by Paul Rowson
Against all the odds and with saintly patience Gordon had formed, trained and developed the gymnastic team into champions and they had recently won the Sunday Times national school gymnastic competition. Consisting, as they did, of twelve Afro Caribbean boys and Petros Petrou who was a precociously strong Greek Cypriot, they were talented and entertaining. Consequently they romped through the auditions and were scheduled to appear on an upcoming programme. This necessitated a trip down to ABC Weekend Television at Teddington Lock in for the recording of the show. My wife and I were roped in as minders, as for many this would be the first time away from home, the first time in a hotel, the first time in London and certainly the first time on national television.
We arrived in a high state of excitement and ABC had booked us into a four star hotel ready for rehearsals the following morning. Some of the team were taken to the cinema and all four adults went with them. The others were given strict instructions to watch TV in their rooms. Floodlights in the car park shone upward to illuminate the hotel sign fixed high on the building. On leaving for the cinema we glanced back to see a fourteen year old member of the team in the room above the sign clearly lit up by the floodlights, smoking a cigar and quaffing what turned out to be a glass of champagne ordered from room service the moment we had left. I doubled back and was gently accosted by the manager in the foyer before I could get up the stairs to remonstrate with the miscreant. He naively asked if there was any limit on the phone calls to St. Kitts being charged to my room.
On the day of rehearsals the kids were nerveless and thrilled to be meeting return winners who they recognised from previous shows. Readers of a certain age will recall the East End singing duo of Peters and Lee and the comedian Frank Carson. As a rule of thumb the less the talent the more the prima donna attitude and some long forgotten Welsh songstress complained that the aroma from the muscle rub the boys were using to loosen up limbs was spoiling her voice. There was no liniment on earth that could have been held responsible for the dismal performance she produced, much to the amusement of the Primrose Hill High School party.
When the great moment came Gordon Fee was, as the custom, given a minute’s chat with the host before the introduction. After that was finished Hughie Green turned towards the camera and intoned with his usual patronising insincerity, “So ladies and gentleman, for the wonderful school children from Leeds and their teacher Mr LEE…. Opportunity Knocks”. When the show went out the kids could still be seen laughing as they started their act. An act incidentally which got them first place on the ‘clapometer’ and resulted in money flowing into the school coffers after requests for performances at galas and summer fetes around the north of England.
One of the highlights of the summer term, and one which had nothing to do with education or young people, was the Christians versus Atheists staff cricket match. Only a group of people at ease with themselves could come up with a concept like this. The Christians line up boasted a couple of good club cricketers, the sadistic head of year five, a deranged evangelical lab assistant and the head teacher who was a senior member of the Plymouth Brethren. He was also, it has to be noted, a man untroubled by any semblance of hand eye co-ordination. The unbelievers fielded a genuinely talented all rounder, a couple of ferocious but wildly erratic fast bowlers and Desperate Dan, so named because of his uncanny resemblance to the cartoon character. Unlikely though it seems I honestly cannot recall a serious injury or argument, but can recollect with crystal clarity a string of Christian victories. Afterwards the Christians always said that they would come for one quick drink and inevitably stayed until closing time. We rashly ignored drink driving recommendations, crammed ourselves full of fish and chips on the way home and arrived on time the next morning secure in our behaviour and professionalism.
It was the kind of school that only staff with a strong constitution and personality thrived in, and there were casualties. One newcomer to the fold was a Jewish woman whose husband was a barrister. They were acquaintance/friends of ours and when she started as a History teacher the whole experience was initially overwhelming. She was seen sobbing on more than one occasion and the failure to keep discipline was making her very unhappy. Unusually and totally inappropriately her husband came up to the school in full barrister mode to say that the situation was intolerable because the kids were anti-Semitic. As the exact moment those words were being spoken the head of year was walking past and without breaking stride said, “They’re not anti- Semitic mate, they’re anti everybody”.
Many staff found the first few months both a cultural and professional challenge. This was way before the days of mentors and support systems for new teachers. Showing great resilience the woman toughed it out, got over the bad start and became a respected and successful member of the staff. However this was not always the case with newcomers, or indeed established teachers who often claimed ten years experience when they had actually repeated their errors of the first year for the next nine.
Unknowingly racist language was used by the most caring of teachers and only in the latter stages of my time there did I really understand what the first generation of immigrants from the Caribbean and the sub continent had to endure as they fought for a toehold in a cold and often unwelcoming motherland. At the Youth Club held in the school building, where I worked three nights a week, the clientele were from the rough end of a rough school and staff had to be alert and clever to diffuse tensions and potential conflict. The truth is though, that despite police and Daily Mail scaremongering most troublesome kids simply grow out of whatever bad behaviour they display in their teens. Only a handful didn’t and I remember them well. One notorious former pupil went on to be a pimp, often recruiting girls who had just left school and sadly, on a couple of occasions, were still at it. As the red light district was very close by, and I occasionally got my kit on and ran home, I passed street corners patrolled by ladies of the night who I had recently taught with the ex pupil pimp lurking in the shadows.
