Forty Years On (and counting)

With everyone starting to think about their summer holidays, I thought this series of articles that originally appeared in the Derby Telegraph last year might have some relevance.

It comes as quite a shock to discover that it is forty years since a particular point in your personal history, like it being forty four years since we last won the World Cup, for example, and yet I can still remember watching the game on our black and white TV.  In 2010 we celebrated our Twentieth Wedding Anniversary, and yet it only seems a year or two since we were cutting the wedding cake as the February rain lashed against the windows of our village hall.  However, it came as quite a surprise to realise that, in September 2010, I had known my mate Kev for forty years.  Thoughts come tumbling through your mind, like; How did that happen?  Where did the time go?  And, thank heavens he’s given up smoking so I’ll never have to give him back the cigarette I cadged on the stairs of Burton Technical College.

This is the start of a story that culminates in a very silly holiday in Majorca but also celebrates a friendship that endures despite geography and advancing age.  However, before we get ahead of ourselves, I need to explain how I came to be on the stairs of Burton Technical College in the first place.

Anglesey Secondary Modern in Clarence Street, Burton had a great reputation for achieving what it was founded for - to provide sufficient vocational and academic training to fit its pupils for work in the brewing, printing or engineering industries.  The brightest boys achieved apprenticeships with Rolls Royce, whilst others gained employment with Bass or Ind Coope.  Some went to Darleys or Tresises, others to BTR or Briggs.  One particularly over-achieving student had gained a post, at the personal invitation of Sir Clifford Gothard, to his accountancy business and was spoken of in hushed tones by staff and students alike.  He floated around the school on a cloud of success, viewing the rest of us scruffy scholars with disdain.  I often wonder what happened to him.  Is he now a force to be reckoned with in The City, or does he wrangle supermarket trolleys, muttering about what might have been?  Anyway, as a school, it was not really designed for academic prowess and had pretty much done everything it could with you by the time you reached 14 or 15.  The few of us who had gone on to sit GCE ‘O’ Levels, had nowhere to go if we wanted to continue our studies.  We had to find some institution that would accept us into its Sixth Form.

The options open to us were, for the boys, the Grammar School, for the girls, the Girls’ High School, and for both genders, Burton Technical College.  As the Grammar School was where I was supposed to be heading before I made an unexpected mess of my 11+, it was assumed that I would gravitate there.  I was less sure, particularly after a visit there made it apparent that I would be expected to wear a uniform again (the rules for this were relaxed at Anglesey for us in the Upper 5^th) and to take an active part in the playing of rugby and other sports, as well as P.E.  Given that it had taken me five years to finally extricate myself from all of this at Anglesey (and I had never grappled with rugby), I wasn’t entirely sure that this pursuit of academic excellence was worth the candle.  Fortunately, the Grammar School apparently viewed me with the same distaste, as they decided to forego my kind offer to study with them.  This was not quite the blow it might have been as I had now visited Burton Tech. and had seen that there I could smoke, drink tea and coffee (instead of school milk) from Perspex cups in the Refectory and generally be treated like an adult (which I was not, but aspired to be) as opposed to an overgrown schoolboy (which I was, but didn’t like to admit it).

All I had to do now was to fill in the yawning gap between leaving Anglesey and joining Burton Tech., of which more next time (Putting the lid on it)


You can find more stories from The Slightly Odd World of Phil Whiteland in e-book format - Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (UK) or Steady Past Your Granny's - Kindle Edition (USA)

Dash!

It occurred to me that I haven't exactly covered myself in sporting glory in my previous posts, so this is an attempt to set the record straight(ish).

I have mentioned before, here and elsewhere, my antipathy toward school sports. I particularly disliked winter sports, such as football and anything that involved scrabbling about in mud and bad weather. Spring and summer, therefore, ensured that if sports had to take place, they did so in reasonably clement surroundings. Moreover, if you ignored cricket (and I usually tried to), most summer sports were individual rather than team based and therefore the only person I was letting down was myself.

I was reasonably happy to have a go at most athletic disciplines. I was quite happy to put the shot (although where I ‘put’ it wasn’t very far), long jump and triple jump (or hop, skip and jump as it was known then). I went along with the high jump until it started to get to a level that I regarded as plain daft. Even the javelin posed no problems, until I started to think about it (I have a penchant for over-complicating things). Once I had lost the unconscious ability to just chuck something as hard as I could, and started to fret about when to let go and how, I naturally became a danger to myself and everyone around me. However, I was happiest (using a very loose definition of that word) when I was running. In this discipline there was nobody to let down and no equipment with which to become enmeshed. It was just me and the distance, and if the distance won, well so be it.

