Bob Baker sent me a copy of a letter he had sent to a friend, reminiscing about events at the Muni which I have reproduced below:-
Bob says "I was looking at the WMGS website recently and remembered that a few years ago I sent the write up below to an old colleague now living abroad. You may be interested in the content".
When the Queen visited Wolverhampton in May 1962 she first of all visited Cosford and then went to the Molineux Football Ground. On the way back into Woverhampton the roads were lined with Union Jack waving people including thousands of school kids, hundreds of which had special dispensation from the Municipal Grammar School to line the route along the Tettenhall Road. Beforehand, we had been asked if we wanted to go to see the Queen and the majority volunteered thinking that it was a couple of hours off school. However, when you are a 15 year old boy and your mates aren’t going to see the Queen you stay with them at school. There were about a hundred pupils remaining at the school which had a couple of teachers left to supervise the skeleton of inmates. We got to break time and the teachers in charge obviously went to the staff room thinking that with such small numbers of inmates nothing serious could happen.
Wrong! A new domestic science mistress had started at school that year and she happened to drive a 3 wheel bubble car (Heinkel Isetta) which she carefully parked behind the boys toilets by the Dunkley Street main vehicle entrance. It took about 6 fit 15 year olds including Bob Baker, Roger Elkin, Rod Naysmith, Peter McLachrie, Frank McEntee, Howard Scarth, Paddy Isherwood? and a couple of others to pick up the car from it’s parking place and transport it to the boys toilet. The toilet block had double doors opening onto the playground above a couple of steps so once the doors were open the bubble car should have fitted inside in front of the wash basins. However, the car was a bit longer than we thought and we could only get the single rear wheel in by the wash basins and one of the front wheels. We had to leave the other front wheel hanging out of the toilet on the next to top step so the car looked a bit like a dying swan pivoted at an angle of about 45 degrees.
For some reason we left the car there and never thought about the consequences. As soon as all of the teachers and pupils returned from waving at the Queen they were confronted by a dying swan lying across the boy’s toilet block. Everyone thought it was hilarious and it did not take long for those teachers with detective inclinations to work out that the deed must have been carried out by boys (all the girls had gone to see the Queen) who had not got any affinity with Royalty. We were soon rounded up and had to put the car back in it’s rightful place in the car park which we duly did. But most headmasters do not have a humorous side and the end result was that the guilty parties all ended up lined up outside Mr Douel’s office before going in one at a time to get the “whack”. I didn’t get the “whack” but had to do a detention which involved standing in the school hall with my hands on my head for an hour after school, I believe that there were about six of us who had this ridiculous non pc torture and we all stood in different parts of the hall so that we could not talk to each other. Even worse, I had just won the school athletics mile 10 minutes before. I bet Gilbert was right pissed off when he had to present with me with the “Mile Cup” in assembly a couple of weeks later. PS. I’ve still got the cup!
Before we graduated to the 4th form antics above another good ruse was to use the facilities of the under floor access chambers. I was in Class 1D in 1957 -58 and at the back of the first row (under Mick Croker’s desk) was a trap door through which you could climb into and get under the class room. When we were being called for registration one day in the summer of ’58 a couple of us got under the classroom and started knocking. I remember that we had a temporary student teacher that day as Mr Lindsay, our Form Master and who was quite strict and would have “binned” us for such an offence, was absent and the poor lady temp who was probably on her first excursion into the experiences provided by first form boys could not understand what the knocking noise was every time she called out a name. She made the mistake of going out into the hall which was adjacent to 1D to check what was happening and when she returned to the classroom the 3 boys who had not answered their names for registration were sitting in their places – they had not come though the classroom door – how had they got to their seats? She never found out. She also had the misfortune on another occasion to be carrying out registration after a couple of the boys had found a grass snake in West Park and put it into her desk for safe keeping. She was just dutifully carrying out registration when for some reason she chose to open her desk – she never got to the end of registration but she did have a good pair of lungs!
Another good one was that we discovered how to make yourself pass out. You squat and take in about 5 very deep breaths, you then stand up quickly and someone gives you a bear hug from behind. You pass out immediately from lack of oxygen to the brain and can remain unconscious for about 30 seconds – maximum a minute. When we tried this out in Holy Joe Williams’s class one day before our Religious Knowledge lesson in 1963 we got a subject, name forgotten, to pass out and be propped up just as Holy Joe was seen approaching the balcony classroom. When he came into the room we all stood up except for the corpse, Holy Joe thought he was asleep and shouted at him, nothing happened but about 10 seconds later (time felt like an eternity in an R.E. class) he came to and had no idea what was happening. Being “smarter than our teachers” we believe that Holy Joe never worked out what happened.
I hope these stories are of use to your magazine. As it happened I left the Muni in the summer of ’65, went to university and then got a proper job.
I was not the boy who on his school report in Summer 1961 had Mr Douel write – Quote / It is high time that he shows signs of “growing up.” This simply will not do. I’ve still got my Municipal Grammar School report and think of the things we used to do in those early academic years.
Bob Baker.