"Clews & Bayliss with Hillman Hunter, Summer of '69"
Courtesy Royster collection
1zaac social comment dept note; Clews & Bayliss now Bargain Booze.
1zaac Cannock motoring history dept note; "It ay a Nunter. It's a Mark 2 Ford Cortina."
For new visitors
SPOILER WARNING
Welcome to our bit of cyberspace at 1zaac.com
You are strongly advised to read the disclaimers preceding episode 1.
Then have a laugh with us and enjoy this.
AB
Ste Cécile
Dec 2008
CHAPTERS
Hey Jude, it's September 1968 /Max Headroom 12' 6" / New Bus to Nubile /SHA 69G / Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin "Je t'aime, mon grand bus" /Business as Usual/ Uniform Changes- OFFICIAL /Disparate Housewives / Frozen River / Fantasy Nympherlude / Get Back to Reality in Long Trousers/Uniform Changes-UNOFFICIAL / Muffin Tights / WHAM! it's Owen & Lee / Spelling Test/Surveillance Strategies/Evacuee Exodus to The Chase in WAAF shoes / Grandad Jack / Galloping Gourmand / Frogs and Kangaroos/Full Metal Blazer / "What Rhymes with Gary Puckett, Sir?" / Major Tom to Jon the Mon / Epilogue, Infinity and Beyond...
September 1968.
It was the term which started with Hey Jude, and led up to the Lily the Pink Christmas.
As
"je t'aime, moi non plus" Serge Gainsbourg experimented with Jane Birkin, our own rear-entry model, the 1950’s Number 17 bus from Cheslyn Hay was retired during the summer holidays.
A Walsall depot driver in a turban had attempted to pass under the railway bridge in Station Street…
RAILWAY BRIDGE PROLOGUE
Flashback 1st August 1961
Today I am 5.
It is hot.
I have had a Cold War blue and yellow plastic Vulcan bomber from Woolworths in Cannock for my birthday.
It shoots red missiles from a spring-loaded hole in the front. The shop had dusty parquet floors, wooden counters & brass door fittings.
We lived at 174 Station Street until I was 8. A miner’s terraced house opposite Georgie Lunt’s chip shop, and around the bend from the railway bridge.
Station St Cheslyn Hay. Photo courtesy CHLHS One of the earliest signs I learned to read, before plunging between the floppy pink covers of “Janet & John Book 1” at primary school, was the sign between our house and the bridge.
It was in raised black script with weathered round red reflectors set into the letters like raspberry Rowntree’s fruit gums;
“Caution. Max. Headroom 12’ 6”
“Dad, what does “Max Headroom” mean”
…I asked as he pedalled us under the bridge and uphill towards home on the dark green, immaculately maintained BSA bike.
The Sturmey Archer gears clicked. His dark blue bib & brace overalls have a packet of Players in the patch pouch on the chest and a folding wooden ruler in the side pocket. His knees pumped up and down like mighty pistons.
I was on the cross-bar, astride a not-very- padded red satin cushion, using a knotted tartan kipper tie as stirrups.
Dad, in surprise, pulled on the rod brakes, which gave out a note akin to a yawn.
“Eh? Can you read that, Son?”
“Caution (pronounced cow-she-on)…Max..Head...room 12 dot dot 6 dot”
“Bloomin’ ‘eck. "
"Where did you learn to do that.”
“I doe know”
I replied, thinking about Grandad Jack’s “Valiant” comic in front of the blazing coal fire at their house in Low Street, or across the street at Uncle Frank’s, with the “By appointment to Her Majesty” Ready Brek packet and HP sauce bottle on his kitchen table under the redundant gas mantle, in front of the Victorian cast-iron cooking range.
Or the Sally Army “War Cry” distributed just before the Wright's seafood cockle man came round with his basket, graseproof paper bags and vinegar on Saturday nights at the Working Mens’ club, to shouts of;
" 'ave yer got any mussels on yer, cock?"…
… Well, “Headroom” means that’s how high the bridge is. In the middle of the arch, though. So a double decker buzz can’t get under it, because they are nearly 14 foot high, right? That’s why they go down Coppice Lane, and the little buzz up from Wyrley, the “Wyrley Whizzer, is only a single decker, see…”
“Oh, orright”
Dad was my Encyclopaedia Britannica.
He lifted me off the cross-bar, and started wheeling the bike towards the back garden, through the cool darkness of the arched entry tunnel between 172 and 174.
