-1957)

WITH the exception of David Beach, I probably knew George better than any other pupil that he taught.

I was quite good at Maths, and was advised by a mathematician (independently of AGS) to study double maths in the sixth form. Maths had never been taught as a double ‘A’ level course at the School, but Harry Taylor, presumably with George's concurrence, agreed that I should go ahead.

George had never taught double maths before, which he frankly admitted. I spent three years in the sixth form, being taught one-to-one with George, at the end of which I read Maths at University.

Teaching one-to-one is not easy, particularly if the tutor is learning much of the material as he goes along – as George was. It was only much later (as a professional mathematician) that I realised how much work he had done for me and what he had contributed to my future. I owe George Beach everything.

We were the fortunate generation, we working class lads were not expected to go to university, let alone spend thirty years teaching in one, George made that possible for me.

His nickname belied his character. I found him kind and generous, both in his manner and with his time. We got to know each other very well. He was a polymath, a gift to any school.

At the time of the Suez crisis, he said that he was a ‘conchi’ during WW2, That was a brave thing to say when the whole sixth form were gung ho and we'll show Jonny foreigner – until Harry Taylor took a special lesson and made us see sense.

I was 19 when I left AGS, George invited me and my girlfriend to tea. He lived near the Cambridge Road swimming baths at the time. His wife had made a banquet.

Three years later, after graduating, I married Brenda (same girlfriend) and he briefly came to my ‘Stag Do’ at the George Hotel.

The last time I tried to contact him was in the late 80s, I think he may have been in hospital.

The last phrase in David’s article is: ‘ he loved his family and his school, doing his best for both’.

He did his best for me, and I have never forgotten him and his efforts on my behalf.

Thank you George.

Marple Bridge, Greater Manchester