Some recollections from Ron Leigh CGS 1943 to 1948
Year 1 1943/44:-
Our form room was the Hall, remote from any other goings on in the School. Here, amazingly, we fought tournaments involving riders mounted on pianos jousting with curtain poles . Another hazard of the Hall as form room was that of being pushed by one's friends into the voids behind sliding panels to be left in the darkness there, alone save for the odd stored bust of Caesar.
Form rooms in later years:-
In year 3, our form room
was Room 50, the Music Room, which had an operational open coal fire and
a blackboard that stood, supported by pegs on an easel.
In year 6L, our form
room was Room 60, the Geography Room. One of the hazards of having this
as form room was that of arriving home to discover a lump of calcareous
schist, or similar, in one's schoolbag-this having been taken from one
of Room 60's glass specimen cases by some prankster
Fond memories of the teachers:-
My general recollection is that, with notable exceptions, the female teachers were very formidable and the male teachers benign.
Mr
Moulson was probably the most benign , followed closely by
Mr Cawton who always signed off one's homework with a large scrawled
CAC logo and who called each of us boys "Old Man" as a kindly form
of address.
Mr McIver, who told us
that he came from "the home of contented cows" (ie Dumfries), instilled
in me a detailed knowledge and concern for Scottish topography, such that
even to this day I carry round, against my will, many names such
as Ochill Hills, Pentland Hills, Campsie Fells and the Dunbar to Girvan
fault line.
Mr Hum would probably not have survived today's assessment-oriented school environment. As I recall, his opening words throughout the year on entering to teach our chemistry class were always; "I've forgotten to mark the books"
Mr Callister could be quite stern and I well remember attending his first lecture to 6L in the Chemistry Lecture Theatre CL. He looked at all of us very intensely and said in a slow threatening tone; "You think you know some chemistry, well--------------you haven't even ---------scratched the surface", accompanying his statement by a superficial scratching gesture of the bench.
Miss Gilham , the girls' PT teacher, occasionally came into room 60 to consult Mr McIver during a class. She would be dressed in her white pullover and little black skirt. When this happened , there was always a discernible drawing of breath and a change to the collective heartbeat of all the boys present.
Some things that stick
in my mind
During an English Literature
Class, where the girls heavily outnumbered the boys, seeing the heavily-built
Tom Stevenson insisting on playing the part of Cordelia in a class reading
of King Lear.
Travelling on the buses to the sports afternoon and always bursting into collective song just as soon as it was legal, that being as soon as the bus had traversed the railway bridge at the foot of East Bank Road.
On alternate weeks we were required by Miss Hibberd to bring specified biological specimens from home for examination in the biology afternoon practical class. We boys invariably forgot to bring these specimens to school, realising our problem only when we saw the girls carrying their specimens in the morning. This always meant a desperate search of the Albert Hall ruins for relevant specimens such as worms or samples of our garden soil. Regarding the latter, Miss Hibberd was scathing about the quality of our gardens, of course based on the rubble samples we all had gathered from the Albert Hall site.
Verbatim (except for italicised
insertions) Extracts from my 1947 diary which I just recently found.
January 29
Sea froze at Folkestone
February 4 Snow
30 feet deep at Fox House
October 27 Travelled
home on the tram with Muriel Stocks (CGS)
October 31 Holiday.
Cycled to Ashford-in-the-Water where I was chased by a bull. On the return
journey, got a puncture at Baslow. Four garages wouldn't help and
the blacksmith was ill in bed. I pushed the bike through Grindleford and
almost up to Fox House when I got a lift on a lorry as far as Totley. Here
by chance I saw Peter Roscoe (CGS) so we went to his house and restored
my bike. In the evening, Countess Maritza at the Lyceum.
November 7 Lost
badge, broke ruler, bought poppy
November 18 Vickers absent,
Physics practical was the deflection magnetometer
November 19 Snow, therefore
no field . Instead went to YWCA to dance with June Pinder, Joyce
Holliday, Shirley in green who takes Geography and Margaret Bowls.
Then to PL to listen to England v Sweden on the radio ( !!). England 4
(Mortenson 3 , Lawton 1) Sweden 1
December 12 Party at
night. Danced with June Royles, a freckled girl from Form 4, J Mills, J
Allen and Brenda Sawle. Took Margaret Bowls to supper.
