by Martin » Sun Jul 21, 2013 3:55 am
Lots of friends got sent to nice exotic sounding locations such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Cyprus. Where did we get ? Poxy sodding Gibraltar. Bloody RAF couldn’t even do the decent thing and send father on a six month unaccompanied.
Thanks for pointing out the original post, my eyes weren’t working too well yesterday for one reason and another.
I’m going to add something to this when I find it again. It’s about my first school, which is closing for good this year. I’m sure lots of “local” schools had the same sort of experience, it just seems that this one had an exceptionally high turnover of kids.
The headmaster, Taff Evans, was a dear man, a true gentleman and one of only two teachers I met when I became an adult.
I have my first school report, it says how sunny and open I was and how I tried to fit in and make friends. A few reports later and it was all about how withdrawn I was and how I shunned efforts by other children to befriend me. I’d also started wetting the bed. These days someone would have picked up on all this but not back then.
At one place, I think it was R.A.F. West Raynham, I didn’t even get chance to start school, we were only there for two weeks. I spoke to one other kid on the camp and haven’t a clue what his name was. I was taken to a school for a meeting with the Headmaster and that was as far as that went, father came home one day and told us to start packing, we were off again.
One of the old reprobates I sometimes have a pint with was in the RAF for many years and he apologised to me for what went on. I said it isn’t his place to do so and he told me that it is as his son is a screwed up junkie and since listening to my anger he’s wondered if his “nomadic lifestyle” as a child had anything to do with this. I told him he should be saying all that to his son.
Anyway, this is the bit about my first school….
“It is a cleverly designed school, where space has been planned carefully. Classrooms are light and airy; and its hall has a crenulated, sound-absorbing ceiling, and a red-and-white tiled floor, still unmarked by the hundreds of small feet that have trodden it. The spick-and-span air of newness which prevails reflects the pride of Mr. I. W. Evans, the headmaster, who insists on great care and attention being given to the school and all that is in it”.
“In spite of its problem, there is an atmosphere of serenity about the school. Almost three-quarters of its children come from R. A. F. families”.
“ “In an average primary school with a termly intake of five-year olds who, with few exceptions, remain until they are eleven, the teachers come to know them well, and can supervise them throughout the whole of their primary school life. Shortstown admits new pupils of varying ages almost weekly, and just as often says good-bye to more familiar faces. It caters for two hundred children, yet in four years the figure in the admission register had risen to well over six hundred. A normal school of similar size would take twelve or thirteen years to reach such a total. Of the 190 children on the roll when the school opened, only twenty-two remained at the end of last term. The others are scattered, not only over the British Isles, but in France, Germany, and even as far a field as Hong-Kong and Australia”.
“The paper-work involved by these movements – entries in records, transfer of documents, and so on – is no small consideration; but the main difficulty lies in dealing with children who can never stay long in any one school. Most of them have already been to three or four different schools, some to as many as seven before their eleventh birthday. Teaching methods vary widely in different areas; so do the standards attained. Children coming from hot climates have attended morning sessions only in their former schools. Syllabuses vary, too. Jack, from a school in Germany, has learnt decimals but not areas; Jill, from a school in Singapore, knows how to deal with areas, but has not done fractions; Nigel from Cyprus knows fractions and decimals, but has not started on volume. The task of absorbing these children of disparate standards into Shortstown without disruption is no light one. Much individual attention is necessary, but it must not be allowed to interfere in any way with the progress of the class as a whole, particularly the 11-plus class”.
“Mr. Evans, himself an R. A. F. man, knows the nomadic lives these children live and he and his staff are able to tackle the problem with understanding”.
“Whatever their destination, whether it be Malta, Colombo, Aden, Belfast or Bedford, the “Ladies and Gentlemen of Shortstown Academy”, as the Headmaster sometimes calls them, will take with them affectionate memories of Shortstown, the school where so many learned so much in such a little time. The school mail, with its letters postmarked from the four corners of the earth, bears witness to that”. “
Mr. Evans was a very old man when I last saw him. He would catch the last bus once a week after going to the RAFA club. We hadn’t met for many years and when I approached him he looked at me for a short while and then grinned, “My boy, you are now a man indeed”. He then called me by name, no mean feat for a man who had so many kids pass through his hands. I would always get on that bus with him once a week, just to make sure that none of the nastier folk ever hassled him. I would pretend I had missed my stop and travel out to the village with him. We both knew I never missed my stop but it was never spoken about.
Anyway, I’m going off in different directions now.
BTW, I still have a recurring nightmare where dad is shaking me awake and telling me to hurry up and get dressed as he’s been posted and we have to move in a hurry.
When we were in Gib I was wandering around and heard an almighty commotion coming from a ground floor flat. The boy of my age was screaming at his parents, begging them not to send him back to boarding school. I remember going to my little hiding place and wondering why I was never sent to boarding school and how nice it must have been to be around the same people year after year.
I went home and asked mum about this and was told it was because they loved me too much. Dear old dad had overheard and came charging into the sitting room. I fled out the door, onto the balcony and dropped onto Queensway. I took off up the rock to some old disused military buildings and stopped there for two nights, too scared to go home. I was nine.
There’s an RAF family lives just down the road from me. I’ve lived here eight years come December and I’ve watched their kid grow up as he’s walked past the house on his way to and from school.
That kid doesn’t know how lucky he is to have grown up in an age where we have lost so many RAF stations.
As I've said, some of us thrived on it and some of us didn't.
Ouch !