The Co-Op's Got Bananas

by Hunter Davies

  School reports tell you so much, establish dates and places and years, when often we forget the sequence of events, and can also give clues to our future interests, strengths and pursuits. Or not, as the case may be.

  I think the world divides into people who keep everything and those who don’t, whose first reaction is ‘straight to the skip’. I am one of nature’s hoarders and collectors. Any old rubbish and assorted ephemera. Or, as I call it, treasure.

  When I returned to Stanwix school, it took me a few months to realise that things had somehow moved on, new groupings had begun to take place, new bonds were being made, new huddles of excited fellow pupils were discussing things I had never heard discussed before, such as a school uniform. At neither of my primary schools, in England or Scotland, had we worn a uniform.

  What I had not been aware of, on arriving back at Stanwix in the spring of 1947, was that I had missed the eleven-plus, or the merit as it was called in Carlisle. In Scotland at the time, there was a twelve-plus, known in Dumfries as the qualifying, which was the stage at which all primary school children were tested and then segregated. It was expected, if I had stayed in Dumfries, that I would go to the Dumfries Academy as I was by then considered to be in the top two or three in the class.

  In Carlisle, they had all sat their eleven-plus before I reappeared. Then, when the results came through it was like a little earthquake, the plates immediately started shifting, new movements were formed, there was shaking and tremoring; life was not going to be the same again.

  It only slowly dawned on me that I was in a no-man’s-land, left on my own, going nowhere. Reg and most of my other friends in the class knew they were bound for Carlisle Grammar School, while a clutch of girls in my class were heading for the Carlisle and County High. I was a displaced person.

  My parents were as mystified as me. My mother, intelligent though she was, never really understood how Carlisle worked, always getting lost every time she went shopping up street. She had little idea of the local education system, which was of course different from that in Scotland. Nor did she know or recognise the names of the secondary schools that were now being bandied around at school each day, discussed, rated and ranked by all the pupils and their parents. I didn’t know their names either, but slowly I picked up that those who had passed the eleven-plus were the brainboxes, heading for the two best schools.

  The eleven-plus exam, dividing up the school population, came in with the Butler Education Act of 1944. (It also raised the school leaving age from fourteen to fifteen, though this did not come into force till 1947.) The government had envisaged a three-tier system, but this had rarely been established in most parts of the country. Instead, all pupils were strictly and brutally divided in two, either to the grammar school or to the secondary modern. In most areas, it was around 15–20 per cent who were the chosen ones, who went to a grammar school, while 80–85 per cent, the vast majority, the so-called eleven-plus failures, were condemned to what was being called a sec mod – a secondary modern school.

  For the next thirty years or so, this was the system for millions of English and Welsh and Northern Irish schoolchildren aged eleven. The exam hung over all primary school pupils in their last year. Everyone knew that those who failed the eleven-plus and went to the sec mod were doomed to be second-class citizens, not just educationally but socially and economically. Your chances of betterment in life, having a decent, possibly professional job, had gone. That was it. At eleven years old, you had already failed the first big hurdle in life.

  In Carlisle, for some remarkable reason, a proper tripartite system had just been established. This had happened only the year before I arrived back, so I was told later. It meant that in Carlisle, after your eleven-plus exam, you went one of three ways: 12½ per cent went to the grammar school or the high school; the next 12½ per cent went to either the Creighton School for Boys or the Margaret Sewell School for Girls; while the remaining 75 per cent, in other words the majority, went to one of the city’s secondary modern schools.

  No wonder there was so much chatter and clatter, discussion and expectation, as pupils tried to grasp, compare and contemplate what was about to happen to them.

  Meanwhile, I was left in limbo. I had not been allocated any school because I had not taken the exam. So where was I going to go? What would happen to me?

