Heywood Grammar School Part 2

Heywood Grammar School was a bit old fashioned, formal and yet a place of great fun.

The first day there, way back in 1965, is remembered in a previous entry and that introduced some of the characters. There were so many more though.

A few years above us there was a lad whose nickname was Prof. I don't think I ever learned his real name. He had a book of double entendres, collected from the sayings of the Headmaster, which he called "Farish Funnies". It was full of things like "I'm not having you boys bringing your dirty balls in here..." or "I'm not having it! Mr Thomas isn't having it - and I'm damn sure Miss Woods isn't having it!!!"

I hated PE. I'd been afraid that the asthma would cause me real problems but it was mainly only the cross country runs that I found impossible. The first one started with a circuit of the playing fields then out onto the roads. By the time I was halfway round the playing field I was in trouble and by the time I got to the gate where the teacher was, I was ready to lie down and collapse, my breath coming in great panting wheezes.

Mr Law grunted, "Asthma?" I nodded, unable to speak. "Back to the changing rooms then," he said. That was the only Cross Country I ran. There were about 5 of us who were excused them and we looked forward to the afternoons when everyone else was sent to run round the streets of Heywood. We were sent out to leisurely walk the streets of Heywood.

A particular mate of mine was Andrew Robertson. For some strange reason we all christened him Sid. I can't remember why but he became Sid for the rest of his school career. Mum and Dad liked Sid because he made them laugh. He made all of us laugh. This was mainly because he liked to laugh... In fact once he started he couldn't stop! He would go off into weird and wonderful paroxysms, food flying from his mouth, should he have recently inserted anything and this would go on many a time until he was helpless with laughter and had infected all around him.

Except for once when he had undergone one of these transformations during a dinner hour. A workman who was digging the road up thought that he was the one being laughed at and Sid arrived back at school with a black eye. He had another bout of uncontrolled laughter trying to tell us how he got the black eye...

Sid was another fan of flying model aircraft and he also introduced me to a mate of his called Paul Fitton, who was in the year above us and who introduced me to the music of The Moody Blues. Paul had a superb hi-fi setup in his bedroom and also had the first set of stereo headphones I ever listened to. I was so impressed I bought the very same model. Hands up today any teenagers who were 14 before they heard music through headphones...?

Now I can't condone the next bit and certainly do not suggest anyone else try it, but for a while there was a craze (limited thank goodness) of making rockets from a mixture of readily available household products. Those doomed to abject failure mixed powders and filled tubes with this. It was highly explosive - I remember it being in the news that someone had made exactly the same mixture to blow open the coin box of a public telephone only to blow his hand off...

We made solutions of it and soaked newspapers in it. Then - here's the most dangerous bit - we dried the sheets over the fireguard of an open fire and rolled them up before stuffing them into cardboard tubes. Most failed to move - as shown, they produced lots of smoke and a roar of sorts but failed to lift off. Bic pen tops you could make whiz about - possibly the reason Bic seem to make them open at both ends these days... (correction from schoolmate Alex Dyson: it's actually because so many people suck the tops of pens and get them lodged in their throats - you can still breath a little through the hole...)

Anyway Frank and his mates had to go one better and made a 3-stage 6-foot tall monster. Displaying "WRN" which stood for "Wardle Rocket Network", they took it up on the moors, lit a long fuse of magnesium strip and took cover behind a small hill.

The explosion was apparently heard half a mile away... The explosion was caused only by the bottom stage however and the top two stages, when rested on a plank of wood as a runway, actually took to the air for about 3 feet before turning to crash in the field. It was impressive looking but hardly aerodynamic! Cine film of this event exists. Wardle had had a flying saucer incident in the late 1950s and residents must have wondered whether the aliens had returned that day!

That marked the end of Frank's rocket aspirations but we in the 5th form were impressed at the success of the plank runway and devised a cunning plan. We reckoned that a 1-foot tall rocket launched from a high window via a runway would fly. We made the rocket, took it to the chemistry laboratory on the 3rd or 4th floor, borrowed a couple of test tube stands to make up a runway of smooth metal rods, poked them out of the window and lit the fuse.

