First memory is the shock of going from being the most gifted child to being one among many but only one of two so precocious as to enter at 10 years and not 11 the world of secondary education. Miss Rainforth was form mistress and taught English.. Granny Graydon taught geography, a strict disciplinarian. Miss Patterson, French, Codling woodwork, Peel chemistry. He gave my friend Bosomworth lines for singing or whistling, 'D'ye ken John Peel' in his class. Beynon was the cane wielding head before KIng took over.
Mr Greenwood, aka Jugger, was given to slaps with the ruler and throwing the blackboard eraser at errant pupils. It was the his way of discipline. No-one objected. One was in fear of the cane, an effective deterrent. Yes, teachers had nicknames. Physics, Herring, had to be Kipper, what else? Smith, maths, was Hence because he said it a lot. Never very sporting and so undistinguished in football or cricket, We played soccer. I defended or kept goal. I would have much preferred rugger. Cricket was a bit scary.I shone in cross country until puberty when I put on weight and slowed down.
At the change from grammar school we had many new teachers, some remembered with great affection. my love of chemistry must have been promoted by John Ward who died tragically young in the seventies.'Plug' Rawlings taught games. Mr Josephs enlivened history. Who can forget learning how Edward II died? We were not though told why this method of despatch was singularly appropriate. Matters homosexual were unknown. Ralph Brookes did not endear himself at first, a Brummie criticising Yorkshire accents, but he proved a great English teacher and promoter of drama. He encouraged a huge drama competition criticising me for overacting in a farce. I was Corin in As You Like It. Out Town was the first ever school play and I have never forgotten its moral of failure to pay attention to people. Most notable all was The Crucible. I was Giles Corey, pressed to death. This had to be done as an after school drama club production and even then some parents were not happy with their daughters as witches.
It was I think during rehearsals for The crucible that there was the Cuban missile crisis. People were rightly worried. Suddenly, during rehearsal there was a very loud bang. We thought the end of the world might be upon us. But we were the generation who grew up in the shadow of The Bomb.The was fear of nuclear destruction. But it was a misplaced fear just like that of apocalyptic global warming which besets people today.
Later Brookes became correspondent for the local paper, The Stockton and Darlington Times and we became good friends as he reported on our missionary work in Nigeria before we went and during leaves.
The headmaster was Stephen King. We thought it odd singing O Worship The King in assembly. Roman Catholics might opt out I think. RCs were the nearest we had to an ethnic minority. We were a monoracial society until Chinese family opened a restaurant in the early sixties though I did find out late that the businessman on the morning bus from Harrogate was the local bookie and a Jew. I never met a Jew until university in London.
In the later school years Smith's Coaches were the means of transport to and from school. I would sit next to my first girlfriend Josephine whose father worked at Baldersby station before Beeching shut the local line. Talking of trains, my hobbies out of doors were fishing and transporting. Fishing was the local Swale, from the bridge with special permission from the land of local farmers. They let the fishing to clubs but let well behaved locals fish. All course fishing. My best was a barbel of over five pounds. Local expert, Frank Neesam caught pike using live bait. My grandfather had been an expert with a barbell over 10lb ar Topcliffe Mill.
Trains were spotted at Thirsk Station which is on a long straight just north of the halfway point between London and Edinburgh. So IIRC the up Elizabethan went through around ! p.m. and the down ten minutes later. An hour later it was the two Flying Scotsmans, train not engine. The Engines were always A4 Gresly Pacifics, streaks we called the streamlined engines with corridor tenders so crews could be changed on a non-stop run. That is what the Elizabethan did daily but the Flying Scot stopped at Newcastle en route. They went through at the maximum permitted speed of 80 mph daily wobbling from side o side. One prided oneself of ability to read the shed number, small ones on the from of the speeding express. I still have my Allan's transporting book for the line. If a train stopped in the station on would try and cab it, stepping onto the first step or two of the engine. The day I cabbed the world steam record holder, Mallard, pulling a slow goods train I knew the end was nigh, the glorious era of steam. I am almost ashamed to admit I went specially to spot one of the first diesel called expresses. I spent many happy hours on Thirsk station. While I was at university I saw the wreckage of a train crash just south of the station. Carriages looked like they had been opened with a tin opener.
Indoor hobbies were reading and stamp collecting. Had always been a voracious reader and got into trouble f I smuggled a torch upstairs to read under the blankets. Buckerige's Jennings was a great favourite which now seems a little strange seeing he was at a public school, socially far removed from me. Philately taught one geography and some history too.