Among many sage decisions made by the head was one to register kids in family groups which enabled the class teacher to really get to know pupils and their families quickly. If any pupil was away from school for more than a week his or her class teacher was expected to make a home visit. This would never happen now but was a clever way of both ensuring good attendance and also getting to know the challenges faced by often vulnerable kids with difficult home circumstances.
One such girl in my registration group whose mother was, how can I put this nicely, ‘worldly’, had been absent for awhile. As my car was in for service I borrowed the new Opel recently purchased by a colleague and drove to the tiny terraced home which was located in a narrow dead end back alley near to the school. A home it should be said without a male figure in permanent residence but with quite a number passing through.
I parked, knocked on the door, and was received in a reasonably friendly manner by the mother who offered me a fag and a cup of tea. She made up an obviously bogus story about her daughter’s absence as she casually blew cigarette smoke into my face. I blew some back in a futile effort to appear in control of the conversation. I attempted mild admonition which was completely ignored. I attempted firm admonition which was met with open scorn. I attempted moral outrage and was laughed at, but just then the doorbell was rung by what turned out to be a gentleman ‘friend’, and as a way of getting rid of me I finally received an assurance of sorts that the daughter would be in school the next day. With as much authority as I could muster I said my farewells and went outside to the car. Twenty minutes later having failed to find reverse on the new Opel I had to knock on their door and get mother, gentleman ‘friend’ and ‘sick’ daughter to push me out of the alleyway. The minute she returned to school and recounted this episode, I was the brunt of staff room jokes for no more than three years.
Somehow the school had acquired an outdoor centre up in a remote part of the Yorkshire Dales. Each class group got to go there once a year and it was a trip that was eagerly aw
aited. The ‘Cottage’ as it was known was about as basic as it is possible to imagine, but it was a great place for learning on so many levels. The new wave of Vietnamese kids who had arrived at the school seemed instantly at ease there, but for most it was a real challenge to be away from home in strange circumstances. On one visit to the cattle auctions at Barnard Castle, the mutual looks of perplexity on the faces of our party (consisting of five Afro Caribbeans, one white kid, three Indians, three Pakistanis, two Ugandan Asians and a couple of Vietnamese), and those of the farmers will stay with me for a long time.
During my last visit there in winter, together with the resident staff member Andy Hobbs, I decided to take the group sledging. We had woken to blue cloudless skies and a heavy snowfall which, on announcing the activity for the day, resulted in a breakfast of high volume excitement and anticipation. The gradient of the field behind the cottage was perfect and we split into two groups about a hundred metres apart. After a few tentative attempts confidence levels rose and soon twos and threes were going down together laughing and shouting. I was persuaded to be one of four on the old fashioned toboggan. We crashed at speed and even over the high pitched screams of delight I could hear the crack of my leg breaking. As I lay in some pain in the snow the kids, touchingly and quickly, realised it was serious and screamed across to Andy Hobbs in the distance, “Sir…Sir… Mr Rowson has broken his leg”. Demonstrably out of hearing range Andy gave a smile, a ‘thumbs up’ and said something equally unintelligible in response. Eventually all seventeen of us piled into the school bus, drove the considerable distance to Darlington hospital, where they all gallantly waited three hours in Accident and Emergency while I was x- rayed and plastered up.
On return to school, and with remarkably little fuss, my registration class was moved to a classroom on the ground floor, lifts were arranged for me to and from school and education of a sort continued. I was enjoying both the job and the attention. The leg healed over time and I was ready for the eagerly awaited ‘Twilight Cup’. This was, as the title suggests, an autumn competition of five-a-side soccer played immediately after school. What made it different, and would cause outrage were the idea to be mooted today, was that each team consisted of kids AND teachers. One reads constantly in the press about the petulant behaviour on the field of professional soccer players. We hear about the flagrant disregard for authority, the simulation of injury, the time wasting and vindictive fouling. The Twilight Cup had it all and more.
The school operated on a split site of two buildings which were about two hundred and fifty metres apart. One was the Victorian former junior school and the other was a monstrously ugly sixties tower block. The Cup then could offer home and away fixtures for a bit of added spice. To hype up matches even more the school made full use of the Tannoy System which had speakers in every corridor and classroom. We had a brilliant mimic who used his talents to the full when announcing the day’s fixtures. Every morning there was a five minute session for Tannoy messages, mostly on humdrum school business. During the announcements the kids were expected to be silent in class and had to stand still if in corridors. The deputy head gave a huge build up along the lines of “We are delighted today that the famous football manager Mr Brian Clough has come to school to make the draw for the next round of the Twilight Cup”. As the microphone was in his office and out of sight nobody could physically dispute this. ‘Brian Clough’ would then announce the draw for the next round with some blatant editorialising along the lines of, “Red House, who played pathetically against Blue House in the last round, had better improve this evening. I thought strikers were supposed to score, but Mr Williams’ miss from two yards in the last game was a bloody disgrace.”