Disaster! A gratifying roar heralded a ten inch flame shooting from the back of the rocket but it stuck on the test tube stands and scorched and blistered all the paint off the window sill until I tipped the whole lot out of the window with visions of a full-scale fire. The Lower 6th Form common room was directly underneath on the ground floor and I remember one lad telling me later of the impressive fireball that fell past the window closely followed by a couple of clanging bits of chemistry equipment...

We got in surprisingly little trouble - I think the chemistry teacher must have been secretly impressed with the sheer cheek. We did have to buy paint and repaint the window sill...

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First Day at Heywood Grammar School

This blog entry re-creates a page from my now defunct Nostalgia web site which I've been saying for ages I should transfer to here and which several other people (well mainly Jackie Waters, long time friend from that same school...) have been saying I should transfer to here. So here it is! Day one of a secondary school career that would see the transition of a boy to a man. Yes, alright - debateable, but I'll get round to it sooner or later!

Heywood Grammar School. I started there in September 1965 with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. I'd been with the same gang of mates since starting school aged 4 until leaving Rochdale's Lowerplace Junior School aged 11. Now, because we had moved outside of the Rochdale Borough area, I would leave all my pals for a group of total strangers.

Also there was a new uniform, not just a blazer and cap but every item of outer clothing was specified! Adding to the sense of all things new was the fact that going to school entailed a coach trip from the pick up point in Milnrow, the village where we lived. The coaches were operated by the Rochdale firm of Yelloways and were, quite understandably, the older of their stock!

On the first morning's trip we learned two important things: one - the back seat was reserved for older pupils who looked (to an 11 year old) old enough to be running the country never mind going to school! Crumbs! The lads were cuddling girls for heaven's sake! Two: although the school rules required it, if you wore your cap then it was going to be snatched from your head and thrown about the coach...

We arrived at the school and were shuffled into lines and marched into the Assembly Hall. The headmaster was Colonel Farish, who was dressed in a suit with waistcoat, over which a long black academic gown flowed to floor level. The Deputy Headmaster and Headmistress, were Mr Thomas and Miss Wood. They also wore black gowns. Mr Thomas looked exactly like the teacher from the Bash Street Kids. Miss Wood wore her hair braided in two enormous Princess Leia cartwheels at the side of her head.

The first years were to be split into 4 classes, 1A to 1D, based purely on age. We would be split by ability at the end of that year. I ended up in class 1B and, together with those in class 1A, we were formed into pairs, lined up into a crocodile and marched off to our rooms which were a prefabricated building a few streets away.

Our form mistress was a pretty young woman called Mrs Pilkington. Sally Pilkington, we were soon told by second year pupils. We were asked our names; "John" I said.
"We call boys by their surname here..." For some reason that was a shock. So for the next 6 or 7 years I was Burke to the teachers and for 3 to 4 years Burkey or Burkey-Bean to my peers.

It solved some confusion - on the front row of the class I was sat between John Booth and John Butterworth! A few years ago I got an email from "Butty" - Mate, the longer I look at your photo, the more I'm convinced that you are the John Burke I sat next to in school..."

At break time on that first day we joined the kids in class 1A and got to know the people we were sat next to a bit more. At lunchtime we were formed into a crocodile again and joined a larger one that walked through the town to a canteen that served other schools at Bamford Road.

School dinners - ha! Some were brilliant, some were gross. No serving counters for us, the food went to each table in huge trays and dishes and someone was designated monitor and dished out portions for all on the table. Baked beans without tomato sauce were unbelievably bad... Semolina and tapioca were not exactly favourites.

Brussel sprouts were commandeered mainly by one of the fifth formers. If you liked them but he was on your table then hard luck... I can't remember his real name but his somewhat predictable nickname was Stinks... He was, despite this, popular. He wasn't above talking to younger pupils, he was very laid back and easy going and he protected kids from a spot of bullying every now and then.

After the march back from the canteen we spent the rest of that first lunchtime in the main playground with the rest of the school. This entailed mainly second formers, giving you a long code number that they would return and demand from you after a while. Some unfortunates were swayed by the temptation to check out the "blue goldfish" in the bogs... Their hair dried out soon enough...