  Somehow my mother eventually worked out that I had been left behind, overlooked, had become a stateless citizen. I am not sure whether she went up to the school to enquire about my situation, or down into the town to the education offices, but one day I found myself called for an interview at the Creighton School. I sat in the headmaster’s study, quietly in a corner, and was given a short written test which I completed there and then. I was then asked a couple of questions, one of which was what I would like to do in life. I assumed this meant your fantasy life, your dream job, so I said, ‘Footballer, sir.’ Which was true, but probably not the answer to impress headmasters with your seriousness.

  A few weeks later I heard that I had been accepted into the Creighton School, which was apparently classed as a technical secondary, not one of the dreaded sec mods. It meant, apparently, that I was being considered as having passed the eleven-plus, so jolly well done, then, but alas not at the top level, not up to the standards required for the rigours and wonders of the grammar school.

  However, it did mean that, along with everyone else, I now had a secondary school to go to at the beginning of the new school year in September 1947.

  8

  CREIGHTON AND ASTHMA ATTACKS

  The Creighton School was long and low and modern, reddish bricks with lots of glass. The building had opened in 1940 and was clean and bright with lots of tarmacked playground but also green-grass playing areas to the rear leading down to the River Eden. We wore a uniform of dark blue blazers and a badge; we had a school cap; we learned French and the school game was rugby – all immediate and obvious clues to a school with pretensions. What could be more idyllic? How lucky we were in 1947, the post-war generation, about to start our secondary education in such wonderful, modern surroundings. I did feel fortunate to have got in, having been worried that I might be going nowhere.

  Next door was our sister school, the Margaret Sewell, a mirror image of the Creighton, same sort of building and layout. My twin sisters, three years later, ‘passed’ for the Maggie Anne, as it was known in the town, and they too wore uniform and felt quite privileged.

  Annabelle, so my mother always maintained, had passed for the high school, and would have gone there, but because her twin sister Marion had done far less well in the eleven-plus, the education authorities decided to keep them together and send both to Margaret Sewell. Our younger brother Johnny, when his time came for the eleven-plus, did not pass at any level. He was sent to what was considered the least favoured of all the sec mods, Kingstown, a small school, just an extension of a primary school, quite far away, almost out in the country. I never knew anyone else who ever went there. Poor Johnny, my mother always used to say, but he seemed perfectly happy and content.

  The Creighton and the Margaret Sewell were in the middle of the town, in Strand Road – the same road as the grammar school. It was the next building, in fact, except for some old stables. So near us, yet a world away in status and prestige.

  I don’t think the majority of Creightonians worried much about the grammar school or felt much jealousy. They were considered stuck-up snobs, grammar cads, who would want to be there, yah boo.

  We were not a sec mod, certainly not, we were a sec tech, so lots to be proud of. Although half the boys went on to become apprentices, as plumbers or electricians, much as they would have done, or hoped to have done, at a sec mod, the other half, the A stream, were aiming for more technical, white-collar jobs, such as draughtsman. The favoured job seemed to be something at Laing’s, the builders, who were very big in the city, having been founded locally and were soon to go on to become one of the construction giants of post-war Bri
tain.

  Only the A stream went on to sit O-levels at sixteen – the General Certificate of Education as it was called. If you managed to pass five this would get you into Laing’s, or similar, at a fairly good level, possibly junior management.

  But at sixteen, you had to leave. The Creighton did not have a sixth form. At the end of the fifth year, if you lasted that long, and half had left after the fourth year aged fifteen, that was it, you went out into the world of work.

  The grammar school had a sixth form, so Reg explained to me, which had fancy names like Upper Alpha or Beta or something like that. They didn’t give marks out of 100 for essays or exams as we did but grades with Greek names, alpha, beta and gamma, with rows of plus or minus signs added on to fine-tune your exact grading. All the masters wore gowns, for they all had degrees, and both Latin and Greek were taught.

  It sounded like a different world, on a level with the public schools we read about in the comics, yet if I felt this gulf between us and the grammar school, I wondered what it must be like for all those in the nation’s real sec mods, damned for decades as third-class citizens.