The Twilight Cup Tannoy announcements caused a regular furore. Kids though it was hilarious and daring to use a swear word and anyone doubting the veracity of Mr Clough’s voice or presence was told he had to dash away for training. Mr Williams felt humiliated as old scores were settled by the announcer in a rather underhand way and the temperature was raised before a ball had been kicked. This of course was the whole idea but by the start of matches there was often an atmosphere of mild hysteria with games regularly seeming to end in acrimony. Young staff displayed behaviour that would have resulted in heavy censure had they been the kids, and the kids predictably aped the petulance of their supposedly mature elders. Despite all this and contradicting almost everything I have written above it did seem to work in a weird kind of way. Bonds were forged which lasted longer than the perceived injustices, unlikely heroes emerged and school stories and legends were born.
What passed for the outdoor sports facilities were on a bit of wasteland high up behind the school where a crude and dusty athletics track had been marked on rough ground. Travellers often camped on this bit of land and the occupants of a caravan or two frequently doubled up as the crowd for the great sporting events that occurred there. Or to state it more accurately they were able to observe the bedraggled group of oddly dressed kids who had actually bought PE kit to school and braved the exposure, kick a ball or run round the track. The horses belonging to the travellers listlessly patrolled the twenty or so metres allowed them by their shackles. It was, nevertheless, the setting for the most interesting hundred metres sprint race that I have ever seen.
One extremely hot summer afternoon when all classroom windows and doors were wide open to catch what little air was circulating a small but exceptionally well built Afro Caribbean adult of about thirty walked, unbidden and without knocking, into my classroom mid lesson. I say mid lesson, but in truth the one thing at this time that unified teacher and pupils was the desire to be outside in the great weather. Recognising that this could not be the case we had settled for a lethargic peace for the remaining twenty minutes after which the bell would signal freedom. His name, he informed me, was ‘Smally’ and his opener was “Who is your fastest sprinter?” I learned later that he had asked someone on the way in who taught PE and was pointed in my direction. Faced with such a direct question I felt obliged to give a direct answer which was that Levi Cunningham was not only the best in the school but in the city over a hundred metres. I did not add that if Levi could bring himself to partake of less weed he might have been the fastest in the county.
The purpose of the visit by Winston Small, which was Smally’s full name, was to resurrect his athletics career. He informed me that he would be at school the next day at lunchtime and expected me to have seven other sprinters including Levi to race him. Smally announced, rather grandly, that he would give eight metres start to the others and five to Levi. That is a big handicap for a hundred metre race. As he left, something in his gait and certainly his physique that suggested he might be a sprinter and so arrangements as per the ‘request’ were duly made.
Rob Green was the adult hundred metre champion of England at the time and also short in stature. Weeks after the race Smally told me that they had been together in the RAF. Flicking channels one afternoon he had been overcome by jealousy on seeing his former colleague racing on television and decided to get back into shape, believing himself to be the more talented of the two.
The grapevine provided the pre-race publicity and next day a smattering of staff, about fifty kids, a few travellers and two of their tethered horses provided the somewhat strange audience for the sprint handicap. It was soon to become even stranger when five men in pyjamas sauntered down from St James’s hospital which was adjacent to the wasteland. They had been out for a cigarette and seeing the preparations had walked over. Smally arrived almost on time in an aptly named Triumph Dolomite Sprint, braked hard on the shale near the finish point and skidded to a halt with maximum dramatic impact. He emerged alone from the vehicle, was already changed, and looked as several of the teenage girls accurately noted ‘Fit’.
He walked down the track and, after a brief warm up, went with the other runners to their respective start positions. Levi and Smally were in the central lanes. There were no starting blocks so, after a clea
n first time getaway on the starter’s gun it did not look as though the five metre handicap was being made up. But by fifty metres Smally had caught the other runners and by sixty five metres he was level with Levi who was increasingly resembling someone treading water in a swimming pool, such was the pace of the man beside him. At eighty five metres Smally was winding down and contemplating the nature of his victory celebration. It turned out to be much like the race itself - that is to say dramatic, slightly bizarre, memorable and speedy. On breaking the tape, generously provided at a minute’s notice by the local hardware shop, Smally slowed marginally but kept on running towards his car. No one had noticed in the excitement of the pre-race build up that the car did actually have two occupants, one of whom had clearly been ducking out of sight. That person was now behind the wheel and driving the car at about ten miles an hour. In true ‘Sweeney’ fashion Smally dived into the moving vehicle and, wheels spinning, they sped off
I always felt after that day that the Olympic hundred metre sprint final was a bit of an anti climax.
Two days later Smally phoned me at home having somehow obtained my ex directory number. Politely and quietly he asked if I could put him in touch with a decent sprint coach which eventually I did. Six months after he went on to beat Rob Green and got one international call up for the Great Britain ‘B’ team. He faded quickly after that peak and returned to his former life of leisure, but I kind of admired him.
