It's very hard to assemble the memories into a truly chronological order and so far as lower school days are concerned, I won't try.
One of my favourite places was the biology lab. The smell of formaldehyde, blended with polished oak still haunts me to this day. The room was lined on one side with ancient display cabinets and their morbid contents, of preserved animals, gazed down on us as they had on generations of students that came before us. There were hundreds of jars and stuffed creatures, most of which were steeped in mystery. We always imagined that somewhere in the back of the cupboard that there would be preserved human parts or even whole foetuses. The only evidence of that were foetal pigs, but even they had a strange attractiveness to the prepubescent mind. The other side of the room was all windows that looked over the garden and greenhouse, a place that I don't recall ever having access to.
My first Biology teacher was a Mr (Chippy) Woodhead, a gentle and elederly Yorkshireman, who regailed us with tales, probably apocryphal, of his life in the north, while teaching us a form of biology, which now seems like natural history. As a homework exercise, we were expected to maintain a "Nature Diary" in which we'd record observations, weather patterns etc. I quite enjoyed this until one day I was ridiculed for stating that Starlings were migrating for the winter. This public humiliation certainly changed my views of the teacher and took away some of my interest in the subject. This was compounded, when I found out later that I was right. I later dropped biology in favour of additional Maths.
The maths turned out to be a big mistake and so at a later date I switched back to biology and by this time, the work had become more academic and the teacher was Squiff! An eccentric but young Mr Hopkins, who was the butt of every schoolboy prank that was going. On one occasion, his car, an old Austin 7, was manhandled by the sixth form and placed upon the roof of one of the buildings - a real feat of strength and ingenuity. Squiff had a short temper, understandably, and little tolerance of misdemeanour. I still remember one of his favourite punishments. He'd issue lines. One hundred of them at a time. That doesn't seem so bad, but his lines went like this - "There is nothing more distressing, than to see a boy or girl disporting himself or herself in an improper manner." Writing that out a hundred times was not funny. Squiff was not one to cross openly and so mostly he was the victim of the subtle attacks from groups of boys who would find whatever means that they could to humiliate him, but without getting caught. More about Squiff at a later date.
Biology was fine, although not my strongest subject, I did enjoy it and managed to pass the exams that enabled me to go on to a higher level.
The subject was very different then to modern Biology. The emphasis was on structure and anatomy. Much of what we did was to take things apart and draw them, or to copy drawings from books, but there was little emphasis placed on the relationship between form and function. That was to come later, and could be seen as a metaphor for what was going on in my life.
Home was becoming less and less important in my life. Although I was a rebellious student, I really did get a lot out of school and enjoyed being there. Biology and the other sciences were becoming more interesting and I was having some limited success in my studies. All this while, the hormones were beginning to flow and puberty starting to effect its changes.
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