When I first found the TGS site it couldn't have come at a better time for me. I was conscious of being at the short end of life, pulling together memories, and emailing old friends was very welcome at a time of life when gaining perspective had great importance. And a gap of nearly 40 years did add a certain perspective.  I suppose that was 10 years ago now, since when I have moved deeper into the Northamptonshire countryside, married a long-suffering American and begun to officiate at Humanist funerals and namings.

School, like life itself, was for me a rather mixed experience. I remember my first day when my mother insisted on accompanying me to the school gate, and beyond if she could have, embarrassing me greatly in the process. How odd that I have no memory at all of my last day. And I remember being terribly proud of my smart red sixth form blazer!

I remember being alone and isolated lot of the time. That was partly because I was terribly thin and shy and suffered from a strong a fear of failure. Things I wasn't confident of doing well in didn't get done at all.  Also Tottenham in 1959 wasn't the easiest time and place to be gay, and I knew that my feelings for some of my classmates would get me into trouble, which was another reason not to mix. I can't have been the only boy with that problem, but it certainly felt like I was. And my mother was a speech therapist who had given me a certain accent that marked me out from the other boys.  I had to learn to speak normally, and never really mastered it.

But I also remember making real friends and enjoying a lot of fun and laughter.  Fear of failure meant that what I learned was mostly about chess.  In the chess club I was supremely confident, because I was undeniably able. The club joined an adult league under my leadership (if yelling "Silence in the Chess Club" and picking the team can be called leadership) and did fairly well in it. The ATC - good old 1571 - gave me a lot of confidence,  tackling tasks I'd never have dreamed of otherwise such as map reading, aircraft recognition, drill, firing, Morse code, stripping down and re-assembling a bren gun, and finding that I could do them as well as anybody.  The best part of the week was travelling back to school on a Friday evening with Tony Harris for the ATC parade, then off to the chip shop afterwards with a host (well maybe 4 or 5) of others for a bag of chips (how much did they cost? Was it sixpence?) and an onion. We'd lark around in the High Road after our chips till it was time to catch a late bus home. I was on top of the world.

I remember people best, both staff and adults, for their human qualities. I've written in the forum about John Fear's mixed influence on me.  One occasion he and I fell out led to a failure to communicate with my family that I now see as a defining moment in my life.  Virtually private lessons (just Bernie Knight and me for two years) with Eric Ashby gave me a great deal. We saw a side of him many will never have glimpsed. Bill Tunley didn't get a chance to teach me anything till the sixth form (as far as I recall) but I remember him best for introducing me to Maupassant and Rabelais and Le Figaro, and for meeting me out of school and treating me like an adult instead of talking down to me. He was easily wound up, but he was a warm human being. Similarly Harry Thomas, who I got to know a bit when he gave me, and some others, lifts to school during a bus strike. And Michael Porter too. Before I was taught by him - or perhaps until I joined the ATC - I thought him odd (because of his wearing of RAF uniform on Fridays) and distant. But then it turned out that he too was a warm human being who cared about the boys and his subject. I couldn't have said it, or even understood the concept then, but I appreciated being cared for and responded to it.  Toby Topham too.  I remember his first name as Rordon (or perhaps Reardon) not Roland, but I could well be mistaken. He was firm but fair and I trusted him totally which was not so with many adults.  He gave me German lessons at his home in Potters Bar when Slasher nearly frightened me to death.  I know some speak well of Slasher, but he was a sadistic bully who should have been thrown out of teaching, in my view.

 

My failure to grasp the opportunities I had at TGS was not the school's fault, even if one or two of the staff didn't help.  For instance Reggie was scheduled to teach Bernie Knight and me New Testament Greek for O Level RI.  I don't recall him ever showing up for a single lesson in two years.  The cost of that became apparent when I turned over the exam paper.  But it became an incentive years after, and I did well in my theological studies later in life at least in part because of my Greek.  And the spirit of inquiry sparked by working on the Greek text of the New Testament won me a Universtiy Prize, got me presented to the Queen Mum, and led in the end to my interest in philosophy and to my atheism.  So that worked out all right.

Thanks to you all for being part of my memories, if only dimly. I wish I had grasped the opportunities on offer at school rather better, but that is the story of much of my life. It wasn't until a different teacher in a different educational establishment recognised some talent and spent a lot of time drawing it out that I began to realise my potential.  For many years I taught for a living myself, but adults fortunately, as an IT Training Manager for one of the big insurers.  I was lucky in that I enjoyed my job, which unearthed skills and talents to be proud of, and I didn't have to cope with teenage boys. From teaching adults I have gained a glimpse of what a hard job the staff had trying to teach us, and I am grateful to those that made special efforts and hope I have not been too hard on those that didn't.

 

Retirement has proved to be the richest and most educational part of my life, and if anything has increased my feeling of regret at not making more of the opportunities that TGS gave me.  But I have nothing to complain about, and am, in these evening years, enjoying life to the full.