The free-wheel clicked to a stop. I heard the clack and echo of the latch when he opened the back gate.
Through the telescope of the entry tunnel, I saw my little sister Nina in a yellow dress on her Tri-ang tricycle under the pear tree at the top of the back garden.
I stood alone in the sixties streetscape next to the flowering currant bush, in the dusty summer afternoon shade at the front of the house.
I had never been alone in the street before.
But now I was five.
I looked up Station Street, at the grey Ford Popular outside Jack & Gil Harding's house, then down at the manufacturer’s plate on the cast iron wall cappings.
The Wyrley Whizzer roared down a deserted street.
I felt the hot diesel exhaust bounce off the chip shop windows.
“Dad, what is “Jellyman Ironfoundry Cannock”? And what does “Her Majesty” mean?
“Your Mom’s made a cup of tea. Come on and I’ll tell you”.
I hurry into the entry, still a bit wary of the dark and the musty smell of plaster and lath.
Then into the pool of light in the back yard where my Vulcan bomber is propped against the Staffordshire blue bricks under the middle room window.
I am 5. I am going to school soon. The world seems old and new all at once.
It feels like being born, again.
It feels like home.
END OF PROLOGUE
Back in September 1968…
Good job there had been no top deck smokers that afternoon; the bus was empty and on the way back to the depot in Bloxwich, its sub-continent pilot and conductor crew briefly happy in the pre-GPS creative route-finding joy of having beaten the system by finding a short cut.
If it had not been his day off, our usual cleft-palated conductor Dennis would have saved the day, and the roof, by shouting down the length of the deserted lower deck;
“Ho’d up, Whoah! What ner yo’ think yo’m mlayin’at, yer mlockhead? 'ave yer gone off yer mloomin' yed? This ay the way back to Mloxwich mnepot. Am yer tryin'ter mnemolish the mlinkin muzz or summat?.”
The replacement new bus on Tuesday 3rd September 1968 was BRAND new.
Engine at the rear, pre-select gears, folding front door, pneumatic midships sliding door.
The sixty-ninth vehicle to be registered in West Brom since 1st August 1968 “G” registration came out.
Its number plate bore promise for our new year at school and our pre-teen explorations.
Now was the fag-end of the Summer of Love, the eve of;
« Mille neuf cent soixante-neuf, année érotique”
(Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin)
The square number plate, prominently affixed next to the rear window in the recess forward of the thundering diesel engine read;
SHA
69G….
The BBC and Tony Blackburn banned Serge's grunts and Jane's affected
ecstase of
"Je t'aime, moi non plus", no doubt worried it would all be a bit too much to take with the Weetabix.
It rocketed to Number One, and the Number Seventeen became "Je t'aime, mon grand bus"
BUSINESS AS USUAL
In other ways our second year at Cannock Grammar felt like business as usual.
Lime green bus passes. The walk from the bus station, past the Social Security pre-fab block, with the E..R 1963 plaque, discussing, post-superhero-neo-asperger-style, car number prefixes with Kev;
“RBF 649, that’s Stafford ay it Al?”
“549 KEA, sure to be West Brom”
“1 DH, that’s the Mayor of Walsall just gone past, mairte”
"SHA 69G, theere's the buzz gooin' back to the Bonk" ...
Through the bike sheds.
All familiar by now.
We had even begun to develop immunity from the vending machine Limeade chilled green emetic, and were now able to swallow half a plastic cupful at morning break time without indulging in the communal chundering sessions which distinguished the new 1968 intake of First Year pupils.
In a year which heralded Man’s first footsteps very much upstairs on another world, there was a move downstairs for 1Z, now….2E.
None of us protested at no longer being Zedders.
Even though we were no longer the youngest kids in the school, we were the last of the Zedder breed: the 1968 intake were labelled more conventionally 1A to 1E.
(click on image for larger view of 1968 intake)
There was little nostalgia for Zeds forgotten, even as we listened to Mary Hopkins intoning Russian folk revival “Those Were the Days”…
UNIFORM CHANGES-OFFICIAL
The Jackie-reading section of the class set some trendy tones. As well as Scholl’s exercise sandals, other items appeared;
Lynette wrote;
Our school uniform saw changes, although these were mainly to the girls’ attire.
Our pale green linen type blouses would be replaced with green and white striped ones and our 'nursey' striped dresses with small round collars were replaced by a more hip “shift” style.
We could now make our own with material stocked in the Co-Op. At last a cheaper uniform. Hopefully in future it would not be necessary to buy things with a good four years of growth potential.
