Summer Times - Old Scarborians

1Summer TimesSummer Times is theJournalof theOldScarboriansMembers of the Association areformer pupils and members ofstaff ofScarborough High School forVolume 42November 2002Old Scarborians AssociationWeb address: http://www.oldscarborians.org.uk

3PRESIDENTIALThe past few monthshave been very pleasantfor many membersof the OSA, aswe have attendedseveral social eventsto mark the Centenaryof the school.The response fromthe members has been magnificent and mostgratifying to the committee members whowere involved in organizing the variousevents.In May, a Cheese and Wine party took placeat the lovely home of Tom and MarjeryPinder in Scalby village. Many thanks tothem; and to Maurice Johnson for organizingthe event.The Centenary weekend at the Palm CourtHotel was a resounding success. The numbersof members attending exceeded expectations,and we were able to revive friendshipswith Old Scabs from various parts of theworld.The reception on the Friday evening (7 thJune) saw over a hundred people enjoying asuper buffet and reminiscing about theirschool days; and viewing memorabilialoaned by various members.On Saturday evening we had a record attendanceof 162 (this must have given PeterRobson a headache, but he coped admirably).The meal was excellent—Joe Cooper saidgrace and Frank Bamforth proposed the toastto the Association. The rest of the eveningwas devoted to more of, “Do you rememberthe time when……?”Sunday saw approximately 70 sitting downto lunch prior to departing for home, probablyhaving gained 3 or 4lbs. in weight overthe weekend!!The weekend was a success because of,i) the excellent organisation and arrangingby the Committee—in particular PeterRobson,ii) the large number of members who attendedand enjoyed themselves, andiii) the excellent catering and accommodationprovided by the Palm Court Hotel.One member said to me and that he had enjoyeda “superb weekend”—and I don’tthink anyone can improve on that!In conversation with a friend (who was, beforehe retired, a senior member of staff atScarborough College), he told me that he hadread a copy of Summer Times and thought itwas an excellent magazine. (Take a bowDavid Fowler) He also thought it was marvellousthat the OSA was still going strong—and apparently getting stronger—eventhough the SBHS ceased to exist some 30years ago.The two golf outings took place in June andJuly and although the weather was not brilliant,at least it was dry. Chris Found will bereporting the details of the winners elsewherein Summer Times—our thanks to himfor organizing the competition; to the sponsors;to the competitors; and of course to theNorth Cliff Golf Club for extending to us thecourtesy of the course, and for providing anexcellent meal after the second outing. (Weseem to do nothing but eat!)It has been a privilege to be President of theOSA during the period covering the Centenary.My personal thanks to the committee fortheir help and to the members for their support.P.S. Future meetings of the OSA will becalled to order by the President using a gaveland pad, kindly donated by Doug Owen. (Ichristened it over the Centenary weekend)Ron Gledhill (1936-44)President

4SECRETARIALAs of August 21 st wehave 616 members, anincrease of 13 from mylast report in April 2002.The rate of recruitmentseems to be slowing atlast though as access tothe internet grows, wecan expect to recruitmore members via this route.In the past 6 months we have had only onedeath reported to us; Bill Johnson (1933-37)who lived in British Columbia.It has been a busy year. As reported elsewhere,we have held the Centenary weekend,which was a great success and we are alreadyin the advanced planning for the Christmasdinner in Scarborough in November and theLuncheon in London in March 2003. You willfind a booking form for these events withyour Summer Times.It remains to be seen what level of support wewill get for these meetings after the ‘high’ ofthe centenary year. In the last Summer Times, Iasked you to let me have your comments andrecommendations on the nature and numberof events we should cater for in the comingyears but apart from a few verbal commentsin the euphoria of the weekend, I have receivedno feedback.We will watch the number attending the nextLondon Luncheon very closely. It is becomingvery expensive to dine formally in Londonand travelling to London and aroundLondon is also becoming expensive and difficult.God help those of you who commutethere daily!Regional events would be relatively easy toorganise, equipped as we are we a detailedaddress for most of our members. We canfilter our data base for post code or countyand contact only those people likely to beinterested in an event in a particular region.Let me know whether you would supportsuch ’local’ events.Meanwhile, we will continue to plan andorganise our two events per year.Peter Robson (1945-53)SecretaryTREASURIALThe Association is havinganother satisfactory yearfrom a financial point ofview. Subs have continuedto come in togetherwith the odd donationand nearly all our activitieshave been carried outat a small profit includingthe golf competitions andthe Centenary weekend. The method of fundingthe golf was changed from obtainingsponsorship for prizes to charging an entryfee and this gave rise to small surplus.Our only reverse this year was a loss on theLondon Dinner. This arose as a result of amisunderstanding about the quantity of thepre-dinner drinks with the hotel but theamount was fairly insignificant.Our main expense this year has been the centenaryedition of Summer Times but this costwas reduced by £420 received from the advertisingplaced.As far as I can see we are solvent for the nextyear or two and I hope that we can continueto attract subscriptions from new membersand donations at the existing level.Chris Found (1951-59)TreasurerSPORTING EVENTSGolf Competitions—2002Both competitions were very successful thisyear and were well supported—particularly

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the first one which was held at the same timeas the Centenary weekend. The course atNorth Cliff was in particularly good conditionfor both events and it was unfortunatethat we had a rain shower at the start of ourreserved tee time, just as the second competitionstarted. However the shower did not lastlong and soon turned into warm sunshine.The results of the competitions were as follows:Dr. Meadley Cup (6th June)Net Score1st Chris Coole 662nd Dick Hartley 703rd Richard Hutton 71T.A.Smith Cup (12th July)Points1st Peter Bell 382nd Paul Gridley 383rd Richard Hutton 38As the three top scorers all had the samescore for the full eighteen holes and for thelast nine the above positions are based on thepoints scored on the last six holes.The dinner held on 12th July in the NorthCliff Clubhouse was attended by 25 playersand supporters and the prizes and trophieswere presented by the President, Mr. RonGledhill. Those attending were well pleasedwith the excellent standard of the catering.Next year it is intended to follow the sameformat for the TA Smith Cup except that adraw for playing partners will be held tocover those players wishing to commenceplay during the reserved tee time.Chris Found (1951-59)Golf SecretaryOSA WEB SITE REPORTI have made a large number of changes andadditions to the site since the May issue ofSummer Times. They are summarized below.645 AdditionalSports PhotographsWe now have sportsphotographs ranging,chronologically, from1928 to 1970 (still withgaps, of course). Fortyfive were added in June, July and August,with over 40 of them in both normal andhigher-resolution versions.Even before the latest addition of a number ofyears to the sports photograph menu, it wasbecoming quite unwieldy. To make thingseasier, the year-selection buttons have beenreplaced with a pull-down menu.The display of the higher-resolution versionsof photographs has been made somewhatmore elegant. Now, when the visitor clicks onthe normal-resolution version, the higherresolutionversion will appear in a browserwindow, of just the right size, in the centre ofthe screen. The window can subsequently beclosed by clicking anywhere on the photograph.June Centenary WeekendPhotographsThe majority of these are now on a new pagein the Event Photographs section. Like theSports Photograph section, this one now usesa pull-down menu for event selection (sameproblem of unwieldiness).The only event of the weekend for whichphotographs were provided (by DavidFowler) was the Saturday dinner. In the mostrecent OSA Web Site Bulletin, I asked thosewho have photographs of the reception or thebuffet lunch to let us know.Drama PhotographsNow that the sports photograph backlog hasbeen cleared, the next task is to update theDrama Photograph section from a somewhatsmaller backlog. In anticipation of this, the

7year-selection menu is now of the pull-downvariety.Other PhotographsThe Documentary section of MiscellaneousPhotographs now contains a third HonoursBoard. It’s undergone some virtual enhancement,including a “new” frame (copied fromone of the other board photographs). Thefourth Honours Board was in terrible shape,so enhancement of the photograph is going tobe a somewhat greater challenge. It will appeareventually.We have a small backlog of Group Photographs,including some of Prefects. Again,that will be addressed soon.Golf TournamentsChris Found has provided reports on both ofthis year’s golf tournaments. The visitor canclick on the Events menu button, and then onPast to select the reports from another newpull-down menu.Discussion ForumSince its inception, the Discussion Forum hasresided on the WFP Consulting web site—with the intention of moving it to the actualOld Scarborians site. That move became moreurgent this in August, when WFP Consulting’sweb hosting company installed newserver software (Microsoft FrontPage 2002Extensions), in which the discussion forumsupport contains a bug that prevents properformatting of messages. (For the technicallyinclined, this is only a problem on UNIX servers;the Old Scarborians site is hosted on aWindows 2000 server.) Everything is nowmoved over, with all the existing messagesmoved to an archive.Minor Change in AppearanceThose still stuck with a 640x480 display (veryold system) or possibly 800x600 (fairly oldsystem) will appreciate the fact that the OldScarborians banner is only about half as highas before and the navigation menu, on the left,is now narrower, with smaller buttons. Asusual, my recommendation is to configureyour display for the highest resolution it supports.SummaryBy the time you read this (November), moreadditions (prefects’ photos, drama photos,etc.) will have been made to the web site.Bill Potts (1946-55)WebmasterCENTENARY EVENTSThe Centenary of the MunicipalSchool/ High School forBoys 1902-2002For those of you who missed the Centenaryevents this year, the next jubilee year will be2052.I don’t expect to be present, having attendedthe celebrations in 1952 as a pupil and havingorganised the Centenary events this year.I remember clearly the fiftieth anniversarywhen a service was held in the Queen StreetCentral Hall and was followed by the SchoolSpeech Day the next day in the same place.We have copies of the programmes for bothevents in our archives. Little did we think inthose days that by the time the Centenaryarrived, the School would be a distant memorythough the quality of the education andthe school life it offered remains the goal ofadministrators and parents today.This year we marked the actual date of theopening on January 5 th 1902 of the MunicipalSchool with a formal Dinner attended by theMayor of Scarborough, who was one of thespeakers. The dinner was attended by 56members many of whom travelled to Scarboroughfrom other parts of the UK to mark theoccasion. John Webster (1944-55) from BritishColumbia was the member who travelledfurthest for the event. Many of the attendees

