South Walks Life

I was a boarder at South Walks House, my first year with Johnny Hale as housemaster and with Peter Lewendon thereafter. I particularly remember the musty old Junior Common Room in the attic with its electric train set and the ‘library’ of the Complete History of the First World War, full of sepia photos of trenches, horses and tanks. The seating, if I remember correctly, was rickety old bus seats.

We all had chores to do and one that I remember hating was having to get up early to make toast for everyone else’s breakfast, using just one dilapidated toaster that made two slices at a time. I don’t think it was blessed with a thermostat, and it was necessary to give it undivided attention to avoid burning the toast. At that age, it’s difficult to devote undivided attention to anything and so I didn’t always succeed. It seemed to take forever.

I joined the church choir at St Peters because it offered the ‘privilege’ of being allowed to walk to and from church without the indignity of being assembled into crocodile formation. I wasn’t very good at singing though, so I gave up after the first year. I remember on one occasion when Mr. Hamilton (the Head) gave a sermon based upon his wartime experiences. I don’t remember the relevance of his story to the church service, but I was deeply impressed by his explanation of how one could sabotage German trains with nothing more than a teaspoon. This involved crawling under the train, armed with the teaspoon, and then ladling dust and sand into the greasing holes for the axles. Great stuff!

St Peters was also the venue for the annual Commemoration Service. My group was intrigued by the list of names of the school founders. We hadn’t (and I still haven’t) a clue who they all were, but one name stood out above the others. Each year we would wait in breathless anticipation for the name Josiah Flea to be announced. Each year it became increasingly difficult to contain our mirth. We would march to the church reminding each other that Josiah would soon be getting another solemn mention. When the name was finally read out, we would explode silently with hands over our mouths and tears streaming down our faces while trying to maintain a sense of decorum. I feel sure that Josiah Flea must have been a great man, but his name wouldn’t have been out of place in the as yet unknown Monty Python.

I was not academically gifted. The most important bits of my education revolved around Games, which I was very good at, and Art, which I enjoyed because it gave a blessed relief from textbooks. I played for Wollaston House at rugby which I loved, partly because I was tall and fast for my age and I could run rings around just about any team that we played against. Gradually the others grew bigger and by the time I got to the senior school I didn’t have quite the same advantage. I still played for the school though and enjoyed the bus trips out to the other schools in the area.

During the summer I would focus on athletics, my favourite events being 440 yards and the jumps; high, long and triple. I held a couple of school records and I felt a certain pride in seeing my name printed each year on the Sports Day programmes.

One aspect of ‘sport’ that I soon came to dislike was the cross-country run. Turn left out of the school gates, down the path beside the shooting range and then slop across a field that stank of curly kale. A small group of us got wise to this ‘exercise’ after a while. We would start slowly and become the stragglers up to the brow of the hill. With all the other competitors in front of us we would then duck down behind the hedge and creep along the top of the ridge to a piece of woodland where we’d stop and have a quiet cigarette while everyone else was dutifully slogging along the road down below.

We could watch the front-runners sweating back up the hill and then wait for a suitable gap before rejoining the race down the slope and back to school and a hot shower. (No names, but there were a couple of members of staff who seemed to regularly appear in the shower room for no sensible reason. A bit suspect).

We enjoyed playing lots of imaginative pranks in the classroom and we must have made the lives of some of our teachers very difficult, but perhaps we did nothing worse than sabotaging German trains with a teaspoon. For example, the bunsen burners in the chemistry lab made powerful water pistols and the rubber pipes could be used as cigarette holders while the lit cigarette was concealed in a drawer. On one occasion my mates rigged me up to a window frame to create a very realistic impression that I’d hanged myself. They were all sitting innocently at their desks again when the teacher walked in. I’m afraid I don’t remember the outcome of that, probably another caning. We did receive some very heavy-handed treatment from a few members of staff. The type of instant punishments handed down by the likes of Rex Tompsett and Jack ‘the Ripper’ Tipper certainly wouldn’t be acceptable in schools today.

Regarding the CCF (which I personally considered to be a complete waste of time), I found it somewhat disturbing that 13 and 14 year old boys should be let loose with live 303 ammunition at Sydling ranges. Some found it more fun to shoot over the targets into the field behind to make the cows run away. One boy liked the noise he could make by shooting at the tin hut to the left of the targets, not knowing that the adjutant was inside it at the time.

This incident prompted the Ministry of Defence to present Mr. Hamilton with a birch with which to punish the offender. Although it had only been authorized for that one offence, Mr. Hamilton kept the birch and he certainly used it on me a couple of times for petty misdemeanors completely unrelated to the MoD.

Overall, I’m glad I went to Hardyes, even if I left with barely any qualifications. I tended to be too truthful in exams, which didn’t endear me to examiners. For example, this leading question in an O level English Lit. paper… “What do you find amusing in this passage from Chaucer?”, inspired my not unreasonable answer… “I don’t find anything particularly amusing in this passage from Chaucer”. Even back in those days examiners were looking for pat answers rather than genuine personal input.

There was a great sense of camaraderie, particularly in the boarding house although I have no way of knowing if I might have fared better at another school. I eventually grasped the point of qualifications much later in life and graduated with a combined IT & Music degree in 1992 as a very mature student, not that it ever did me much good for earning a better living.

John Hanna, September 2008