…my satchel was changed for a basket with a cover that looked like the elasticated plastic thingy from the bottom of our budgie cage, but one had to keep up with the fashion…
DISPARATE HOUSEWIVES
With their cheese pie ingredients, exercise books, ladder repair sewing kits, blue mascara, lunar charts and other carefully packaged hygiene accessories stowed neatly in their baskets, there was enough variety now in the home-made elements of the girls’ uniform to qualify them as budding “Disparate Housewives”…
In contrast to the “homely” cardigan & cardboardy conical brassière look, some of the girls began cautiously flirting with the “24/7 Clubber” style (full make-up and exposed flesh regardless of season or venue). This style, as any occasional visitor to Cannock will attest, has burgeoned (with midriff/body-piercing and cleavage updates) amongst local youngsters for more than forty years.
On the academic front, The Powers That Be had started to sift and label us further: Latin and Maths were two obvious sieves.
Were we still in form groups for some subjects, though.
We must have been for English, because we had a young Mr DS Wheat, and read “Cider with Rosie”, “Grandad with Snails”…and “The Grapes of Wrath” (Steinbeck had died on 10th November.) The Chrysalids. (John Wyndham failed to keep off the reading list and died that year, too)
FROZEN RIVER
Our new form teacher was Mr Griffiths, who was given the sobriquet of “Nobby”, by Carole Freeman.
She said she’d seen his knees during a staff soccer match.
Mr G was a young, tall, swarthy, likeable, deliberate Physics teacher.
His passion for pastoral care began, falteringly, to make itself felt on the first day during an enforced form period at 10am.
He had dealt with matters arising (distribution of new orange rough books and blotting paper, reminder of General Fund protocol…) by 10.10.
So he filled in time by explaining how lucky we were going to be this year; our General Science would transform itself into Chemistry, Biology and….Physics. We would be learning about FORCES…
He wrote the word on the blackboard.
A basket handle creaked as someone fumbled for a “Jackie”.
He then regaled us with a riddle, which he claimed would illustrate what a fascinating subject Physics was.
The details, (and hopefully former classmates will be able to help out on this one), have become hazy when viewed through the mists of time. But it involved the unlikely scenario of a man in frictionless ice skates on a frictionless frozen river (!), desirous of moving backwards.
Steve Wilson’s eyes began to glaze over, like a frozen river…
We were still seated in rows, although (possibly in a nod to chaos theory by Mr G?) no longer alphabetically.
Some of us had begun the slow, inexorable migration towards the “cooler” zones of the back of the classroom, with the footballers, and nearer to the athletic frame and micro skirt of new class member Lynne Hodgkiss.
(More “Less is More” on micros later.)
As Mr G posed his riddle, I’d semi-switched off, and had started day-dreaming comic scenarios in pidgin French, more or less related to the subject.
I already had one suggestion about how our theoretical skater might propel himself forwards by breaking wind, and decided to keep this for possible later use.
When we got to know him a bit better.
And when I knew the correct French for “breaking wind”.
Our form room was F1.
We were increasingly obsessed by Rowan & Martin-esque sexual innuendo, so domiciliation in “F-block” held a certain appeal.
FANTASY “NYMPHERLUDE”
A highlight of each week was when we had to queue for the changing rooms outside the Gym.
If you hung back towards the rear of the queue, you were, allegedly, afforded a view along the tunnel which led to our imagined erotic heaven;
The Girls’ Changing Room.
Unfortunately, the Town Planner responsible for the school’s design had done his job too well when designing the entrance, and the chicane at the other end allowed sound to filter, indeed to be amplified.
But it blotted out any voluptuous visuals.
We knew from the squeals of delight which echoed down the tunnel that something was going on in there which entailed more than mere nubile nymphettes undressing and the pulling on of Netball or Hockey gear.
(Although the mere thought of those particular vestment manoeuvres was more than sufficient to kick our hormones into attentive mode for several hours.)
Nah.
There had to be other things going on.
The boys’ collective imagination was certainly not lacking in the supply of scenarios.
And, judging by the way we all lingered as the queue started to move past the doorway, leaning backwards as our place in front of the doorway slipped past, in a vain expectation that the brick wall at the end of the tunnel would miraculously reveal a vision of delight, most of us had similar ideas…
FAST FORWARD 2008
On a September Sunday evening in 2008, at our first 1ZAAC reunion, White Horse pub, Cheslyn Hay, all was-figuratively speaking- finally revealed.
