Sixty Years Later

by Steve Brazier

Some people love reunions, some would not be seen dead at one. When I was phoning round canvassing support for the 1998 reunion for Muni pupils who began in 1958, I heard the negative side of the argument. I did get off on the wrong foot - forgetting my old classmate's first name. But he was already irritated at being chased up after my initial letter inviting him to attend. "Do you think", he said, "that I would enjoy the smug ramblings of all of you who have done well and prospered over the last forty years?". I guess he hadn't. Prospered, that is. Another responded that he would not travel miles to reacquaint himself with people he had found tedious. He was just unwilling to correct his school-day stereotypes. I was apprehensive myself: meeting girls who had spurned teenage advances and boys who has excelled at everything I was bad at. Some had been intimidating and aggressive. How could I now sustain a conversation with them? What if people simply could not remember me? My adult life has been largel free of humiliation and rejection. Why risk it now in an old school time-warp?

Should I attend out of a sense of duty? Seven shared school years should perhaps be enough to justify celebrating that we are still here to tell our tales. At least 10% of the 120 who started in 1958 have died: Ann Gandy; Bob Baldwin; Malcolm Preece; Bruce Wassell; Michael Oakley; Thomas Igloi; Helen Watkin; Eileen Taylor; Judith Rodgers among them. They'd be glad to attend - do we owe it to them to go ourselves, because we still can? Their absence is a memento mori for the survivors.

I've now attended about six Muni reunions, large and small. There were the whole school events in the early '90's. Held at the Masonic in Tettenhall. The first one had quite a lot from my cohort. The second one far fewer. Perhaps the old time dancing and prevailing pre-war majority put people off. Our 1958 entrants reunion in 1998 was an attempt to make it more about us - and Roger Nash's hard work got over sixty to attend. Several wrote to Roger, Rosie Hogg (nee Abbott) and me to thank us for organising it. "It was like a dream. I had never expected to meet any of those old friends again. Except perhaps in the afterlife" Richard Cliff wrote. For the most part, people were still recognisable. Showing my daughter the photos afterwards, I kept saying "...and she hasn't altered at all....". "Dad", my daughter said, "they ALL look fifty to me". As they did. But each child still peeped out from behind the bags, lines, hair loss and spectacles.

Last September, twenty-four of us met again. Exactly 60 years since rolling up in brown and gold for our first day. We toured the school buildings, surprisingly little changed. The hall now smart in maroon and cream, looked bigger. We wandered about in small groups, swapping memories as we revisited each staircase, balustrade and corridor. Here was the cubby hole on the balcony where Mssrs Foxon and Shepherd issued new exercise books amid the comforting smell of new paper. Here was Room 9, no longer Borstal Brown, where I'd supervised prefects' detention less than a week after being a detainee myself. Here had been the Junior Library in glass fronted shelves still in use for craft displays. Here was the Door Frank McEntee kicked in. Here was the domestic science room where cricket teas were served by nymphs in gold gingham. Pamela Warren (nee Pritchard) had her photo taken on the stage, as if reading the bible in assembly from the lectern as she'd done in 1964.

The rooms, now rented to artists and small businesses were locked. We then moved on, via the Clarendon to Molineux for an evening meal. There was little talk of careers and family life. Nor of ailments and strategies for fending off the ravages of time. Many had distinguished themselves at home or at work but few wanted to go on about it. Whatever we had done since 1968 was irrelevant, only our common origins and shared memories mattered.

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Brian Foster distributed souvenir beer mats, Tim Salt, who had organised everything this time, despite warnings, had had a 1963 school photo framed. People pored over it, remembering names and faces. I spoke at length to people I'd hardly known back then. Corrected long-held prejudices, revised hazy memories. Jill Eggington had spent a night on the pavement to get my 1964 Beatles ticket at the Gaumont. I had forgotten but now I could thank her. I recently wrote in this newsletter that Johnny Forster was responsible for Rosie's black eye in the mixed hockey match. Wrong it seems. Richard Law owned up. I hope I won't be sued. And it was the ball that hit her in the eye, not the hockey stick.

Miss Witts, who taught history until she left in 1961 sent us all a collective 60th anniversary card. She still remembers some of us, she wrote. I met her for lunch with Miss Fenton (as was) a couple of years ago. They seemed smaller. Not shrunken by age . Shrunken rather because I am eight inches taller than I was last time I had seen them. Everyone had their own take on the teachers: how good/bad/kind/cruel/helpful/awkward they'd been. I can't remember some of them at all. Frau Walter, a hard task-mistress to some, had patiently given Rosie Abbott and Stella Warren individual catch-up German tuition. People had fond memories of Miss Bishop, who I blame for turning me from a competent maths pupil to a raving arithmophobe until Mr Entzen rescued me. Others found him impossible and would not forgive his anger when, twenty minutes into his lesson, he found a dog Patrick Isherwood had hidden under a desk. Nearly every teacher named elicited love and hate in equal measure. There were exceptions: Mr Steel and Mr Williams inspired nothing but praise. Mr Steel was the only one who addressed boys by their first names. That certainly made me feel more at home in the dark winter of 1958, adrift in a sea of new faces, new rules, an uncomfortable uniform and impending violence beneath a lofted rugby ball.

Mr Douel, unsurprisingly, had commanded respect but little affection. But now I know that he had republican leanings, I understand why he tolerated the refusal of about twenty of us to troop up to Molineux to cheer the Queen in 1962. Recollections of that morning's bubble car incident differ greatly. Though I think we finally agreed on the name of the domestic science teacher to whom it belonged (which I have already forgotten again). Imperfect recall lends a mythic element to such tales. Like the Robin Hood legend or the Bible, the Bubble Car Incident takes on a richer mantle as it is embellished by false memory syndrome.

Our shared teenage years were lived at very different paces. It's not just about rates of puberty, more the variety of family and social backgrounds. And the mingling of 120 people over five or seven years. Were it not for the arithmophobia, I could tell you how many billion interacting relationships and experiences that means. Nigel Lowe, ever the dry wit summed it up. So much of the conversation had involved romance and our dawning fixations on the opposite sex. Having been more interested in stamp-collecting, he concluded "I don't think I went to the same school as you lot".

Did you start at the Muni in 1958?

There was a consensus at the reunion that another should be held in five years. More immediately, an informal get-together for lunch at the Old Joint Stock, Temple Row, Birmingham will take place on Monday 2nd September 2019 from 12.30 pm. If you're interested - just turn up!

Stephen Brazier 1958-1965

Published WMGS OPA Newsletter Spring 2019

Who was there?

Reliving old memories in the school hall

Pamela Warren ( nee Pritchard) and Steve Brazier

Bill Tranter and Roger Nash










Bob Baker and Frank McEntee

Rosie Hogg (nee Abbott) and Howard Scarth











Linda Tranter (Leurs) and Nikki Edge (nee Morris).