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CHRIS RICHARDS

GLAISDALE SCHOOL 2

HOW IT WAS, 1973 - 1978

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1975 - and 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen had just hit the Number 1 spot. Mrs Bussell the Music teacher had promised that we could bring in our singles to play for one lesson only. Steven Gabbitas chose the B Side of 'Funky Gibbon' by the Goodies - 'Sick Mans Blues' while Carl Smith drew groans from the class by bringing 'Trail of the Lonesome Pine' by Laurel and Hardy. Next door to Bussell's room was the domain of Mr Tomkinson the English master, known as 'Tom Cat'. He always wore grey jackets, wore a moustache and was a good teacher but always a really miserable toad. One pupil was once ignoring him in class so he flapped up the excess hair over his ears with a ruler and said. 'perhaps you would hear better with this removed, laddie'. I always wound him up by refusing to join in class debates, preferring to stay broodingly silent in my own dream-world, a million miles away from Graham Greene or Thomas Hardy.

Mr May was the Woodwork teacher when I started in 1973. An old fellow who smoked a pipe and was very careful and studious. Our first project was to make a totem pole, basically a piece of 2 x 2 which would be cut out and decorated on the sides with your own design. I was a little vigorous with the chisels, however and by the time May came to look at it, it was half the size of all the other pupils efforts. 'A little less pressure with the chisels, Richards' he said, shaking his head. Eventually Mr May left and was replaced by 'The Scouser' - Mr Derriscott. With thick-lensed specs and the personality of a docker, he was different to his meek and mild predecessor. Unruly heads would be clapped together with a piece of timber, although Tim Broad and I would escape to the Storeroom, where we would discuss the Top Twenty in between the stacked piles of softwood.

Metalwork was an even more daunting affair altogether. Mr Bowmar took the class, and always seemed to have a black greasy quiff, like Peter Cushing had just arrived with a clipboard to take our lesson. The room smelt of steel shavings and reminded me all too much of the Raleigh factory where my dad worked, day in day out. Lads were expected to go into some sort of industrial profession, but I preferred art and guitar playing, to all this. I had seen Mick Ronson, and Marc Bolan with his low slung Gibson guitar and that had done it for me. Bench drills, lathes, and a brazier in the corner, and a row of vices on each wooden bench. And racks of files and hacksaws. The more advanced kids, like Kev Binder, brought electronics magazines in to school, and did all the clever soldered circuit board stuff, but I had trouble cutting a straight line even in a piece of mild steel.

Mr Bird was the Chemistry Teacher, and a Geordie. He drove a VW Beetle, and had a small white coated google-eyed female assistant, quite plump with legs like matchsticks, who would go into the back room to puff on a Players No6. Mr Bird was also my house master, in the end room on the top corridor above the PE block, where the register was taken at 9, and where all years in Wollaton house got together. I remember Patrick McCracken, Georgina Shaw, Lee Toft, and Dave Clayton. Dave Clayton had the biggest platform boots in the year, black with a pink insert, and Blakeys or 'segs' in them, to enable a sideways slide down the corridors that was unrivalled in 1975. Birdy's pronunciation of chemistry terms in Geordie was laughable - 'Magnesium Sulphate' and 'Copper' were two good ones.

School Disco - 1976. Entering the blacked out hall area, music pumped from a small sound system as groups of nervous youths lined the walls, and Mitchell Slade danced with a few adoring girls from our year. Some attempted to dance behind him, with arms hanging limp at their sides like planks of wood. Ian Gutteridge was behind the DJ booth, wearing headphones, with Miss Woodward the Geography teacher. Gutteridge had impressed me by having an ITT tape recorder with 'Magic' by Pilot on it. Mitchell would always get a dozen girls flocking round him, and it was sickening. His elder brother Russell was the same. We left the disco after about ten minutes and decided to start queueing for school dinners. Rows of tables with coloured metallic water jugs and a permanent smell of cabbage which lined the nostrils. From what I can remember boys and girls all sat at separate tables then. Some sort of mincemeat flan was on the menu, with a shortcrust top and minimum beef content. Chocolate custard had a skin on it thick enough to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, but the real killer was the strawberry shortbread. Even when coated in custard it had to be hammered violently with the spoon's handle until it broke into pieces. Food at home was much better, and when I got home to 31 Ainsley Road, mum had my tea ready on the table. When Dad came home from Raleigh at 6 he sat at the table as well, it seemed to be the done thing in the 70s. Eating with unwashed hands with only a fork placed in his right hand, he would make my mum heave by sticking his tongue out and showing her the masticated mash and gravy in his mouth.

1976 - Robin Edgar's mum ran a youth club up at Wigman Road Baptist Church. Andy Todd, Kevin Munn, Derek Cousins, Mark Cousins and I decided to go one evening, so I put my blue A-line trousers and cheesecloth shirt on, and off we went. Robin was a diabetic and had a blonde younger sister and a mother called Ruby. The hall was a riot of hormones - kids playing table tennis, skittles, and football. Andy Todd had a near miss with the football and the stained glass window and was asked to 'calm it'. In a side room, Lesley Cain and her buck-toothed friend danced to ABBA. Lesley was the well-endowed younger sister of Stephen Cain and their mum was a dinner lady at Glaisdale. Kev Munn was talking to Mark Cousins about snogging. 'Did she open her mouth? It's no good if she doesn't open her mouth, you puff!' I got chatting to Michelle, a tall ginger haired girl, and later on, her friend Heather Owen came over and said, 'She wants you to walk her home'. I felt a lump in my throat and started up the road hand in hand with my carrot-topped companion, who wore a white jumper, black skirt, pewter tights and plimsolls. Her breath smelt faintly of lunchtimes stale cigarettes. Stopping on some grass near Melford Road with trouser legs now two inches too short, we paused before the goodnight kiss and I took Munny's advice and broke through to the uncharted waters of the 'proper snog'. By now, the others were well on their way home and I raced to catch them up with my news. At Beechdale Shops they lifted me shoulder high like a hero and carried me back to the estate, which was now in darkness.

