15 minute read
OG MEMORIES
Celebrations from down under
Cecilia celebrated 50 years of life in Australia in July 2019. A large party was planned by Cecilia’s family and her daughter, Nancy, phoned School to see if we could organise a card to be sent to her mother signed by the Head. We’ll let Cecilia take up the story now...
Advertisement
Greetings and hello from the Land Below Capricorn!
How can I begin to tell you what joy you gave to me and my family when you wished us Happy Golden Jubilee, our 50th year of migration to Australia? It took my breath away: you have been so generous to send all those mementoes of my time at school between 1942 and 1949: the print outs of pages from the school magazines, the painting of school from the front, the huge card of good wishes from the Head and the Development Office. Thank you for the tea towel with the coat of arms and our motto, the Old Girls lapel pin and so much more. My daughter, Nancy has been busy- she also told the Queen! Great heaven... I opened a letter from Buckingham Palace on our special day with a lovely message via a lady in waiting.
Mentioned, as I have been in the list of successes over the school years, I never covered myself with a desperate glory,
I suppose that I came through well enough.
A little eleven year old girl in the early years of the war, set off to sit for the Eleven Plus exam; that was me and I walked with destiny that day. Winning a place at the High School changed my life. I have been reading through what you sent me and all those old familiar names... names and faces I can still see in my mind’s eye. Many will still be alive, looking a bit worse for wear as I do. What stories are locked away in our memories? Members of staff too: I wonder where they are now: it’s not hard to guess really.
My Headmistress was Miss Kingswell. War time buses were often crowded. I was sitting on the bus journeying to school, along with another couple of WGHS girls and after we had left the Bull Ring towards school it was standing-room only. Suddenly an imperious voice rang out “Stand! And give up your seats!” Mrs Kingswell had got on the bus at the Bull Ring and saw us occupying seats. We shot to our feet to let some adults sit down, but the shock and the shame shrivelled us. To add to our embarrassment, Mrs Kingswell got off the bus at the same stop as us. She was carrying a basket. Good manners demanded that one of us offer to carry it for her. Yes, yes... which meant that we had to walk at the same speed as the Headmistress and hold a polite conversation all the way to school. I wasn’t the one carrying her basket, but we walked as a group with our heads held as high as we dare. That short walk seem inordinately long that morning: no scuttling along or hanging back! I expect that we were soon forgiven.
Cecilia Conwaye-Wright (OG, 1949)
(née Elsie Smith)
Edited from a longer version of Cecilia’s memories.
Used to live in Wakefield, still live in Wakefield...? Well, we all share one common bond, we went to school in Wakefield and spent many an hour in this metropolis. Last year the local Wakefield paper reported, with some horror that Wakefield had been voted the 8th worst place to live in the UK. Says who? Not a chance or as us Yorkshire folk would say… “get away with you”.
Well, here we are in 2021, post- 2 lockdowns and keeping everything crossed that we are not about to embark into another and… “plus, ca change” - as the French might say (remember French lessons in room 4, watching the chalk dust cloud and dance in the bright light cascading through those big windows staring out onto a sun-drenched quad on halcyon 1980’s summer days? And if I am honest probably sweating a bit through your Amplex or Mum roll- on deodorant, which never quite dried).
Drum roll please...
Wakefield has thankfully now been the subject of more favourable press and media coverage. The city has been the subject of a one- off Channel 4 Programme, presented by comedian Tom Allen- with the very lovely Martin Kemp- yes, “he of ah, ha ha haaaa ha True” and “Gold” fame making an appearance at the Theatre Royal. Also, the Wakefield Express has recently reported that Wakefield has made a list of the most “chic”, yes you read it right- I said “CHIC” cities...
Memories of 1980s Wakefield
So, I thought I would both share some memories of 1980s Wakefield and then... update you a little and write an ode to this fair city. I hope that you can also enjoy my little pictorialsashay down memory lane (taken in Feb 2021). I absolutely concur with the view that Wakefield has a lot to offer and here I am today living my 11- year- old self’s dreams of residing in WF1, in wonderful Wakefield.