We learned a few nicknames of staff - Bill Thomas, the Deputy Head, was Tommy. Dorothy Wood was Daisy. The woodwork master was called Chisel and the frightening-sounding allegedly torture-loving chemistry master was known for good reason as Basher!

I might be wrong about this, but I think the first day was a tour around some of the classes we would be visiting for different subjects and meeting the teachers. We found we had Basher for chemistry... What in fact was chemistry? The room was a laboratory and had lots of glass bottles with what looked like water lined up on benches. There was strange equipment - bunsen burners, gas taps and test tubes - strange place! Basher's nickname was not ill-founded. His favourite trick was to make a fist with the middle knuckle extended and then rap the centre of your forehead with it. In a temper I once saw him pick a boy up by the ears...

He wasn't alone - the biology teacher, whose name I forget, shocked the whole class into silence by slapping very forcibly a boy called Stafford around the side of the head with his own exercise book. He had forgotten to do his homework. Taffy, the geography teacher, was an absolute sure shot with a heavy wooden board rubber! Every school had one of those but Taffy never ever missed, no matter how far back you were sitting!

We were to see a lot of David Miller, as he taught us not only French, but music. He was a young man with a sharp beak of a nose and spectacles, which he obviously used just for reading because he would whip them off when he wanted to glare at the class. He was a brilliant musician on the piano and had a real love of music. When French got too boring someone would say "Play something on the piano, Sir!" Every now and then it worked!

Mr Miller was choirmaster of the Heywood Grammar School Choir, a choir of good ability and reputation which used to sing for Evensong in St Luke's parish church in Heywood every Thursday night. I loved singing and enthusiastically joined the choir, putting up with wearing the cassock and surplice. I regret now, that I have no photos of the choir at all, nor have I found any on the Internet - anyone reading this who can help?

You could never accuse me of being religious I'm afraid but I loved the soaring voices when we sang the Magnificat - "My soul, my soul, doth sanctify the Lord..." Again if you recognise those words, someone tell me who wrote it and help me find a CD with it on!

Mr Miller was also the pianist for morning assembly. This included Christian worship in those days and I find it hard to understand now why the Government has been so scared of offending minorities that we don't teach our own religion in schools. It's no wonder that church attendance has fallen so much. Some of the hymns we sang in Assembly are still in my head - particularly:

He, who would valiant be, 'gainst all disaster
Let him in constancy follow the Master
There's no discouragement to make him once relent
His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim

Ah, shivers down the spine! That and "...for those in peril on the sea"!

We had a teacher called Mr Law for PE. He was dressed in a track suit and had a whistle and called our names out for the register then said "Green!" or "Red!" or "White!" or "Blue!" I hadn't a clue what that meant because I hadn't been listening properly. It dawned on me that he was allocating us to a "house", not taking the register and I had to go back and ask what mine was.
"Name?"
"Burke, Sir," I said. He looked at his list and sniffed.
"Hmm! You are a berk aren't you, boy? Blue!"

We were ushered into a physics lab - more strange equipment and a genial, even jolly, chap standing behind the teacher's bench who lined us up and demanded to know who our form teacher was.

"Mrs Pilkington, Sir". He considered this for a while.
"Oh yes... she's nice, Mrs Pilkington... pretty... nice figure... cooks a good breakfast...!"
"What's your name, Sir?" someone asked.
"Mister Pilkington!" he twinkled. "Anyone know what physics is?"

No one did. He picked up a jar and tipped some iron filings over a lit bunsen burner. They flared and shot up like a firework. We all went "Ooooooh!" with delight just as he had planned. Pilky was a born teacher - but his experiments always went haywire. "Well..." he would say, as what he had told us would happen stubbornly refused to, "take my word for it! Now try it for yourselves!"

Chisel, the woodwork teacher, had a huge workshop in the basement of the main school building. His nickname was due to his habit of standing at one end and saying to someone "Fetch me that chisel..." He would point to a bench with several chisels on it.
"Which one, Sir?"
"That one!" ...said without moving but with a finger outstretched which could have been pointing to any of the chisels!

He had a habit of banging a wooden mallet on a workbench close to your hand - you would jump out of your skin! He also used to throw a hammer in the air, whack it with his hand so that it spun, catch it and put it down. Then he would leave the room. When he came back half of us would have rapped our own knuckles trying to do the same thing...

