Past Pupils

Melvin Shaer (1969)

My first year was 1963 (1C) and left in 1969.

I have been married 22 years to Helena and have 3 children Nicola(19), Jonathan (15) and Sophie (11)

Having lost contact with just about everybody apart from the occasional chance meeting. I had move out of the area ages ago (now live in Edgware). I was visitng the area (about 10 years ago) with my son and went to look at the "old school" and all I found was a housing estate! I now know what happened.

I had long forgotten many of the names of the boys and teachers but after reading some of the listings everything starts flooding back! (well the good memories anyway).

I had almost forgotten "fatty" Bill Tunley (French Teacher), he once tried to eject from his class (I can't remember why but I am sure I deserved it) he physically tried to pick me up from my chair, couldn't manage it and mumbled something about not talking in class and ended up throwing a rubber
at me. I wished I had listened to him now since I often travel to France on business.

We had a Geography teacher who we called "Divi" Allen (I never did know why we nicknamed him "Divi") and an Egyptian Biology Teacher called Mr. Mohammed who had absolutely no control over our class.

My first Headmaster was Dr Witt, a strange character who had a fixation with Greece and all things Greek, even tried to organise a school holiday there (a quite exotic location for those times!) but couldn't generate any enthusiasm.

I remember "Toby" Topham showing me and several other 1st year boys the "numerous canes" in his office and pointing out that if we ever fell foul of him we could chose which of the canes he would use on us (we never did).

It was nice to hear that Lawrie Cooper eventually became Head (he was a gentleman).