Memory Lane 06

The following is a further contribution by John Rosser:

Our form master initially was Teddy Tilbrook but then we had Eric 'Bobby' Charlton for the rest of the time.

The latter had a good laugh at my expense as I was pretty useless at technical drawing and metalwork, and still no good at practical work. However this particular day I was working on a metal scraper and Eric had a student teacher with him; he said to the student: 'what ever you do don't let Rosser near the lathe because if anyone can make it go up and down instead of round and round, it'll be him!' Blinking sauce!

He was also my team master for Kevere. Once again I was the butt for him on the cross country team event. Bear in mind that I'd managed by scull-duggery to avoid the 1st 2 years of the event and wasn't an athlete by any stretch of the imagination but unfortunately found myself put forward for the team of 40 in the 3rd year.

Eric told me that I'd better not finish last otherwise he'd kick me round the course. Well I think it was about 3 miles on a wet and soggy Haste Hill and I wasn't too bad until the last stretch up the hill when I got overtaken by nearly everyone but managed to finish an exhausted 156th!

We weren't good at rugby either especially as we played soccer at home. Our rugby teacher was Bomber Plenderleith who taught us all sorts of dodgy and incorrect tackling procedures. One day we were playing an inter team or class match and several great hulking forwards were bearing down on our full back and the ball was in the air coming down in his vicinity. Bomber shouted out 'hug it Huggett-the boys name' but to no avail as he was flattened by the onrushing forwards!