Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill

by Gervase Phinn

  Opening Doors

  There was a metaphor about life that my former headmaster, Mr T W ‘Taffy’ Williams, was fond of using. At the leavers’ assembly, at South Grove Secondary Modern School for Boys, he asked us to think for a moment before we left the school for the last time.

  ‘Whoever you are and whatever you do,’ he said, ‘as you walk down that corridor and out into the wide world, I want you to pause for a moment and remember one thing: life is like that corridor, lined with many different doors. Some few will be bolted and barred to you and, however hard you push and pull, strike and shout, they will remain forever closed. Some will be wide open and you can walk through with little effort and no hindrance. Some will be ajar and, with a little exertion and curiosity, you will be able to see what lies behind. Most doors, however, will be closed, but they will be seldom locked. These are the doors of opportunity, boys. The doors of opportunity. It is up to you which of those closed doors you choose to try and to discover what is behind, waiting for you –’ he paused for effect – ‘and which to pass on by.’

  I guess, for many of the pupils in the school hall that heady July morning, the headmaster’s metaphor was lost upon them, but for me, an ambitious, rather studious, idealistic sixteen-year-old, those words have remained a vivid memory. The closed doors in my own life have been rarely, if ever, locked, and I have been immensely fortunate that I have had caring, supportive, encouraging people all along the way who have helped me through them.

  Throughout my life, I have been encouraged to open doors by my parents, my grandmother and my teachers, but many a time they have opened them for me and urged me through, building up my confidence to do so.

  My grandmother’s dictum was that life is short, and to make the most of it. She encouraged me to believe that every opportunity which comes my way should be taken; I should read books, take an interest in people and events, not be afraid of asking questions and expressing opinions. A favourite expression of hers was: ‘Never be afraid of chancing your arm.’ Then she would add: ‘And don’t take life too seriously – after all, nobody comes out of it alive.’

  A Father’s ABC of Life

  Always remember my son to:

  Act in a matter that you would wish to be treated,

  Be considerate . . .

  Choose your friends with care,

  Don’t take yourself too seriously,

  Enjoy all that life offers you,

  Follow your dreams,

  Guard against bitterness and envy,

  Harm no one,

  Ignore the cynic,

  Jog a little each day,

  Keep calm in a crisis,

  Laugh a lot,

  Make the best of what you have got,

  Never miss an opportunity of saying ‘Thank You’,

  Open your heart to those you love,

  Pay no attention to grumblers,

  Question certainties,

  Respect the feelings of others,

  Stay true to your principles,

  Take a few measured risks,

  Use your talents wisely,

  Value your family,

  Work hard,

  X-pect a lot of yourself – but not too much,

  Yearn not for riches,

  Zest for living should be your aim in this world.

  ‘Don’t You Have a Proper Job?’

  Working Life

  Into the World of Work

  My first interview for a job was a simple and informal affair. My girlfriend’s father had a friend who was manager of a large bread factory on Greasborough Street, on the outskirts of Rotherham. I was looking for a job just after the sixth form and during the weeks before departing for college so, on his recommendation, I presented myself one Monday morning at the factory. The manager, a lugubrious-faced individual with thick, black-framed glasses, reached out and picked up a pencil which was lying on the desk, and twirled it between his fingers.

  ‘Work hard, be punctual, do as you are told, wash your hands and don’t steal the bread, and you’ll be fine.’

  And that was it.

  Chuck, the foreman, a bald-headed, rotund little man with a stomach as solid and round as a football, tight in his white overall, looked me up and down.

  ‘Another bloody student,’ he mouthed. ‘I hope you last longer than the last one. He nearly fell in the bloody dough and was baked with the bread.’ He held up a hand. Two of the fingers were missing. ‘And be bloody careful if you’re on the slicers,’ he said.

  I learnt a great deal about life, work and human nature in that bread factory.

  I learnt about getting up before it was light and catching the early bus, enduring the hot dry and noisy atmosphere of a factory, about boredom and monotony and weariness and sheer hard work. I also learnt to be wary of my fellow workers.

  Chuck, aided and abetted by some old hands, took delight in playing tricks on the students. I guess it was because a life baking bread, after the initial fascination, became incredibly tedious and predictable, and these clever ruses lightened the monotony. But there may have been more to it than that. It may have been born out of resentment – the fact that these bright young things would earn a bit of pocket money over the holidays and then swan off to university and end up with fat salaries and company cars. It they ever did return to the bread factory it would be as pen-pushing managers and company accountants, engineers or directors. They needed bringing down a peg or two, showing everyone they were not that clever.

  The perpetrators must have thought their antics were hilarious. Most of them were harmless, such as hiding essential tools and equipment, removing the toilet paper from the lavatory or putting salt instead of sugar in the students’ tea. Some went too far though. One student discovered a dead rat underneath his sandwiches in his snap box and spent most of the shift retching in the lavatory. Another had his bike loaded onto a van with the bread and had to walk all the way home.

  One poor lad, a pale-faced boy with a wispy beard and large glassy eyes, who is now probably an eminent doctor or a university professor, spent the whole of the morning with a tea towel wrapped around his head after following the foreman’s instruction not to enter the factory without covering all facial hair. He only discarded the cloth when the manager, on his daily walk around the factory, asked him if he had a sore tooth.