Those changing room squeals were not of joy or ecstasy.
They were emanating from 30 naked, innocent young ladies and Carole Freeman (who was incongruously singing "Blackberry Way"...) attempting to maintain poise, arms and elbows gathered in a bodice, unsuccessfully dodging the chilly jets of water Carole was aiming across the white-tiled expanses of the communal shower.
So, dear reader, it was even better than we’d dare imagine.
Better, anyway, than Carry on Camping.
(Technical aside; Upon this 2008 revelation, a suggestion was made, just before we were thrown out of the pub for sober hysteria, that a re-enactment video clip be made on the school premises for the forthcoming blog.
Assurances of copious use of steam, a discreet cameraman and Vaseline-ed lenses did nothing to reassure potential showering starlets.
We may have to be satisfied with a soundbyte only.
Readers will be encouraged, just as in '68, to make up their own pictures.
I know this is disappointing. I saved a fair bit on Vaseline, though)
Plug for 1zaac episode 3
By popular request from the zeddeuse contingent - "what about he boys' changing rooms?": keep blogwatching for episode 3E. Rugby balls, sun-stroked cricketers, jockstraps and the pubic cubicles...
GET BACK TO REALITY IN LONG TROUSERS
Around the time “Get Back” hit the top slot, my own Griffiths-style knees were covered with the charcoal flannel of long trousers, purchased with Gran Floss and with relief at Foster Brothers for 17/6.
The transaction had felt like a rite of passage.
When they wore to semi-transparency in the first week of January, I wished we had raided the gas meter as well as the electric one, and invested in the one-guinea pair.
Accelerated wear was convolutedly caused by avoiding a boycraze of “humbug, finger or thumb”.
This appeared to be a dodgy import from places like Harrow or Eton, where its epithet was British Bulldog .
The Cannock Grammar wannabe/aspirational version was, however, performed fully clothed, outdoors, in daylight, and minus top hat. It was practised principally by the now infamous lads from planet 1B, with bouts usually convened by "Gaz" Nicholls.
It was a “Boy Thing” with undertones of rugger and homo-eroticism, involving as it did, a pretext for sticking the back of your head against the boy in front’s testicles.
It was good training for the budding rugby stars in our class.
More about this, with a free download of their song repertoire, including Eskimo Nell, in 3E episode.
We were guessing that the girls must have thought the exponents were totally tough and that they (the girls...) were just feigning disinterest by reading Jackie articles aloud to one another..
The girls thought the humbuggers looked like total morons.
As usual, the girls were right.
Kev Gunn’s posterior ended up through a window pane during a rare 2E indoor session of humbuggery. We had a solidarity whip-round collection to pay for the replacement, after a headmaster's enquiry failed to flush out an informer.
It was on the morning Tony Blackburn’s syrupy tones announced the maiden flight of the Boeing 747, and when the humbuggers had gone, that half a dozen of us formed a splinter group next to the humbug Staffordshire blue-brick wall outside G-Block, and invented a game which involved tossing duffel bags over the wall.
We had no points- scoring system, or rules. The game just happened.
It felt refreshingly like a road less travelled.
And this, if you haven't lost the thread by now, dear reader, is where my long trousers lost theirs.
It was because the duffel game, somehow by common accord, was played in full uniform, sitting on the tarmac.
UNIFORM CHANGES-UNOFFICIAL
As a counter to our teenage fashion cred, but with a nod to fashionable sci-fi, Kev brought in one of his Christmas presents.
The Blue Peter Eighth Book.
He sat, scratching his sideburns, reading a Bleep & Booster chapter in the corner of room F1.
Paul Nicholls, became a trendsetter when he discovered orange, black-buttoned denim shirts (still at Foster’s), for a pound.
Then, despite the hazard posed by Mrs Aston’s uniform recognition abilities, came to school in it, humming the cool strains of 'Albatross' by Fleetwood Mac.
(This seemed very daring at the time. It set the trend for the purple flares conflagration in the 5E episode...)
That was it: we duffel tossers all wanted in.
Within 3 weeks, my ‘paper round money secured the first tangerine element of a parental influence-free school uniform alternative.
WHAM! IT's OWEN & LEE
The school had been painted during the autumn term.
The whiff of turps set us all up for the promised hallucinations when plans were outlined to buy a bottle of dandelion & burdock and some junior aspirins from Boots chemists, and to sit in the front row of 2001 A Space Odyssey behind the bowling green and next to Rosa's caff, through the folding glass doors at... the Danilo.
