Apart from uniform, behaviour, attendance and the worship of the headmaster, there were other obligations at Prince Henry's Grammar School. Each term began with a church service, at which attendance was mandatory. I'm not sure how anyone would have known if we weren't there, but we always went and hated every minute of it. Churches, like hospitals, have a certain presence, a combination of smell and ambience that I loathe and detest. To sit in stark, grey darkened spaces that smell of death, being lectured by strange, effeminate men in dresses and to have to participate in the mumbo jumbo that is fundamentally a corruption of a middle eastern set of beliefs, seems such a waste of everyone's time. By all means allow those that need the crutch to do what they want, but making such things an obligation does nothing for the church or the obligee.
The annual cross country race was another obligation. Well it was for boys. Girls were obliged to watch the start and finish and do goodness knows what in between. The only way out of this event was to lose a leg, and even then, I am sure that the PE staff would make you hop round. The afternoon was organised into three races. Juniors and seniors wore white, and middle school wore dark and light blue quarter shirts, blue shorts and dark socks. Juniors would go first and their course was of course the shortest. Then the middle school would set off and finally the seniors on the much longer route.
I dreaded this event, as did all the fat, gangly, inept, and uninterested. It was achance for the sporty types to show off and for the rest of us to trudge around and be humiliated by coming near to last.
I remember when i was in the senior contingent, I must have been sixteen by then, a group of us planned a rebellion. Now remember this was the 1960s, and we were the generation that was swept along by the rebellion of the western world, where the youth were no longer prepared to accept the bullshit thrown down from above. The music was changing, the way people looked was changing and for the first time in the history of Prince Henry's, attitudes towards authority were being questioned in ways that had not happened before. People were no longer going to blindly do what they were told.
Our protest against this ludicrous event was to wear red socks, which about 30 of us did. Not only that, at the start, when about a hundred students lined up and waited for the starting gun, we all decided that under the gaze of the rest of the school, we would not run the race, but walk it. The gun fired and thirty red socked rebels were left on the line, casually strolling as one, along the course, much to the amusement of the spectating girls. Oh what fun we had, basking in the glory of rebellion. Of course we all finished the course together, in a line, we crossed as joint last, and were met by the combined senior staff, who ushered us out of sight and into the school hall for a debriefing. I thought that we were going to be caned, but I don't think there was anyone on the staff with enough energy to cane us all. We were however given a thorough dressing down and referred to as disgraces to the school etc etc ......... just what we wanted to hear of course; from then on it was rebellion all the way.
The other obligation, again for boys only! was the CCF, the Combined Cadet Force. As soon as we were in the fourth year, we had to join. No excuses were accepted, and on wednesdays, after school, we'd be lined up in our little squads or platoons and taught how to march and salute and to obey anyone that shouted at you. We were issued with uniforms made of wool that were heavy and extremely uncomfortable. In those days, drainpipe trousers were the fashion, while the uniform ones had sixteen inch bottoms and were inevitably too big or too small. It was so uncomfortable to wear, and to sit through a whole day in it was a torture. The boots were even worse; big black and inflexible with huge hobnails that made walking a nightmare. I just don't know how we won the war!
The CCF was a huge organisation and we were expected to participate fully. It wasn't good enough to turn up every wednesday, we had to go to shooting practice in the rifle range, normally used by smokers on a day to day basis. We'd have to attend war exercises at weekends, and unless you had a good excuse, even attend army camps in the holidays. I hated most of it, but did enjoy the shooting. It was quite satisfying, and the secret of my success in that was an ability to see the headmaster's face in every target. I managed to win a marksman's badge and that was all that I got out of the CCF.
At this point, I'd like to mention Squiff again. Now Squiff was second in command of the airforce unit, on the grounds that he'd seen an airoplane once. He'd stalk about in his officer's uniform, complete with swagger stick, barking orders for people to ignore and generally looked a prat. The school owned a Grasshopper. This was a training glider that was capable of just about taking off and landing on skids. It was man powered, in that it's propulsion consisted of two very long elastic ropes, that were attached to its nose, and projected forward in a huge V. Cadets were rounded up to pull these ropes, rather like egyptian pyramid builders, and with the usual lethargic effort the glider woul soar to a height of three feet and then drop to earth after about 20 yards.
One day, Squiff decided to give a demonstration. He donned his flying hat and rounded up a selection of us cadets. Whether his choices were bad or maybe conditions were just right I don't know, but for some reason the assembled slaves were highly motivated and we all ran and pulled as if our lives depended upon it. Never before had a grasshopper gone so high or so fast or so far, and certainly never before had one crashed through the wire fence that surrounded the tennis courts and come to rest against the fence on the far side. We were jubilant! Squiff must have wet himself. He was as white as a sheet and shaking all over. Cadets were rolling around on the grass in absolute hysterics, deeply sympathetic to his feelings. The grasshopper never appeared again for some reason.
1 comment:
Good words.
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