Road to the Dales, The Story of a Yorkshire Lad

by Phinn, Gervase

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Can you can start in September?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  He leaned across the desk and held out a hand. 'Welcome to Hart, Moss & Copley,' he said, smiling.

  'And that's what you want to do, is it?' asked Mr Firth, when I told him about the interview. 'Add figures up all day in a dark and dusty office? Deal with tax forms and tiresome financial audits? Be a trainee accountant?' He stressed the words 'trainee accountant' as if they were an insult. 'Whatever do you want to be a trainee accountant for?'

  'It's a good job, sir.'

  'You want to teach, lad, teach. That's your future - teaching - inspiring young people. It's the best job in the world. You think on, Phinny, teaching's for you.'

  Three days later I received a letter from the Rotherham Education Office inviting me to attend an interview with Mr Bloomer, the Director of Education. I had never met Mr Bloomer but had been at primary school with his daughter and knew that he was a very important man, in charge of all the schools in the town. I reported to the reception at the Education Office on the appointed day and at the appointed time and waited in the outer office. I couldn't understand why he would wish to see me. The secretary occasionally looked up from her papers but said nothing until the buzzer on her desk sounded.

  'You may go in, young man,' she told me, 'and remember to call the Director "sir".'

  The room I entered was large and dark-panelled. Great glass-fronted bookcases full of leather-bound tomes lined one wall, and framed pictures and prints, no doubt drawn and painted by the town's children and students, were displayed on the other. Opposite the bookcases a window gave an uninterrupted view over the town. Many years later, when I was appointed as General Adviser for Language Development with Rotherham, I was shown into the very same room. The desk, bookcases and prints were still there and the smell had lingered too.

  Mr Bloomer sat behind his large mahogany desk and invited me to take a seat in front of him.

  'Now then, young man,' he said, 'what is this that I hear about you leaving school before your A levels?'

  I explained that I had been offered a junior position at an accountant's in the town.

  'Your headmaster has had a word with me and he is of the opinion that you ought to stay on.' He looked down at a piece of paper before him on the desk. 'You've done pretty well in your O levels and have a bright future ahead of you. Your teachers think highly of you, as indeed does Mr Williams, who feels you should continue your studies.'

  'Yes, sir,' I replied, not really knowing what to say.

  'If you were to stay on at school, what A levels would you take?' he asked.

  'I've not really thought about it, sir,' I replied.

  'Well, give it a little thought now.'

  'I suppose I would take the subjects I like best,' I replied eventually. 'Probably English literature, history and geography.'

  'Arts subjects,' said Mr Bloomer. 'Not really the sort of subjects suitable for accountancy, I should have thought. It seems to me mathematics would be more appropriate.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Now look, young man,' he said looking across the desk, 'I agree with Mr Williams. I think you should stay on and do your A levels. If, after that, you still feel accountancy is the profession for you, then you can become a trainee, but get a few A levels under your belt first. I feel certain Mr Copley will take you on if you still feel inclined to become an accountant.' It seemed to me that everyone knew about my intentions and had a vested interest in my future. I suppose Mr Firth had related our conversation in All Saints' Square to Mr Williams, who, in turn, had contacted the Director of Education to use his influence.

  'You know,' he said, 'Mr Williams and I are very proud of the fact that some young people like you, who didn't get the chance to go to the grammar school, have done so well. You have achieved results much better than some who did pass their Eleven Plus and you have done that through hard work and determination. My advice, young man, is to stay on at school and keep your options open. Have a word with your parents and see what they say. You might consider training for the teaching profession. We need people like you in our schools.'

  At the time I didn't think it was particularly unusual for the Director of Education to summon a pupil to his office and give him the benefit of his advice, but now I know that it was. It seems amazing to me when I think about it now that someone as important and as busy as Mr Bloomer should take a personal interest in just one student. It had never occurred to me until Mr Firth raised the matter that I should train to become a teacher, but after that encounter with him in All Saints' Square and subsequently with Mr Bloomer, a seed was planted and things in my life began to change. Had I not met Mr Firth on that day my life might have taken a very different course.