  I was not immune from the tricks. My first job was to wheel the bread from the factory to the vans, for loading. The loaves would be stacked on sliding metal shelves, on a tall trolley with heavy rubber wheels. At the very bottom was a locking device, triggered by a push of the foot. Of course, Chuck never mentioned the lock and, on my first trip down the long ramp, observed by the foreman with his arms folded over his chest, the trolley gathered speed, then careered out of control, collided with a van and spilt its load. I was panic-stricken and began frantically picking up the bread.

  ‘Bloody marvellous, that!’ shouted Chuck, drawing everyone’s attention to my distress and embarrassment.

  ‘Bloody students don’t know their arses from their elbows. All that bloody learnin’ and he can’t push a bloody trolley wi’out dropping all t’bread. Comes out of tha wages that, tha knaas.’

  On the next occasion I was let loose with the trolley, Chuck sidled over, surreptitiously activated the locking device with a secretive flick of his foot and then sauntered off, with the words: ‘And watch what tha’re doin’ this time.’ I spent the next five minutes pushing and pulling to get the trolley moving.

  One of the students who had worked at the factory the previous year, warned me to never, under any circumstances, go down to where the confectionery was prepared by the women, under the supervision of an Amazon of a forewoman called Dora. If I did, it was likely that I would have discarded cakes and pastries stuffed down my overalls or, even worse, be squirted all over with whipped cream.

  One morning, Chuck sidled up. ‘Go down the confectionery and ask Dora for a triple, screw-top, flange extractor,’ he instructed me.

&n
bsp; I set off but spent the next five minutes hiding in a cubicle in the lavatory. I then returned. ‘Dora told me to tell you that she needs a note from you,’ I informed Chuck seriously. ‘She said that the last triple, screw-top, flange extractor she sent up here has gone missing.’

  ‘Clever bugger,’ mouthed Chuck, ambling off down the factory. ‘I reckon from t’first time I clapped eyes on thee, tha’d end up a bloody teacher. Too clever by ’alf.’

  It was never my ambition to become a teacher. It was another contact who put me in line for the job as a trainee accountant. Mrs Gill, my mother’s best friend, was Company Secretary at Thomas Wilde and Son, in Sheffield, and she arranged for me to have an interview with a senior partner at Hart, Moss and Copley, Chartered Accountants. I had presented myself at the plush offices on Moorgate Street, in a new suit, white shirt, school tie, hair short and slicked back and highly polished black shoes, and sat before one of the senior partners. He appeared every inch what I imagined an accountant would look like in his dark pin-stripe suit and waistcoat and with a pair of half-moon spectacles perched on the end of his nose.

  Having satisfied himself that I had the necessary qualifications, he sat back on his chair and asked me a few general questions before leaning over his desk.

  ‘Well, young man,’ he said, after a long pause. ‘Go ahead. Sell yourself.’

  I must have acquitted myself reasonably well because he nodded approvingly after each answer.

  ‘Can you can start in September?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Welcome to Hart, Moss and Copley,’ he said, smiling.

  I never did train as an accountant. Three days after the interview, I received a letter inviting me to attend Rotherham Education Office to see Mr Bloomer, the Director of Education. I had never met Mr Bloomer, but knew him to be a very important man, in charge of all the schools in the town. I reported to the reception desk 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. After a short wait, I was shown into Mr Bloomer’s office. I entered a large, dark-panelled room. 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.

  The Director of Education had been contacted by my headmaster, Mr Williams.

  ‘Your headmaster,’ said Mr Bloomer, ‘has had a word with me, and he is of the opinion that you ought to stay on and do your ‘A’ levels. He thinks you would make a very good teacher.’

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

  At the time, I didn’t think it was particularly unusual for the Director of Education to take a personal interest in just one student, to summon him to his office and give him the benefit of his advice, but now I know that it was. I took the advice, stayed on for ‘A’ levels, and then trained to be a teacher.

  Fun and Games

  When training in the profession, I went on teaching practice to St Augustine’s Roman Catholic Secondary Modern School, in Huddersfield. Being young and reasonably fit, I was given two lessons of games to teach each week. The head of the PE and Games department, a large, amiable Scot I shall call Gus, told me to buy a tracksuit and football boots and report to the boys’ changing rooms the following week. I duly did as I was told.

  Forty-five large, gangly adolescents were waiting outside the changing rooms when I arrived. Gus, attired in an old tracksuit heavily decorated with various colourful athletic badges, was standing at the head of the queue, jangling a huge bunch of keys.

  ‘Right lads,’ he shouted, ‘get changed quickly and quietly, quickly and quietly.’

  I accompanied him into a small teacher’s office, where I was presented with a whistle. He poked his head around the door.

  ‘Keep it down, lads, keep it down!’ he shouted, and the hubbub immediately subsided.

  Out on the fields, he told me he would lead the pack on a jog around the perimeter and that I should follow up the rear.

