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Correspondence. |
From: Bob Benbow, 17/01/02Some
reminiscences from Bob (Ben) Benbow, DCS 1958 -1965. "When
I was a kid my parents moved a lot - but I always found them" Having spent 4 years at Downhills junior school, I arrived in the autumn of 1958 in a maroon blazer four sizes too big brought from Keevans, and my first pair of long (and I mean l-o-n-g) trousers. They hung in folds around my legs. The first day was the initiation ceremony when you were liable to have a variety of things done to you by the 2nd formers. Being thrown into the stinging nettles was one ordeal I remember undergoing. However, with so much redundant material in my trousers, my legs were well protected. There was a guy in the 2nd form at that time whose name (I think) was Fleming. He was regarded as the school hard man. It was he that orchestrated (literally) a welcoming session for 1st formers which involved being herded en mass into the boys bogs and taught to sing the first few verses of "Eskimo Nell" on pain of having your head shoved down the bog. When the noise attracted the attention of the duty playground teacher (Mr. Hill), the boys from the 2nd form disappeared, leaving us to face the music. More accurately it was Mr. Hill who faced the music, being greeted as he was by a chorus of angelic choir boy voices rendering in full flood words we had been told never to use, whose meaning we could not have fully grasped. I knew from that day on that I was going to find my time at Downhills more liberating than I had realised. Bizarrely the same thing happened when Peter Zecchin and I turned up as freshers at Queen Mary College seven years later (except there was no coercion, and by then we knew all the verses and their meaning). I got to thinking this might be a routine whenever you made a career change, but alas it was not to be. One of the first teachers I remember was 'Taffy' Thomas. He took us for chemistry (down in the junior school building?). For some reason I have this image of him always with his nicotine-stained finger up (in the air, that is) emphasising that an atom was the smallest indivisible particle known to man. Obviously he must have been out when they bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It probably had something to do with his increasing deafness. To be fair he never let it stop him from teaching, and a good teacher he was. I really admired his bravery, bearing in mind that in those days, hearing aids were not the discrete packages they are today. Taffy's looked more like a 1930's telephonists headset, together with a control box the size of a small coffin with dials and lights, strapped to the chest and 'hidden' under the coat. About as unobtrusive as a rabbit with a howitzer. How quickly 11 year olds lose their innocence. Armed with three verses of Eskimo Nell, nothing was going to stand in our way. Taffy was forever adjusting his hearing aid to cope with variations in sound levels. Someone suggested that on a given signal we should all stop actually talking and start miming. The result was immediate. Taffy turned up the volume as high as it would go, no doubt making a mental note to re-charge to two accumulators that powered it. At that point everyone in the class reverted to making their usual fearful racket. And I can remember poor Taffy desperately trying to pull off the device around his head before he was completely deafened. I got the feeling this was not the first time the trick had been played. The idea was probably passed on by an older brother. Chemistry was good fun. We used to connect the water hoses to the Bunsen burner and soak the ceiling. That got the plumber out on at least one occasion. And during a lesson about combustion, who was it dared to light up a Players Weight (6d. for 5 from the corner shop). No sooner was the fag alight than Taffy called the culprit to the front. With smoke issuing from every orifice, the boy threw the dogend into a sink of water and made his way in a fog of smoke to the front of the class. Were you talking boy? demanded Taffy. I'll leave the rest to your imagination. Suffice it to say the headset was ripped off again because of the hysterical laughter. I started in form 1M. Mr Hill was our form teacher, and Mrs Martinez our French teacher. Fortunately in our early innocence, we did not understand double entendres relating to the use of the French tongue. Mrs Martinez was a lovely lady with a highly interactive (for those days) teaching style. This involved getting people to converse in French as much as possible. "Bonjour mes enfants" she would attack you with as she walked in to class. "Bonjour madame" we dutifully replied. "Blackwell, ouvre la fenetre sil vous plais" . I was thinking "do me a favour its already 10 below in here with all the windows shut!". "Oui madame, mais certainment." "Merci, ah, Benbow, ouvre la porte sil vous plais." "You are joking. You do realise this is England in December!" Never having had the courage to challenge authority I responded "Oui madame, mais certainment." It wasn't until some years later when I first went to France that I understood why she had trained us to do this. I found myself opening all the doors and windows in my hotel room, owing to garlic induced flatulence. And who can remember the first lesson on the facts of life? Human biology teaching at its' best! Designed to suppress useful questions by extending the use of analogies to the point of being nonsensical - Anything to avoid saying what actually happens. And let's face it, when I was11, not many people seemed to know. The whole thing was destined to confuse rather than clarify. There were no pictures, which would have been really interesting. Just diagrams from which I could make out absolutely nothing. In fact we were forced to copy drawings of male genitalia of such monstrous proportions that it must have either been based on a freak, or drawn by a very optimistic woman. Either way, I certainly persuaded myself that I must be deformed not having anything that looked remotely like the diagram, I was dimensionally challenged. And then there was Mr. Osowski, when I was in the third year. I cannot remember how his name was spelt: I couldn't even pronounce it at the time let alone spell it. I think he was Polish. He was either a supply teacher or he had a very short contract. He certainly had a very short temper. He was probably used to children doing what they were told. Incredibly he was teaching us French. His stock phrase was "up the lot, out!", whereupon the whole class were herded to Mr Fishers office for misbehaviour. I think the Head got fed up with it in the end, but us pupils never tired of it. It became an unspoken challenge to provoke Mr Osowski to this point. I can vividly remember sitting next to Roger Legget. Roger was asked to enunciate some verbs, so he decided to deliberately mispronounce