attended the morning service at St Mary’sChurch, Scarborough the next day and wereacknowledged and welcomed by the Vicar ofScarborough.In June we held the Centenary weekend basedon the Palm Court Hotel. We began with areception and supper on the Friday evening7 th June, which was attended by about 100members and spouses and partners. We werealso honoured to have the Deputy Mayor ofScarborough and her husband as our guests.The dinner the next evening, Saturday 8 th Juneproduced an attendance of 162 and it was alively evening that went on well into the nextday. Later the same day, Sunday, we had aquiet lunch when 70 members and guestsattended.Overall, the weekend was a great success andwe received only positive comments from theattendees. Gary Watson (1948-53) from NewZealand was the furthest traveller though wehad Harold Jordan (1943-51) from British Columbia,Peter Wood (1941-50) from Chicagoand Peter Mole (1951-57) from Long IslandNY.Within the weekend, Chris Found organised aclass of ‘51 reunion, which was supported by15 members.All three events were staged at the PalmCourt Hotel who supported us superbly andwho gave us space at the hotel for an exhibitionof photos and memorabilia which wasorganised by Mike Bowman and contributedto by many members. It was a major collectionof material containing some real treasuresand it contributed greatly to a very enjoyableweekend.Many thanks to all of you who supported theweekend and many more thanks to the peoplewho helped me organise it. I hope the weekendin 2052 is as enjoyable.Peter Robson (1945-53)Secretary8FROM HERE AND THEREAlan Bridgewater (1933-40)writes from PocklingtonI have just received the latest issue and congratulateyou on the ‘production’. It musthave been a mammoth task !I see John Hall suggests a data base for themembers' entries. If no-one else volunteers,could you give me some idea of what is required.I may be able to help. I am alwayslooking for some use for the computer andthis research might be useful to me (or mybrain!!!) as well as the OSA. If a ‘file card’ typeof program is needed, could you suggest one.Editor’s note: Alan’s Index of Summer Timesfrom November 1999 to May 2002 appears asa supplement in the centre of this issue.Adrian Casey (1951-59)writes from SurbitonI joined the OSA on leaving school, but didnot keep up. I contacted John Forster viawww.friendsReunited.co.uk who mentionedthe web site and the newsletter. Unfortunately,being disabled (arthritis etc.), I can nolonger travel. My contemporaries knew that Ijoined the Immigration Service in 1960, andspent 1962-1973 at Heathrow Terminal 3. Thatplace was variously described as ‘the plumport, where only the cream of the IS canserve,’ ‘you are serving there as a punishment,you're lucky you weren't sacked,’ ‘we'redesperate to get IOs to go there,’ ‘we're sorry,but there's a waiting list and you must awaityour turn,’ and ‘you're too badly needed therefor us to let you escape to a quiet channelport. Relief at Dover? You must be joking!’In 1973 I escaped to Prison Industries nearhere at Tolworth Tower, then after the sackings,suspensions, and (abandoned) fraudtrials I was rewarded with a move in 1985 to anice quiet sinecure in Fire Safety at HomeOffice HQ at Queen Anne's Gate. The quiet

9were thinking of sending me something butjust couldn’t be bothered!Reference John Hall's suggestion on p13 of thelast issue, plus ‘don't look at me!’ and your‘Nor me!’, I would not mind having a bash atsetting up a database. That is, unless youknow of somebody else who is doing so. Atone time I worked in the Record Services areaof the Home Office…Some comments on mentions of my name inthe May 2002 Summer Times.John Forster recalls (page 9) that I accompaniedhim and others to an election meeting atwhich our then MP, Sir Alexander Spearman,was present. However, we disagree about whoreferred to him as ‘Mr Spearmint’, because Ithink it was John!period lasted precisely 4 days; then there wasthe Bradford City football ground fire. Theother one I remember was King’s Cross Undergroundfire. In 1989 I began 18 monthsenjoying myself in IT Division. After a deadlyboring job back in QAG I took early retirementon medical grounds in 1992. I am currentlywriting my memoirs, working title "TIGERSAND ALL THAT".Good luck with your stint as Chief Masochistor Editor! I have been in that chair with variousnewsletters on too many deadline days,wondering where all the promised contributionshad got to. I have no wish to do so again,I can assure you!My CV in that respect includes: Bulletin —SCS(Immigration staff) journal; Home Office Echo—Founding Editor; Prindus News (HO PrisonIndustries official journal)—Assistant Editor;MZ Rider-MZ Riders club—Editor; OpenShop—Conservative Trades Unionists newsletter—Editor;Newsletter—Wordperfect UserGroup of the UK—Founding Editor.I once ran a Special Apathy Edition of Echo andgot a postbag full of letters that all said theyThe incident of remarking, ‘Ça pue’ [Thatstinks], is true; certainly, I was ejected by theassistant for “manque de politesse” [lack of courtesy]on one occasion, and only went back inwhen Joey ambled over and suggested Iapologise. However, what I actually said was,‘Ça pue comme des… (which was an awful lotstronger!)On page 21 Rick Ware recalls an incident atRAF St Athan in 1959 when we were practisingfiring Bren guns. One member of 739Squadron ATC did fire off a whole magazinein one go, deliberately. I was certainly not theculprit. I remember returning, by arrangementwith the range warrant officer, on a separateoccasion to fire other weapons. The range waswell away from aircraft, and a pilot wouldhave to ‘buzz’ the range to get shot at!As to John Hall’s recollections (page 14) aboutA Midsummer Night’s Dream, didn’t Eaglen“Eggy” Sheen, and not Richard Willcox, playthe part of Puck? I remember Charles Hall’sperformance as Bottom particularly well, becauseI played Peter Quince, and how EricRice used to harangue Charles for overacting.John Forster has kindly lent me his copy of theprogramme, which shows that Donald Hell-

10muth was the producer, while ‘Samuel Rockinghorse’was credited with the setting andlighting.Among the things that went wrong duringperformances were Hippolyta’s (Patricia Merryweather)necklace breaking and slippingdown underneath her costume to land with a‘clunk’ on the steps at the front of the stage.Also, for my character, I used an ancient pairof spectacles with the lenses removed, which Iexchanged with my own glasses kept in a bagof props that I kept in the pocket of my apron.I was sitting on the edge of the stage, bemoaningthe absence of Bottom, when it occurred tome that there was something different aboutthe audience since my previous scene. Theyshould have looked to me like an indistinctfuzzy blur, instead they were in sharp focus. Ihad forgotten to change over from my own20 th Century glasses! However, this meantthat I could see where the ‘missing’ necklacelay. I strolled down the steps, picked up thenecklace and returned to the stage. Eric Rice,sitting in the audience, wondered why I remainedstanding with my back to the audiencefor such a long time. I was franticallychanging into the costume specs and poppingmine with Hippolyta’s necklace into my bag.In Quince’s opening address to the nobles, heis supposed to have difficulty with his lines,so I arranged for the prompter, PeterNewham, not to prompt me at this point. Inevitably,there came the night when I reallydid forget the next line and I wandered allover the speech, getting into a dreadful mess,before I found my place. Everybody but methought it was a piece of brilliant acting.John also mentions how we used to makepaper kettles, filled them with water, anddrop them out of the window of Room 17. Ashe describes, this was a risky business, becausein the fraction of a second that the missiletook to drop, someone might walk outthrough the door immediately below. Thelower halves of the sash windows werescrewed to the frame to prevent them beingopened, but it did not take long to unscrewthem. However, normally we slid the top halfdown.I was interested to read the text of Bob (‘Gus’)Watson’s speech. Principally I remember himfor instilling in me a lifelong aversion to thepoetry of William Wordsworth. After onlyone 5 th Form term of WW I only disliked hispoems; then Gus said we were so bad atWordsworth that he was going to make us doa whole extra term on the subject! I can’t rememberbeing put off any other author forlife. I recall Gus on the verandah of the pavilionat Oliver’s Mount, haranguing the assembled5 th and 6 th and telling me to stop beingobstreperous (for muttering that it was a totalwaste of my time to be forced to play cricket,or rugger, games I was no good at, when Iwanted to do long distance running). He mentionedthat there was only a small staff room,which was on the first floor. Of course, Modern6A did not even have a form room buthad to store our belongings in a cupboard ona stairs landing.I suspected that the variety of rugger I hadplayed at Lakanal would not go down well atSBHS. However, one day Keith Dutton wasoverseeing the ‘hopeless’ match and decidedto keep joining in. Once, he snatched hold ofthe ball and ran down the pitch shouting overhis shoulder, “Tackle! Tackle!” At this, I tookhim at his word and ran towards him at greatspeed, launching myself in a flying tackle. Forreasons best known to himself, KD was notlooking in my direction; while I was in midair,in that split-second he turned to face meand my shoulder took him full in the stomach.He went down hard, backwards, and I somersaultedover him. We then gathered aroundthe fallen figure, whose eyes were closed andhe was not breathing. “You’ve ****ing killedthe b****r,” was the general reaction. Fortunately,he revived after a minute or so. Wecarried him to the touchline, where he spentthe rest of the afternoon sitting quietly and