My first visit to Wakefield was in Jan 1982 when I sat my WGHS entrance exam- armed with a Parker “Flighter” silver fountain pen, some worse than average mathematical skills, little logic, or reasoning (verbal or non-verbal) as evidenced here, but hopefully I was slightly better at telling a story! Somehow, I passed and… Throughout my subsequent years at WGHS I always lived in a small, quite pretty-( but for a teenager that equated to “quiet and pretty boring”) village just north of Pontefract, off the old A1 (remember that- a dual carriageway bit next to Ferrybridge- eeh them were the days!), with a vista of power stations! However, from Sept 1982 to 1989, I only travelled, or in the words of the Pet Shop Boys, was prepared to GO WEST- west to Wakefield (on the 148, 149 or 150 – 35p each way or using my “Kerching – a – Saver Strip”. For a good while (for most of the 1980’s) Wakefield became and remained the epicentre of my very existence. It was a 20- minute drive from home to Ponte, service bus to Wakefield, walk out from bus station across car park and cross busy road to walk up Northgate to Wentworth Terrace and to school- via of course, the Wentworth Street pedestrian crossing (still there- just think how many times you pressed that button- to and from school, to the games field). Everyone got on some kind of bus, train, or public transport. My world was Wakefield and it always seemed “wonderful to me”. I was resentful that we lived so far away and envious of friends who lived closer. There were friends who lived in or near Wakefield (Sandal, Walton, Thornbury Ave, West Ardsley), The Doncaster Crowd, the Huddersfield Set etc. Where were the Ponte People?
As I grew older, I spent time shopping with friends in the “Ridings”. Hard to believe now, but when it opened in 1982/3- people travelled far and wide. This modern mode of shoppingpredated Meadowhall by around a decade- with its glass lifts (woo!), C &A, Miss Selfridge, Top Shop, Dotty P’s, Benetton, M and S, Tie Rack (remember that- I am sure we had one at some point!) WH Smiths, BHS and food forecourt downstairs. I wanted to be able to meet my friends with ease at the Odeon (soon to be demolished) on Kirkgate, to queue outside and to watch Top Gun for the 5th time. I longed to be able to meet up with boys from Silcoates and QEGS at the “Athena Café” (top of Westgate) and buy one cup of tea I could make last for hours. I yearned to buy clothes from the teen boutique nattily called “Intique”. We would buy our 99p burger and pull out the green gherkin (What’s that? Yuck) in McDonalds on Cathedral Walk, window shop the ball dresses in Vivien Smith’s window (were there about 3 styles of dress, and about 4 different colours of shiny metallic taffeta?) and browse in a very small Next which I do remember was somewhere opposite the Cathedral too. In the sixth form aged 16, I memorised my fake date of birth (must remember it’s 1969- for the purpose of getting in for the “light show”) so I could go to Henry Boons, Roof Top Gardens and Casanovas (black eye liner, tube skirt- skirting very briefly with a goth phase-dancing to “She Sells Sanctuary”)- in the days when last orders were at 11 but often we all went into a nightclub at about 10 pm, only to be collected by our patient parents, waiting at midnight in the Westgate Car Park.
In the 1990s and early 2000s I completely neglected Wakefield. University, work, love, and life took me elsewhere and I only resumed our love affair when... somewhat incredulously, I found myself moving back, complete with family, to a village where the power stations meet. Full circle! There followed children sitting entrance exams and being put on buses (luxury coaches for 21st century learners) before upping sticks, biting the bullet, kicking village life firmly into touch and moving to WF1- yep city centre! At long last I was living my IV Lower dream!
And do you know what… I absolutely love it!
Miss ‘ ’ German Jones
I started at Wakefield Girls High School in September 1959, aged 11. About 18 months later my father met Elfrieda, a German lady through the German Shepherd Dog Association in West Yorkshire. She came from Hamburg but was living in Holmfirth, having married an English “Tommy” (who was a part of the Allied Occupational Force), in 1947. She had approached my father because she knew he had a daughter close in age to her niece in Hamburg. This niece, Margrit, was learning English and wanted a pen-friend. I agreed, on the understanding that we would correspond in English. So began a friendship which has lasted for 60 years!
In IV Upper we had to decide on options for our O-levels. It seemed only right to me that I should choose German so Margrit and I could also correspond in her native language as well. I had, of course, known who Miss Jones was, distinguished from the other Miss Jones (Domestic Science) by the prefix “German”. I also had friends in the year above me who were doing German and who talked about her sometimes. Some of the things they said really made you wish you were studying German so I looked forward to starting in Lower V.
Although a seemingly quiet and unassuming person, we all knew who she was, partly because she did stand out in a way because of her clothes, especially in the winter. She wore fairly long pleated, or gathered tweed, or wool, skirts and quite large sweaters - Fair Isle (?) - possibly hand knitted - and old fashioned lace up shoes with thick stockings. I suppose she was dressed a bit like Margaret Rutherford in those “Murder at the Gallop” type films. Somewhat country type and old fashioned.