My best mate from 6th form days, Alex Dyson, contributes this memory: I couldn't wait to drop woodwork in the fourth form even though it meant another two years of art. We used to get a crack from Chisel with a piece of wood for even looking in the wrong place, yet when we were boiling the glue kettle one day and I set fire to a pile of wood shavings when he went out, he never even noticed. I was crapping myself because it really took hold and the air was thick with smoke when he came back, but he must have been preoccupied with some really important matter, like someone holding a pencil in the wrong way...

Priceless!

The end of the school day came and we paraded back to where the coach had dropped us off. There were 5 coaches! A moment's panic, then I found the right one and we set off back. The M62 didn't yet exist, so the coaches took us through Heywood and through countryside to Sudden, in Rochdale, turning right up to Castleton past the end of our old street (yet to be covered here in an entry about gruesome ailments) and then along Queensway, past all the mills that had contributed to my Dad's bad chest, along Kingsway and then back to Milnrow where I got off, the coach ending its journey in Newhey.

Yelloways were using their 1952 "Seagull" model coaches for the Heywood run. The photo is of the same model but a different coach firm. They had no seatbelts, nor would coaches have passenger seatbelts for many years to come, and had a large metal handrail across the back of each seat as a grab rail to help people sitting behind get up out of their seats. If the coach stopped suddenly the metal rail was just at tooth height...

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Annual Reunion 2010

Spent time rummaging this week through the closets and cupboards, looking for the old school tie and scarf ready for our annual get-together.

Alex, Jackie and I met up this year at Nutters Restaurant in Norden near Rochdale. These reunions have come to be a celebration of fine food and wine as well as a chance to regress to 17-year-olds and swap memories and jokes.

I never fail to be utterly entertained and entranced by these days which happen just once a year in August. We rotate the arrangements for the meal and Alex did the honours this year with Jackie looking for a suitable eatery in or near Liverpool for next year. If any other old friends would like to join in, my email address can be found in the left hand column.

We swapped personal news and dissected school life at Heywood Grammar School and its successor, Heywood Senior High School (now Siddall Moor). We were there at the start.

Jackie wanted to know what had happened to my old Nostalgia website which had lots of memories about the school. My main website disappeared when I moved ISPs and the intention is to recreate the pages here on this blog - hence old stuff like the Amsterdam weekend being uploaded.

The only problem with the blog format is that entries appear in reverse order...

So my task for sometime during the next year is to get the old Nostalgia site recreated here. There are already a number of entries under the nostalgia label and they will get added to that and also added to the family and friends label.

So of course most of the jokes told on Tuesday were far too politically incorrect to put on here and many of the memories meaningless to outsiders or have already been covered or will be recovered once I get cracking on the pages about Heywood Grammar.

The food was wonderful, I had salmon in oyster and mussel sauce - this came ringed with mussels which I really cannot bring myself to try. Sorry to the kitchen who may have been affronted at them being shoved to one side and not touched! The salmon and the sauce was beautiful though, with a herb crust and set on a bed of fine shoots and onions. Alex had fillet of beef which looked gorgeous and Jackie had ... well I can't remember actually...

We stayed for three hours and customers were coming in for afternoon tea which looked wonderful - sandwiches and cakes and pots of tea. Almost as gorgeous as the stunning young lady who came in with two friends or relatives...

"Don't mind me, lads..." muttered Jackie in exasperation as we sat goggle-eyed for a moment... They really did look delicious those sandwiches...

HMS Pinafore

All sorts of memories come back when you start scanning old photographs.

As I flicked through the old albums of stored black and white negatives I came a cross a set of photographs from December 1971. At the time I was in the Upper 6th Form at Heywood Senior High School - now called Siddal Moor I believe.

The music teacher, Gerald Fish, had suggested the school stage a Gilbert and Sullivan light opera, HMS Pinafore. It was the first musical production I can remember. Before that productions were plays - I remember watching Sheridan's The Rivals one year as a young boy in the lower forms and thinking how grown up the 6th formers looked...