11recovering.Bob Watson’s mention of Alan Wilson remindsme of a 1957-58 Modern 6B jape thatwent wrong, but in a good way. We hadheard that Mr Wilson (known for some reasonas “Nervous Neddy”) had just got marriedwithout telling anybody at school. Hewas due to take the first lesson after lunch, sowe drew a wedding congratulations greetingon the board addressed simply to “Sir”. Mr AE Jones, the kindly history master, was themaster on duty that lunchtime, and hestrolled in on us to make sure we were notdoing anything untoward (like selling theschool building to the Americans). He tookone look at the blackboard and exclaimed,“Bless my soul! However did you know?”Then he sat down and told us about his newwife, whom he had married very quietly onlya few days earlier. We didn’t have the heartto tell him that it was intended for Alan Wilson.He also told us what satisfaction he hadgained from being a teacher and recommendedit to us as a career. After he left theroom, we cleaned the board. What Alan Wilsongot instead was a class obsessed with thesubject of marriage, as we steered the lessonunerringly in that direction.Who was the master cast by Chas Rice as theeponymous villain in what is known asShakespeare’s “Scottish play”? Was it Donald‘Ducky’ Hellmuth? ‘Samuel Rockinghorse’was notorious for his use of dim lighting,which was an advantage during one performanceof the play. The cast used to rely rathertoo heavily on being notified by the call boyto turn up on stage when required. There wasa banqueting scene involving quite a fewcharacters. When the scene began, there was acertain dearth of bods round the table. Thosemissing were still playing cards in a corner ofthe library, because the call boy had beenunable to find them. Chas dug them out andthey gradually slipped into their places undercover of near-darkness. In their absence, theother players demonstrated their unfamiliaritywith the play by inserting the dialogue ofthe missing actors. Unfortunately, they(Ducky included) got the wrong scene and sothe conversation was a mess of non sequiturs.The headmaster was in the audience thatnight, and Chas asked him what he thoughtof the play. He remarked that in one scenethere seemed to be more people on at the endthan there were at the beginning. (Joey wasrumoured to turn off his deaf aid whenwatching the school play.) The three witcheswere played by (in numerical order) DavidCorfield, myself, and Charles Hall. The ‘fire’beneath the cauldron was partly constructedof rough-hewn lengths of wood nailed togetherand our costumes consisted of raggedold net curtains. We were forever gettingsnagged on the nails, and we had an audibleripping time getting free. Charles was onceheard to use the F-word! (The First Witch hasa speech about a sailor, master of the Tiger,off to Aleppo, who will be plagued by tempests.I mention this, because in 1961 I was onduty aboard a storm-tossed ferry, in a cagesurrounded by six huge tigers!) (Editor’snote: See page 34)Act IV Scene 1, Double, double, toil and trouble(etc.), time for the Science Sixth to showoff their lack of expertise with pyrotechnics.At various points we expected small puffs ofsmoke, but nothing happened. The smokepowder was supposed to be ignited with aStrand Electric electrical fuse wired to a remotebattery. For reasons best known tothemselves, our technicians were using wetLeclanché cells not known for their ability tokeep a charge. With only one cue for smokeleft, somebody decided to link all the cellsand all the smoke pots together for one lasteffect. The pots were also overfilled withsmoke powder.As I leaned close to the cauldron, I heard aloud fizzing, and looked down. Then Ileaped back as a six foot lilac and yellowflame shot out of the cauldron. It only justmissed me, and I felt the searing heat. I fin-

12Maritime MotifsSouthley RoadSouth MoltonNorth Devon EX36 4BLTel / Fax +44 (0)1769 572727We are pleased to providequality Sweaters/ Pullovers in100% Lambswool or Wool/Acrylic to members of the OldScarborians Associationworldwide.Please ring Martime Motifs orDavid Fowler, for details andprices.ished the scene with my face covered in sootand ash and my nose stinging from the sulphurfumes. When I came off, everybodythought I had been burned, but it was only thesmell of singed crepe hair.I remember with affection most of the masterswho taught me. I used to be terrified of Bon,but he was always a good sport, and he admittedthat he was happier teaching the olderboys. Mr Anthony, who taught German andonce invited Mick O’Neill and me round to hisflat for coffee just before he got married. Brad,deputy head and the only master without adegree, also President of the InternationalYouth Hostels Association, who seemed tohate smaller boys and only got on with theseniors. Chas (I never knew why he was calledthat) Rice, whose opinion of Billy Binder wasnot repeatable, and who tried to persuade meto stay on for another term so I could play Shylockin The Merchant of Venice because he feltI had the face for it. Hap Taylor, Flight LieutenantRAFVR, my CO at ATC. Pike Richardson,of course, and not just because he livedacross the road from me. Both he and Joey,when speaking to me, would take my sleevebetween thumb and fingers. “∏r 2 h” [the volumeof a cone?] always makes me think of himand his room of wooden spheres, cones andcubes. “Zenna” Potts, George Arthur “Cozzie”Costain, “Pop” Francis, and many more, ofcourse.Ted Lancaster (1949-54)writes from Stourport-on-SevernRegarding the photograph entitled ‘By the SpaWall 1950's’ it was taken in the spring of 1954.It was not by the Spa wall but on a park benchunder the Valley Bridge!David Horsley (1957-62)writes from ScarboroughSince leaving school I have been in the familybutchery business, DJ Horsley Ltd. I cannotbelieve how the time has passed.Kenneth Mills (1957-64)writes from ColchesterFollowing receipt of volume No. 41 May 2002

13it looks as though I have been amiss in failingto advise you of my new e-mail address. I hadbeen having great problems with MSN updatingtheir system which eventually meant Iwasn't even able to access my e-mail. Plus,getting through to their help desk became anightmare, hence the change.Brian Eves (1951-1958)writes from LondonI left school in July, 1958 and joined the MetropolitanPolice as a Junior Cadet. I servedwith the Met for the next 37 years retiring in1997 as Detective Sergeant, Special Operations,Intelligence Branch. My wife and I haverecently celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary.We have a son and daughter who areboth married and we have three grandchildren.I remember my days at school withgratitude. With the benefit of hindsight I nowrealise how lucky I was to have had the'Westwood Experience'.David Abram (1954-60)writes from WillenhallI’ve had an assorted life!Student Engineer Apprentice at RR in Derby,then through Marketing, Consultancy, WorksManagement, Mining in Africa. Finally as aTeacher in Business Studies.A heart attack in 2000 caused early retirementand I’m now in the Midlands. I'm determinedto eventually return!Mark Carrington (1971-73)writes from Maryland USAI'm delighted to have found your web sitehaving spent my sixth form years at the ScarboroughHigh School for Boys. I plan on visitingthe site regularly.I'm delighted at the prospect of joining theOSA. Bill, thanks for the reminder of howquickly the 33 intervening years have passedsince my fifteenth!(Bill Potts had written: “I note that the firstepisode of Monty Python's Flying Circuswas broadcast on your fifteenth birthday”)David Andrews (1958-63)writes from LeicesterCurrently working as Ordnance Survey's ProductionGroup Manager for Leicestershire,Derbyshire and Rutland.Peter Fawcett (1940-46)writes from HalifaxHaving just received OSA Summer Times I wasprompted to have a look at the website(Fascinating!) Re:Photo "Prefects 1950" I thinkunknown 6, front row right, may well be as Irecall, a studious lad called LISTER, maybe"Mick". Hope this helps and good wishes toall.Mike Lester (1949-57)writes from Staintondale,ScarboroughCongratulations on an excellent centenaryedition of Summer Times. I have been dippingin and reading it all from cover to cover. H.W. Marsden's account of the founding of theschool was particularly apt at this time. It isstrange to see how some people's memoriesare almost exactly the same as my own, yetothers have a different slant on people andevents.My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed the CentenaryDinner at the Palm Court on June 8thand the organisers are to be congratulated ona thoroughly enjoyable and successful event.Caroline is now able to put faces to some ofthe people she has been hearing about foryears, but never met.It was interesting to see Frank Thompson'saccount of doing a ‘Full Circle’ and comingback to teach in the same building, even thesame room, in which he had been taught. Idid exactly the same thing, but previously Ihad only been teaching in Whitby, nothing asexotic as East Africa.

