I’ll start with a couple about whom I remember least, and will therefore have to make up most.
Mr Watts had an artificial leg, having lost the real one in
the war. I think it was his left one,
because I can picture him riding his bike to school. This had been modified so that he only had to
pedal on one side; I’d only see him in the morning, when he would be riding
along Mallard Way towards the staff entrance and so would be on the same side
of the road as me. But it could have
been his right one.
His inevitable nickname was ‘Pegleg’. I guess he must have been aware of this, but he
was a kindly soul who clearly had a thick enough skin to elect to be a boys’
secondary school teacher in the knowledge of all that would entail, and I don’t
think there was ever any unpleasantness serious or discernible enough to need
escalating.
I have no idea what he taught.
Mr Barraclough taught, I suspect, geography. If so he must have taken me over from Mr Styles
(q.v.) when I was in about the fourth form and done serious damage to my
interest in the subject. To be fair, my
interest in any subject other than skiffle was at serious risk by then, so I can’t
completely lay my abysmal O level performance at his door. Oh all right, I can.
I remember him being extremely tall, which is confirmed by a
photograph I’ve recently stumbled across online. Online sources also suggest he was an avid
user of the cane, but I never experienced that.
Mind you, I don’t remember ever having been caned during my school days
(or since). I was too timid to be a
threat to any of my teachers.
Thank you for inspiring a blog post, Tim - as so often in the past, when we hardly knew each other in person.
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