The school was only around 3 years old, having been a merger of Heywood Grammar School and some other schools when secondary schools went comprehensive. For us grammar school pupils it meant being subjected to fire alarms and fire extinguishers being set off every now and then. Our japes had been a touch more intellectual. A bit more of your serious pursuit of scientific knowledge in the laboratories to make fireworks, rockets and such... The fact that they burnt all the paint off the window sill and ended up having to be jettisoned out of the second storey window didn't detract from the intellectual nature of it...

Anyway Gerald wanted me to play the male romantic lead. I was a bit aghast at this as the female lead was taller than me... So to his disappointment (and in retrospect to mine probably) I refused and ended up helping with the lighting and special effects which consisted of a thunderflash in a metal dustbin in the gymnasium behind the stage. A bit of magnesium powder in the cannon made a flash and the gigantic KABOOM! of the thunderflash meant that it was a wise decision to have St Johns Ambulance on hand as it took the audience a good 5 minutes to settle down after that went off!

The school gained some musical instruments out of the production, bought specially for the orchestra, some of which were pupils augmented by some of Gerald's contacts from the musical world.

I remember him particularly for the tremendous support he gave me at the time as a guitarist, encouraging, prompting me to try lead runs that challenged and stretched me, giving a few of us the confidence to go out and sing in front of an audience for the first time.

I remember many of the people shown here but can only remember names of those from my year or of those who I had regular contact with.

The full set of 27 photos, which were taken at the dress rehearsal, can be viewed up to 1440x900 pixels at this Flickr set. If you are featured, or you know any of the names I either never knew or have forgotten, please add a comment to the relevant photo.

Queens' College, Cambridge

On Wednesday Clive and I gave a workshop on Project Management to an audience of learning providers - colleges, universities, local authorities and one private provider - in the wonderful setting of the Old Kitchens of Queens' College, one of the colleges of Cambridge University.

Queens' rather than Queen's because it was founded originally by the Queen of Henry VI, Margaret d'Anjou in 1448. For some reason it was refounded in 1465 by Elizabeth Woodville, the Queen of Edward IV and therefore the placing of the apostrophe in Queens' College is correct.

Above is seen the Cloister Court. There is a modern and a medieval "side" to the college, with each being separated by the River Cam. We were in the medieval side, or the Dark Side as it is known affectionately. The Cloister Court was built in the 1490s, though the President's Lodgings, facing onto the river, is 30 years earlier.

It was raining quite heavily that day but I couldn't let that put me off whizzing round with the camera for a couple of minutes at lunchtime.

Leading from the Cloisters up through a corridor with the Old Kitchens on the right and a sumptuous Banqueting Hall on the left are these well-worn stone steps. Walking straight through brings you to a second, earlier courtyard, the Old Court. First however we'll have a peek through that door on the left into the Banqueting Hall.

I've seldom been in a more impressive room, even walking through the likes of Windsor Castle. This room is awe inspiring with its ceiling guarded by gilded angels projecting from beams, the gold leaf decorations and the age-blackened panelling. And this in an education establishment! How different from the canteen to where I was marched in a long crocodile in Form 2 at Heywood Grammar... Do the diners here have to put up with lumpy tapioca and semolina, haricot baked beans served without the saving grace of a tomato flavoured sauce...

I left the room only with reluctance and turned left to the Old Court with this magnificent Gatehouse at the opposite side. It was a brilliant venue to give one of our workshops and I'd like to thank both the Queens' College and the JISC Regional Support Centre, Eastern for making such a splendid venue available to us.

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Heywood Grammar School Reunion

Last night after work I drove over to Heywood for a school reunion. Jackie was away at a bluegrass concert but Alex turned up right behind me and we met up with a few faces we hadn't seen in - what? - 36 years?!?

I learned a valuable lesson - even if your phone has a 5 megapixel camera, don't assume it will take photos! I should have taken a camera! Anyway it was great to catch up and chat with Brigid, Andrew (alias Sid), Jackie, Anne (both of them!), Jayne, Dave, Elaine and a few others.

There were a few teachers scattered about the room too and there must easily have been over a hundred people there.

Mike Law, our ex-Games teacher made a short speech and asked "Would you like another reunion in four years?" which prompted a few mutterings of "Blimey, I might not still be here in four years!