Made In Hull By Maurice Fairfield Part Four - Schooldays continued (3/3)

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3). Part One - Arundel Street Days Part Two - Our Terrace Part Three - The Calm before, (The Storm) Part Four - Schooldays Part Five - The War 1 Part Six - The War 2

The bicycle shop was owned by a Captain Harrison, who was the stereotypical thirties middle class male with a small M.G., plus fours and a tooth brush moustache. He had golf clubs as well and his daughter Peggy played tennis - the height of posh - on the public courts in East Park. Sometime during this period I noticed that some of the boys in our class (there were no girls) disappeared . We later saw them in Malet Lambert School uniforms and what we called tippy caps . They had all learned to say things like bai jove, and eh what? I'm not kidding.

Parents could pay their children's way into this downmarket Eton and children whose parents had little or no money but had brainy children could enter them for scholarships. These were only taken up by aspiring parents and many a gifted kid left school to improve his chances with an apprenticeship and night school. Many more were got into, Amos and Smiths, Robbies Tin Works, Hollis's Sawmills and the host of other firms offering dead-end jobs which soaked up the school leavers of East Hull.

The Municipal Grammar Schools which gentrified both dim and bright alike and set their feet on the bottom rung of the middle-class ladder were once Higher Grade Elementary Schools and were built by local authorities to get round the part of the Education Act which stated that State schools were only to offer schooling to primary level.

To extend opportunities to promising children the higher grade schools were set up with access by entrance examination. My father got his parents to sign the form. They thought he was applying for permission to leave school early, an option for people who had learned everything the primary school could teach them. His feet didn't touch the ground when they learned that he was going to stay at Craven Street School until he was sixteen and he was soon out in the work force.

I am not sure when or how these enlightened plans turned into a hollow pillar of class privilege with a double barrelled name, but that seems to be what happened. On the whole it was a relief to return to the crowded steamy life of Arundel Street just in time for the Second World War. In fact there were two or three years to go but they went quickly.

The wars in Spain and Abyssinia had kept war in everyones mind and there was a great deal of worrying about gas. Reminiscences from the first war were handed on by older men - my grandfather for instance - who had never quite recovered from his experiences in the trenches and spent his days on a couch in the kitchen, although he walked to his lodge (The Buffaloes) once a week.

He used to get a magazine in the post from an ex-servicemans' association and I read it as I did everything else. One of its features was a column of reminiscences from the trenches . The title, "I Was There," was spelled out in corpses draped on a barbed wire entanglement. He never spoke much and never smiled at all. My Uncle Harry and my Uncle Fred lit up the house when they were home from the sea. Fred joined the army and went to India but Harry continued "big boating," travelling all over the world and bringing exotic gifts home until about 1942 when he disappeared forever.

He had a couple of odd mannerisms which marked him out from other men of his time and place. He was softly spoken and always called my grandma "Mother" instead of "Mam" like everybody else. He never married and he wore a single gold earring. He couldn't swim which was not unusual among sailors at that time who believed that if your ship went down the less time you spent struggling to stay alive the better.

His earring was meant to be a charm against drowning. It was not powerful enough to save him from the German surface raider which shelled his ship to pieces, and him too, gentle manners and courtesy and all.

Copyright 2004 © Maurice Fairfield

Continued on www.thisisUll.com Part Five - The War 1

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