14Rick Ware's memories of playing in a bandtakes me back to John Pitts and the MelodyMakers, signature tune Crazy Rhythm. Weplayed at various youth clubs and similarvenues around the district. John played piano,and I played various things such as trumpet,trombone, double bass and tuba, but not all atthe same time! John became a training collegelecturer and wrote one of the standard recordertutors, used in thousands of schools. Iremember one Melody Maker gig that we didat the North Riding Training College, wellknown as a virgin's retreat (and that was onlythe staff!). We were escorted on and off thepremises for fear that we might corrupt thefemale students ..... as if! Arthur Costain didnot approve of these dance-banding activities,but we all got a huge amount of pleasure andmusical experience out of it.On a point of musical accuracy re. PeterNewhams memories of the song that wassung regarding the follically challenged "Dai"Liddicott. The music is actually the last part,the galop, from Rossini's William Tell Overture,also associated with the Lone Ranger.Julian Wilson (1970-72)writes from LondonI was a student of the SBHS during its finaltwo years at the beginning of 1970. I havelived in London since 1985.Please keep me informed of future Londonbased reunions.John Sheader (1966-73)writes from ScarboroughI came across your web site quite by accidentand have been patiently working my waythrough it for over an hour. Memories floodingback of nick names of teachers etc. I amliving in Scarborough now having been awayfor many years and would like to becomemore involved. I am 46 now and was at theschool between 1966 and 1973. I wonder ifyou have any of my old class mates on yourbooks. I must admit to having lost touch withthem all over the years. I probably have a fewphotos tucked away too if you are interested.(Bill Potts responded: Thanks for the feedback,John. Now's the time to move to thenext step, which you can do by joining. At £10for a lifetime membership, it's a terrific bargain.)Rowland Bruce (1949-54)writes from AustraliaG'day David,I'm pretty sure you must be the DG Fowler,with whom I vied for Chemistry marks beforeI left to live in York in December 1954. If so,fancy getting in contact? VK5OUEditor’s note: I did, and I recall that Rowlandwas always a keen amateur radio buff. Fromhis call sign it looks as if he still is!John Harker (1950-1956)writes from NewcastleWhat a joy to receive the latest edition of SummerTimes where every page is a sheer delight.Membership of the Association must be one ofthe best bargains ever.I note that one Dug Harris wonders if I am thevery same with whom he enjoyed a cyclingholiday in Scotland and the answer is yes,even though, as he points out, my dates arebit strange. This is due to my spending a coupleof years at Archbishop Holgate's in Yorkbefore arriving at SBHS. As he points out, theholiday was a massive success even thoughthe weather was pretty violent at times. I rememberthe three of us—Neil Hunter, whosadly died recently was with us—strugglingagainst a gale across Rannoch Moor only to beblown over at the top. As we laid there in aheap, members of a fancy cycling club goingthe other way stopped and, totally ignoringall the blood and gore, asked if our spokeswere okay. There was also the time in GlencoeYouth Hostel when a fair young wench puther boots in the ovens to dry on the previousnight only to find that when the stove was

15turned up the following morning, they werecooked to a turn. Happy days indeed.I note a query as to the location of one TerryVokes who left in 1956. I have an addressfrom which an occasional Christmas cardappears. Rather than publish this—folk are abit sensitive about such things—perhaps theinterested party might like to get in touchwith me. I seem to remember that Terry studiedEconomic History at the LSE and, after arather unsuccessful foray into teaching, hetook up Cost Accountancy and worked forboth Ford and Dunlop before becoming theAccountant for a banana firm in the Canaries.Here, his bungalow was at one end of aswimming pool and his office was at theother and he is the only chap I know whoused to swim to work! He retired back to thiscountry—with a big bag of gold, or so therumour has it—and taught for a while at aCollege in Wolverhampton.The much valued contributions in SummerTimes from Bill Potts Junior call to mind verymany happy memories of his dad who to mymind was one of the most inspiring teachers Iever had. In order to bring Physics alive, heused to purchase a deal of ex-army equipment—transmittersand what have you—andwe all spent many happy hours dismantlingthese in the hope of finding out how theyworked. This sort of activity must have inspireda colleague of mine who, when wewere at Durham, required a device whichwould switch on his electric blanket—he hadwealthy parents —when we were out indulging.Rather than lashing out on a commercialjob at say £3, he opted for an ex-army deviceat say £1. This worked brilliantly the onlysnag being that it came from a bomb and wasonly capable of working once!All happy memories—do keep up the goodwork.Harvey Pickup writes fromAustraliaOn the matter of the photographs of TheAlchemist in 1968, I can perhaps help a bit. Inthe cast photo, the second from left at thefront is Alison Bartliff (as surmised by anothercorrespondent). In the production staffphoto the person in the back row on the rightis Simon Ward. The person in the front rowon the right is Mick Waterhouse and to theleft of him is Mel Hogg.Other than that, I'm stumped for the moment,even though I was in the production!I now live in Oz, and my school photos arestill at home in Scarborough. Next time Icome back (probably October) I'll scoutthrough them. I know I have a copy of thecast photo in the album and it is possible. Iwrote everyone's name on the back.CAPTAIN Eddy Baines(1946-51) writes fromM.V. Frontier Duchess(Latitude 18 Degrees37.5 MinutesNorth; Longtitude71 Degrees49.35 MinutesEast. Some 62miles West SouthWest from Bombay)I have my SummerTimes outhere with me andmy, how this magazine has taken off. It reallymakes good reading.I remember Monsieur le Brun telling us thatL’arbetier was the French word for Crossbowman.Remember that John?The year before last my doorbell rang andthere on the threshold was Terry Shaw pluswife and two daughters. He had come fromCalgary where he lives.He is a retired Major from the CanadianArmy. I have the school photographs from1946 and 1950 on the wall in the dining roomand he videotaped each row of the boys. Heis in close contact with Tidder Allen and

16Brian Reeves who both live over there. Hetold me that I put him on the Empress of Canadawhen he first emigrated out there but I donot remember that.In 1966 I was attending a Management Seminarin Brighton. Harold Wilson was in powerand he had introduced new working methodsin all industries and it was to change the shippingindustry forever with the new concept ofintegrated crews.However, on the first evening, myself and afew others walked into a pub and Lo and Beholdsitting there was Maurice Blake. We bothsaid, “What are you doing here?”He was then the Press Officer for the town ofBrighton. Many contemporaries will rememberhim and his soccer skills.We were both in the under 12’s under DaddyFrancis. We still keep in contact.Whatever happened to Icky Moore? BurfyBuck? Pepper and Webster?, (you couldn’tsay one without the other)‘Garty’ Thomas` of GT Garages is retired inFrance. Where are Gordon Young, JohnGledhill and of course Senrab the Magician?(Barnes spelled backwards)They really were Sunny days but when youleft that school you were literate, numericallyadept, ready for life and ready for an employer.It is a sad fact that today’s youngsters, in themain, are anything but ready.I am eternally grateful to that school for preparingme for my voyage through life.Frank Stephenson (1931-36)writes from MaltonCongratulations on another superb edition.You get better and better. Many thanks for thesplendid article on Grandfather Stephensonand the Desoutter. I regret the Mark 2 wentthe same way as the Mark 1...straight into thedeck and then into the wheelie-bin.Nice to know that Eggy Boyes is still with us.We share a distinction. He was always top ofthe class and I was always bottom.I read Tom Walker’s obituary, and am surehis sister Mary would be pleased to receive acopy of that Summer Times if that can be arranged.Mary met Max Dease when she was in theWAAF and he was in the RAAF. Max was therear gunner of a Lancaster and was shot downon what should have been their last trip, adodgy one to Schweinfurt, on which thirtyeightaircraft were lost. Max and I met at DulagLuft, the German Air Interrogation centre,and when we had exchanged our pedigreeshe told me that he was engaged to be marriedto a girl who lived in Scarborough. We stayedtogether in Stalag Luft 3 and through variousother interesting places until repatriation.Max and Mary were married at St Martin’sand a riotous reception was held at the RamshillHotel. Sadly Max died last year.I have passed OSA's web address to Mary'sgrandaughter, but just to be sure, a copy bypost would be great.Mary Dease writes fromMount Pleasant, WesternAustraliaHow very kind of you to send me a copy ofSummer Times at the request of Frank Stephenson.It was greatly appreciated by myself andmy family.The “Reminiscence” by Gordon Medd wassuperb; it captured my brother’s spirit so well;it brought both tears and laughter and evokedmemories of the pranks that he used to playon me and the fun that we had.This journal will be treasured by myself andfamily and I thank you so very much forsending it to me. I am writing to Steve andGordon to thank them for their parts in thistotally unexpected pleasure.

