TASHY DID - A LIFE
1960
I’m noticing, as I write these dirges, how they seem to be getting shorter as, what was once an exciting new experience becomes everyday routine. I suppose
this just mirrors life, relationships, work, even pleasure. Going to school was exciting at first, now it just happens as a part of my year, but not always, as
you will see very soon. The art, I guess, of surviving this is either to accept life, or parts of it, will be boring after a while or to go out and make it
interesting, set new challenges, go for new experiences, try for new achievements. Also I now rely more on memory than mother’s diary entries.
For many years of my life I was told, and believed, I had a fear of dying. Wrong. I have an incredible anger at not being alive. I love my life, mistakes
and all. I love waking up each day to find something new. I know I have never lived this day before and it will not necessarily be better than any others but it
will be different. Someone will teach me something, I will see something, I will experience something, I will understand something, that I never have before.
Dying doesn’t frighten me; not being alive would be the most annoying and upsetting thing in my life.
So what new things did 1960 bring. The year began with father taking me to the first ever racing car show at the Horticultural Halls. All through my life
he would always encourage me in what I wanted to do. He never tried to make me into the him that wasn’t. He would have loved me to enjoy and study classics. He
would comment on how he couldn’t understand that I didn’t like it, how it gave you the sort of mind to deal with other things in life but he never once made me
feel inadequate that I hated it. He never told me he was disappointed in me when my “O” level Latin grade was a 9, the lowest possible. This was actually a
tremendous achievement as, purely by chance I am sure, the unseen text we had to translate, taken from one of dear old Julius’ Gallic War pieces, we had gone
through a month or so before. He knew I had this love of motor racing and he was there to help me enjoy. In 1969, you’ll have to wait, his encouragement meant
mother didn’t speak to him for three whole days, so there was an upside for him in all this too.
Talking of mother she was still not a well person. In March, she notes she spent 10 days in bed. My sister and I were sent out daily to do the shopping and here
again my shyness had to be overcome. My sister was nowhere near as shy, she would talk to anyone and sometimes did, thinking they were someone else. So, when we
had to go shopping, she said she would ask for whatever it was we were going to buy. In these days there were very few supermarkets, certainly not in North Harrow.
You went to a butcher, a greengrocer, a baker and asked for what you wanted. I had the money, sister would ask. Perfect. Wrong, as so often. She would ask but
in such a quiet voice the shopkeeper couldn’t hear her and so, not unnaturally, turned to the elder child and asked what she had said, probably thinking what a
nice brother letting his sister try to be a big girl and ask.
School was fine and I had two notable achievements. A success in Maths fuelling my love of competition and the cane, or to be more precise the blackboard
compass. Let’s take the pain first. I forgot to tell you I had also been sent to the Headmaster’s study in Leeds. I was accused by a teacher of talking during
grace, said before every lunch in the vast dining room. I hadn’t said a word but, nevertheless, I was given no recourse to defend myself and received six
strokes on my backside, still covered with my trousers, from a table tennis bat wielded by the Head. In my mind, another unjustified punishment. This one in
London was different; it was totally justified. We had been set some Maths homework and one kid couldn’t find the questions in his text book. On learning this,
the teacher asked if the boy thought he would be so stupid as to set homework that wasn’t in the book. My answer of yes was slightly too loud and three strokes,
once again on my trousered bum, were administered with the large wooden blackboard compass, geometrical not navigational. I should point out, for those who think
this treatment wrong, that in neither case did I feel I was being beaten. The strokes were calculated to hurt not harm. In the second instance I had no hard
feelings. I had been cheeky; it was deserved. I have my own views on child discipline but I will leave these till later, when I actually had children to
discipline.
The Maths thing was far more fun. As I told you, maths teaching in Leeds was way ahead of London. By the age of 10 I had done far more than most of my
fellow classmates. One day our form teacher, who taught nearly everything, gave us some multiplication and division of fractions to do. There were 200 in all.
He said it would be a race to see if anyone did them all. We had to bring them up to his desk after 20 to get them marked. There was another boy in the class
who had also had his early schooling up north. We were the first to go up, almost together after 20. The others were well behind. The same happened at 40 and 60
but I noticed that, not surprisingly, there was a bit of a queue by now. Cue Rowland competitive, yet fair, brain. When I had done 80, I saw the queue was about
10 long; there were 22 in the class. So, instead of going up and standing in it, like my rival did, with a big grin on his face because he thought he was now
beating me, I stayed at my desk and, on a scrap piece of paper, started the next 20. When the queue had diminished I went up, returned, copied out the answers
from the scrap paper and went up again when the queue was small. Needless to say I won.