I seem to remember that the running distances then were 100, 220, 440 and 880 yards and, of course, the mile. I lacked the stamina for the longer distances (probably because of an early addiction to the evil weed), so the mile and 880 yard races usually involved me crossing the line when everyone who was remotely interested had long since cleared off to pastures new. Neither did I have the concentrated power that was necessary to succeed at 100 or 220 yards. However, I could make a reasonable fist of the 440 yards. By “reasonable fist”, I mean that I did not always finish last, which in my terms was success indeed.

On this particular day in around 1967 you find me lining up for the 440 yard heat on a less than sunny school day. These were the heats that would decide the contestants at the annual Sports Day. My record as one who “did not always finish last” meant that the contestants in my heat consisted of others like myself, and those who most definitely did finish last. This was the heat for those who were usually consigned to the goal in football, or who had been languishing behind a permanent sick note from their mother. This motley crew lined up at the staggered starting points, with me on the outside and leading position. I was never really happy with this position because it was impossible to judge how well you were doing until the point when the ‘stagger’ unwound and the rest of the pack steamed past you, by which time it was too late.

On this occasion, I made my mind up to try and give a good account of myself and, from the word “Go” (literally in this case) I pounded ahead as fast as I possibly could. With heart pounding and laboured breathing I waited for the moment when the rest of the contestants would thunder past me and was then completely perplexed when it did not happen. I just was not used to running without having someone else ahead of me. I didn’t dare to look behind me as I knew I would either fall over or, at the very least, stumble and watch the others storm past. All I could do was to run and keep running at full pelt and wait to see what would happen. All the while, I kept waiting for that familiar moment when one or more runners would pass me. As I drew ever closer to the Finish Line, I began to panic. I had never won anything sporting in my life and it seemed to go against all the laws of nature that I should do so now. And yet, I did. I crossed the Finish Line with no-one in front of me and with people still there to cheer me home. Even the P.E. Teacher, who normally would not spit on me if I was on fire, was forced to remark “Well done, Whiteland”. I collapsed in a heap, astounded with myself.

It was only later that a creeping cynicism began to tarnish my victory. It dawned on me that my fellow racers might have realised that winning this heat would inevitably involve them in racing, yet again, at the Sports Day. This annual event was, for me and my less sporting compatriots, usually a pleasant day in the sunshine watching the exertions of others and cheering enthusiastically for our House. Winning the heat would rather put a dampener on an otherwise pleasant day. I therefore began to wonder if I had not so much won the heat, as that the others had made absolutely sure that they would lose it. I would never know, but these thoughts did rather take the shine off my victory.

You will be pleased to know that the natural sporting order of things was restored at the Sports Day, with me coming in a creditable last against the more skilled and speedy opposition. I did, however, have a tinge of jealousy as I noted that the combatants from my heat were lazily disporting themselves around the field. Oh well, some you win and...

The Change in the Changing Room Part 1

I like to think that I'm something of a student of human behaviour (only GCSE at the moment, but I'm working on it) and the activities in the gents changing room are a rich source of study. Back in 2007, I wrote a piece for the Derby Evening Telegraph on how much the male changing room had changed since my school days. This is the first part of that article:

“We’ve got to make the most of what we’ve got left, haven’t we?” The white-haired gent said to me as we both stood in front of the mirror in the changing room of a local health club. I’ll tell you more about that conversation later (before you jump to any odd conclusions) but it did prompt me to realise just how much has changed in male behaviour in my fifty-odd (very odd in some cases) years.

In my youth, anyone attempting to ‘make the most of what they’ve got’ in the changing room (by which I mean adornment of any sort, from deodorant to hair gel, before the double-entendres start flying thick and fast) would have been viewed with deep suspicion. Things are rather different now, I have discovered.