She looked quite ancient to us youngsters and had steely, greying hair. She had a round, often smiley, face but couldn’t be said to be good looking, although not ugly and actually quite a benevolent look. I vaguely recall she wore a large, man’s wrist watch. We would see her around school and, although quiet of voice, she was firm in her application of the rules! As I was destined to find out! Her classroom, as I recall, was one of the smaller ones. It had a blackboard and a large, old fashioned school teacher’s desk with a fairly high chair for her to sit at it. This meant she, sort of, looked down on us as she taught. I got off to a bad start. My Godmother had given me a small signet ring during the summer holidays and I had worn it constantly. On our return to school I totally forgot to remove it - wearing jewellery was not allowed, apart from “sleepers” for pierced ears. Well, “Hawkeye” Jones honed in on it immediately I entered her classroom and she confiscated it forthwith. “You can have it back on the last day of term”. Arghh!! I had to go home and admit to my mother what had happened. Mind you true to her word, she returned it on the last day of that term, and the next, and the next... Some of us never learn!
Her teaching methods were much as those we had encountered in French with grammar and vocabulary taught using an old text book, with emphasis placed mostly on written, rather than spoken language. She would neatly write on the blackboard and speak in a gentle quiet voice. She never seemed rushed, impatient or annoyed. However, when she marked our work, she was always very honest and blunt about where we had gone wrong but not in a nasty way. I must admit I struggled with the 3 genders! I also struggled with how the words used could change according to the case, nominative, accusative, genitive and dative.
She did have one unusual trait which many of us found rather embarrassing, definitely different! When she had a cold, or needed to blow her nose, she would scrunch up her voluminous skirt and, beneath it she wore what I can only describe as “bloomers”. Loose and extending down her thigh towards her knee, rather like what you saw in films like Tom Jones! She would put her hand up the bloomer leg, take out her handkerchief, blow her nose, replace the handkerchief and lower her skirt. All done “just like that”, no fuss, just as though it was what everyone did!! After a while you got used to it but it never stopped seeming odd. When you talked with others past and present pupils, they all said the same doesn’t she know what pockets are for?
She talked about her time. In Germany, before WW2, and described her time in Leipzig and Dresden. She had kept contact with one of her friends in what was by then East Germany. This friend was a teacher of English. German Jones suggested to us all that we would benefit from corresponding with a German pen friend and, despite already having my friend Margrit, I decided to go ahead. I got the names of two girls. One never really hit it off with me, or I with her, but the other, Elke, is still my friend today. We use WhatsApp, she writes to me in English and I write to her in German. I have to say I’m not sure if German Jones would appreciate my use of Google Translate - but I do. Plus, modern technology is so much faster than letters in the 1960s!!
She did encourage us to speak the language, on the basis that, if we visited the country, we would be more welcomed if we tried speaking, however nervously. She was a stickler for pronunciation and it was the one thing she praised me for. She said I had a GOOD EAR!! I must admit it has been fun and even hilarious at times - like the time I ordered a lager and limestone! When I realised how silly I had been I could hear her saying “it is important to think about what you are reading and saying and also beware of using a dictionary blindly with no thought!”
Looking back I think we learned a lot from her, partly because she did something I don’t think any other teacher at the school did. Every December she invited us all to her home for an Advent Party. She lived at 1 Lacey St in Horbury with her friend Miss Heap. Their parties were renowned for fun and great food. I seem to remember it was usually on a Friday evening. We entered a nicely decorated hallway and were led into an equally well decorated lounge. The decor included lots of items from Germany, some of which I have myself. Small wooden “roundabouts”/“whirligigs” propelled by the heat from a candle flame, angel chimes, a small set of wooden choristers and beautiful enamel and wooden tree decorations and also the candle arch (electric, with candle bulbs) on the window ledge so when the curtains were closed it was visible to passersby. I was fascinated by the fact that, instead of turning it off, she just twisted one bulb and once, the contact was lost, all the bulbs turned off! Later I found out that this is the way most German families do it - both my friends and their families do.
We would sing German Carols and read German Christmas stories and then be taken to the dining room for an Advent Feast. She and Miss Heap had made wonderful sandwiches and there was Stollen and Leberkuchen. We drank a variety of soft drinks but there was also a non-alcoholic warm drink flavoured like mulled wine but definitely NOT wine! We had heard about these parties but, until you went, you couldn’t imagine what fun they were. You just couldn’t wait for the next Christmas and, of course, as they were only open to her current pupils, once you stopped learning German, that was that - a great disappointment. I remember her with great fondness and have always been grateful that she introduced me to the language which led to flourishing friendships, lasting many, many years. Thank you “German” Jones.
”
Lebkuchen cookies
Pat Lowe (OG, 1966)
(née Agus)