At the end of one's third year you had to chose are or science. I dropped history and art for physics and biology. So for the next two years my GCE subjects, taken in 1961, were English language and literature, maths, French, geography, biology, chemistry and physics. We also did Religious education but not for examination. I started on Latin but dropped it when I realised by chosen degree, pharmacy, was not needed any longer. It was a requirement for Oxbridge entry and they did not offer pharmacy.I had reached pharmacy as a choice having moved on from train driver than bank manager, never fireman first or cashier. I was never top of my class but in the top third until my A levels when I was to shine.
After Josephine as platonic girlfriend (I do not recall we ever so much as held hands on the bus just sat together), I was sweet on Jane, daughter of the deputy head. But that affection was not reciprocated.
1961 saw me get the six GCEs I needed. I failed English lit and geography simply because I never revised them, concentrating instead on what I needed for sixth form and university. I know the two teachers were disappointed with me and with a little more effort I could have passed except I had not relished the set literature. Macbeth I loved. Browning was OK, Tennyson less so. But Hardy's Trumpet Major was the pits. What 14 year old boy wants a tale about a woman who cannot make up her mind? I have never since succeeded in reading Hardy though my love of the language
1961 I started science A levels, biology, chemistry and physics. I think we had some non-examined general studies too. I worked very hard these two years and found my first real love, Margaret. That was no longer platonic. Double seats on the back rows of the Ritz and Regent had their uses. But all of us were sexual innocents. In our sixth form any one student claimed sexual experience and he was not local but from a RAF family. Homosexuality was unknown too. Of course young boys even pre-puberty messed about but gay was a carefree adjective. I recall at the time of Wollfendon being reported on the breakfast radio I asked my father .'What is homosexuality?'
"I'll tell you later'.\, he relied, but never did.
Saturdays I has a job at Wendt's garage on the A1, a ride of four miles each way, half along the dual carriageway. Safety was not a concern. My bike had cost under £30 new and I was pumping petrol at 4s 11halfpenny a gallon. (under 25p c/f £5.22 today), I was on the southbound carriageway, the garage was on the northbound. It could be busy especially at holiday times. Scottish holiday weeks brought the best tips. There was no self service. I would offer an oil check with the petrol. Two memorable customers, the worst and the grandest. The worst was an idiot with a Rolls who stopped too far for the pump hose to reach. He wanted to pull at the hose or get me to remove the retaining wire. I asked him to move his car. He said he would report to the owner. If he did I heard no more. The grandest was a fleet of four vehicles with no number plates. They included a unquote shooting brake made I believe for George V. They were the queen's cars returning south after summer shooting at Balmoral.
Quietest day at the pumps was Christmas day with fear than a dozen cars. I also sold cigarettes.I thought them expensive but did take up a pipe unbeknown to my parents. Our house was teetotal. Friends introduced me to alcohol. I did not likelier but once, only once, came home drunk on remand coke and vomited. No-one knew about drugs. Saturday night was pictures followed by fish and chips, walk Margaret home, good night kisses and a four mole cycle ride home. Was a fit cyclist. We enjoyed all the films, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The L-shaped room, Billy Liar and especially the great romance of West Side Story. Cinema was the big entertainment. Earlier my father had taken me to The Dam Busters and Battle of the River Plate. A little older I had seen Davy Crockett and Bridge on the River Kwai by myself. The latter scared me with the brutal mistreatment of the POWs by the Japs.We did not have a TV until the family rented on around 1959. I used to watch TV at the home of a local family the Crookes. I was also allowed to play on their 3/4 size billiard table. Memorable TV was Bannister's four minute mile, cup final as the only live football and test cricket, Fred and Statham opening the bowling. But most memorable of all I saw Laker take all 10 wickets against the Aussies at Old Trafford. I remember running from kitchen to dining room to interrupt the family's dinner with the remarkable news. My most memorable sporting moment on TV until the 1966 World Cup final.
I have mentioned cycling. I thought nothing of 19 miles to Harrogate and back to see Yorkshire's annual game there. My first first class game was the Ashes at Headingly in 1961. A very slow day only hundred and some runs. I stood up during play. "Sit down lad" for being me. The his mate said.'Tek the time. Ee's missing nowt'. My big regret is I never saw Fred on a fast wicket. dad was supposed to take me to see India at Headingly. Mother persuaded him to go shopping instead. Fred was phenomenal. I never really forgave my mother. I also cycled stay with my uncle who's Methodist minister in Hawes up Wensleydale. I has a disastrous youth hosteling simmer holiday with a friend cycling
Devon and Cornwall. The disaster was repeated punctures not realising a rim tape had perished.
As I said, I work very hard in the sixth form and was shattered after the exams. I was convinced I had failed not least because I knew I had miscalculated a physics question about the orbit height of a satellite. The next part was to comment on the significance of the figure. I answered my figure was wrong. It should have been such and such, a geo-stationary orbit.
