Steve Brazier
At the age of 11, I was disappointed not to get a place at Wolverhampton Grammar School, where my brother had gone at the startling age of 10. Apart from anything else, their uniform was a smart black and red; they had an Army cadet corps and they played football.I now had to wear unfashionable brown and gold and play rugby, which for a very short-sighted eleven-year old was dangerous. Nevertheless, I could not wait to start at the Muni. Most of all I wanted to do homework and was put out when we were sent home on our first day without any. I'm not sure that ever happened again.
Of all the exciting new subjects, languages were the most appealing. I was thrilled when Mr. Dudley re-christened us all with the nearest French equivalent first name. I was Étienne. Exotic. He had fought in the First World War and would tell us language-related anecdotes. Fighting on the Western Front and desperate for a taste of home, he had spotted a box of porridge oats in a dusty French village shop and, failing to make himself understood, was taught the correct vocabulary by the shopkeeper: "Ah ! ce sont les Kwack-errr !". He did not teach us the lyrics to "Madamoiselle from Armentières" but I think she had been a bit of a "Kwackerrr" too.
Latin with Miss Day was an inspiration. She was very well-spoken, lacking the Welsh accent possessed by so many of the staff (and by practically all of my primary school teachers, to whom we would say “Nos da” at the end of each day). She was fascinated by our own accents but said that she was completely baffled by the real Black Country dialect still to be found then in places like Lower Gornal. In the 1990's, I tracked her down to a nursing home in the south of England and she replied kindly to the letter I wrote to tell her what fond memories I had of her lessons. I enjoyed Latin. A class-mate recently reminded me that I used to charge 3d to correct his homework for him. But I struggled when her successor, Mr. Sheppard, insisted we learn parrot-fashion his English translations of the set passages from The Aenied for the O Level exam. Despite a good memory I found learning by rote impossible. So on the spur of the moment in the exam itself, I skipped the question he had prepared us for and did an unseen passage. Mr. Sheppard was convinced I had made a fatal blunder but unlike many of the poor devils who had learned the whole text by heart, I passed.
German was another matter . Try as I might, I could not remember the vocabulary and gave it up after one year. Frau Walter was a good teacher. Rosemary Hogg (Abbot) told me recently how she had helped her pass O level German in only one year. In my 3rd Year report she wrote "Would have done better but omitted whole question in exam". Oh dear. Not just the vocabulary then.
There were several other French teachers: Mr. Jordan was a student teacher in whose lessons we would run riot. To avert chaos, the whole class was eventually offered an amnesty by our form master, Mr. Thompson, if we would relent. We did, and it all ended amicably. Mr. Cooke was different. He was a real martinet and we gave him quite a hard time. I can still hear the cheer that went up in our 4th year final assembly when it was announced that he was leaving. We waved wildly as his white Morris Minor drove past the shop on Newhampton Road West that night. Poor chap. Mrs. McCunn came next. She had the first Ulster accent I had ever encountered. Having fought off speaking French with a Welsh accent (as practised by Mr. Parsons), pupils now had to interpret on two levels ("la nourriture" for example became "lar noorarr-too-wourr").
I went on to do French with Mr. Dudley in the sixth form. He would translate aloud the soppy French Romantic poetry we had to do but left all the steamy bits in the original. How I envied my friend at the Girls' High School whose syllabus included the then very trendy Camus, Sartre and Baudelaire. We got Racine, Flaubert, Hugo .... dreary. Mr. Solomons took over when Mr. Dudley retired. He was a very nice man. He complimented me on my profound analysis of some Hugo poetry and was downcast when I told him I had invented the lot after glancing at a few of Hugo's biographical details in the back of the text-book. All my subsequent brushes with academic literary criticism have convinced me that this approach is the norm. My mistake was to admit it was invented. The highlight of A-level French was sitting next to Nicola Morris (now Edge) for two years. She had (and still has) an impressively husky voice. She sounded sexy enough speaking English but thanks to spending time with her French pen-friend, she could make me melt by just conjugating the verb "être". I was impressed enough to begin to write to a girl who lived in Grenoble and my spoken French might have blossomed much earlier had I not let the correspondence lapse after a few letters.
Although I did well in French A Level, I never considered studying it at university. Many years later, my job brought me into contact with France and I did a 2 year commercial French course. I would happily have taken it further but knew that I would have to get immersion in France to achieve any fluency. This proved impossible. However, my wife and I had several German friends who always had to speak to us in English. I found this embarrassing, so when I retired, I began to teach myself German. Despite my teenage conviction that it was difficult, I spent two years with the Open University and became hooked. After another five years at Nottingham University, I got a first in German in 2008. I think Frau Walters would be proud of me.
Steve Brazier (1958-1965)