17Eric Thomlinson writes fromOntario CanadaGreetings from an old "Scarborian"I can see no immediate benefit in membershipbut wanted to say "hello".I attended SBHS during the early Forties. I'ma proud graduate of our old School, Brotherin-Lawof Dennis [D.F.] Saunders, anotherSBHS old timer, one of the schools finest Students& Athletes. I won High Jump and Discusin 1942 (Big Deal!!). I do have some oldphotos and a copy of the "Scarborian" issue28 November 1942, to remind me fondly ofmy times, friends, experiences and learningat SBHS.Peter Newham (1954-61)writes from NorthamptonI am writing somewhat belatedly to say thatas a “new boy” Ithoroughly enjoyedthe London Dinner,at which, despite myanticipated misgivingsat not knowingmore than 1 or 2people I was made tofeel very welcome. Ihope that numbersare such that the dinner does continue forthose of us for whom attendance at Scarboroughis not so easy, though I must try tomake the effort in the future.I have taken the liberty to pen some furtherrecollections for your ‘editorial consideration’for inclusion in Summer Times as an attachmentto this e-mail, and must congratulatethe Association on the last Issue, whichwas very good. Whilst readers obviouslyidentify with the years of their own contemporaries,you continue to cover a broad andinteresting spectrum.Editor’s note: Peter’s jottings appear onpage 31.Robert Purse (1961-68)writes from Fenny ComptonContacts welcome, especially from the happyfew in Upper VIth Science 1967/8.Paddy Ireland (1944-52)writes from NSW AustraliaYour web site has done something remarkablein bridging the fifty years since I leftSBHS.I went off into the navy to learn Russian,which I did at full stretch in very talentedcompany. I then went on to Caius, intendingto read French and German, but found myGerman was not up to scratch (perhaps toomuch time had been wasted with “We willstop now and go on after school, bad boys”).So I dropped German and went back to Russian,a far more welcoming department. MyFrench started off with a mark of gammadouble minus, so there was nowhere to gobut up.After Caius, my guidance systems went haywireand I first found myself working mainlyas a translator at the British Embassy in Moscow.One of my colleagues there was an Australian,a brilliant Kremlinologist, who suggestedI might apply for a job at his homeinstitution in Canberra. I filled out the formsand forgot about it, since I had only a B.A. Somy next move was to Australia, where Ispent the next forty years teaching Russian(and learning it), with several spells back inMoscow. One piece of Binder advice towhich I paid too little attention was to pick alanguage to learn that was spoken in a countrythat it is pleasant to visit. Another to mewas to become a lawyer; since he regardedme as a barbarian, I have to take that as anythingbut a compliment.To teach Russian in Australia is probablyabout as sensible as teaching Indonesian inAlaska, but I had at my university a goodfifty colleagues working in the Soviet and

18East European field, all trying to work outhow the Soviet Union ticked, until it was discoveredthat after all there was no balancewheel. So a small language department was inno sense isolated.I have never thought about whether anyone atSBHS influenced the way I went about myjob. I had always found Brown’s scorn a bettergoad than Billy’s bullying (in the middleschool) or Bon’s costive hostility. If anyonedid, it was probably Hovington, teaching Englishgrammar in the fifth form as if at weapontraining. Not long ago, a student told me shelearnt more French in my Russian I than inFrench I. Exaggeration notwithstanding, thatshould give me a place in the shade of Binder.I retired five years ago, but kept half a room,space becoming more plentiful as staff werethinned out, together with a few jobs nowcoming to an end or becoming irksome. Mywife has led me to live on a small property inthe Burra valley, south of Canberra. I have ason in the Queensland Department of the Environmentand a daughter in the QueenslandDepartment of Education. (Australians willrecognise these terms as oxymorons.) One hascare of mines and oceans, the other of genderand cultural equity. I have hopes that theirprofessions will one day help their fatherthrough the pearly gates.Ron Quaife (1932-37) writesfrom CoshamI have some memories which have not had amention before. I hope that some, if not all areacceptable. I would like to hear how long the‘hot pennies’ tradition (item below) was continued.I regret that I was unable to attend the Centenaryevents but I had just returned fromvisiting my daughter who lives in the Algarve.In the awaiting post was an appointmentfor my lady companion to go into hospitalfor an operation. This covered the sameweekend as the OSA events.Editor’s note: Ron’s jottings appear on page32/33Dick Hartley (1950-58)writes from HindheadI am just picking up the pieces after fiveweeks holiday in Southern Africa—also thereason why I missed the London lunch.I am sorry I cannot help you further with thephotographs I sent earlier in the year. Theoriginals were sent—unbeknown to me—tothe people who were putting together a verymuch plagiarised version of ‘This is your Life’to mark my retirement.Thank you for sending the copies of the photographsfrom John Found. They were veryinteresting—particularly the one where I amholding the cup. I am sure it will not havegone unnoticed that here is a cricket teamwith only nine players! Thereby hangs a tale!We fielded first and one of the oppositionbatsmen played a shot in the air, somewherebetween wide mid-on and deep mid wicket.Both Max Broderick and Colin Hurd ran forthe catch and arrived at the same time. I, ascaptain, should have shouted the name of oneof them to catch it but in a long moment ofmaximum indecision, said nothing. The resultwas a fearful collision which resulted in Maxbeing knocked out and Colin suffering a verybad cut over his eye. Amazingly, Colin caughtthe ball and managed to hang on to it. Bothwere taken to hospital and although we onlyhad nine men to bat we managed to win thegame.Happy memories and I think Colin Hurd stillbears the scars.Derrick Craven (1933-1938)writes from YorkI thoroughly enjoyed reading the latest issueof Summer Times and although I do not recognisemany names, something always seemsto spark off memories—good ones, I mean.This time it was the mention of Masindi by

19Frank Thompson. I often stayed at theMasindi Hotel during my years in East Africa.The first time was in 1954 when I was enroute to Nimule on the Sudan border, viaButiaba, Pakwach and the Nile. I stayed atMasindi more frequently after I was transferredfrom Dar es Salaam to Kampala, and in1962 after the floods when Lake Victoria rose28 inches above normal, and Lake Albert andthe Nile were also flooded. I inspected thedamage at Butiaba pier, which had beenwashed away, then travelled by launch toinspect Pakwach and Rhino Camp on theNile, stepping off the launch onto the roof ofthe Godown at Rhino Camp.Masindi was a useful place to break a journeyto Northern Uganda. On one occasion I leftthe Hotel to travel to Paraa Lodge andMurchison Falls. Driving along a narrowtrack with tall elephant grass on either side, Irounded a bend and came to an abrupt stopabout two yards from the rear of a very largeelephant. Jumbo was not pleased and I waitedsometime before I risked starting the car andreversing some distance from the elephant.He indicated how angry he was anddisappeared into the grass. On my return toMasindi I related my adventure in the barwhile drinking a cold Tusker. The Managertold me that two men had done the samething a few weeks earlier, but they did notstop in time and bumped into the hind legs ofthe elephant, who, being somewhat surprised,sat down on the bonnet of the car and that didnot do it any good. I did not find out how themen extricated themselves.Mike Watson (1944-49)writes from YorkSurely the unknown in the photo onpage 65 vol. 41 is a young Les. Hartzig?No doubt he will be in touch.John Rice writes about the Pirates ofPenzance, Happy days, I was one of thePirates and I still remember that in theinterval between the Saturday matineeand the evening performance we all hadtea in the kitchen, having broughtsandwiches. There was some discussion aboutthe football results and a bet was made thatsome of us daren't go for a paper. The upshotwas that myself and I think, MarmadukeVickerman, yes it's true, he was always Vick,went up the slope to the station corner, incostume for an Evening Press. It was asomewhat murky evening and the thingwhich stands out was how little notice wastaken of two quite tall youths dressed in bumfreezer jackets and white kilts (skirts?),complete with swords. The last time I spokewith Vick was 1952 in a queue at the open aircinema in Moascar garrison in the CanalZone. Never saw him, it was too dark, but thevoice gave him away.When he returned from the army, Hov was‘given’ 3L, we were classed as a somewhatdifficult form and Hov was to lick us intoshape. Very quickly we came to respect oneanother, and by half term 3L was back tonormal. I last saw Hov in 1952 and asked himhow it was that he had been our form masterfor 3 years running and he told me it wasbecause he had asked for us. In our fifth year,School Certificate English literature, heannounced that he had read the syllabus andwe would have to manage without poetry as‘it was slush and he wasn't prepared to teachit.’I've rambled on, thanks very much to all ofyou for a great job, I enclose a cheque to gointo the kitty towards expenses for the next

20100 years. Sadly, I am not in the countrywhen the Centenary celebrations take place,bad management somewhere!Editor’s note: Mike may remember the veryyoung SBHS pupil, and budding Editor,shown in the photo on the previous page.At the time Mike & I were both members ofScarborough Amateur Radio Club.John Moorhouse (1951-59)writes from King’s LynnI was hoping to attend the centenaryweekend and even more so the gathering ofthe ‘Class of 51’.Unfortunately the standardisation meetingsfor the AQA A5 French (then later the A2French) preclude my attending. I have beenan A level Senior Examiner for twelve yearsnow. Many thanks for volume 40 of SummerTimes: all sorts of memories come floodingback. Please let me know if you would likethem committing to print in such acontribution as that of my exactcontemporary Leonard Norton-Wayne.Editor’s note: Yes please John!Here are few in note form:• In 1U we had ‘Billy’ Binder as our FrenchTeacher—and I’m sure my ex class-mateswill remember that, exasperated with myexcessive enthusiasm to answer all hisquestions, he placed me beside the swivelblackboard and I was to write out theanswers while the rest of the classattempted to utter them—I am still there,next to a swivel blackboard writing French!• At the end of that year Norman Stoddardasked the supposedly two smallest boys inthe school (viz. Leonard Norton-Wayne(1A?) and myself ) to blind box as a funevent during the school boxingchampionships telling us both that theother had already said ‘yes’—mustn’t letthe side down! In the practice down in thegym I could hear the heavier Leonardpadding around and I hit the poor ladseveral times. However, in the event therewas so much noise that I no longer had thisadvantage. Apparently while I boxed‘comme il faut’, Leonard resembled awhirling Dervish—and Norman Stoddardkept prodding both of us with a boxingglove on the end of a pole. The bout endedwhen Leonard caught me as I advancedwith the full might and speed of one of hisswirls. To the great amusement of all I wascatapulted backwards, virtually knockedout, if not brained. Not a sensible pursuit!• Back to French! In the sixth form LesBrown took care of the language work(eternal gratitude to him) while a newteacher, Alan Wilson, coped with theliterature. 25 years later I came across himagain, when he was head of languages atCulford School, Bury-St-Edmunds and Iwas oral examiner for his ‘O’ and ‘A’ levelcandidates!He greeted me warmly, and confessed thathe had never had another pupil like me in allhis career. I think it was meant as acompliment….Dennis Petch (1925-31)writes from LichfieldI was most interested to see on the back of arecent edition of Summer Times, photographsof the three headmasters who were in chargewhilst I was in school. There are probably notmany surviving who were there during thewhole of this period. Three that I recall wereJack Pearson, Len Halstead, and HaroldWheeler.Most of the others that I knew joined after theone year of Freddie Mayor that I had in 2bwhere Mr. Allen was form master. Many ofmy friends were lost in the war.Having moved in August from WelwynGarden City, I’m still sorting through oldpapers and relics of the past that havesurfaced, among them several old editions of

