Happy mid-30s.

Way back in 1934, I started at Peter Pips as a scholarship boy travelling daily by train from Eastleigh.  I remember an early welcome by Doc Freeman who ran his eye over us and said “ The cream of the brains of the Administrative County of Hampshire?   You’re more like the sediment at the bottom”.  At that time we had a school war cry to encourage our teams.  It went 

Ee nick-a-deena deena deena, Ee nick-a-deena dina doh,

Ho, Ho, Hoppity Ho, Pull up your socks the Peters.

While I was there, Doc announced that it was a version of an Australian chant and it lowered the dignity of the school, so he banned its use.

 

I have very much enjoyed reading all your messages and I was surprised by how many names I remember.  CANY was teaching Geography in the end room of the new block of classrooms to the left of the main building.   A little way back towards the main building was EO Jones’ lair where he lived with his ‘Alsatian’.  I was hopeless at Latin but his Alsatian only bit me once.  At that time his Alsatian’s bark was worse than it’s bite.  Being a two-inch square section of timber, the ‘footprint’ of its contact was several square inches and so the bite was reasonably gentle.

 

My next Latin teacher was Cooksey.   He taught me very little Latin but he REALLY taught me how to HATE !!!!!!   My surname is Br챕haut and Cooksey delighted in grabbing me by the hair and bouncing me up and down on my seat while declining my name.   BrayOH, BrayASS, Brayat, Brayamus, Brayatis, Brayant.   Printable comments fail me.  After a couple of years, I was thrown out of Latin and left to study Physics on my own, supervised by Mr St.John, pronounced Sinjon.  My science teacher was Mr Tanner and the skill of those teachers allowed me to do well in the Oxford School Certificate examination.

 

I remember a teacher who we called Wick, perhaps because he ruled Wick (or was it Wyke) Lodge.  He always wore a clerical collar and was reputed to spend much time in the bar of the ‘Jolly Farmer’.   I was taught English by EGAP.  He was Mr Page and his nickname was his real name spelt backwards.  I wonder if CANY was Mr Yates’ initials?   Paul Wodehouse was another teacher and we knew of his connection with the ‘Hampshire Chronicle’ and I think his wife may have been its editor.   I think that Mr Cozens might have taught us Maths from textbooks that he had had published.

 

Two other teachers there were real characters.  Punch taught German.   He was a short stocky man with a very broad cast in his eyes and was reputed to have been a spy in World War I.  The optical axes of his eyes seemed to meet at nearly 90 degrees, and we never did discover which of us was being observed.  He used to bring an old clockwork gramophone into the classroom and play a German song, Nach Frankreich zogen zwei Granadier by Schumann. We learned and sang this and the quality of our singing was matched only by the abysmal quality of the gramophone.   The other teacher was History teacher Dickey Childs.  He was very deaf and used his right hand for cupping his ear and for throwing the blackboard rubber.   On a scale of 1 to 10 his throwing was rated 9 for velocity but only 3 for accuracy.   The class needed good reflexes to survive.

 

Happy days !