For the aesthetic approval of the painters, several of the girls made two tuck-up turns of their skirt waistbands, revealing four more teen-inches of American Tan. They watched the two hunky, tanned, white bib-and braced, pistol-packing spunky-hunks (who were 17,) create a wedding cake effect by gathering all of the classroom furniture to the middle of the room, and covering it with a white dust sheet.
A signwritten board, propped in F1’s window, informed us that their names were possibly Owen and Lee.
They had the 1969 bum fluff equivalent of designer stubble.
Had they been blond, gay and a little less challenged in the dental department, it would have looked like a WHAM! concert, the gals perhaps envisaging four powdery, blushing buttocks emerging from that cake.
The painters would return the following year.
Lynne and Lesley started preparing a welcome- back fantasy fake French-kissing number for them. (Stay tuned for 3E chapter for details).
But WHAM!..They were half a generation away.
Back to 1969. Miniskirts were definitely IN.
On January 1st, Louis Armstrong let us all know it was a Wonderful World.
We thought so too: this, our 1zaac research dept reliably informs, was the year of the MICRO.
It had to be a teenage dream come true for us boys, frustrated every Friday by the Changing Room Corridor design fault, surreptitiously scanning for a glance of knicker cloth of any shade but grey. Or even a triangular micro-flash veiled in American Tan, or even Muffin, with a vertical gusset seam (see note below), if you were lucky enough to catch a micro-wearer crossing or uncrossing her lower limbs.
Author’s note; Whilst undertaking research for this article, I was assured by a normally reliable 1ZAAC source/Sunday School attendee that there was also a shade of tights called “Muffin”.
It shall be left to the readership to determine whether this may have been a Wikipedia-style hoax.
Muff+in=tights??
The same correspondent also provided, in 2008, an update on uniform developments. And a (four-decades on; better late than never) insight into the girls’ regulation undies.
...Although my Mom always said that expensive though they were, the regulation grey flannel knickers would last forever. PLEASE SPARE ME THAT.... hideous, itchy and the half-life of plutonium to boot.
We all turned 13 that year. TEENAGERS AT LAST.
As if to welcome us into the contradictions of the grown-up world, the American electorate let a shifty-looking Nixon have the keys to the Oval Office, and the nuclear launch codes, on 20th of January.
Nixon probably stole the election by, during the campaign, appearing on the “Laugh-in”, and uttering “sock it to me?” (cf 1Z episode). Democrat candidate Hubert Humphrey turned down Rowan & Martin’s invitation, to his later regret.
By March, Tricky Dickie Nixon was secretly bombing Cambodia.
We started making a few assumptions about the collective competency of the US electorate.
But we were too pre-occupied with other matters of adolescence to be unduly worried.
Growing from a distant rumble of our First Year, you could hear the hormones rushing from halfway down F block corridor, regardless of any four-minute warnings. Rowan & Martin must have got wind of this, and fuelled our fantasies with weekly visions of Goldie Hawn go-go dancing.
The staff perhaps picked up on the sexual zeitgeist.
This was, after all “1969, année érotique”: As mentioned above, Serge Gainsbourg was, even as we drifted away from Humbugfingerthumbery, penning “Je t’aime….Moi non plus”, with he and Jane Birkin, like a pair of panting puppies, breathily climaxing to Number One, despite/because of being banned by Tony effing Blackburn.
Almost all of us, allegedly, were only solo performers at this stage.
But our minds were certainly fixed on duets, and that bus registration number.
As usual, Lennon had it all sorted. John and Yoko posed naked for an album cover, then started a “Bed-in” towards the end of May.
Tangerine-shirted Paul Nicholls did an instant re-write Lennon's September ‘68 Beatles’ masterpiece, releasing
“Hey, Nude…
…don’t turn around”
upon us the next day.
It didn’t help that Mr Wheat introduced the topic of the Swedish Sexlympics into class discussions rather more often than seemed necessary. This delighted Ian and Steve, now firmly established one desk away from Lynne's micro.
Then we studied Cider with Rosie.
Karen remarked in 2008;
Someone got “tossed off” the haywain on the first page.
This started a few more -albeit rustic- stirrings.
SPELLING TEST
We had a spelling test, which included the words naïve, haemorrhoid and diarrhoea...
...clearly Mr Wheat was preparing us for future careers in the medical profession. Naïve was a bit of a puzzler, 'though.
Click on image to see if you've improved since 1968...