Saturday nights were often the time to make a Vesta ready meal. Beef Curry, Prawn Curry, Paella, or Chow Mein, this was the 70s kids first taste of ethnic culture. I was only allowed to make them when my Dad went out on a Saturday night. From what I can remember, the meat was soya and they tasted pretty dire, but still better than the Glaisdale school slop!

At 16, some of the 5th years got 50cc motorbikes, which they were allowed to ride with 'L' plates. The popular model was a small Yamaha called a 'Fizz' because the letters in the model name began with 'FS'. Lads such as Gary Pearce gained instant bird appeal when he got his 'Fizz', but soon came a cropper when he was passing a car and his left kneecap smashed into the edge of the door which the driver had opened. Ouch! Lads such as Martin (Peanut) Rippon came off worse than that and had to have steel pins inserted into his legs.

Detention, 1976, and Mr Matthews had kept me behind after cheating in a maths lesson. I had got all the right answers, but the calculations didn't match the result. so Matthews wrote 'To thine own self be true - Detention' in my Maths book. (Noddy) Matthews looked as old as the hills, had hair like Shredded Wheat and had probably been there since the school opened. His chalk-marked brown jacket was the same colour as the ancient desk and chair where he sat in the corner. With me on this detention was Denise Watt, who was scrubbing a desk with Ajax. She had scrawled a lad's name into the wooden desk and Matthews had made her scour it off. Noddy came over and said 'Do you love this boy, Watt' and her tears were dripping down into the bleach, her eyes reddened and sore as she struggled to speak, hopelessly infatuated, with chipped nail polish and white knuckles as she rubbed harder and harder.

Bowmar the Technical Drawing master was prone to mood swings. Once we all lined up outside the lab before a lesson and he arrived, brushing back his black glossy quiff with a fiery look in his eyes. Someone let out a belch, fuelled by dinnertime's gut-rot meat pie, and he flung down his paperwork, and stalked down the ranks. 'If any of you as much as breathes, I'LL BE DOWN ON YOU' he bellowed, before letting us into the room, which had lines of angled drawing boards and a rack full of T Squares. We all had little black cases, which when you pulled the metal pins out of the sides, contained different sized compasses in a velvet lined box. Mine had been 'acquired' from the drawing office at Raleigh by my Dad, who seemed to be able to scrounge anything from that place. Years later I heard a funny story about Bowmar. Darren Scothern and his mates made up a tune, using the trumpet lick from 'Hawaii Five O' which went - 'B-B-B-B Bowmar, B-B-B Bowmar'.

Jim Kilding the Physics master had a awful basin (Purdey) haircut and kept a room in between Glazzard's pottery room and Bird's chemistry lab. The room always smelt faintly of gas, and taps were placed on each desk to receive the bunsen burners. I always sat next to Neil Martinson, known as 'Bamber' because his glasses made him look like the 'University Challenge' quizmaster. Neil also had a twin, Robert. On my left was Peter Burke, who was the son of a scientist who owned an ancient Volvo. He thought it would be a good idea to set fire to a Durex which he had in his pocket, but was detentioned by Kilding. We laughed when we saw the slip because he had written on it 'Reason - Burning a condom'.

RALEIGH CLUB

Lisa and Chris Richards, Raleigh Athletic Club, 1972

1974 - The peril of Monday morning at Glaisdale was often eased by a Sunday night visit to the Raleigh Athletic Club. After a bath and the Top Twenty, I would put on a red tracksuit, get my football and get in the car to go up to the Club, situated at Old Coach Road at Wollaton. Turning right just before the 'Wheelhouse' pub, down a small lane and through a gap in the hedges, the building would appear, behind a pristine cricket field, with a white picket fence and large white boards on wheels. Wooden steps led up to the Club, which had rows of tables, and a small bar behind which stood the cheery face of Les the barman. His daughter was called Lesley and had long blond flowing hair, but was a bit older than us. A Raleigh worker stood next to his bike and played the fruit machines, Dad said he put over half his wages into 'TIC TAC TOE' Friends who joined us on Sundays were Tony (Grandad) Slade and his parents, Frank Sharman, his wife Flo and their kids Pete, Gillian and Susan, and Len Dilley and his wife Jenny, whose grandson Peter Spurr played football with me but went to the rival school Player. Len had an Vanden Plas 1300 and a Yorkshire terrier called Tinger. This got attacked by a bigger dog at the club and was christened 'The Tankard Dog' by my Dad, because of the TV ad for beer which had the slogan 'The Bite at the Back of the Throat'. The playing fields at the club were enormous, to the far end were tennis courts and behind the car park were Raleigh Woods and Raleigh Pond. After a night running round the fields and woods, I would often fall asleep on the way home on the car backseat, and Dad would often treat us to chips from the only chip shop open on a Sunday night, the Chinese one on Hartley Road, Radford.

all text ©2001 C W Richards

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