  Being at Big School was such a Big Event in itself, feeling so important in your new blazer with your new pencil box, set square, ruler, compass, protractor, all neatly tucked inside your new leather satchel – out of which you soon took your ruler. Fashion dictated that you stuck your ruler in your sock, can’t remember why. Was it to keep your socks up, and mine, like Just William’s, were always falling down? Or to show you were ready to rule, if some teacher demanded a quick bit of technical ruling? Or was it the better to smite some bully who was bothering you?

  Being at Big School, everyone seems Bigger than you – and not just the teachers. Some of the older boys seemed absolute giants, massive hulks, some with moustaches.

  Gradually it became clear which were the totally useless teachers. The French teacher, for example, I am sure could not speak French, for I never heard him say a word in the language. Instead, he would get us to read out from our French books and he would then correct our pronunciation, without in fact speaking the words himself. I suspect he was lumbered with teaching French because no one else could do it.

  At the Creighton very few teachers had degrees, as was obvious at prize-giving when most turned up in their ordinary clothes. The small handful of graduate teachers would display their furs and finery for all to see. Most of them had been in the war, come out and done short-service teaching training courses, encouraged by the government. The country needed more teachers, especially male teachers, ready to cope with the population explosion which was soon expected, now that our brave soldiers were back at home with their wives.

  I was put in class 1T for my first year – the T standing for Mr Thompson. The other class, in the two-class intake, was 1P after Mr Potter. They had been divided equally alphabetically, not on any merit system. At the end of that first term, in December 1947, out of our class of forty, I was eleventh. My next report, at the end of my first school year, showed I had jumped to fourth. In the second year, I went into 2A, which comprised the top half of the first year. From then on, I was in the A stream, being clearly totally gifted.

  My Creighton report, which naturally I still have, is a proper little book, with lots of pages, as it was to serve you for the whole of your Creighton career, during the next five years, if you stayed that long, so you had to take care of it.

  On the cover, the label says Hunter Davies, but inside, at the top of each annual report, it says E.H. Davies, Edward Hunter Davies and sometimes Edward Hunter-Davies. They could obviously never get my name straight. There was a boy in our year who had a proper double-barrelled name, Norman Heeley-Creed. Who said the Creighton was not a quality school.

  My school report is covered in brown paper. We had to do this to all our books each year, whenever we got a new set. It was an annual and agonising ritual in our household when all four of us suddenly announced we needed sheets of brown paper, which of course my mother never had, being unaware the new school year was imminent.

  Another ritual at school took place at the end of each term, when we had to take our desks out into in the playground and scrub them with soap and water. We rather liked this, instead of having any more lessons. I don’t think the grammar school did it, priding itself on its ancient, ivy-covered, battered desks. At the Creighton, we were a relatively new school, with new fittings, so we were supposed to keep everything clean.

  Even though I was in the A stream, I still had to do metalwork, up to the fourth year, and also technical drawing, right up to O-level, as we were a technical secondary. I hated both of them and was utterly useless.

  The metalwork classroom was a proper workshop, with lathes, a furnace, soldering irons, very noisy, dusty and dangerous. The master in charge, big and burly and always busy on his own particular creations, hardly bothered us, not in the way of teaching or talking to us. We were given a project and the materials at the beginning of each term, then left to get on with it. If we had any problems we queued up to see him while he was bent over his own work, with his protective goggles and ear pads firmly on, ignoring us.

  For four whole years in metalwork lessons I worked on a companion set. This consisted of a poker, a shovel and tongs, plus a stand on which each item was hooked. A wonderful present, so I thought, for my dear mother, won’t she be pleased. Like most families, our domestic life revolved around crouching in front of our coal fire with people shouting, ‘Shut that bloomin’ door!’