SURVEILLANCE STRATEGIES
In the delegatory tradition favoured by boarding schools or concentration camps, or other institutions housing more than a thousand inmates, we had Form Prefects assigned to us.
Hand-picked, trustee-status Fifth formers, they were delegated, presumably, to survey and protect us.
Their duties, when they turned up, seemed to comprise sitting on the window ledge (new glass after Kev’s “accident”) while the majority of us played more whist, or milled around the break-time classroom in quasi-anarchical semi-liberty.
We would occasionally take breaks from the mild anarchy to discuss elementary human biology with the FP’s.
There may have been a few inter-year Nuffield hands-on practicals, too.
But those mists of time, and the fear of litigation from retired FP’s, are rising again.
Form 2E won the 6 –a-side soccer competition.
England reigned as World Cup champions, at least for now. One of the lads did a talk on football, and duped us all, including Mr W, before admitting he had plagiarized it en bloc from The Daily Mirror.
At least it wasn’t The Daily Mail.
There was some great footballing talent in evidence with snowy-haired Steve Wilson, Ian Walton, Bill Haughey, Dave Bowes…Who else was in the team? Was it Bernie Silverstone and Steve Menzler?
EVACUEE EXODUS to the CHASE in WAAF SHOES
Mr Spencer headed up a Student Aid Programme committee which organized a 30-mile sponsored walk around Cannock Chase one Saturday in October. We all set off wearing labels, like evacuees.
It was Tim Dawson (see photo) who drew to my attention the provenance of the shoes I was wearing.
He had seen the same ones in the film "Battle of Britain" at the Danilo the previous evening.
Unfortunately they had been on the feet of a dead WAAF. (Royal Air Force Lady).
I had thought that they were pretty cool -black lace ups and leather soles- when I'd snapped them up for six bob (1 week's 'paper round pay) at Thackers emporium opposite the Rec' in Cheslyn Hay.
Only when Tim pointed out the subtle curves in the stitching did I "cotton on." (More about this, and other war surplus anecdotes courtesy of Kev in Episode 3)
It was by now painfully clear to me that WAAFs didn't do much sponsored walking. I was driven back to the starting point by one of the Sixth Form organizers with Karen, bored and knackered despite her long legs after seventeen miles too, in a Vauxhall Viva.
GRANDAD JACK
I was only late delivering the 'papers one one other occasion that year, in January 1969 when I was given a "detention" punishment for habitual AOH: Avoidance of Homework, see below.
So I had to effect a rapid ‘paper delivery in the dark, carrying the canvas bag, which had two knots in the shoulder strap and was so blackened by newsprint that you could hardly read the words “News of the World” emblazoned in blue on its outside face.
I was walking down Cross Street, which we always called “The Town Well” because of the communal water pump.
Bill Mansell took his ‘paper from me. He was painting the parish pump with black gloss even though it was winter, and dark.
“Bit lairte ay yer, Cock?”
He said with a smile.
Then I looked down the hill, to the Cross Street junction with Low Street fifty yards away.
Some new, detached houses were being built next to the pink-flowering horse chestnut tree on the corner. In the orange glow of the street lamps, a billboard announced that they would be available shortly for the price of four thousand two hundred and fifty pounds.
What I saw next is imprinted on my memory, and is as clear as I write this as it was on that day forty years ago in 1969.
On the bend of Low Street, next to the black and white fingerpost, caught in the headlamps of the Wyrley Whizzer bus was the unmistakeable figure of my Grandad Jack.
He was wearing his dark brown suit, an olive green peaked cap, and leaning on a shiny walking stick.
I shouted “Grandad!”, and waved.
He looked up the Town Well hill, put his hand to his eyes, saw it was me, and waved back across the murky, coal-fire smoked infinity of those fifty yards.
He was smiling.
It was the last time I saw him.
He died peacefully in his sleep that night.
He was sixty-eight years old.
This was considered a good age for anyone who had worked “down the pit”.
Gran & Grandad Davis circa 1968
Back at school later that week in room F1, we read hilarious, nostalgic passages from “Grandad with Snails” in our English lesson.
At twelve years old, after seeing my Mom unconsolable, it was the first time I had experienced grief.
I thought of Grandad Jack’s skills at keeping the coal fire burning all night by putting on "the right way round" a judiciously-sized lump he called a “rairker”. Of the day he taught me to drink “tay” out of a saucer. Of the way he listened to me reading Janet & John, and then the Captain Hurricane stories in The Valiant…
In Mr W’s English lesson, silent tears fell onto the opened pages. It was not a very 1960’s English thing to do.
