Written by Alan Neatby-Smith it is a book about Risley and Long Eaton during the 1920s and 30.
More school personalities
ALTHOUGH when starting school I must have been a gangling, oversized lad, the seniors always seemed immeasurably bigger and older, and only a little less awesome than the masters. I remember particularly, flaxen-haired Tommy Sharman, son of a humble Castle Donington railway worker, a brilliant Latinist who, in 1930, won a State Scholarship and was reputed to be destined for high places.
I never heard that he had got any higher than Consul at Riga but I am probably wrong. About his time would have been tall, dark, Eton-cropped Brenda Clarke (also from Castle Donington?), who already seemed to be grown up, and Winnie Feber, whose physiognomy I don't recall at all, but whose cerebral attainments in the mathematical field, together with those of Brenda, were made known to us lesser plodders. They must have been mathematician Fletcher's pride and joy.
Any lady reader rejoicing in the name of Joan may be interested to read of: Joan Knott - first woman in the country in the Civil Service administrative Branch Examination; Joan Godfrey - first woman in the Assistant Tax Inspectors' Examination; and Joan Hurley, who won a State Scholarship in 1937.
Long before my time there was Keith Palmer, of a Sandiacre family and a brilliant dyechemist, who became head of the ICI plant at Billingham before being head-hunted for a still higher position in the USA. So even the humble LECSS was involved in the brain drain! One Saturday I watched Keith bowl at Sandiacre cricket ground. It must have been very dry for both he and the ball seemed to disappear in a cloud of dust, and he put me in mind of Harold Larwood.
His younger brother, Neville, my senior by four years, also ended up in the North of England, managing a power station. He also bowled but at a much reduced pace for Risley. About Neville's time there must have been Mary Cordingley, with a sublime English beauty and already sufficiently developed, to my young eyes, to provide a noble bosom on which a confused adolescent could rest his aching head.
Not far behind would have been the eldest of the Smedley trio, from the Beeston area I believe, who, with his younger siblings, were universally known as Gale, Breeze and Draught, the last being in my form and, I believe, Breeze in brother Mick's. Gale resides in my memory for his charming injunction when, as a server of Mrs. Frost's school meals, he invariably said: "Get it darn yer, that or nowt." This brings me back to Neville's contemporaries. Brother Paul and his greatest friend, Les Statham, of Breaston, were later both in the art world, Paul having gone to Nottingham Art School and Les to Derby Art SchooL Paul became a commercial artist at the Carrington Studio in Nottingham, did photoretouching on Picture Post at Watford and finally, having married a Southampton girl, ended up as a cartographer at the Ordnance Survey HQ at Southampton, where he died in 1981.
More school personalities
ALTHOUGH when starting school I must have been a gangling, oversized lad, the seniors always seemed immeasurably bigger and older, and only a little less awesome than the masters. I remember particularly, flaxen-haired Tommy Sharman, son of a humble Castle Donington railway worker, a brilliant Latinist who, in 1930, won a State Scholarship and was reputed to be destined for high places.
I never heard that he had got any higher than Consul at Riga but I am probably wrong. About his time would have been tall, dark, Eton-cropped Brenda Clarke (also from Castle
Donington?), who already seemed to be grown up, and Winnie Feber, whose physiognomy I don't recall at all, but whose cerebral attainments in the mathematical field, together with those of Brenda, were made known to us lesser plodders. They must have been mathematician Fletcher's pride and joy.
Any lady reader rejoicing in the name of Joan may be interested to read of: Joan Knott - first woman in the country in the Civil Service administrative Branch Examination; Joan Godfrey - first woman in the Assistant Tax Inspectors' Examination; and Joan Hurley, who won a State Scholarship in 1937.
Long before my time there was Keith Palmer, of a Sandiacre family and a brilliant dyechemist, who became head of the ICI plant at Billingham before being head-hunted for a still higher position in the USA. So even the humble LECSS was involved in the brain drain! One Saturday I watched Keith bowl at Sandiacre cricket ground. It must have been very dry for both he and the ball seemed to disappear in a cloud of dust, and he put me in mind of Harold Larwood.
His younger brother, Neville, my senior by four years, also ended up in the North of England, managing a power station. He also bowled but at a much reduced pace for Risley.
About Neville's time there must have been Mary Cordingley, with a sublime English beauty and already sufficiently developed, to my young eyes, to provide a noble bosom on which a confused adolescent could rest his aching head.
Not far behind would have been the eldest of the Smedley trio, from the Beeston area I believe, who, with his younger siblings, were universally known as Gale, Breeze and Draught, the last being in my form and, I believe, Breeze in brother Mick's. Gale resides in my memory for his charming injunction when, as a server of Mrs. Frost's school meals, he
invariably said: "Get it darn yer, that or nowt." This brings me back to Neville's contemporaries. Brother Paul and his greatest friend, Les Statham, of Breaston, were later both in the art world, Paul having gone to Nottingham Art School and Les to Derby Art SchooL Paul became a commercial artist at the Carrington Studio in Nottingham, did photoretouching on Picture Post at Watford and finally, having married a Southampton girl, ended up as a cartographer at the Ordnance Survey HQ at Southampton, where he died in 1981.