by Steve Brazier
I was taken to meet my first head teacher on a dull Monday in 1950. I know it was Monday because the clothes horse was up against the fire and I had to squeeze past it to reach the alcove where my toys lived. She was Mrs Edwards, head of Graiseley Nursery School. I recall only her brown dress with a floral pattern. It could have been a skirt, but I only came up to her waist. I was allocated the peg with the cockerel, forced to eat cabbage, and vomited. Every afternoon we lay on rows of canvas beds, sleepless under scratchy grey blankets. More a break for the staff than for us. And yet I enjoyed it and got a taste for school, sand-pits, crayons and playground games: “Eee Aye Adio, the Farmer wants a Wife”.
Graiseley Primary smelt of Jeyes Fluid, wooden floors and stale milk. Nearly all the staff were Welsh including the Headmistress, Miss Williams. We even said ‘Nos da’ at 3.30 every day in Form 3. My memories of Miss Williams are surprisingly benign. Surprising, because I twice had to go to her to be caned for talking as each class in the school was lined up in the playground and marched into the building. This took ages, so keeping quiet was quite a challenge. The cane was on the palm of the hands. It hurt! You didn’t cry and returned in shock to your crowded classroom iron-framed double desk and inkwell. Her room was where we went to see the nurse for weighing and measuring. And Miss Williams conducted regular reading-age tests. I misread ‘campaign’ for ‘champagne. Later in life I was to learn that mistakes like that remain in the memory in a way that correct answers don’t. When you are learning foreign languages, the embarrassing errors tend to ensure that you don’t make them twice. I once ordered beer in France and got a Dubonnet-like aperitif because I’d used the English pronunciation. Do you remember the 1960’s advertising for “Byrrh” on French roadsides?
Thereafter I followed Mr Dudley’s instruction to “roll your R’s”. This is important in German too. I once asked for “Bretzel” (salty knot-shaped bread rolls), was told they had none and realised they’d not understood my unrolled “r”. I tried again with an un-British flourish and it worked. It’s easier than making your Black Country vowels understood as a student in London where Fulham bakers claimed to have no bread buns, until I began pointing to them in the window.
At the Muni, pupils lined the wall outside Mr. Douel’s office every morning after Assembly. Mostly this was to get an ‘Exeat’. I remember going to see him quite often because my teeth were so bad that I was a regular with Mr Liptrot, the schools’ dentist. At 14 I had a course of fillings but as his pretty nurse, aged about 16 would hold my hand during the drilling, it didn’t seem so bad. His son, John was at the Muni and we became good friends. His sister, Betty had been there too and gone on to university to train to be a dentist herself. She wrote in the school magazine of her first encounter with the cadaver dissected in anatomy classes. So, the awful smell in the school biology lab was a sort of warning. John went off to Strathclyde University to study hotel management. Where is he now?
Exeat’ is a Latin subjunctive: an example of the WMGS copying outmoded public-school snobbery. I think the introduction of rugby in 1957 was another. I got very good at kicking the ball before I was tackled. ‘Tackled’, you will recall, was a euphemism for Actual Bodily Harm. Thank you, Mr Douel. I’m sure you meant well and had hoped by playing rugby the school would take on the mantle of Eton or Harrow while differentiating itself from the Boys Grammar School. The girls already played hockey, so no change needed there - already violent enough. Have you ever been hit hard by a flying hockey ball? Johnny Forster accidentally poked Rosemary Abbott in the face with a hockey stick during our annual Boys vs. Girls Hockey match. In the staff vs.1st XI hockey matches, Mr Richards played in goal, covered in padding and wearing his motor bike helmet. Very wise.
I had to go to see the Head early in my Lower Sixth year. I’d chosen the wrong A levels to do architecture at university. He consulted a blue book and agreed. Could I do A level Maths in a year., he mused. We both knew the answer to that. “Better do Geography then” he said. With hindsight, probably a more suitable career for me. But the E-type Jaguars parked outside the architects’ offices on Tettenhall Road had impressed me. My first new car, some years later, was a Renault 12. It was rather a smart plum colour but as with all Renaults in the 1970’s, turned matt after three years. I bet Jaguars didn’t do that.
In 3A, Mr Douel announced to the class that half of us were to do woodwork instead of art. Our names were drawn at random and I got Woodwork. I loved art and went to see him to ask for a re-allocation. He flatly refused. I explained my aspiration to be an architect - he was unmoved. I rebelled, going to the Art Room instead of Woodwork on the first day. I came top in Art again that year. No one ever noticed or asked why I wasn’t with Mr Smith in woodwork. The whole business still puzzles me.
Emboldened, I returned to Mr Douel’s office the next year to complain that I was being forced to do ‘O’ Level Religious Education. As I was an atheist it was a waste of time, I pleaded. He was unimpressed. I hated the lessons, made no effort with homework and achieved my lowest ever mark for an essay - 2/20 from Mr Williams. The night before the RE ‘O’ level exam in June 1963 I decided, faut de mieux to read through the tiny New Testament I’d won at Sunday School at 11 during the religious fundamentalism phase which led me to atheism. The exam lasted 90 minutes, so I might as well write something. No one was more surprised than me when, on holiday with Patrick Isherwood and his parents in Blackpool in August, a telegram arrived from my brother: “Passed all ten. Congratulations “ I’d passed RE!
Mr Greenway, the music teacher wrote “He has no talent” in my report book. And as he sacked me as Form Chairman after three years of unblemished service told me “You have a big mouth”. But in the Upper Sixth he surprisingly revised his opinion and coached me for the bass part in HMS Pinafore’s trio “A British Tar”. We did three performances for the parents and in the interval of one of these I was summoned to the Head’s office. It was full of minor dignitaries drinking tea. My proud Mother, a school governor had requested my appearance, in costume and make-up. “I didn’t know he could sing” she told Mr Douel.
In the sixth form, the syllabus’ fixation on religion continued and we had Mr Douel for an hour a week for even more Religious Education. These were open discussions on moral issues. The Head led off and tried to stimulate contributions. Being normal teenagers, my classmates generally remained silent. Not me. Mr Greenaway had been right about the big mouth - I was never short of an opinion. Often it was just me and him, going at it. Thirty years later, I saw him for the last time, just before he died at a Muni reunion at the Masonic in Tettenhall. “I remember you” he said “You were the form atheist”.
Mr Douel will be remembered for many things: his pronunciation of “ski-ing” (“shee-ing”); he was widely reputed to be a conscientious objector during WWII; his attempts to persuade any sixth-former he valued to apply to Bristol University. Above all, his aura. As he clambered onto the stage in Assembly, shrouded in the generous folds of his black gown; his entry into any lesson producing a clatter of scraping chairs as we all stood. His prolonged absence when ill with pleurisy and the consequent rise to prominence of his deputy, ‘Sid’ Parsons. Pleurisy sounded fatal to me. But he came back non-the-worse. Did he ever use the cane? I doubt it but the author of an account in this Newsletter of the now legendary 1962 Bubble-Car Incident disagreed. How would this square with being a conscientious objector? Discuss.
On balance, despite his rather daunting presence and the menace which accompanied his high office, I found him approachable and accommodating. But then I was one of the lucky ones who did well academically, only committed minor misdemeanours and had a Mother on the governors. A good Headmaster’s Report was essential for a university place. He did well by me. What about you?
Stephen Brazier 1958-1965