I was sitting next to Graham Price. He asked me if I was OK.
I was glad Mr Wheat asked Ian Walton, not me, to read out aloud.
We laughed in unison at Ian's reading.
GALLOPING GOURMAND
Later in the term, there was another fund-raising initiative based on the
a priori that emerging bulimia in the white West could be the key to helping starving Biafrans.
The Dr Scholl wearers were invited to bake Victorian sponges or fairy cakes, and to sell them to their classmates at break-time, to be washed down with lashings of green fizz from the now- popular vending machines in the dining hall. (We had developed full immunity by now. A whole cup...)
Just like at the bulimic’s birthday party (the cake came out of the girl), there would then be mass squeamishness as the boys winced during locust testicle dissections in double Biology.
Enterprising, Euro-trotting Peter Gethin went a step further.
In a cunningly crafted plan, he set about stuffing HIMSELF, (a suggestion which had been repeatedly voiced by a number of the girls earlier in the term)... for a good cause.
The plan was admirably simple, and may or may not have been inspired by conversations with members of the town’s Rotary Club.
“How many pancakes can Peter Gethin cook, toss and eat during break on Tuesday?”
...mused the hand-crafted posters which appeared during Christian Aid week all over F-Block.
For a mere pre-decimal sponsorship charge of “thruppence” per 6 pancakes, onlookers were offered the opportunity to crowd the safety-glassed porthole in the Domestic Science doorway, and observe the unforgettable spectacle of an apron-ed PG doing his Home Alone in the Kitchen Galloping Gourmet impression.
He cooked and consumed fifteen deftly flicked crêpes, imagining himself as Cannock’s answer to Cool Hand Luke.
A number of the girls concurred that he would indeed be their hero, and branded him the most accomplished tosser of the week.
FROGS and KANGAROOS
Shortly afterwards there was a frogspawn population explosion in the Biology pond.
This resulted in the frog trial/kangaroo court.
This episode deserves a separate article, which can be left to the literary talents of other former classmates.
The outcome was a dramatic brawl, when the rows of desks parted like the Red Sea, between Steve Rotherham, (now Menzler) (Court Usher), and a much bigger kid from the Third Year.
None of us could ever imagine Steve taking second place in such a conflict, and he indeed came out on top.
FULL METAL BLAZER
We had “fatigues”/PT training in the gym.
This was as close to National Service as most of us would get. We never liked the way aptly-named Mr Skinner referred to big bloke Graham Price by the name of “Slim”.
Foreshadowing Stan Kubrick's 1980's masterpiece "Full Metal Jacket", Graham had armed himself with a good sense of humour, elegant copperplate handwriting and that Paratrooper air rifle. Full Metal Blazer.
We also had a Full Metal Gym Slip section in class 2E.
There were the athletics stars; Lynne was an all-round champ (javelin?) with big dimples and a broad smile.
Paul had begun to astound us after the October’68 Olympics with backwards “Phosbury Flop” high-jumping. His recruitment into district athletics, and the demolition of the Civic restaurant put an end to hopes of a revivalist Cannock Gastro-afternoon this year.
On the study side, some of us thought how clever we were by planning, using a plethora of excuses or absences, the Avoidance Of Homework.
I was an accomplished subscriber to the AOH method, often spending mere hours avoiding what could have been accomplished in whole minutes.
Some teachers had a quaint approach, returning marked exercise books with the flourish of what could perhaps best be described as an “oral public flogging”.
The recipient would turn scarlet for five minutes, after having had his/her (usually his) exercise book frisbee’d-(with remarkable accuracy in the case of Mr Wheat) back to his desk.
Mr W thought he had most of us taped, and was probably right.
He lost his cool last lesson one Tuesday when we were writing limericks.
He struck Bill Haughey on the side of the head, after he made one up about Number One Hit “Young Girl” and the lead singer Gary Puckett.
In 2008, the Zedder poet in residence suggested a tribute "Lyneric"
If Puckett was your given name
It could well have led you to fame
As with Gary, the chap,
Who joined Union Gap,
And thought 60's 'Young Girls' were all game.
Now if you had the surname of Glitter,
You might have found younger kids 'fitter,'
So when this Gary sang,
About joining his gang,
He was after the baby, not sitter.
(More Glam & Glitter in 5E...)
(Note from 1zaac legal dept; There should be an "allegedly" in the last line.)
