When I left Icknield Walk I moved onto Greneway Middle School. There were many primary schools in Royston but only two middle schools. I was lucky it was only about seven minutes from our house – until we moved after my first year.
Our first year we had Miss Sage as a teacher, though she went on maternity leave halfway through the year. She was replaced by Mrs Brown who had an accident infamous at the school in the summer of 1976. That summer was so hot we were allowed to stand in the outdoor pool at the end of PE lessons. Mrs Brown was wearing a bikini under her jumper. When she pulled off the jumper the bikini top went too.
(year 1
Back row: ?, Simon Phillips, Diane Burgess, ?, ?, John Bonney
Second from back: Stacy Beamon, ?,?,?,?, Simon Coleman, James Auty, Martin Beale, Steve Anderson
Second from front: ?, Mick Burfitt, Simon Annis, Stuart Moulding?, Ian Anderson, ?,?, Chloe Bowerman, Liane Chapman (I think)
Front: ?,?, Susan Baldwin, ?, Mrs Sage, Paul Ashby, Me, ? , Sean Clarke)
Greneway was definitely a progressive school. Meaning that discipline was pretty lacking. Playground time was a constant source of potential bullying. In the first two years classes were all in your form group. You will note that everyone in the photograph has surnames early in the alphabet – classes had been split purely based on surname.
Greneway also had an obsession with basketball, at the behest of Mr Charles, the headmaster. I was short for my age and totally unathletic and I hate basketball to this day. There were also psychopathic games of shinty or athletics doing high jumps into shallow sand pits.
Our second year class photo is missing. We had Mr Jacobs as a form tutor, his speciality was music and he played organ at different churches in Royston. My best friend that year was James Auty – until his parents moved.
One day Mr Crawford – who taught maths to year three and four – came to give us a mental arithmetic test. Stuart and I got top marks. The following week we were pulled out of class to do a test with the year fours. We both did pretty well and scored in the top quartiles. Unfortunately he then used this to criticise the members of year four that we beat. Beat was an apposite word because that was what the I got later.
In the third year the five forms were turned into four with two tutors – the class initials were the teacher with the longest service, so ours was named after Miss Bourne, our other teacher was Mr McDaniel. They taught French and Science. Poor Mr McDaniel was a very new to reaching and doing sex education for us that year was not easy for him.
Unlike the first two years we had classes in different specialist rooms. Our form room was in yet another temporary classroom – the specialist French rooms (no language labs for us).
(Year 3
Back: Mr McDaniel, ?, Steve Anderson, Simon Coleman, ?, Mark Terry, Ian Anderson, ?,?,?, Me, Darren something, Mike Meitener, Mrs Bourne
Second from back: ?, ?, Annabel Perrott, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, Diane Burgess, Stacy Beamon, ? , ?
Second from front: ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, Ruth Fisher, ?
Front: Matthew Moorhouse, Paul Ashby, Sean Kenny, Sean Clarke, Martin Beale, Alex Perrott)
I went on a trip to France that year. It was at Easter and I was most worried about missing a week of the Marvel UK comics that would come out the day we left and would be removed from the shelves the day before we got back (the number of comics I bought was far more than approved of so asking for parental help was out of the question). The trip across the channel to Brittany was horrible. I had always been a touch travel sick anyway, the choppy seas meant I spent six hours freezing on deck. Thank heavens for John Bonney who was on the trip too.
The hotel was not all that. We had to share double beds, in rooms that slept four. Each room had a closet with a bidet and sink but no toilet. No one explained the bidets to us and at least one person on the trip tried to defecate in one. We were bemused by the French – there were open pissoirs for men in some streets and other toilets were unisex – we were using the urinals when girls from our group walked in to use the stalls.
Every night there was soup – potage, a grey mess of leftovers. In typical school trip style we trolled around filling in worksheets and generally not having much fun. We did go to the Mont St Michel, which was somewhere I would have happily spent far more time.
There were an interesting collection of teachers.
Mr Brand who taught geography. He had spent years working in Papua New Guinea and had an Australian accent. He enjoyed telling us that the social order in Papua New Guinea was men, boys, pigs, women and then girls. He was also scathing bout the lack of cleanliness people in Britain had.
Mrs Beeson who was – let’s not fat shame – a large lady. One time she actually sat down on a chair in the first-year classroom and the shattered the chair to matchwood. Obviously the class disintegrated in laughter.
Mr Dent was one of the science teachers who had a fearsome reputation. I was only taught by him for one term and he was hilarious. Digging on the school farm with one boy working while four of us were watching he told us that we were a microcosm of British working practices. I was the only one who got the joke (I was already reading a daily broadsheet newspaper)and after that he took a special interest in me (not in any sinister way) but gave me extra work to stretch me, not something the school really approved of.
(Year 4
Back: ?,?, Diane Burgess, ?, ?,?, Mark Terry, ?,?, Stacy Beamon, ?,?, Simon Coleman, ?
Middle: Sean Kenny, Sean Clarke, Michael Meitener, Me, ?, ?, ?, Marin Beale, ?, Steve Anderson, ?, ? , ?, ?
Front: Alex Perrott, ?, ? , Ruth Fisher, Mrs Rogers, Mr McDaniel, Julie Bird, ?, ?, Paul Ashby, Matthew Moorhouse)
Miss Bourne left so in our final year we were named after Mr McDaniel and the new French teacher, Mrs Rogers, was our other tutor. In the picture she looks quite stern but actually she was very funny and actually got me interested in French.
The school had a regular fund-raising collection of wastepaper to recycle. In our final year they decided to offer the prize of a day out to somewhere of the class’s choice to the class that collected most. Mr McDaniel and Mrs Rogers told us that we should be the winners and we absolutely went for it. In retrospect I can see that it was the best way to bond the class together. Personal disagreements and fights took a second place to our determination to win, with peer pressure forcing everyone to work hard.
Mr McDaniel offered a bag of crisps to anyone who collected more paper than him (my first evidence that people are easily bribed with food). He had to hand out about 30 bags of crisps. Totals were kept secret so as the deadline approached we went berserk. Every newsagents in Royston was giving us unsold paper and whole roads were having collections made by our class. In the end we won with more paper than the whole school had collected the previous year. We were a bit annoyed that they allowed the second-place class a day out too – even though they had collected a massive amount as well they had less than half what we had.
We chose to go to Great Yarmouth. It was a great day out that marked the end of the academic year and our time at Greneway (not that I had enjoyed much of it). I remember getting home at nearly 9pm at night, with the dinner table ready for me to eat from – it was a salad with various meats and buttered new potatoes. The house was empty (I had had a house key since we moved to Victoria Crescent in 1976).
Baker Street
Five Miles Out 