21the magazine.As a civil engineer my work took me tovarious parts of the country but in the 1947I settled in Welwyn Garden City with mynew family and worked there until 1975when I retired. We stayed on afterretirement until August last year when wemoved to Shenstone.Thank you to you and your colleagues forkeeping the Association going so long andfor the much improved magazine which Ilook forward to and enjoy reading. Iwould suggest that perhaps an item couldbe included telling those in far away placesof any changes to the town and itsamenities. I often wonder what ishappening to the old place…..Editor: It’s been an aim for many monthsDennis… when space permits!Stan Halliday (1949-54)writes from StowmarketRe the missing name on the 1950 SchoolChoir photo, I believe this is John (Jonny)Lumb. I seem to remember he didn’t finishhis stint at school, as the family went toCanada at some point.Another strong recollection of him was hisacquisition around the second or thirdform, of a girl friend possessed of a veryadvanced figure for her age, which led toconsiderable envy among his peers.OBITUARIESWilliam (Bill) Johnson(1933 to 1937)Bill Johnson died on April 3rd aged 81 inSouth Surrey, British Vancouver, Canada.His widow Mabel Johnson writes:“As you already know, Bill has been ill forsome time and in hospital for the last 3weeks.I am sorry to have to tell you that Bill diedin his sleep early Wednesday morningApril 3rd. It was a peaceful ending to hisillness. I am receiving support from ourchildren and grandchildren who are presentwith me. We will be having a memorialservice to remember Bill at our churchsoon.”John Cappleman(1952-57)Not a member of the Old Scarborians, buta past pupil of SBHS, plumbing and heatingengineer John Cappleman died in StCatherine's Hospice, Scarborough, in Juneafter battling with cancer since February.Mr Cappleman, 61, of Cayton, attendedGladstone Road Infants and JuniorSchools, and then the Boys' High Schoolfrom 1952 to 1957.On leaving school he was taken on as anapprentice with Scarborough plumbingfirm Reg. Dennis where he worked fornearly 30 years, eventually becoming apartner for 12 years.He decided to set up his own business inthe early 1980s and worked until he wastoo ill to do so.He was a former member of ScarboroughAmateur Radio Society.(Adapted from the Scarborough EveningNews obituary)ERIC GEORGE SIGSTON(1947-52)John Mann remembersIn October of lastyear I learned of thedeath of Eric Sigston.Both the dateand the place of hisdeath were unknown,although itwas thought that hehad died during theeighties, somewherein the South Pacific. This news brought to

22an end what had been a search for more thantwenty years for news of his whereabouts, butbegan an attempt to discover the details of histimes.I first became friendly with Eric in 1952, hislast year at school and myself in the Thirdyear. Eric came to the school at the age of 13years, in the 3 rd . Form. Despite our age differencewe found that we had much in common.A mutual interest in the Theatre and in Literaturewas a sufficient base to form a friendship.I became aware of Eric during the productionof A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Eric takingthe part of Quince, and myself helping backstage.Not only do I recall Eric’s love of theArts and his absurd sense of the comic, butalso the serious and academic side of his nature;his passion for the sciences and, in particular,for Biology and Geology.Eric left school in 1952 for College where hetrained to be a teacher and, subsequently, wascalled up for National Service. He joined theEducation Corps and became attached to theRoyal Hussars Regiment. He served in Koreaand in Japan and left the Army with the rankof Captain.I left school in 1956 and went to work in theReading Room of The British Museum. Forthe next twelve months or so I did little elsebut read, giving myself the education that Ihad not taken advantage of at the HighSchool, until, with my own tour of NationalService duty on the horizon I decided tospend the remaining months living and workingin Paris.Having left the Army in 1957 Eric returned toScarborough before taking up his first civilianteaching post in Great Yarmouth. That summerhe and I were involved in a production atTheatre in the Round, which at the time washoused in the Public Library. Eric was involvedin the production, I shifted sceneryand Beryl Theaker (S.G.H.S.) appeared in theplay. I remember no more of the play than itstheme music, “Dream”, sung by the EverleyBrothers. Many happy days were spent duringthat glorious summer on the beach andscrambling on the cliffs in search of fossils.Evenings were spent at the Spa Hotel in VictoriaRoad where many pints of Rose’s BestBitter were consumed.In the autumn of 1958 I joined the Royal AirForce and served in Hong Kong where I wasseconded to the civilian Air Traffic ControlCentre at Kai Tak Airport as one of the teamof military advisors. All this while Eric and Icontinued to correspond.Upon my return to the U.K., and having leftthe R.A.F. in 1962, I returned to Scarboroughand once again Eric and I renewed our friendship.I was married with a daughter, and desperatelysearching for a suitable career. Therewere numerous and varied excursions in thatdirection. Eric was on leave in Scarboroughbefore taking up a new life in the South Pacific.He had accepted a post in Fiji at theQueen Victoria School teaching Biology andhe left Scarborough before the start of the autumnterm that year.Having discovered some of the many andvarious pleasures that there are in the world

23of Wine and having decided that the bestway to subsidise those delights was to jointhe business, I was fortunate enough to finda position in the Wine Trade, and my wife,daughter and I shortly thereafter left Scarboroughto live and work in Newcastle uponTyne. My career with the company took offand after living in Newcastle and, subsequently,Stockton on Tees, we moved southto Suffolk where I took up a senior managementrole with my company, based in BurySt. Edmunds and living near Newmarketuntil 1974. For all of this time Eric and I continuedto correspond.In 1974 I transferred to another companywithin the Group by whom I was employedand we moved up to Cheshire. In 1975 Ericmoved from Fiji to Honiara in the SolomonIslands where he taught at the King GeorgeV1 th School. I ran my company’s businessfrom Manchester for a number of years beforebeing appointed a Director of two companieswithin the Group. Although by now Iwas based at Head Office in London we continuedto live in Cheshire.Sometime during the early 80’s Eric and Ilost touch. My letters went unanswered,even a letter to the Principal at King GeorgeV1 th . bore no fruit. Time went by and althoughI did not stop wondering what hadhappened to Eric, only occasionally did Iattempt to seek him out. I tried to find Eric’ssister in Scarborough, but was told that shehad moved away. Subsequently, I learnedthat she had died. Not being a commonname there were few Sigstons in any telephonedirectory but my search continued tobe unrewarded. My work was now takingme to various parts of Europe and pressureof business meant that we spent little time inScarborough. During our occasional visitswe came into contact with few old friendsand had it not been for the fact that both setsof parents still lived in the area, Scarboroughwould have held little interest for us.By the early 90’s I decided that I had hadenough of commuting to London two orthree times per week and of waiting in variousairports for delayed flights, so, still withthe same company, I took on responsibilityfor all the independent regional brewers inthe U.K. and for the sales force that supportedthose companies. It was good tospend more nights at home each week ratherthan in various hotels around Europe.By 1994 we were in merger discussions withthe Guinness group and with cases full ofmoney being available to senior executives Idecided to accept an early retirement packageand departed in 1995 after over 30 yearsservice. By this time all of our parents haddied. My Father-in-Law had bequeathed tous his small flat on the South Cliff and webegan to use this more regularly. As timewent along we began to find more and moreold friends, some of whom who had remainedin Scarborough, and some who werereturning to the town as they retired fromtheir careers in other parts of the country.We decided to buy a larger apartment inScarborough and I re-joined the Old ScarboriansAssociation. In 1990, as a Christmaspresent to each other my wife and I decidedto buy a new computer system. We went onlinein January 1991.I decided, once again, to take up the searchfor Eric and the plea for information wentonto the web site. Time passed, but in Octoberof last year, via Bill Potts and PeterRobson, news came from John Larbalestier,one of Eric’s oldest and closest friends thatEric had, in fact, died during the 80’s.in theSolomons. Strangely, John had also losttouch with Eric at around the same time as I,and was unsure of the details. The newscame as a tremendous shock. It was asthough Eric had died that day, not 20 yearspreviously and I felt a duty to find out more.My first call was to the Foreign Office. TheirAustralasian department put me in touchwith the British High Commission in Honiaraand the information began to trickle in.