them. It went something like: "Ger swiss, Chew as, Eel as, Alas, Now savons, Vow saviz, Eelsont, elsont" By the time he got to the end, we were all desperately trying to suppress our hysteria, made all the worse because two boys were already standing out the front with their back to the class for misbehaviour (I think it was Blackwell and Bowers). All I was conscious of was their shoulders moving up and down as they tried control their laughter. In the end the pressure was irresistible, and there was an explosion of laughter (what a relief) over the top of which could be heard "up the lot, out!" and another walk to the head's study began. It was Roger and I who, in the third year, experimented with playing knock down ginger on a truly biblical scale. This involved tying several knockers together (door knockers I hasten to add,) and pulling them all at once. The weakness with the plan was that it required a spiders web of string draped across the road. Even in 1960 there was a chance that a car would come along and spoil the moment. Predictably enough it did. There was this high-pitched twanging sound followed by a series of crashes and clanks. The car managed not only to remove the string, but several door knockers in the process. It should have been back to the drawing board for another go with a lighter grade string, but as there were no knockers left, there didn't seem much point. I remember the geography hut. What was the name of the geography teacher? (Mr. Jenkins). He used to bring each lesson to a close with the expression "Put your things together and go!" much to my amusement and that of the girl I used to sit next to and share this early double entendre with. Maybe some of the human biology lessons did rub off on us after all. I wish I could remember her name. It was the same girl who came up with, "Smoke Old Holborn, To Obtain A, Cigarette Altogether Harmful", when Geoff Rowe set the class homework to come up with a mnemonic for basic trigonometry. That certainly stuck in my mind, although I suppose it wouldn't be politically acceptable now. I used to sit next to Peter Zecchin in Geoff's maths class. To say there was a fair amount of collusion between us over the maths homework would be an understatement. On one memorable occasion we both got a question staggeringly wrong through some obscure reasoning. However, both our answers and workings out were identical. I remember Geoff writing across mine "see Zecchin" and across Peter's "see Benbow". Geoff taught us some memorable things. I still can prove that 2 = 1. Comes in very handy in an argument. You know that bit when you get to "well you'd argue that black was blue and two equals one!" Well, have I got news for you baby! It also leads to some interesting variations - like the two-armed bandit, the military one-step and George Orwell's 'Two legs good one leg bad' (as my missus keeps reminding me!). And what about shouting "Eight!" on the golf course, and watching everybody duck. My memory of PE (or PT?) was about avoidance. I was one of those people who was always chosen about second from last for the team. I had skinny legs, but also having size 11 leather football boots (the ones with screw-in studs) made me look more like the lower part of Olive Oil (some may wish to extend the analogy further, but jealousy will get them nowhere!). Miss Allison was our first PT teacher. Us boys always complained that she stayed in the changing room while we were getting changed. Certain that she was hoping for a glimpse of our parts that other beers can't reach, we would try to keep ourselves covered by pulling down our vests. That was the only item of clothing that still fitted us at the end of the term, being long enough by then to conceal a cruise missile, let alone what we had to offer. And then along came Phil Francis or Plum, a fairly accurate observation regarding his dimensions, and not those you might immediately associate with a PE teacher. But whatever Phil lacked in shape he more than made up for in cunning. I remember a boy in our 3rd. year class being flash and not paying attention during one of his lessons. Phil threw the ball at his head and told him to shut up. The boy was tempted to show his contempt by heading it back, only to find that it was a medicine ball. I think that's what they mean by 'knocking sense' into somebody. After that the boy was a half-wit, so that was some improvement. (no names no pack drill). Plum played Captain Corcoran in HMS Pinafore, and later the judge in Trial by Jury. The plaintiff was played by one of our fellow 6th formers, Christine Rudd. During the legal proceedings, the judge flirts with the plaintiff, and eventually, when the legal bodies are unable to resolve the issue, declares "Put your briefs upon the shelf, I will marry her myself!" Now I don't know what became of the briefs, but those words turned out to be truly prophetic, being as Phil and Christine were married awhile after. Talking of Gilbert and Sullivan, it was Evelyn Flowers (as she then was) who encouraged the most unlikely crew of lads and lassies to perform HMS Pinafore. I have never met anyone before or since, with such a natural ability to develop and nurture talent, especially in those who thought they had none. To this day so many people have Evelyn to thank for what has become their lifelong interest in music and singing. It was a tragedy that such colossal ability was lost so early to cancer. Gobby Gates took us for maths in the sixth form. Thanks to his dedication, he eventually got me through my A level. He always had an apologetic manner. On the first day of a new term, we traditionally played tricks on the teacher we thought were highly original, but they must have seen many times before. A classic was to tie together all the dusters from various classes and leave an end draped innocently over the radiator. I played the old 'Swan Vestas match in the end of the chalk' trick. It worked really well, but what made it side-splittingly funny was Gobby saying something like "oh I'm sorry, the chalk seems to have caught light". Who can remember the railway that ran close to the school, on the line from South Tottenham station via Seven Sisters to Ali Pali? There used to be a massive interchange platform at Seven Sisters, which saw about four passengers a year. No wonder Dr. Beeching took an axe to it!. And then there was the flea-pit Cinema at West Green, The Essoldo. Watch this space - more to come if you are not bored stupid already. Bit like being back at school. Bob Benbow. January 2002 Bob has a fan in Linda Hiilyer, who has sent in the following. I have just read Bob's message, what wonderful memories. I've been in stitches reading it (unfortunately I was at work at the time and work for the mental health services in Hull - unless I explain to them what I've been laughing about I may be sectioned under the Mental Health Act....!!) 4 April 2002 |