  Having all ‘limbered up’, Gus ordered: ‘Get the poles!’ Was this some sort of arcane ritual in which the boys attacked their Polish peers? Four boys appeared, with large white poles, and were instructed by the teacher to stick them in the grass, spaced out evenly for skills practice. ‘Balls!’ shouted Gus, and four more boys appeared with the footballs. The pupils dribbled and wove for ten minutes before being told to form four teams.

  ‘I’ll referee one match, Mr Phinn,’ said Gus, ‘and you the other.’

  During the game, which I refereed, despite my giving various dubious rulings, none of the boys questioned my decisions.

  At the end of the lesson, the boys showered, changed and lined up quietly to be dismissed.

  I joined Gus later that lunchtime.

  ‘That was a really good lesson this morning,’ I told him.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘You know I have an idea I might change from English and teach Games.’

  ‘Oh, aye?’

  ‘I mean,’ I continued, ‘it’s so much easier, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘You don’t have all the preparation to do, the homework to set and the examinations to mark.’

  ‘Bit of a doddle really,’ observed my colleague.

  The following week, before the lesson, Gus approached me in the staff room.

  ‘You’ll be all right on your own for ten minutes this morning, won’t you?’ he said. ‘Get the lads started. It’s just that I have something to take care of.’

  My heart sank down into my shoes.

  ‘On my own?’ I repeated.

  ‘Aye. The lads know the routine.’

  I arrived at the changing rooms, my heart thumping in my chest. I jangled the keys.

  ‘Right lads,’ I said, lowering my voice a couple of octaves, ‘get changed quickly and quietly, quickly and quietly.’

  I disappeared into the teacher’s office, emerging a moment later with my whistle around my neck.

  ‘Keep it down, lads, keep it down,’ I told the boys, and the hubbub immediately subsided.

  Out on the field, we jogged around the perimeter, with no problems whatsoever.

  ‘Get the poles!’ I ordered, and four boys disappeared to get the white poles. I pointed to a piece of grass a distance from the football pitches. ‘Stick the poles in over there,’ I told them.

  ‘There, sir?’ questioned a bear of a boy with a round red face, legs like tree trunks and hands like spades.

  Here we go, I thought – a confrontation. Keep calm. Look confident. Don’t show your fear. ‘Yes, over there!’ I raised my voice.

  ‘Are you sure, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I am sure! Do as you are told and be quick about it!’

  The boy shrugged and did as he was told.

  When Gus arrived, the boys were dribbling and weaving around the poles. He surveyed the scene.

  ‘That, Mr Phinn,’ he said, ‘is masterful.’ I ballooned with pride. ‘Masterful.’ Then, after a deep in-drawing of breath, he added, ‘They’ve stuck the poles in the middle of the bloody cricket square!’

  The Nun’s Story

  I visited the Bar Convent in York recently. Situated just outside the city walls at Micklegate Bar, the original 17th century house was purchased by Francis Bedingfield in 1686 and was replaced in the 18th century by the spectacular Georgian building now listed as Grade 1 by English Heritage. The building remains the home of the York Community of the Congregation of Jesus and is open daily for interest, education and enjoyment. This is one of the county’s hidden gems and houses the most fascinating collection of artefacts, paintings, religious relics and historical documents, a stunning Maw tiled floor, a Winter Garden, a priest hole and a superb and beautifully preserved neo-classical Chapel, hidden from view.

  The museum tells the story of how the sisters of the Community lived and worked in secrecy during the reign of El
izabeth I, to preserve their way of life in a time of terrible persecution and lack of recognition of the value of education for girls and women and the contribution they could make to society.

  I had visited the Bar Convent before, in rather different circumstances. It was a good forty years ago, when I was training to be a teacher. My flatmate was on teaching practice at the convent, which then housed a girls’ school, and he was intending to accompany the teachers and students to Stratford-Upon-Avon to see a production of King Lear, but he was ill. Sister Margaret Mary suggested I might like to take his place.

  After a couple of hours on the coach to Stratford, I became increasingly uncomfortable. I had drunk a few cups of coffee that morning and now wanted to go to the toilet. I kept crossing and uncrossing my legs to try and ease the pain in my complaining bladder.

  ‘All you all right, Mr Phinn?’ asked the nun sitting next to me.

  I pulled a pained expression. ‘I’m fine,’ I lied.

  The discomfort got worse and worse. I just had to go to the lavatory or I would burst.

  ‘I suppose we’ll be stopping for lunch soon,’ I said casually to my companion.

  ‘Oh no,’ she replied. ‘We shan’t be stopping now until we get to Stratford.’

  The pain in my bladder was becoming unbearable. I just had to go to the lavatory. Then I thought of the most horrendous scenario: me, standing by the side of the road, doing what I had to do, with thirty girls and four nuns staring out of the coach window in amazement. The embarrassment, the indignity, the shame! No, I would have to think of something.

  I eased myself down the aisle of the coach to speak to the driver.

  ‘I have to go to the toilet,’ I whispered in his ear.

  ‘Toilet!’ he exclaimed loudly.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘I’m desperate.’ There was a pathetic pleading in my voice. ‘Please.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you what I can do. I’ll get off and go via Coventry. There’s a car park and toilets in t’cathedral precincts.’