Memory Lane 14

10th May 2023, Peter Schweiger recalls:

What a great website.  It inspired me to contribute something.  I did Economics, Geography and History at A level and was so fed up with exams that I was one of the few that did not go to university.  Instead I took the advice of the careers master and successfully applied to train as a forester with the Forestry Commission.  What a slog that was.  For two years working in a Hampshire forest on piece work.  Then on to the school in North Wales with 40 subjects on the syllabus and exams for each.  No jobs in England for foresters when I qualified, so I returned to my family business making shoes in central London for the next 40 years. Shoemakers were called snobs because they would not touch dirty shoe repairs.  That was for cobblers. So I am a double snob.

 I remember having economics lessons in the geography stockroom with Benny Goodman.  There were wide cracks in the walls and we wondered when the building would collapse.   I was impressed by the “Dictator" door closers that stopped them banging and have one.  In the summer terms I enjoyed going sailing on the Rickmansworth Aquadrome and being taken in Masters cars. We capsized once and had a dead fish in the boat when it was righted.

 During the winter on Wednesday afternoons there was swimming at Heston baths.  A coach would take us and because it was 40 minutes each way, no masters would come with us.  When we did swim it was for fun, diving for pennies in the deep end or lengths along the bottom.  I can still do 25 meters along the bottom of the pool in Amersham.

6th form studies arranged a cruise in the Baltic on a converted troop ship for a thousand school leavers. I earned some of the £80 by gardening and baby sitting. I won my only sports prize on the boat in a completion to dive for soup spoons in the pool on board. 3 dives with 40 spoons each time in the bottom.  I brought up 108 and was awarded a spoon with the ships name on it.

 Enough for now.

 Peter Schweiger

 I joined for the 6th form and was in transitus? Until I had enough O levels.

 1962-64