THE SCHOOL ON THE HILL
My past is everything I failed to be.”
Of all human facilities
memory is the least reliable and one of the most important. Without memory we
cease to be who we are, or more accurately who we have become. Yet we
fictionalise our lives to an extraordinary degree, creating patterns and order
where there was none. We operate always with hindsight, -we know how things
turned out, -and fabricate a narrative to explain our current predicament. Lost
in all this is the chaos of contingency, the million and one possibilities, the
roads we did not take.
In addition to all this this narrative is highly selective, from the millions of possible moments we select but a few, then memory edits and chooses the angle from which we view this thing called our past. We become victims of the propaganda of memory.
In addition to all this this narrative is highly selective, from the millions of possible moments we select but a few, then memory edits and chooses the angle from which we view this thing called our past. We become victims of the propaganda of memory.
I envy, but am suspicious of
autobiography, the meticulously arranged chronology, the neat history of a life
described in detail. My own memory allows for no such process, the past more a
fog; the further back I go the denser the fog becomes. Then only great ghostly
icebergs appear. These are the big events. Being rushed to hospital at 8 when
my appendix burst, changing primary school, moving to Springfield Council
Estate.
However by the age of 11
things start to take on a clearer shape and form. Though even my secondary
school days present as little cameos, small moments that either then, or later,
I have invested with importance. There is no flowing narrative, though I can of
course do, what I suspect others do, impose one.
So this is how I remember
things to have been at Meole Brace School, though much has been lost in
translation. For above all else, "the past is a foreign country: they do
things differently there…”
I
I emerged from ‘The Summer of
Love,’ arriving at Meole Brace Secondary Modern School in September 1967.
That summer I had spent in
Northern Ireland, in Belfast, then on to stay in our Uncles caravan in a small
seaside resort called Groomsport, a village on the shores of Belfast Lough.
Here I listened to Radio Caroline, broadcasting from off the coast of the Isle
of Man, on a transistor radio.
“Going back in time with the sound of the nation,
it’s a Caroline Flashback….Caroline the sound of the nation…Caroline 315…24
hours a day sailing away on the Caroline Love ship…if you’re going to San
Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair…so save up all your bread
and fly to San Francisco, if not for this song but for the sake of your own
peace of mind…On a warm San Francisco night”
 |
| Meole Brace School |
It was heady stuff for an
11yr old who arrived at school wanting life to be good, to be fun and who
wanted to be grown up, indeed was grown up. For my memory of my childhood is
the memory of being a little adult. Perhaps that is how it is for everyone.
Meole School sits upon a hill
just above Meole village on the outskirts of Shrewsbury, a two and a half mile
bicycle ride from my home, which was outside the school’s catchment area. This
daily five mile journey represented a passageway between two very distinct
worlds, the world of the Springfield Council Estate and the world of school.
These worlds were very starkly different and I jealously guarded that
difference, the two world were not to interact. The world of school had a
streak of magic about it, here were my closest friends and, more importantly,
there were girls. The world of Springfield was more tepid, slower, and often
dull.
II
“You say yes, I say no
You say stop
and I say go go go, oh no
You say
goodbye and I say hello
Hello hello
I don’t know
why you say goodbye, I say hello
Hello hello
I don’t know
why you say goodbye, I say hello”
Beatles
My Schooldays had a
soundtrack, the featured artists were as extensive as they were varied, from
the Beatles and Stones, to Barry Ryan, Herb Alpert, Free, Eric Burdon, Jimi
Hendrix, The Turtles, Carpenters, Union Gap, Don Partridge…the music never
stopped playing.
Long before the Walkman, let
alone MP3 the tracks played in my head as I ran down the corridor. “No running
in the corridor Moorcroft!” It played as I entered class and caught sight of
Gillian Powis. She seems to hear the music too.
“I don't know why you say goodbye, I say
hello.”
The music fills the room as
she smiles and I fly twice around the classroom before descending into my
seat, just as the teacher enters. Catching Gillian Powis’s eye can do that for
you.
Herein lay the magic of
school, for Meole Brace was a mixed school, here there were girls. I loved the
presence of girls. Don’t get me wrong, shy and awkward I was no Casanova,
indeed often in the presence of the girls I liked I collapsed into hopeless
incoherence. Still the music compensated, the music and a vivid, exotic and
romantic imagination, coupled with a capacity for fictionalising my
existence.
“The being known as wonder girl is
speaking I believe
It's not easy trying to tell her that I shortly have to leave”
It's not easy trying to tell her that I shortly have to leave”
I wanted life to be good, to
be fun but above all else to be dramatic and romantic. Win or lose to be the
hero of the unfolding novel of my life.
“I walk away
like a movie star
Who gets
burned in a three way script.
Enter number
two,
A movie queen
to play the scene
Of bringing
all the good things out in me.”
In all this it never occurred
to me that the purpose of attending school was to learn anything.