I was youth hosteling on my own in the Lakes. Margaret had come on a school trip to France. She was back and phoned me. I couldn't believe my ears. Failed?I only had the school's best results, two As, a B and a distinction too. University here I come!
Among my best friends in sixth form were Jim Harwood who went on the read chemistry and die soon after retirement which. Ian Swiers, farmer's son and proud recipient of one of the first Minis on his 18th birthday. Mist memorable of all was Thomas D'Oyly Snow. He joined the school in 1961. At about 6'5" he suck out as did his public school accent. He was the eldest son of George D'Oyly Snow, the new local Bishop Of Whitby who in turn was the son of a WWI general, Thomas D'Oyluy Snow. Generations alternated Christian names. Kilvington vicarage was home to two other snow sons too. One, John, was to gain fame as Channel Four newsreader. Father and sons were all six footers and low beams in the vicarage had hanging sheets of paper warning against head injury. I befriended Thomas as he was the new by on his own. His father has been made bishop after serving as an ordained public school headmaster. Thomas who has socialist views wanted to leave public school for the local comprehensive. He and his socialism are to reappear in my story around 1991.
Anglicanism in our area was pretty dead as far as we Methodists were concerned. In fact the only Noth Yorkshire vicar we hear of being evangelical, seceded in 1966 following Lloyd-Jones call. So we were chapel and most Metodiasts were evangelical. Bit liberalism was ravaging the denomination added by the circuit system changing ministers after as short a stay as three years. My uncle stayed but many evangelicals left like Malcolm Peters at Topcliffe. He was never invited back into a Methodist pulpit for nearly 30years when I had him preached at Dad's funeral in 1964. My parents stayed Methodism keeping Skipton Bridge chapel alive until they retired to thirsk in the eighties. Those who left Methodism went reformed like Malcolm and the rich farmer Willis Metcalfe who bankrolled Evangelical Press and Evangelical Times. His brother Douglas was the one prominent Methodist who left but stayed Arminian, unless I count those charismatics who also left. Another farmer, Jim Wilkinson started Hollybush Fellowship which still prospers. It remains the only place I was greeted with a hole kiss by a burly farm labourer on the door. Liberalism had killed most rural Methodist chapels. Even Topcliffe with its pipe organ and horseshoe gallery is closed now. Reformed and charismatic churches have prospered.
I went to chapel Sunday School in the morning. Dad taught. Evening service I attended even after I lost faith. That was out of respect for my parents. The evangelistic preaching was of the 'you are a sinner and must make a decision to repent and believe'. If I had been brought up under the teaching of covenant children I now believe I would have been spared trauma. I was taken to the first Billy Graham crusade at Harringay, my first London visit but no sightseeing. I was convicted but not enough to go forward. A future Eric Hutchins crusade at Masham saw me decide, first out of my seat that evening. What convinced me was his story of the invitation. You are invited to an event. You can reply yes, reply no or put the invitation on the mantel piece for the time being. That procrastination is a 'no'. Well I was procrastinating no more. I made my decision. I sincerely believed it was becoming a Christian. Now, IMO, I think not. After initial new zeal in spiritual matters I became agnostic. A little philosophy was a dangerous thing. I read on philosophical doubt. I could make a good case to doubt the existence of the chair on which i am seated. How much more reason to doubt the existence of a God I could not see? So I finished school with a good A level certificate but no faith.
The family passed through difficulty when Dad suffered contact dermatitis from oils and arc welding when working for a Ripon engineering firm making heavy transport trailers. In rural North Yorkshire there were few non-oily jobs outside of agriculture. After a spell in a timber yard Dad answered an advertisement for a salesman, no experience required. He became a Betterwear brush man, selling door to door. This was not salaried but commission only work. The salesman dropped leaflets, then canvassed sales delivering two weeks later and getting his money. Fewer than 10% of recruits were good at the job. Dad became the best in the north of England, one of the company;s top salesmen. This brought us more prosperity and four wheels. Dad has gone from auto-cycle to 125-cc B.S.A. Bantam. For selling he bought a Commer Cob van and after that a succession of new estate cars. Holidays were always in the UK. Memorable were trips to Scotland with caravan. By Loch Eck we suffered midges the like of which I never even saw in Africa. In Oban we had a week of daily rain. But with a grandfather Graham, I love Scotland, But ever the nonconformist I alone among the tourists had my photo by the England sign on the border. Everyone else was by the Scotland one.
My one contribution to village life was when the churchyard was full and an extension burial ground needed, There was church land at the end of the old vicarage property. I went door to door collecting money to fence off the new cemetery. My parents are buried there.
I started to spend holidays youth hosteling. I did this in Yorkshire, the Lake District, Snowdonia and Scotland. I loved climbing the hills.
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