In Uxbridge St. Juniors, the changing room for sports tended to be the brick built shelter on Anglesey Road Recreation Grounds (“the Wreck”). This was open to the elements on one side and the facilities consisted of a slatted bench around the other three sides (large chunks of which had usually been broken away by the older youths who frequented the place at night). It was somewhat Spartan in design and did not really encourage the spending of any time on one’s appearance. The main aim was to get your socks and football boots (or equivalent, depending on the season) on before the biting wind, scything across from the Wagon Works, turned your extremities a fetching shade of blue and condemned you to a Pobble-like existence for the rest of your days (for those who have forgotten their Edward Lear, the Pobble had no toes). I suppose we must have changed somewhere on site at Uxbridge St. as well. I can recall those ubiquitous draw-string pump bags hanging ominously from every coat peg, a sure sign of horrors yet to come (you may have gathered that my relationship with physical exercise was not an entirely positive one), so I suppose we changed in the coat-stuffed cloakroom but I’m not entirely sure.

The move to Secondary School brought much improved facilities for changing for the various tortures that featured in the school timetable. I can only speak for the Boy’s Changing Rooms of course, the Girl’s equivalent would remain a mystery to me, the only images I had were those conjured up by the lurid gossip of adolescence and consequent fevered imaginings (one being entirely the product of the other). The Boy’s Changing Rooms consisted of rows of slatted benches (again, I don’t know why, perhaps there’s a law somewhere) with coat hooks above. I seem to recall some lockers but these were for gym and sports equipment, I think. At the end of the room was the shower block, a tiled area split into two short corridors with shower heads either side, and the P.E. Teacher’s changing room.

Those unable to take part in the planned physical activity (or who hoped that they would not have to) lined up by the lockers, waiting for inspection by the P.E. Teacher. He would then proceed down the line, perusing the ‘papers’ (letters from home, allegedly) of the supplicants, like an S.S. Officer in a World War II film. By this time, the rest of the class would be changed and ready for their instructions and could sit back and enjoy the ritual humiliation of those who, for real or imagined reasons, were trying to avoid being involved. The degree of theatricality involved in this process tended to depend on the teacher for that class and the mood he was in. Genuine medical reasons usually just provoked a degree of discontented muttering from the track-suited Torquemada whereas the more feeble excuses (“I’m not feeling very well, sir”, “I think I’ve got a cold, sir” (as opposed to a cold sore), or “I had a letter from me mum, but the dog ate it”) would be seized upon, communicated to the rest of the class in pantomime-like tones, and followed by one of his stock of withering phrases or sarcastic comments (“Cold! Cold! If you can catch a cold, Whiteland then you can catch a ball, get yourself changed” or “Well, I’d rather teach your dog than you, Jones. Three times around the playing field, now!”).

Forgetting your kit was a cardinal sin and, whilst it might work occasionally as a means of dodging P.E./Sports, it was usually guaranteed to result in the utter humiliation of the ‘less than artful’ dodger. The standard punishment was to find yourself attired in kit assembled from lost items and cast-offs of previous generations of Anglesey scholars, in a bewildering range of sizes. The miscreant might therefore find himself wearing shorts that might be considered a little roomy by Bernard Manning, his (not Bernard Manning’s) school vest (we all wore vests in those days), grey school socks and football boots so tight that the erstwhile footballer would have to mince onto the playing field. All of the above in a range of colours from dark purple to “me mum washed it with me sister’s red flannel knickers” white.

Returning to the changing room after your bout of physical endeavour inevitably meant an encounter with the showers. In those days, adolescence and cleanliness did not really go together and many tried to avoid this particular ordeal. The P.E. Teacher was, however, always absolutely determined that everyone would shower, but as you were only ever allowed about 30 seconds in there, the chances of any thorough cleansing taking place was pretty limited. By and large, ‘he that must be obeyed’ seemed to be fairly happy if you were just wet. What the reaction would have been if you had trooped into the showers clutching some herbal essence shower gel and a bottle of ‘Wash and Go’ (I used that on my hair and they were right – I washed it and its gone!), I dread to think. Ideally, following the Spartan ethic, I’m sure they would have liked you to rub yourself down with a pumice stone and flay yourself dry with a whip. Of course, getting clean under these conditions would have been a minor miracle anyway, given that the floor was usually liberally coated with divots of mud and turf prised from the boots of all the preceding classes, and that you were putting back on the same sweaty (and there’s nothing like an adolescent male for sweat, they can sweat from pores that haven’t even been discovered yet), grotty garments that you changed out of in the first place.

The first collection of stories - "Steady Past Your Granny's" is now available in Kindle e-book format at Amazon UK and Amazon USA