Now I don’t think, as
Secondary Modern schools of that period went, Meole Brace was a bad school.
Indeed I think it was one of the better examples of this second tier of the education
system. I also don’t think that overall the teaching was particularly bad,
though some of it definitely was. No, I think that there was a degree of
disengagement from many of the teachers, they went through the motions, which
in my case matched my own disengagement. I was in B stream and the academic
efforts were concentrated on the A streamers. Thus I pretended to learn and
they pretended to teach me.
In writing this now I am finding
it difficult to remember very much of what I did learn. I remember being taught
a little about the English Civil War, albeit in a simplistic fashion. I had a
sense that the Cavaliers had the better part to play, certainly the best
costumes. The Roundheads, although superficially right, were dull and
unpleasant. This did not spark my interest in history, that particular spark
had been ignited much earlier. As it happens the history teacher, CJ, was a
particularly unpleasant man, a sadist who also found time in his busy schedule
to let us know of his support for the South African and Rhodesian governments. Later
it was almost as if Roger waters I took him as a template for ‘The Wall.’
“You, yes you behind the bike shed,
stand still laddie.”
I also remember being taught
about wheat production on the Canadian prairies, which might have been useful
if I had had a desire to emigrate and become a Canadian prairie farmer. As it
happens this desire passed me by.
 |
| Canadian Wheat -A desire to cultivate never took hold. |
I do remember another teacher,
whose name I don’t recall, a supply teacher I suppose, who taught us briefly. A
kindly and sympathetic soul, indeed a natural teacher. He introduced the class
to Animal Farm by George Orwell, which possibly, gave birth to a lifelong love
of Orwell.
I have other fleeting
recollections, pouring molten metal into a cast in metalwork, which I remember
felt pretty cool. Making an apple crumble, in a then revolutionary move to
teach boys how to cook. Whilst in woodwork I was allowed to pretty much do as I
pleased, as long as it did not involve actually working with wood; it seems I
wasted too much of the stuff. In technical drawing I remember drawing the new
Morris Marina. For the rest it is all lost in the fog.
I do remember that God
somehow managed to infiltrate the school. A mix of sickly Christianity and
disinfectant puritanism. We sang hymns. The only one I really liked being the
one sung at harvest festival.
“We plough the fields and scatter the
good seed in the land.”
An incident; I am about
thirteen, I am hauled out of school assembly for acting the fool. Dragged
before a class of fifth years I am asked the purpose of school assembly. “A
chance for the whole school to meet,” I reply, not unreasonably.
No I have got it all wrong. “Tell
him someone.”
“It is an act of worship sir.”
“That’s right we are worshiping God. When you act the fool in assembly you are being disrespectful
to God. You believe in God don’t you?”
“I’m not sure,” I replied not
yet familiar with the word agnostic.
I think this reply infuriated
him much more than my acting the fool and almost certainly added to the length
of my detention. But it was detention I got, he did not hit me. For yes in
those days we were beaten.
It sounds barbaric now, which
of course it is, beating children to gain control and submission no longer
thought kosher. Though at the time it’s seemed natural, part of the order of
things; indeed getting the slipper, which was reserved exclusively for the
boys, represented something of a rite of passage. The slipper was the first
line of corporal punishment, the cane being reserved for more serious crimes
against the ruling order. I was ‘slippered’ several times, bending over to be
hit on the bottom. It seems absurd now, and I think it felt absurd even then.
The threat of ‘the slipper,’ in truth a pump, or gym shoe, was never very far
away, with some teachers more inclined to inflict pain than others. Corporal
punishment is of course a practice that can produce a certain frisson for those
inflicting or even receiving the pain and has seriously distorted the future
sex lives of some senior civil servants, bankers and judges. I don’t know
whether any of the teachers at Meole ‘got off’ on administering pain, but in
truth, for me, the humiliation was worse than the pain. I do have scars, mostly
from a life sometimes badly led, but being hit on the bottom with a gym shoe is
not one of them.
III
My eyes begin to wander, I
stare out of the window, to where the girls are playing netball….
“Imagine me
and you, I do,
It’s only right,
to think about the girl you love and hold her tight,
I think about
you day and night so…”
“Mr Moorcroft has found
something more interesting out of the window, perhaps he’d like to tell us all
about it?” Fat chance, I don’t even understand my own aching heart, let alone be able to explain it to anyone else. Always
consumed by hopes and desires, always daydreaming.
“Yes I'm in
love who looks at you the way I do
When you
smile I can tell it know each other very well”
I don’t think there was a
week in all my four years at Meole Brace that I was not obsessing about one
girl or another. The names flow through my head like butterflies startled in
the sunshine, Laura, Helen, Sheila, Karen, Susan and of course always the heart
stoppingly beautiful and unattainable Gillian.
