I don't recall much of the form below Mick's, except that it housed one of the best sporting all-rounders, George Breed, whose cannonball shot at goal, after a lightning twist, was particularly memorable. More of George in a later section on cricket.
One of his year was Ernie Plackett, from the Sandiacre haulage firm, whose sudden twist with the ball after a dash down the left wing I learned to time fairly accurately. His elder brother, "Charry" Plackett, was one of the star pupils of the Art Room, and only comes to mind from one unusual episode. For some reason a hair had been pulled from among his incipient chest hair and we were gathered round staring at a spot of real blood.
Dennis ‘Tagger’ Taylor, the fastest runner in the school, of whom we shall hear more later, was around at this time. He and I came into collision in a house soccer match in which I upended him in what I still consider was a fair shoulder-charge, but as he was the fastest runner in the school and I was only a gangling near-six-footer, the decision went against me. As my favourite master, John Crompton, backed up the decision I can't accuse him of favouritism.
Coming now to my form, first mention must go to Katie ("Swot") Boyes, from York Avenue, Sandiacre, undisputed top of the form, year by year; a quiet, blond, serene girl, ethereally fragile-looking, but obviously tough enough to achieve first-class honours in economics at Cambridge.
There was nothing fragile-looking about statuesque Betty ("Jigger") Lloyd, nor her gingerhaired cousin Joyce ("Jo") Tunnicliffe, both from Breaston; carroty-haired Muriel ("Mudge") Miles, of Wellington Street (of whom more later); Margaret Taylor, sister of Dennis, Hermione ?, the plainest girl, with steel specs and long plaits, but what a good sport she was.
I have to admit that my boyish admiration for the opposite sex resided not in my own form but in the one above. For in a brief sojourn in the sixth form, after matriculation, I encountered Margaret Dalgleish, of the mineral water firm and then in second-year sixth. She was not a conventionally "pretty" girl and I was not put off by her nickname - Maggie Dagger - but admired her for being both the champion slow cyclist and one of the fastest 80-yarders. I suppose I was also attracted by the fact that she seemed to be the only girl remotely interested in me. Being somewhat unnaturally diffident, I was reluctant to tackle the problem head-on and attempted to employ Mudge Miles as a go-between. Dear old Mudge never seemed to do her stuff and only a much later revelation made me understand that she would have preferred to have played first fiddle.
Immediately after I left and had commenced my articles at 34 Market Place, I took my afternoon cup of tea to the window, hoping to see Maggie cycling past on the way home to 180 Wollaton Road, Nottingham, and afterwards we managed a very decorous and short-lived courtship.
Having previously mentioned my placid nature, I would hate to think that I had given any reader the impression that I was more of a mouse than a man. It may have been shortly after I left the sixth form than I found that a small French exchange teacher was paying more attention to Maggie than I considered necessary. Having established the whereabouts of his lodgings, I went there one evening and as he stood in the doorway, I towered over him, and in stilted schoolboy English (unmixed with crude Anglo-Saxon) informed him that unless he desisted I might find it necessary to push his Gallic teeth past his epiglottis. Looking back with horror, I recognise my foolishness: but for a Merciful Providence he might have had a flick-knife under his armpit, or the French equivalent of a skean dhu inside his sock - he might even have come out top of his épee class!
By now the house system had been instituted and if memory serves me correctly, Derwent was most often top house. I sometimes wonder how random was the allocation of pupils. I don't recall very much detail, but it must go on record that their prodigious all-rounder, George Breed, knocked spots off us by throwing the cricket ball a magnificent 103 yards. However much I wound myself up, I never managed more than about 60. Even George had something to learn from an Eton College boy who apparently knocked up 130 yards! I wonder how this compares with professional cricketers?
I can't even remember who captained Soar House at cricket, whether Ken Bettle of College Street, or myself. But I do remember that he and I seemed to share the bowling and often shared the wickets 50-50. I had always been regarded from Risley days as principally a batsman, but for Soar I developed a high shoulder action which enabled me to maintain a very straight ball and little short of a yorker. Once again, I cannot remember having been called upon to bowl for the school team, having been relegated to opening batsman with George Breed. Masochistically, I always chose to take "first bowl".
Living only a few stone-throws from Trent College, it would have been strange had we not come into some contact with the scholars, but there never seemed to be any about the town. Father was visiting dental surgeon to the college, but we learned nothing from him. I do remember one occasion when the public must have been admitted to a rugby match and I had my first glimpse of the celebrated Prince Obolensky, with his shock of golden hair pushed back by the wind as he flew down the wing. This was a preview of a later occasion when he did a like service for his country in an international game. Am I right in believing that soon afterwards he gave his life for his country in the ensuing war?
The headmaster at that time was G F Bell, and I remember writing to him after I had left school suggesting that a cricket match be arranged between an XI from our old scholars and one from his college. Alas, it fell on deaf ears - probably most fortunately for us since they would most likely have murdered us.