24Ros Taisia of the Commission rememberedEric at various social functions. “He was alwaysmost amusing and interesting”, shewrote, “and was obviously very happy in theIslands.” She was able to put me in touch withKen Blackburn, the Head of Science at KingGeorge VI. in Eric’s early days there, and nowliving near Nottingham. He remembers Ericas a very keen and enthusiastic teacher withseemingly boundless energy for all school andextra-curricular activities and devoted to hisstudents and the school.Subsequently, Ros put me in touch with theHigh Commissioner’s office in Fiji. Throughthis office I endeavoured to make contact withQueen Victoria School but neither e-mails norletters gained any response.In January of this year Anne and I revisitedFiji. Queen Victoria School is situated in ajungle setting in the southeast corner of VitiLevu, in the hills above the town of Suva,with endless views of the South Pacific andother islands in the Fiji group. Even thoughmid-January the school was still closed for theChristmas holidays and although a letter waswritten and a message left on their answeringmachine, no one contacted us from the schoolduring our stay.In Honiara, Solomon Islands, George Semane,the current Principal and one-time student atKing George VI remembered Eric with muchrespect and affection. He spoke of Eric as asimple man, stern but liked and admired byhis students. His approach to education leftlasting impressions on both students andteachers alike. Eric was instrumental in establishinga Sixth Form and many of those studentsin whom he took a particular interestare now holding key positions in both theGovernment and Private sector in the Solomons.Eric’s contribution to environmentalissues in the islands, sport and theatre inschool are still remembered by more than2000 students that Eric was responsible forteaching in the twelve years that he was at theschool.George’s last memory of Eric is of the morningwhen Eric decided that he was poorlyenough to be taken to hospital. He had beenobviously ill for some time but had continuedto fulfil his duties at school until his bodycould take no more .He asked for a taxi to becalled and waved weakly as he was drivenaway. From the hospital in Honiara Eric wastransferred to Brisbane where, shortly thereafter,he died of cancer.Eric’s body was returned to King George VIwhere he was buried on the school’s ChapelHill, the grave being marked by a simplestone.In Eric’s memory a dormitory was built andnamed after him. “He was the best investmentthat your country has ever made in The SolomonIslands” was George’s last comment.There remain gaps in this history. Eric’s timeat college, in the Army and in East Anglia isunknown. When my wife and I return to NewZealand we intend to spend more time in Fijiand will revisit the High Commissioner’s Officethere and Queen Victoria School, but ifanyone reading this can help to fill in thosegaps I would be most grateful.One final memory of Eric. I was back in Scarborough,on embarkation leave for HongKong. Eric travelled up from Kings Lynn forthe weekend. We met in the cocktail bar of thePavilion Hotel. After a couple of beers Ericannounced that dinner that night was on himand that he had reserved a table, fittingly, atthe Hong Kong Restaurant in York Place. Hemust have made special arrangements as thetable was particularly well laid and the mealcame, course after course, without any orderbeing given. Later during the evening Ericadmitted to me that he had asked for a specialmeal to be served as his guest was about totravel to Hong Kong and live there for threeyears. At the end of the evening Eric presentedme with a list of places to visit all overthe Far East, sights to see and a second list, ofbooks and records that he hoped I could ob-

25tain for him. During my three years in Asiaparcels were regularly sent back to the U.K.for him.Upon my return, it must have been half-term,for Eric was in Scarborough, we again met upand again had dinner in the Hong Kong restaurant.On this occasion I made the arrangementsand having had three years experienceof both the best and the worst that the FarEast had had to offer was not really expectingany great culinary event. However, therestaurant pulled out all the stops and wehad a truly memorable evening. Althoughwe had corresponded regularly Eric demandeda blow-by-blow account of my experiencesand, finally, in the early hours ofthe morning we were politely requested bythe management to go home.There have been any number of Special Peopleat our old school and, for me Eric was inthe forefront of that band. What would hehave achieved had he lived, I wonder?Extract from a letter writtenby John Larbalestier(1947-52)We both entered the 2 nd .Year with W.C. Pottsbeing our Form Master. Eric was known as“Siggo” to all.He was a natural clown and an excellentmimic, a great fan of Chaplin, and Laurel andHardy. His impressions of them and othergreat cinema idols of the time were memorable.Eric was fascinated by all science, but especiallybiology and geology. His bedroomcontained many samples of rocks and fossilsgleaned from the cliffs and beaches. Hestored them under his bed and knew all theirscientific names.Eric, myself and Gerry Hinchliffe appearedas policemen in “The Pirates of Penzance”. Ican still remember most of the words to allthe songs. In “A Merchant of Venice” Erictook the part of Launcelot Gobbo, in “A MidsummerNights Dream” he was Quince andin “”Twelfth Night” Sir Andrew Aguecheek.Rehearsals for “The Dream” were hilariouswith Eric ad-libbing and clowning. I have aphoto of him as Quince together with theprogramme and its cover, which may be ofinterest to the Old Boys especially as it showsBill Potts dressed as a fairy!Eric also appeared in other plays entered forinter-school competitions. One, especiallymemorable, was Chekhov’s farce, “The Proposal”performed at The Futurist. There areonly three parts, Eric playing the father anxiousto marry his daughter off to a nervoussuitor. Both father and suitor needed a greatdeal of vodka to sustain them and Eric’s portrayalof gradual decline into alcoholic oblivionis one of my most treasured memories ofhim—a theatrical classic. The opening of thevodka bottle on stage, encouraged by vigorousshaking, was a veritable triumph of timingand effect. The cork flew out of the bottlelike a rocket into the stalls, narrowly missingthe head of a senior member of the Historystaff. Needless to say, the play, conceivedand produced down to the last tiny detail byCharlie Rice, won the competition.On rare occasions when Eric was teaching inGreat Yarmouth or when he was on leavefrom the South Pacific he would leave a messagefor me at the Bar of The Grand to let usknow that he was in town and we wouldmeet up for a drink. We moved North, lostcontact with Eric and some years later weresent a cutting from The Scarborough EveningNews reporting Eric’s death. It came as agreat shock as Eric had been full of life andso generous in his work for others. I like tothink that he had instilled in the many youngpeople whom he had taught in different partsof the world, the same enthusiasm, interest,humour and love of life that he had himselfpossessed. He was a good friend and we stillmiss him.

Allan Green’s “MEMORIES OFA LAD FROM ‘THE STICKS’ …Ravenscar”(1949-55)• “Joe” Francis my 1A form master introducingus to archaeology, “Read Diggingup the Past by Sir Leonard Wooley……hetold us ” I still have my copy.• The smell of Mr Price’s Biology lab andhis wartime stories of flying Fairey“Swordfish” aircraft.• School dinners and the racket as dozens ofspoons hammered away at rock hard biscuitsaccompanying the “frog spawn”pudding.• The fear of missing the bus home. Lastbus to Ravenscar was 4.15pm and thedread of possible detention was always atthe back of my mind.• The sight of Bon Clarke making his highspeed journeys down the side of a corridorscattering all before him• The roar from Brad Bradley when he noticedI had written “English Grammer” asthe title on my exercise book.• How to decide just how one might get MrPotts to forget the lesson on Boyle’s Lawand onto De-Gaussing ships (again).• The little display case in the WoodworkRoom with a small photo-frame and picture(I suspect of Mr Perry’s wife) with asmall card reading “A thing of beauty is ajoy forever. Keats”.• The “milk break” and going out on a coldwinter morning to drink the partly frozenone-third pint.• How accurately Mr Jones the Historycould throw lumps of chalk and boardrubbers.• Being sent by Mr Taylor out of Art class togo around the school to collect for him the26non paid dinner monies from other pupils…Interruptinga class for othersseemed like a fun thing to do, however,Room 10 was strictly avoided.• Reading the part of Thor in an English Lit.lesson and my one and only line, “ Myhammer! ” which came out as “mi ammer”much to the disgust of Hov whosuggested that I should never have leftRavenscar, at least not before civilisationhad spread a little further North.• Mr Stoddard’s “Why does a mouse whenit spins”………..where did that comefrom?• School camp at Loch Torriden and climbingBen Eigh and several others desperatelytrying to keep up with our guide…..an old boy called Tinkler I believe ?• Learning by heart the French poem “LaSonge D’Athalie” as an alternative to becominga member of Billy Binder’s ChessClub. By the way what wonderful tributesto him in recent editions. A very specialman.(Yes, David, we were in the same form........you would remember if I had the courage tosend you a "mug-shot"......it was Fowler, Frost,Green, Halliday, Harrison....etc.)Editor: And of those five, Stan Halliday hasjust joined OSA.CORRECTIONS &ADDITIONS1: Foundation Meeting OSAClub (Vol. 41 Page 65)The unknown member, was, of course LesHartzig. Many thanks to Jack Layton, MikeWatson and others, for getting in touch,—andto Les for confirming that it was indeed himself.