  In September 1964 I joined the sixth form at Oakwood Technical High School for Boys. I thought perhaps that the headmaster might meet me, introduce himself and welcome me to the school, but he left that to the school secretary, a bright and cheerful woman who said that should I want to know anything I should come and ask her. I found that Mrs Ranby was true to her word, and I often called into the office for her help and advice. On that first day she took me down the cold tiled corridor to the sixth form classroom, chattering inconsequentially and pointing things out.

  'You'll be very happy here,' she told me. I can't say that I felt reassured.

  On that first morning, like any new boy, I felt apprehensive and under-confident as I stood in my smart new black blazer and badge in front of the Lower Sixth class, to be introduced by the form master. I recall that he got my name wrong - something I have had to put up with for most of my life. Indeed, on all the reports from Oakwood both my names are spelt incorrectly. All eyes stared at me as if I were some strange exhibit in a museum case. Perhaps these superior-looking boys were wondering just how an Eleven Plus failure would cope with the academic rigour of advanced study. They had gone through the school together, sat and passed their examinations together and made close friendships. These boys I now had to mix with were well-established. I knew nothing of their backgrounds, what they discussed, their academic achievements, and I had no experience of their world. I knew no one at the school on that first morning, and although I felt nervous and lonely as I glanced at the staring faces before me, I was determined to stay the course. I remember thinking to myself that I was as good as they were, and even if I didn't settle in here, make friends or even enjoy the courses, studying at the high school would be a means to an end. I had a good string of O levels, some with distinction, and had a firmness of purpose. I would persevere, keep my head down and work hard.

  As it turned out, some of the boys were friendly and I was soon disabused of the idea that they were all stuck up and stand-offish. Mathematics, history, economics, music, geography, the sciences could be offered at A level in the boys' school but not English literature or French, so I, along with five other boys, had to study for part of the time in the girls' high school.

  It was a strange and not altogether unpleasant experience striding down the corridor at the all girls' school to be eyed by gaggles of giggling girls in brown uniforms and observed by sharp-eyed women teachers in black gowns and with severe expressions. We must have looked gauche and gangly as we entered the room of the Head of the English Department.

  Miss Mary Wainwright was a diminutive, softly-spoken woman dressed in a pristine white blouse with a lace collar, done up at the neck with small pearl buttons. She was swathed in a long, pleated tweed skirt, dark brown stockings and small leather brogues. The delicate embroidered handkerchief that she secreted up her sleeve would be occasionally plucked out to dab her mouth. Save for the large cameo brooch placed at her throat, she wore no jewellery and there was no vestige of make-up. She lined up her new students, a motley group of spotty, lanky boys, and peered up at us. 'I've never taught boys,' she said, and then, after a long pause and with a twinkle in her dark eyes, she added, 'But I've heard of them.'

  W
e studied two of Shakespeare's greatest plays - Richard II and Hamlet, the longest and most tedious of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales - The Knight's Tale and The Prologue - The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Joseph Andrews by the eighteenth-century novelist Henry Fielding and the poetry of John Keats. I was pleased to see that Thomas Hardy's tragic tale The Mayor of Casterbridge was on the syllabus, but disappointed that D. H. Lawrence and Charles Dickens were not.

  In the first week I kept a very low profile, saying little but watching the other students, who did not appear as clever and self-assured as I'd imagined they would be. I was pleased that the first text we studied was The Mayor of Casterbridge. I had read several of Thomas Hardy's novels and really enjoyed them, and I was familiar with some of the literary devices he was prone to using.

  As soon as Miss Wainwright opened the book and started to read I was in a world I loved and in which I felt familiar. Occasionally she would stop, make a comment and smile with a curious wistfulness, as if there was something she recalled fondly from a distant past.