Near the end of the year, the winds of change once more blew softly. Thunderclap Newman sang that there was "Something in the Air".
The school magazine was published, and contained some some poignant poetry.
Rather less poetically, Euro-ambassadrice extraordinaire Sandie Shaw sang a re-worked German pop “gem” called
Monsieur Dupont and, right on cue, a vanguard group of French kids came from Lyon.
Click on record to see Sandie's 1967 Eurovision victory, mini-nightdress included...
Some of us became go-betweens/interpreters (the past is indeed a foreign country; for me the future would be, too…) for the struggling polyglot chaps who were seeking international relations with the French demoiselles. The lads were in the fourth or fifth years and were, as a consequence of their seniority, surfing the hormone/acne tsunami with aplomb.
This Gallic arrival was nearly as good as my planned elopement with Miss Simpson (cf 1Z article).
I was sad but resigned when she left for another school, then visited room B2 with a BABY the next year.
Drat.
That only left Sandie Shaw.
So, the school year ended with Neil Armstrong taking one small step.
The Apollo 11 adventure launched on 16th July.
David Bowie launched into psychedelic folk with A Space Oddity the same day.
It shot to Number One.
Dennis Bould came out with a better
A Capella cover version the next morning, which started
“Mountain goat to John the Mon”…
Ted Kennedy took a giant leap in his car off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, just before the Astronauts returned safely to earth.
The world, and American politics, would never be the same again.
We knew Steve Wilson's voice had broken, when he walked in to F1 one morning, and gave a bass rendition of Desmond Dekker's "The Israelites" just before Mr Spencer walked into our Scripture lesson.
It might have been school holidays by July 21st.
In any event, I have no recollection of turning up to school on 22nd, bleary-eyed after an all-night session viewing Cannock Grammar visitor Patrick Moore & James Burke’s jittering black and white live, hyper-excited TV coverage, to inform Mr Griffiths that I’d worked out the answer to his riddle.
He was set to be our form teacher for another year, and on the last day of term informed us that we would be moving into a science lab after the holidays….
Oh dear.
With unlimited and unsupervised access to gas, electricity, magnesium ribbon, sulphur, mercury and ammonium nitrate, and with the autumn arrival of more hormones and Monty Python, things promised to be "completely different"...
Fireworks were clearly going to be in store for us in 3E.
For a front row seat at the display, keep watching out for 1zaac episode 3, which is due for release at the end of January 2009...
EPILOGUE
FAST FORWARD, FATHERS’ DAY 15th JUNE 2008
The wheels of the nursing home’s red wheelchair make a soft click as we pass under the railway bridge in Station Street.
Dad is in good spirits, and wearing his favourite green “Country Gent” green check cap, souvenir'ed from my brother Ant some years previously.
The stroke took away most of his conversational abilities last year.
But he still joins in if we instigate a song from the forties, fifties or sixties.
His repertoire is inexhaustible.
White Cliffs of Dover. A Nice Cup of Tea. Que Sera Sera. Theme from Rawhide. Spanish Eyes…
In another gambit showing us that he’s still here, he has also taken to swearing and blaspheming with impressive flair.
I never remember him swearing much when we were kids.
Now he’s an accomplished cusser.
We pause on the Cheslyn Hay side of the bridge, opposite number 174.
“Look Dad. Max Headroom”
“Bloomin’ ‘eck”
I try to second-guess the far-away regard in his alert eyes, and imagine he’s thinking;
“Now where did that last half century go?”…
And so am I.
So I say
"Let's go and see if Mom's put the kettle on"
The reply comes after a second or two;
"Orright."
We set off up the Station Street hill, into the sunshine.
As the Cannock bus drives towards us on the bend of Low Street, we are standing in the shade of the flowering pink horse chestnut, waiting to cross the "Town Well. "
Dad points at one of the fallen blossoms , which is balanced on the kerbstone. He thinks, then says clearly and with a smile:
"Pink"
And we start singing, in harmony and at nearly full volume, a disgustingly customized version of “Lily the Pink”.
Alan Brown
Sainte Cécile
Postscript; Science exercise book comment, unvetted by the English dept by the looks. Inadvertent creative entry for a new blog; epitaphs r us.com?
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We went for a picnic at the romanesque church at Mesnard.
The 13th-century wall-paintings were re-discovered in 1950, after the de-consecrated church had been used as a barn for almost 100 years... John did a "Don't Look Now" tribute pose...(1zaac film buff committee comment; a very scary film, released during our last year in the Sixth Form...) 
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