Re: Central School at the outbreak of the Second World War.
Mr Lilliman was the headmaster; Mr Avery was the English master but soon enlisted in the services and I believe his wife took over.
He was a slipper and chalk teacher: the slipper down hard on one's posterior for misdemeanours and a piece of chalk thrown at your head if you persisted in talking - he was never known to miss.
But he was fair and we had enormous respect for him. We had messrs Hart, Morgan and Peters (or Petrie?) as the other teachers.
The war seemed a distant, uneventful happening, even though the sirens sent us scurrying in those first years.
Old Cartwright took us for carpentry lessons and he was a real craftsman. He had a compulsive habit of sucking jet-black Zubes (are good for your tubes) tablets, and we all took home our tea tray and egg-holders decorated with dark spittle splashes.
Classmates included Sticky Stark, Dickie Dyde, Ricky Rayfield and Harris, now a nearby neighbour. Murphy, who I recall punched me for some reason, I later discovered he became a very fine teacher.
In my third year, I managed to talk the teachers into allowing us to put on a show - the first since the war began.
The school was divided into two halves, by a brick wall in the playground and, of course, the main assembly hall. The girls were on one side and the boys on the other.
Talent was drawn from both and when discovered that Beryl Smith and I shared the same act - we did impersonations of famous people - we teamed up for the show and continued the act afterwards, entertaining the troops and the public.
At that time there were parties and concerts in halls all over the area and we went to those doing our act.
We did Rob Wilton "the day war broke out", Cyril Fletcher, Winston Churchill, and even an impersonation of Harry James, playing the Flight of the Bumblebee on a trumpet.
One of the tricks we had in order to avoid school was to walk up to the top end of the town where the old Odeon used to stand by the Pond and alongside it, which is now the Sainsbury's car park.
There was a public air-raid shelter and we used to stroll up to that in the hope that the sirens would go.
It would take us a long time to get back to school afterwards. It only happened once. The rest was the theory.
Some of the teachers were very quick with the cane and often they were justified.
I remember when I had been making some home-made stink-bombs, feeding the chemicals into the test tube, but old Pruet Morgan knocked against my satchel and the resulting smell cleared both the boys' and girls' school. I got six of the best for that.
The trauma of it was waiting outside the study, rather than the caning itself, which was a temporary pain.
It made me a hero for the day. Is anyone alive that remembers that?
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