A Blast From the Past

I was at Spyway from 1970 - 75. You are right, right, right. What memories have flooded back: you could traverse the entire school in the roof space (the warning about falling through was Apocryphal); Ciel really did smell; having dry clothes thrown into the Drove (borrowed from a mate, now in peril that he might be caught dressed for bed late on a Sunday afternoon) so that you could report back to Mr Geoffery after a Sunday walk without revealing that you had been caught at Seacombe by a wave. 

Oh, and it started '55BC Julius Caesar invaded Britain' - at least I think it did. The matron was Rosemary Maloney (owner of Romulus the golden retriever), summers were never longer, blackouts and powercuts were the norm in winter, the cooks were Spanish and pudding always seemed to be semolina with just one teaspoon of runny raspberry jam. If you were lucky enough to find a seed it was reputed to be a wood chip especially made by the father of one of the Vischer boys.

Random Memories - Late 50s

In no particular order...

Watching The Beatles playing 'She Loves You' and later 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' on Matron's ('Miss' Thomas's) television. I think we had about 15 of us crammed into her room. 
Same Frances Thomas over-using the terms "Swinging" and "Dodgy" with appropriate thumb gestures.

Virol or Malt... I always preferred virol. My first introduction to vitamin supplements?

Stewed Figs. Almost put me off that delicious fruit for life - and those baskets of rather sour bread that I am sure were very healthy!

Getting a hat-trick - sadly not for the first XI - on the pitch below the golf course. Can three-in-a-row be a fluke?

Dunking for Apples after chewing sticky buns off a string and scoffing a digestive biscuit out of a plate of flour (all with no hands) at Halloween.

The General Knowledge Quiz at the end of term.

Passing logs along the chain of 50 or so boys to fill all the baskets around the school.

'Go-Kart' racing (made from old roller skates) - (one boy-power) around the shed.

'Sly Games' in the Grove - why was Hugh(?) Mansel always thought to be sly?

George Elles throwing a dart across the dormitory which embedded itself to the hilt into Charlie (now Brocket) Nall-Cain's foot.

Talking after lights out - in particular the aformentioned CN-C telling us the facts of life which rather mysteriously he had learned at the time of his father's funeral. Of course we all said he was talking rubbish - surely THAT wasn't POSSIBLY true!

Very cold dormitories in winter.

Collecting chestnuts on one of those very long Sunday walks.

Geoffrey and Bev's rather smelly Old English Sheepdog - 'Ciel'.

Half an orange at half time during rugger matches.

Running down the hill to Dancing Ledge with a towel as an air brake.
.
Parental visits to Bovington Tank Museum and Lunch at the Square & Compass. 

Some boy's (was he called Miles... or Myers?) Dad visiting in a small helicopter (a Hiller?). I wonder if these last two tipped me towards joining first the Cavalry and then later the Army Air Corps.

I did say they were random...

Christopher Hudson
Aberdeenshire. '59(ish) to '64.

Not Cricket

For many years at Spyway, it was traditional for a cricket match to be played each year between those boys going on to Eton (Spyway seen by some as Eton's junior school) and the boys going on to 'other' schools. The future Etonians always won.
However, in the late 1950s the annual match ended rather suddenly and unexpectedly.
The Future Etonians were bowled out for a miserable 57.
Eric & Geoffrey deemed the possibility of defeat for the FEs unacceptable and the game was immediately abandoned!

Squatters' Rights

In the dormitory on a winter's night the door opens, the lights come on, adults come in led by Geoffrey.
I do not know how many are in the party, because we are all mesmerised by Geoffrey's guest - think Raquel Welch in her prime.
We might have guessed that this was a prospective parent; we also knew that she was, objectively speaking, beautiful.
What confirms these judgements is Geoffrey's body language and demeanour, presumably the combined result of lust and pecuniary interest, neither ofwhich we would have understood at the time.
The lady was indeed a famous beauty, formerly the sort-of Grand Marshall of the League of Health and Beauty (very popular fitness programme for women before the war) and now the widow of a gallant aristocrat.
Happily her son soon arrived: he was popular and something of a leader, but he disconcerted us hugely when we found that he preferred to squat with his feet on the lavatory bowl where the rest of us would conventionally sit.

Skinny Dip

All fifty of us on Dancing Ledge, naked sprites, trying not to make anything of the fact that the pitted and barnacled volcanic rock was in itself very, very uncomfortable and that the swimming in prospect was terrifying.
If you were a beginner, you had to stay afloat in the pool which E & G were thought themselves to have blasted out of the surface of the Ledge (paddling desperately, absolutely certain there was a Conger Eel in the murky depths waiting patiently until now for YOU to present yourself). If you graduated to the actual Atlantic Ocean, and did not drown at once, you were sure to be hideously cut as you tried to time the wave that put you back onto the Ledge.

Multum in Parvo

Mr Gray the Latin master, bald and erect, sitting at his desk with a salad bowl full of Fox's Glacier Mints (for when we got things right) and next to it the salad spoon (for when we did not).

One Man Went to Mow

Geoffrey with his pipe on a summer's day in the Jeep (faded blue-grey, just a hint of its previous career in the US Navy), driving steadily up and down the playing fields, us tumbling in and out of the rear seats, all parties being entirely unconcerned about the whirling blades of the Ransome's Triple Gang Mower which the Jeep is towing

Shedload

I remember being part of the vortex of roller-skaters crashing around the big wooden barn - possibly all fifty of us.

All Weather Walks

I remember being one of a stream of little Tardises, gumbooted and encased in yellow sou'westers and oilskins, stumbling through the winter's rain on the routine Sunday walk - chilblains humming all the while and bound to get worse when we got into the warm.

Wide Delivery

I remember the whole cricket team bowling along to an away match in one of the Lagondas, sticking out in all directions like the Keystone Cops.

By Gum

In our day, when going up to Twickers was a very rare treat, we would huddle around Eric to listen to the radio commentary. We conformed to the general presumption of good behaviour of course, but there was one occasion when some chewing gum (which I am sure was never permitted to anybody in the school) was dropped irretrievably in Eric's grey hair. We were all confused and appalled, so the question of actual punishment never seemed to arise.

Fly in the Sky

In my time the attic playroom (with the dormer window which looked South) had very many copies of the Aircraft Recognition magazine.
Several of us made ourselves World Experts on aircraft recognition by working through these. Any speck on the horizon would be crisply identified, usually in a chorus of agreement. This probably started me on my career in the RAF.

Lessons for Life

Three things leant for life - how to sharpen a pencil, how to make a fire and how to use a saw! Best memory was watching Bev have a bath through a hole in the bathroom wall - worst memory being beaten for flicking a rubber band at another boy and hitting him in the eye. Most amusing was having a fight and hitting the fire alarm (as I was not caught) - least amusing was trying to sing (I have never mastered this skill). All-in-all a prety good start to life - it certainly made you stand up for yourself and taught you that you either sank or swam (at Dancing Ledge this was literally true).