Grandpa was still coming over most days and the home help had returned to us on our return and would come in twice a week. In June we set off for another
family holiday to Weston-super-Mare, where mother had spent some of her childhood times. We went by train, Schweppes and steam for those of you who have been
with me since the start. We stayed in a hotel right on the seafront called the Cabot, the hotel not the seafront. The first day, resplendent in our beach wear,
father with his ever-present pipe, trousers a little high, we were snapped by a beach photographer, who would take your picture and then charge you something to
go and pick it up. My sister claims she accidentally turned away but I think it was deliberate.
Okay, I said in our beachwear. These next three photos question that mode of holiday dress. In the first, I am wearing my old Leeds grammar school
blazer and tie. This may be because the rather blurred lady on the far right in the background, next to mother, who was also politically on the far right,
was her old live-in maid who had come over from her home in South Wales to see us. But, in the next photo, while building sand castles, I am wearing my
Quainton Hall school cap. On the beach. On holiday. The final photo goes back to something I said in 1951 about father’s sand sculptures. He was a church
goer, he sang in the local choir for years, he loved building these churches.
Talking of mother she was still not a well person. In March, she notes she spent 10 days in bed. My sister and I were sent out daily to do the shopping and here
again my shyness had to be overcome. My sister was nowhere near as shy, she would talk to anyone and sometimes did, thinking they were someone else. So, when we
had to go shopping, she said she would ask for whatever it was we were going to buy. In these days there were very few supermarkets, certainly not in North Harrow.
You went to a butcher, a greengrocer, a baker and asked for what you wanted. I had the money, sister would ask. Perfect. Wrong, as so often. She would ask but
in such a quiet voice the shopkeeper couldn’t hear her and so, not unnaturally, turned to the elder child and asked what she had said, probably thinking what a
nice brother letting his sister try to be a big girl and ask.
School was fine and I had two notable achievements. A success in Maths fuelling my love of competition and the cane, or to be more precise the blackboard
compass. Let’s take the pain first. I forgot to tell you I had also been sent to the Headmaster’s study in Leeds. I was accused by a teacher of talking during
grace, said before every lunch in the vast dining room. I hadn’t said a word but, nevertheless, I was given no recourse to defend myself and received six
strokes on my backside, still covered with my trousers, from a table tennis bat wielded by the Head. In my mind, another unjustified punishment. This one in
London was different; it was totally justified. We had been set some Maths homework and one kid couldn’t find the questions in his text book. On learning this,
the teacher asked if the boy thought he would be so stupid as to set homework that wasn’t in the book. My answer of yes was slightly too loud and three strokes,
once again on my trousered bum, were administered with the large wooden blackboard compass, geometrical not navigational. I should point out, for those who think
this treatment wrong, that in neither case did I feel I was being beaten. The strokes were calculated to hurt not harm. In the second instance I had no hard
feelings. I had been cheeky; it was deserved. I have my own views on child discipline but I will leave these till later, when I actually had children to
discipline.
The Maths thing was far more fun. As I told you, maths teaching in Leeds was way ahead of London. By the age of 10 I had done far more than most of my
fellow classmates. One day our form teacher, who taught nearly everything, gave us some multiplication and division of fractions to do. There were 200 in all.
He said it would be a race to see if anyone did them all. We had to bring them up to his desk after 20 to get them marked. There was another boy in the class
who had also had his early schooling up north. We were the first to go up, almost together after 20. The others were well behind. The same happened at 40 and 60
but I noticed that, not surprisingly, there was a bit of a queue by now. Cue Rowland competitive, yet fair, brain. When I had done 80, I saw the queue was about
10 long; there were 22 in the class. So, instead of going up and standing in it, like my rival did, with a big grin on his face because he thought he was now
beating me, I stayed at my desk and, on a scrap piece of paper, started the next 20. When the queue had diminished I went up, returned, copied out the answers
from the scrap paper and went up again when the queue was small. Needless to say I won.
Grandpa was still coming over most days and the home help had returned to us on our return and would come in twice a week. In June we set off for another
family holiday to Weston-super-Mare, where mother had spent some of her childhood times. We went by train, Schweppes and steam for those of you who have been
with me since the start. We stayed in a hotel right on the seafront called the Cabot, the hotel not the seafront. The first day, resplendent in our beach wear,
father with his ever-present pipe, trousers a little high, we were snapped by a beach photographer, who would take your picture and then charge you something to
go and pick it up. My sister claims she accidentally turned away but I think it was deliberate.
Okay, I said in our beachwear. These next three photos question that mode of holiday dress. In the first, I am wearing my old Leeds grammar school
blazer and tie. This may be because the rather blurred lady on the far right in the background, next to mother, who was also politically on the far right,
was her old live-in maid who had come over from her home in South Wales to see us. But, in the next photo, while building sand castles, I am wearing my
Quainton Hall school cap. On the beach. On holiday. The final photo goes back to something I said in 1951 about father’s sand sculptures. He was a church
goer, he sang in the local choir for years, he loved building these churches.
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