Apart from this one rugby game and one cricket game, the only other episode I remember in connection with Trent College was a visit to their outdoor swimming pool during their summer vacation. I had gone with Alan and Keith Hall, only to find the pool covered with pondweed, which took some clearing before we could take a dip. Brother Hugh recently told me that he did much the same, with the Hall brothers and Wally Tunnicliffe, but that the weed was not only on the surface.
As Alan and Keith had been educated away, I seldom saw much of them, and I am quite puzzled how this episode came about. Their father had been a tenant of my father, with a hairdressing salon under his dental surgery at 70 Derby Road, before moving to more commodious and palatial premises at the Green. Whether the fumes from the salon and the fumes from the surgery helped or hindered either business, history does not relate. While Keith elected to continue the hairdressing tradition and remained in LE, Alan went in for medicine and, like me, lost track of the ancestral haunt, by moving to Lincolnshire.
Having seen, in 1999, a letter to the Daily Telegraph - in prime position - from a Dr Alan Hall, of Sleaford, I took the liberty of writing to him asking if he was the brother of Keith, and formerly of Long Eaton. A few days later I had a telephone call from Alan confirming that I had guessed rightly and he seemed genuinely pleased to be remembered after such a long interval. No more pleased than I, because he had often stuck in my memory as being an impossibly good-looking lad, rather like a youthful Gary Cooper or Alan Ladd. It was a brief correspondence with Keith that put me on the Sleaford scent.
Carnival time was always popular. The Breaston Highlanders were a most impressive band and it seemed difficult to realise that they were not real Highlanders. The procession seemed almost endless and I suppose they coincided with the Wakes. I was slightly smitten with the elfin looks of Jeannine Gentis as I trailed along among the side-shows with a mixed group. She and her younger sister, Ella, were daughters of Mother's friends, Mr. and Mrs. Gentis, of Elm Avenue. The father, of French extraction, had the job of sorting out an incredible confusion in the books of the biggest estate agency in the town.
During some of my long convalescences I helped Mother to entertain Mrs. Gentis with my cucumber sandwiches which (I like to believe) would have gone down well at Buckingham Palace. Eventually, Jeannine married Reg Alton and, with him, pursued a highly academic career at Oxford University. Her half-French blood must have helped as she delved into medieval French literature.
As a family, we never seemed to go in for social life. We boys always gravitated to Trowell Grove, to Les and Topsy Statham's. The only two outings I recall were to a performance by Frank Titterton, the tenor (and England's answer to Richard Tauber), and a matinee at the Nottingham Theatre Royal showing "Rose Marie", to which I had bullied eldest brother Paul to take me. He was reluctant and, coming out into bright sunshine after the performance, I felt the show was a bit out of place.
One of his year was Ernie Plackett, from the Sandiacre haulage firm, whose sudden twist with the ball after a dash down the left wing I learned to time fairly accurately. His elder brother, "Charry" Plackett, was one of the star pupils of the Art Room, and only comes to mind from one unusual episode. For some reason a hair had been pulled from among his incipient chest hair and we were gathered round staring at a spot of real blood.
Dennis ‘Tagger’ Taylor, the fastest runner in the school, of whom we shall hear more later, was around at this time. He and I came into collision in a house soccer match in which I upended him in what I still consider was a fair shoulder-charge, but as he was the fastest runner in the school and I was only a gangling near-six-footer, the decision went against me. As my favourite master, John Crompton, backed up the decision I can't accuse him of favouritism.
Coming now to my form, first mention must go to Katie ("Swot") Boyes, from York Avenue, Sandiacre, undisputed top of the form, year by year; a quiet, blond, serene girl, ethereally fragile-looking, but obviously tough enough to achieve first-class honours in economics at Cambridge.
There was nothing fragile-looking about statuesque Betty ("Jigger") Lloyd, nor her gingerhaired cousin Joyce ("Jo") Tunnicliffe, both from Breaston; carroty-haired Muriel ("Mudge") Miles, of Wellington Street (of whom more later); Margaret Taylor, sister of Dennis, Hermione ?, the plainest girl, with steel specs and long plaits, but what a good sport she was.
I have to admit that my boyish admiration for the opposite sex resided not in my own form but in the one above. For in a brief sojourn in the sixth form, after matriculation, I encountered Margaret Dalgleish, of the mineral water firm and then in second-year sixth. She was not a conventionally "pretty" girl and I was not put off by her nickname - Maggie Dagger - but admired her for being both the champion slow cyclist and one of the fastest 80-yarders. I suppose I was also attracted by the fact that she seemed to be the only girl remotely interested in me. Being somewhat unnaturally diffident, I was reluctant to tackle the problem head-on and attempted to employ Mudge Miles as a go-between. Dear old Mudge never seemed to do her stuff and only a much later revelation made me understand that she would have preferred to have played first fiddle.
Immediately after I left and had commenced my articles at 34 Market Place, I took my afternoon cup of tea to the window, hoping to see Maggie cycling past on the way home to 180 Wollaton Road, Nottingham, and afterwards we managed a very decorous and short-lived courtship.