  The first essay I handed in to Miss Wainwright concerned our initial impressions of Henchard, the main character in the novel, and I spent long hours in the central library in town writing, rewriting and referring to various reference books. When the essays were handed back my heart leapt. Following a long and detailed assessment of my effort written at the bottom of the page in small neat handwriting, I had been awarded a B+.

  Miss Wainwright took me aside after the lesson. 'That was extremely promising,' she told me, smiling. 'It's a very good start. I am sure you will do well.' From then onwards I gained in confidence, contributed in the lessons and achieved good marks.

  What incredible good fortune it was for me to have had this remarkable woman for my teacher. Miss Wainwright, a woman of great learning and infinite patience, was passionate about her subject and had the ability to bring the works of Shakespeare to life.

  'Shakespeare is not a novelist,' she once told us. 'He is a poet and a dramatist and the greatest writer that has ever lived.' What was so memorable about this remarkable teacher were her eyes. They shone with intensity, especially when she was discussing her favourite subject, the bard himself.

  Miss Wainwright regularly organized coach trips to the neighbouring theatres to see performances. In one production of Richard II in Sheffield, the actor playing the lead of 'the sun king' was a small man with an enormous yellow codpiece in the shape of a risen sun. In the opening scene, when all the nobles assembled in their finery on stage, the King entered sporting this remarkable appendage, which caused a great deal of mirth in the audience of largely schoolchildren and students. Even greater amusement was caused when the king sat down, for the codpiece would rise up in an extremely vulgar manner. It soon became too much for the audience to bear and great guffaws emanated from different parts of the theatre. When the King arrived in successive scenes he was greeted by loud cheers and comments such as, 'Ey up, it's thundercrutch again.' The production was temporarily halted and the manager, over the microphone, informed the audience that if it did not remain quiet and cease interrupting then the production would cease. When the King made his next entrance it was noticeable that he was wearing a rather tasteful and considerably smaller codpiece in a discreet black.

  Miss Wainwright took us to see a production of King Lear at the Rotherham Civic Theatre. The acting was wooden and the costumes bizarre, but the beauty and poignancy of the language came through. King Lear, confused and deranged, entered with his dead daughter draped in his arms and crying to the heavens:

  Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:

  Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them

  That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever.

  I know when one is dead and when one lives:

  She is dead as earth.

  Miss Wainwright - sitting one away from me in the row, began to dab her eyes with the lace handkerchief.

  44

  My geography master at A level was another inspirational teacher called J. A. Taylor (JAT). I very nearly gave the subject up after the first couple of weeks but was persuaded otherwise by Mr Taylor. JAT taught the regional geography part of the course and supervised the local study, the other teacher taught the meteorology and physical geography components. When I arrived for the first lesson of physical geography, copies of the textbook we would be using, this maroon-covered tome called Physical Geography by Horrocks, were distributed but there was one textbook short.

  'I wasn't aware that you were joining this group,' the teacher announced, and I was told to share with another student. The boy next to me, understandably, was not that pleased, for it meant we had to take it in turns to take the book home to do our homework. Looking back I feel it would have been more considerate of the teacher to have asked two other boys who knew each other to share, not the new addition to his class, who didn't know anyone and felt nervous enough. I cannot say I felt that comfortable in this teacher's lessons. He never welcomed me when I first arrived or asked about me or took any real interest in me as the course progressed. When I did on occasions see him about something he would reply stiffly and hurriedly, like a man who had more important things to do.

  The first assignment was on a topic that I just could not get my head around - 'Isostatic Equilibrium'. The grade I received was poor and the comment indifferent. So, one breaktime, I saw Mr Taylor, who was the head of the department, and told him I was thinking of giving up the course, that I really didn't feel up to it. He persuaded me to continue, telling me my grade at O level, a few marks off a distinction and better than many in the group, was a good indication that I could cope with the course.