  All the items in the set were made of wrought iron, which we hammered and heated, bashed and battered, soldered and screwed, hoping recognisable shapes might emerge. Mine, when completed, was absolutely appalling. It was more like a piece of modern art, which Picasso or Salvador Dali might have made when drunk. I did eventually finish it and present it to my mother. I wonder where it is now. Be hard to destroy. Perhaps it’s in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  Technical drawing was at least quiet and clean, but oh-so-boring and tedious. You had to draw plans with side elevations and different angles and I could never get the hang of it, constantly rubbing out my pencil marks, then trying again, ending up with dirty marks, fingerprints, indentations and creases all over the page.

  I see I got 50 per cent in the tech drawing exam that first year, which surprises me. Must have been generous marking. There were two boys in the class, Dobbo and Barker, who always got 100 per cent. I hated them, so neat and tidy, not just in their drawings but in their clothes, their school uniforms, their shorts, their everything. I hated neat fuckers.

  Not, of course, that I would ever have used such language at the time, not even in my head. People did not swear, not that I heard, not in public. There was no bad language in books, in films, or in the street. The worst we ever said was bloody and bugger, but never the f- and c-words. I was on a train once, going to see my relations in Cambuslang, when some soldiers got into the crowded carriage. In talking among themselves, one was heard to use the phrase ‘bloody hell’. A gentleman beside me in a suit stood up and glared at them. He said there were women in the carriage, who could clearly hear what had just been uttered, so could they kindly desist from using such disgusting language. The soldiers immediately apologised.

  Today, if you dared to reprimand anyone for their language you would likely get a right mouthful, if not a good kicking. Or just laughed at. No one would comment, or even register the words spoken, not even any women who might be listening. Everyone swears, in every walk of life, from the cabinet to Buckingham Palace. Prince Philip recently told a photographer to get on with the fucking photograph, so the papers reported. And I believe everything in the papers.

  I saw a survey the other day that said that the average adult, men as well as women, from all classes, all ages, uses the f-word twelve times a day and that people swear twenty-seven times more today than they did fifty years ago, back in 1965. Bloomin’ heck, is all I can say.

  I played rugby for the first year at the Creig
hton and hated it. I was small and weedy and got knocked over all the time and started wheezing. So I managed to get myself excused, even though that meant I found myself on games afternoons lumped with the lumps, the fatties, the speccy four eyes and the totally uncoordinated, who were herded together behind the goals on a spare bit of grass and left to muck around among themselves or just stand there, doing nothing, staring into space, pathetic specimens, while all the hearties and thugs beat the living shit out of each other.

  Yet at home, in the street, in Caird Avenue, I was always playing football. Often I would start wheezing, go red in the face, but I was determined to carry on, as I loved football so much, and would grit my teeth and continue, hoping to overcome the asthma attack. Amazingly, it very often subsided.

  At school, though, I decided to use my asthma as an excuse, to get out of rugby, but it was real. It had clouded my early childhood and now, aged about twelve, it had suddenly come back to haunt and humiliate me.

  I can’t remember when my asthma started. It seems to have been there since I was born. Both my parents smoked, even over my cot as a baby, so I was told by my grandmother. She said she had constantly warned them about it, but it made no impression. Everybody smoked in the thirties and throughout the war. The government even handed out cigarettes to servicemen, as part of their rations. It was glamorous, film stars smoked, the flappers and bright young things smoked, the upper and the lower classes. In advertisements, for cars or clothes, models were always languidly, elegantly smoking.

  I never tried, even later as a teenager. Being in the same room in which someone had smoked made me choke. It is hard to believe it now but people smoked in the cinema, causing thick clouds to hang in the air, practically obscuring the screen. They smoked on buses and on trains and in cafés. You could not escape, smokers were everywhere.

  I was sent to the doctor, for which we must have paid before the National Health Service arrived in 1945. Our Carlisle doctor, Dr Jolly, was in Portland Square, where several doctors had their surgeries. His waiting room had mahogany furniture and high ceilings and everyone sat in silence and awe, not just in fear and trembling. Medical folk were superior beings and we were grateful to be in their presence, we humble patients. My mother almost bowed when she took me into his surgery.