Having previously mentioned my placid nature, I would hate to think that I had given any reader the impression that I was more of a mouse than a man. It may have been shortly after I left the sixth form than I found that a small French exchange teacher was paying more attention to Maggie than I considered necessary. Having established the whereabouts of his lodgings, I went there one evening and as he stood in the doorway, I towered over him, and in stilted schoolboy English (unmixed with crude Anglo-Saxon) informed him that unless he desisted I might find it necessary to push his Gallic teeth past his epiglottis. Looking back with horror, I recognise my foolishness: but for a Merciful Providence he might have had a flick-knife under his armpit, or the French equivalent of a skean dhu inside his sock - he might even have come out top of his épee class!
By now the house system had been instituted and if memory serves me correctly, Derwent was most often top house. I sometimes wonder how random was the allocation of pupils. I don't recall very much detail, but it must go on record that their prodigious all-rounder, George Breed, knocked spots off us by throwing the cricket ball a magnificent 103 yards. However much I wound myself up, I never managed more than about 60. Even George had something to learn from an Eton College boy who apparently knocked up 130 yards! I wonder how this compares with professional cricketers?
I can't even remember who captained Soar House at cricket, whether Ken Bettle of College Street, or myself. But I do remember that he and I seemed to share the bowling and often shared the wickets 50-50. I had always been regarded from Risley days as principally a batsman, but for Soar I developed a high shoulder action which enabled me to maintain a very straight ball and little short of a yorker. Once again, I cannot remember having been called upon to bowl for the school team, having been relegated to opening batsman with George Breed. Masochistically, I always chose to take "first bowl".
Living only a few stone-throws from Trent College, it would have been strange had we not come into some contact with the scholars, but there never seemed to be any about the town. Father was visiting dental surgeon to the college, but we learned nothing from him. I do remember one occasion when the public must have been admitted to a rugby match and I had my first glimpse of the celebrated Prince Obolensky, with his shock of golden hair pushed back by the wind as he flew down the wing. This was a preview of a later occasion when he did a like service for his country in an international game. Am I right in believing that soon
afterwards he gave his life for his country in the ensuing war?
The headmaster at that time was G F Bell, and I remember writing to him after I had left school suggesting that a cricket match be arranged between an XI from our old scholars and one from his college. Alas, it fell on deaf ears - probably most fortunately for us since they would most likely have murdered us.
Apart from this one rugby game and one cricket game, the only other episode I remember in connection with Trent College was a visit to their outdoor swimming pool during their summer vacation. I had gone with Alan and Keith Hall, only to find the pool covered with pondweed, which took some clearing before we could take a dip. Brother Hugh recently told me that he did much the same, with the Hall brothers and Wally Tunnicliffe, but that the weed was not only on the surface.
As Alan and Keith had been educated away, I seldom saw much of them, and I am quite puzzled how this episode came about. Their father had been a tenant of my father, with a hairdressing salon under his dental surgery at 70 Derby Road, before moving to more commodious and palatial premises at the Green. Whether the fumes from the salon and the
fumes from the surgery helped or hindered either business, history does not relate. While Keith elected to continue the hairdressing tradition and remained in LE, Alan went in for medicine and, like me, lost track of the ancestral haunt, by moving to Lincolnshire.
Having seen, in 1999, a letter to the Daily Telegraph - in prime position - from a Dr Alan Hall, of Sleaford, I took the liberty of writing to him asking if he was the brother of Keith, and formerly of Long Eaton. A few days later I had a telephone call from Alan confirming that I had guessed rightly and he seemed genuinely pleased to be remembered after such a long interval. No more pleased than I, because he had often stuck in my memory as being an impossibly good-looking lad, rather like a youthful Gary Cooper or Alan Ladd. It was a brief correspondence with Keith that put me on the Sleaford scent.
Carnival time was always popular. The Breaston Highlanders were a most impressive band and it seemed difficult to realise that they were not real Highlanders. The procession seemed almost endless and I suppose they coincided with the Wakes. I was slightly smitten with the elfin looks of Jeannine Gentis as I trailed along among the side-shows with a mixed group. She and her younger sister, Ella, were daughters of Mother's friends, Mr. and Mrs. Gentis, of Elm Avenue. The father, of French extraction, had the job of sorting out an incredible confusion in the books of the biggest estate agency in the town.
During some of my long convalescences I helped Mother to entertain Mrs. Gentis with my cucumber sandwiches which (I like to believe) would have gone down well at Buckingham Palace. Eventually, Jeannine married Reg Alton and, with him, pursued a highly academic career at Oxford University. Her half-French blood must have helped as she delved into medieval French literature.
As a family, we never seemed to go in for social life. We boys always gravitated to Trowell Grove, to Les and Topsy Statham's. The only two outings I recall were to a performance by Frank Titterton, the tenor (and England's answer to Richard Tauber), and a matinee at the Nottingham Theatre Royal showing "Rose Marie", to which I had bullied eldest brother Paul to take me. He was reluctant and, coming out into bright sunshine after the performance, I felt the show was a bit out of place.