  The following week he discovered that I did not have a physical geography textbook and was sharing. He sighed and shook his head and asked why the other teacher had not provided one for me. I explained that I had been told to share and that's what I had been doing. The following lesson Mr Taylor presented me with a brand new and updated edition of Horrocks.

  JAT clearly loved his subject and taught us with such enthusiasm and rigour, believing that geography was best studied in the field - 'first-hand experience' was his favourite catchphrase. I remember once, on one of his trips, we scanned the landscape looking for drumlins, described in our textbook as 'basket of eggs scenery'. I imagined them to be small hummocks, but when I enquired of Mr Taylor where these 'drumlins' were he threw back his head and laughed and then informed me that I was standing on one - this huge rounded hill. 'First-hand experience,' he said. I learnt then that fact can sometimes be as fanciful as fiction, for the descriptions in Horrocks seemed to me to bear little relation to the real world.

  JAT organized many a field trip at weekends, during the school holidays and for a week out of school at the end of each term. These were eagerly anticipated, especially since we joined up with the girls from the girls' high school, under the watchful eye of JAT's wife, the formidable Mrs Taylor, who was head of the geography department there.

  One memorable field trip was to Malham Cove. We had read about 'clints' and 'grykes', limestone pavements and caverns, potholes and subterranean rivers in our physical geography textbook. I was not prepared, however, for what I was to see. We approached by a footpath from the south, and this immense bow-shaped cove came into view like some great walled cathedral. It was breathtaking. I had never seen anything quite as bleak and rugged. Mr Taylor had us stand beneath the towering cove and not say anything at all - just take it in for a moment. Then he explained that it had been formed millions of years ago when the earth's crust had cracked, fracturing the rock so that it dropped vertically. 'It's over two hundred feet high,' he told us, 'a thousand feet wide and once a crashing waterfall cascaded over the vertical cliff, creating a fall higher than the Niagara Falls. Now can your small minds take that in?'

  We spent that week at the youth hostel in the ancient village of Malham and saw bubbling springs and crashing cataracts, crags and scars, ravines and overhanging clif
fs, and the spectacular Malham Tarn, one of the two natural lakes in the Yorkshire Dales.

  Mr Taylor asked if anyone had come across the novel The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. I was the only one who had read the story of Tom, the little chimney-sweep who meets the babies in the cool clear water. Mr Taylor related the story of how Charles Kingsley, having passed through Bradford and witnessed the squalor and filth, visited Tarn House in Malham in 1858 as a guest of the millionaire philanthropist Walter Morris. Kingsley was struck by the stark contrast of the dark industrial city and the stunning limestone scenery, as I was on that first visit. He was a skilled botanist and was asked by the children of the house to explain the streaks of black on the face of the cove. He explained that they were made by a little chimney sweep called Tom slipping over the clifftop and sliding down into the stream. Here was his inspiration for the classic fantasy story.

  I discovered the North York Moors in the sixth form on another of Mr Taylor's expeditions. This silent and bleak world with its great tracts of heather and bracken fascinated me. We stayed in youth hostels and explored the incredible landscape, visited great abbeys like Byland and Rievaulx, ate our sandwiches in the shadow of lofty castles at Helmsley and Pickering, and sat in the sunshine outside local inns in villages untouched by modern life. One weekend Mr Taylor led us deep within the North York Moors towards the coast at Ravenscar. The journey followed the old Viking route known as the 'Lyke Wake'. Legend has it that the Vikings carried the 'lyke' or corpse across the forty boggy miles to the sea, where the body was given up to the waves. With the coming of Christianity the practice was continued but it took on a deeper meaning, and the walk came to symbolize the journey of the soul towards heaven. I had never seen such magnificent scenery in my life. Beneath a shining blue sky there stretched a landscape of every conceivable colour: brilliant greens, swaths of red and yellow gorse that blazed like a bonfire, dark hedge-rows speckled in pinks and whites, twisted black stumps, striding walls and the grey snake of the road curling upwards to the hills in the far distance. Light the colour of melted butter danced among the new leaves of early summer.