Twelve Years in the Making

Part Four

From 1 MacVicar’s I graduated into 2 Whites; although at the end of the first year a top stream was selected which would stay together for the next four years, I wasn’t in it. White’s was, however, supposed to be slightly superior to the other two forms; the streaming system at Birkenhead meant that we were taught most subjects as a form in the second year, but were streamed for French and here I did find myself in the top set. Our form master Mr Downes was something of a frustrated actor- in fact he did on one occasion write the Junior School play and give himself the starring role, casting me in the role of a cat (as in the cat and the fiddle- the play was based on nursery rhymes and such like)- and while demanding and occasionally temperamental, when I came to have Oxbridge coaching lessons with him in sixth form he demonstrated his passion for drama in particular. Though I had hoped for a change from Mr Liddell, he continued to teach me Maths, while Mr Jackson (the Head of Modern Languages, no less; a Yorkshireman and an active member of Amnesty International, who could be seen several times a year “imprisoned” in a wooden cage outside a church in Heswall to raise funds) took the top set for French. My interest in the language was at this stage enhanced by my first ever trip to Paris; while this was far from my first trip abroad, and Mum, Grandma and myself had gone to Amsterdam the previous year, our trip to Paris (courtesy of a small pools win on Grandma’s part) helped me to put my schoolboy French into some kind of context. The memories are starting to get a little hazy and confused with a later visit, but our tour company had a base in the first floor of a cafe in the Rue de Rivoli opposite the Louvre, from which we were dispatched on a full-day bus tour of the city and later on a day trip to Versailles. We also had free days which we spent in and around the Louvre and ascending to the second stage of the Eiffel Tower, having two vertigo sufferers in the family meaning that the top was out of the question. I’m glad we went when we did, if for no other reason than that we took the hovercraft from Dover to Boulogne, a crossing which no longer exists, although coming home rough weather meant that firstly we missed our train at Dover (along with many other passengers who proceeded to throng the next departure for Charing Cross; one of whom was the television presenter Raymond Baxter), then the last train of the evening for Liverpool at Euston, obliging us to catch the Irish Mail as far as Chester and take a taxi, which the tour company steadfastly refused to refund.

My progressive alienation from the sciences continued; Mr Wiltshire’s General Science class was so uninvolving that I can remember nothing of it, while my abiding memory of Dr Cowling’s biology class is of, shortly after attempting to draw a locust imprisoned in a glass jar, we were treated to the spectacle of Dr Cowling attempting to encourage said locust to fly by cupping it in his hands and letting it go into the air- whereupon, having lost a leg and damaged its wing in transit to the school, it collapsed into a quivering collection of locust components on the lab floor. For somebody who had loved reading about the natural world, to be so alienated by the academic study of the subject was painful and I ended up very disillusioned, with no desire to follow science as a path. The only science I enjoyed at school was the astronomy component of GCSE Physics, and perhaps the practical side of electronics, but that was very little for five years’ study. The raw information remained firmly in my brain, however, as my greatest achievement in Junior School was the practically unprecedented feat of winning the General Knowledge prize in two successive years. This was decided on the basis of a test, administered to all the Junior School classes by Mr Harrison in lieu of an English lesson, and at the end of the year it took the form of a £5 book token. In my first year, I was very much taken with Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes and so I chose a collection of the complete Holmes novels and stories. My second year choice depended on one of those milestones in the streaming system, as from the third year on we were streamed full time; we took most subjects as a form, but in others were graded by ability, so that the top Maths set took their O-level at the end of the fourth year and then took AS Maths in the fifth.

I have to say that, not quite coming across as top drawer material, I didn’t make it into the top stream, known as Lang (for Languages), but I did make it into the second stream, Ling (for Linguistics). The reason for this emphasis was that both these forms took an extra language at GSCE/O Level, either German or Ancient Greek. I opted for Greek, having on balance enjoyed Latin more than French over the two years, and having kept up an interest in the classical civilisations, although I can’t help thinking that perhaps this decision has had more of an impact on the course of my life than I could have considered at the time. The other two forms were Lit (for Literature), which took basically the same curriculum minus the extra languages, and Mod (for Modern), who concentrated on the sciences and dropped Latin and History. The transition into the third year (and the Senior School) was crowned by another of my occasional flourishes, as I succeeded in finally coming top of the form in the exam order, but most of all I can remember a certain overcast and slightly bleak feeling on the last day of term, having counted down the days in familiar surroundings; after the announcement of the forms, the only point which remained to be decided was our senior school Houses. Under the form list for 3 Ling I found the following:

Cragg, I. R. (B)

And so I found myself in Bushell’s, and the stripe in my tie would be purple. It would also, in the fullness of time, lead to another of my school achievements, but at the time that was four or five years away and there would be much to go through before then.