“Don't
question why she needs to be so free
She'll tell
you it's the only way to be
She just
can't be chained
To a life
where nothings gained
The romances all played out
in my head to the soundtrack of the Beach Boys, The Stones, the Beatles and Bob
Dylan. Already reading Hemingway, “a man alone ain’t got no chance.” I was
always the romantic loner. The model, Bogart in Casablanca.
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world
she walks into mine.”
Looking back there was
something more than a little masochistic and perverse, in this world view,
which seemed to feed and insulate me whilst in reality eating away inside me.
“Then take me disappearin' through the
smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past
the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to
the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy
sorrow”
IV
“Hand out the arms and ammo
We're going to blast our way through here
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
And you know that it's right.”
Outside the window things
were going on in the outside world, revolution was in the air and even in a
classroom in Shropshire I momentarily caught the scent. Paris was on fire as
the students fought back against the riot police. I knew both instantly and
instinctively where I stood, my politics though were visceral not intellectual.
Later I scribbled slogans on an A4 cardboard folder I carried into English
classes. Though I did not always grasp there full meaning. I was making a
statement.
‘Be realistic, demand the Impossible!’
Street slogan Paris 1968
By the fall of 1970 my
experience of school began to sour and I felt increasingly drawn to a wider
world in which I imagined myself being fully engaged and active in ‘the
struggle.’ I was outgrowing Secondary school. The outside world felt more vivid
more alive.
“I'm going on
down to Yasgur's farm
I'm going to
join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to
camp out on the land
I'm going to
try an' get my soul free.”
That the reality for a
working class kid from a council estate with no money, no qualifications and
little worldly wherewithal, was going to be very different, more Woolworths
than Woodstock, I did not yet fully realise.
My final months at school
were a dismal affair soured by conflict and a growing feeling of restlessness
and unease.
Another incident; now I am
about 14, close to becoming fifteen. The music teacher asks what goes with
rhythm, I reply, accurately, blues. This is dismissed with the wave of a hand
and sarcasm.
Always the smart Alec now,
ready with a quip, I make a remark as I am leaving the class. Within a flash he
has hauled me over his desk and is within a millisecond of punching me in the
face. I can see that he has lost control. Suddenly he is more afraid than I am
and let’s go of me. I leave the class deeply shaken.
V
I left school in 1971, surely
the year in which the 1960’s finally died. Though Maggie May had been top of
the charts for ever, the free and easy Hippy culture was dying, certainly well
past its creative peak.
My school days ended
unnecessarily badly, though by that stage there was a vindictiveness in the
air. I was considered disruptive and had repeatedly refused to get my hair cut,
(yes it was still, just, that
period). It was then mutually agreed with my parents that I should leave of my
own accord rather than be expelled.
My very last class was a
music class, I was asked if I had done a piece of work and when I said no, the
teacher, a she of whom I have no memory, kicked up a fuss. I then exasperatedly
said, “It doesn’t matter anyway, I’m leaving today.” She seemed to have
difficulty with this and I was dragged upstairs to see CJ, the deputy head, to
see if this was true. (Why I didn’t just walk out there and then I don’t
know). After roundly insulting me “You
were always bolshie…nothing good will come of you,” he escorted me from the
premises.
VI
When I left school I thought
I knew more than I did and that I was more grown up than I was. I was certainly
more optimistic than I am now, or was ever to be again. The coming years proved
difficult, though eventually I returned to full time education, going on to
be accepted for university.
So did school fail me/all of
us? My friends and so many of the people I shared a class with were more intelligent,
funny and most certainly more capable than the teachers gave them credit.
For myself however I cannot
complain, I left school literate, though not completely numerate;* and though I
remember little of what I was taught at school, I must have learned something.
Perhaps the most important lesson I learnt was if you want to understand the
world there is no substitute for doing your own research. After I left school
my education really begun, so school taught me how to become an autodidact, -
not a bad lesson.
So that was how it was, or
more accurately these are the images that come to the surface as I sit here over forty
years later. I have course left out much, much about the friends I had and the
less attractive side of my personality. For I was often selfish, something of a
coward and self-obsessed-though I think you got that bit…
Now though I must go and get my bike
from the bike shed and cycle home, dizzy with the events of today. Did Gillian
really say that if forced to choose between all the boys in class she would
choose me?
But such thoughts though are
deadly, for they give you hope.
* This is a problem that
stays with me to this day, the mere sight of a mathematics problem can induce
nausea, dizziness and the desire to disappear down a dark hole, and I owe a great debt of
gratitude to the inventor of the calculator.
Unattributed music lyrics in
order Monkees ‘Alternate Title, Gordon Lightfoot ‘If You Could Read My Mind,’ Turtles
‘Happy Together,’ Herb Alpert ‘This Guys in Love With You’, Rolling Stones,
(Jagger/Richards) Ruby Tuesday, Bob Dylan ‘Mr Tambourine Man,’ Thunderclap
Newman, ‘Something in The Air,’ Joni Mitchell ‘Woodstock.’