272: SBHS JUNIOR CHOIR(Vol. 40 page 58)Mike Lester has provided a definitive list ofnames of those on the photograph whichappeared in our November 2001 issue. Thechoir won The Viscount Samuel Shield atThe Eskdale Tournament of Song, Whitby.May 1950.BACK ROW L—RBransby Croft, Clive Mallory, David Merryweather,David Hunt, John Marrison, StanHalliday, David Stevenson, David Howden,Ralph Seymour, Bob Burnard, Derek Eyland,Colin Leppington, David Renshaw,John Morley, John McWhan, JamesMaughan, John Lumb, Peter Robson, SteveWilliamson, David Fowler.FRONT ROW L—RDavid Booth, John Steel(e), John Rice, MichaelLester, Leslie Swales, Glyn Bower,Arthur Costain, John Moor(e), John Scarth(accompanist), Ron Holland, Alan Wilcox,John Wheelhouse.MEMORIES — OF THEHEAD OF MATHSby John Rice (1947-56)Tich was the name he was given when he firstarrived at SBHS. It’s true that he was a diminutivefigure, no more than about 5'2, and most12-year-olds were already taller than he was.But despite his small stature Herbert Richardsonwas a commanding and inspirationalteacher. By the late 1940s the name Tich hadfallen out of use andhe was known to allas Pike. Pike was ourForm Master in the3rd year, in what wasthen room 9, the firstroom on the left at thesenior end of theWestwood building,opposite the notice-boards and the Library.The presence of the notice-boards might wellhave given Pike the idea that lent his room itsdistinctive appearance. Remember those diagramsof geometrical figures that covered thewalls? “Pike's Picture Palace of Perfectly ProportionedProblems and Puzzles for PatientPeople” was our name for room 9. Amazinghow that phrase has stuck in the memory.Pike spent most of our lessons sitting on thathigh chair of his, at that high desk, dealingwith individuals who were clearly strugglingwith Maths and couldn’t work things out fromthe detailed examples in the book. Just occasionallyhe would leave his perch and make hisway to the board to explain something to all ofus. He would come out with that famous ambiguityof the teaching profession, “Watch theboard while I go over it”, without ever betrayingthat he was aware of the double meaning.Yet he had a fine sense of humour and was asgenial a personality as any on the SBHS staff.When the school underwent its first post-warinspection (it must have been in 1949 or 1950),the whole place was on edge. We had Mathsperiod 1 on Monday morning. On the first dayof the Inspection, Pike’s introductory words tous were, “They'll be along any minute!”—andthe laughter that greeted this remark was justwhat was needed.Pike was a key man at SBHS, since one of hisjobs was to keep the school accounts. I can

28imagine he brought to this task the same meticulousapproach that characterised his Maths teaching.Those of my contemporaries who took A-level Maths were full of praise for his work withthem, and for his unequalled command of thesubject. Like other members of staff I have writtenabout in this series of “Memories”, Pike wasinvariably pleased to see Old Scarborians whoturned up unexpectedly at the school, even ifthey had not been among his best pupils. He wasanother of those exceptional men who madeSBHS the fine place it was.FAMOUS PUPILSWeb site www.friendsReunited.co.uk specialisesin bringing together old school friends.The OSA has a link from that site to our own,and this has brought us many new members.One feature of the FriendsReunited web site isthe facility to add reminiscences of teachingstaff and school friends—particularly thosewho have found fame—or infamy!The following extracts come from FriendsReunitedwith acknowledgments to them, and tothe those who have posted these entries. Wecannot vouch for the veracity of all the informationgiven.explosive mixture being placed in a test tube.He continued his education at The WorcesterSchool for the Blind and then went on toOxford University.He took up a post with the RNIB and was thefounder of the Commonwealth Society for theBlind, now Sightsavers International, and wasits director for many years. He was alsoinstrumental in the founding of othercharitable bodies for the blin, and wasknighted for his services to charity.1945 John Scrimingerby Peter RedmondJohn and I went through SBHS together; hewent to Stage School and after a spell as a varietyartiste, went on to become a Sports producerfor TV (every sport but football!) He hadthree brothers, Tom, Dick and Harry and asister. He was very proud of his family, especiallyof his grandfather, Will Catlin, founderof the pierrots. Sadly, John died several yearsago but just before he did, we shared a lunchand many happy memories.1920 Eric Fenbyby Peter DixonActed as amanuensis to Frederick Delius afterhe went blind. Later returned to Scarboroughas head of music at the North Riding Collegeof Education. He also held a senior post at theRoyal Academy of Music.1920 Sir John Wilsonby Peter DixonAlmost certainly the most well known OldScarborian.He was blinded when an experiment in theschool chemistry lab went tragically wrong. Aincorrectly labelled bottle resulted in an

291966 Peter Taylorby Martin EcclesCurrent affairs broadcaster with the BBC(Panorama)1967—John Taylorby Martin EcclesCurrent affairs broadcaster with ITV. (Worldin Action)1967 Michael Wilsonby Martin EcclesBreakfast TV presenter with ITV. BusinessEditor for Sky News.1967 Harvey Proctorby Adrian CopleyWhy does everyone omit the "Keith" part ofhis name? Yes, I remember opposing him asLabour candidate in the 1966 mock election.Of course he won in a safe Tory seat, but Icame a creditable runner-up. To my amazement,as a resident in Billericay, Essex severalyears later, a Conservative election motorcavalcade pulled up as I was crossing theHigh Street, out stepped Mr. Harvey Proctorand limply shook my hand, asking if I wouldbe voting for him. I replied that I would seriouslythink about it but my wife, an immigrant,was not enfranchised. He went on towin and subsequently throw away a safe Toryseat, falling prey to his natural propensities.Many of his constituency members reportedthat he was a good M.P. Sadly, he was replacedby Theresa Gorman, who was half theman he was. What happened to his electionagent in school, Bruno Santini and where ismine, the indomitable Ron Richardson? Whoremembers the "rocket" of inflation burstingthrough the roof?1967 Andrew Irvineby Ian CopleyDoes anyone else remember this young Scotslad who spent about a year at SBHS either1966 or 67, went straight into the school 1stXV at full back!Is this the same Andy Irvine that played fullback for Scotland?1968 Robert PalmerWell—he sings (or so they say). And hatedschool… Anyone remember the prostituteboots episode with Chas Rice?MEMORIES OF MASTERS(also from FriendsReunited)1942 Norman Stoddardby Arthur IbbotsonI remember when he returned from the Armyin the first or second year of the war. He had afine head of hair then. He took us for mathsand PT. I shall always be grateful for hisadvice that I should drop HSC maths after thefirst term in the 6th form.1971 Norman Stoddardby Allan MuseOne of the most entertaining teachers at theBoys High for `A` level maths. His favouritephrases were obviously, “I never say‘obviously’” and “’Asymptote` silent as inbathing.” Short with a bald head, there weretimes when I thought he was funnier than EricMorcambe, where is he now?Editor: Sadly, Norman died a few years agofollowing a heart attack when driving nearRillington.1966 Jack Ellisby Brian TurnerJack, who taught latin and occasional gamesor PE. Remembered for his 'crust and crumbs'game, whilst spitting over the nearest boy.1966 'Biff' Smithby Brian TurnerThe History teacher who always clippedGraham Troutsdale.

1966 'Billy' Binderby Brian TurnerFor his chess lessons when Games werecancelled on Olivers Mount because ofadverse weather.1966 Les Brownby Brian TurnerThe French Teacher who could forget almostanything, including his car which he left atschool because he did not know where hehad parked it.1966 W.C.Pottsby Brian TurnerPhysics teacher who smoked his pipe anddid the Times crossword in the prep roomwhilst we were doing experiments.1966 W.C.Pottsby Colin BatesonDoes anyone else remember "Zenner" Potts?He seemed as mad as a hatter to most of us,never starting his first teaching lesson untilhe'd completed The Times Crossword, but hereally was brilliant. Remember how he usedto talk about "how he sank The Tirpitz"during WW2? Something to do with degaussingminiature submarines.301968 Les Brownby Adrian CopleyLes, if you are still with us, you areresponsible for me becoming a teacher. It wasfollowing one lesson of yours that I skivedwhilst in the Sixth Form. You obviouslymissed me, sought me out in the prefects'room, gave me a thorough dressing down, amoral and verbal broadside, reminding me ofmy personal responsibilities. A little lightflickered, glowed, then shone brightly. It wasthen that I made the fateful decision. I'm notquite sure, even now, what the connectionwas between your admonitions and mydecision, but they have persisted to this day.PETER NEWHAM’SJOTTINGS (1954-61)Les Brown may havebeen marginally impressedif I hadheaded these jottings‘A la Recherche duTemps Perdu’ but thiswould be not onlypretentious but perhapsdemonstrate thatC. H. MUNDAY LIMITEDSuppliers of special order ties, wall shields, blazer badges and manyother promotional itemsWe are pleased to be supplier of ties to theOld Scarborians AssociationOxford House, 8 St. John’s Road, St John’s, WOKING, Surrey GU21 1SETelephone: 01483 771588Fax: 01483 756627E-mail: enquiries@chmunday.co.uk

31it is one of the very few tedious pieces ofFrench literature that inexplicably sticks inmy mind from an “A” Level French at whichI certainly did not excel!• “Recollections” are perhaps more appropriateto the following:-• The school trip to Norway in the late1950’s on the good ship Venus out ofNewcastle—with an impromptu latenight sing—song on deck, accompanied Irecall by Peter Taylor on Guitar—and thesubsequent rather primitive stay atFloyen Youth Hostel, Bergen, (burntdown many years ago)—with Joe Marsdenin an inappropriate and very Britishsports jacket nominally in charge.• A 5 th Form Physics expedition fromWoodlands to the adjoining Raincliffehill with a school telescope obtainedfrom the inimitable W. C. Potts on thefalse premise of a “scientific trip”, whichwas subsequently and wholly unsuccessfullyfocused on the gym of the GirlsHigh School in the similar interests ofscientific research.• A field trip by the long defunct train serviceto Robin Hood’s Bay and the MarineCentre, distinguished only in my memoryby my first attempts at smoking andthe threat of blackmail in respect of thisby other of your regular contributors!• The long and tedious bicycle ride up toplay Rugby/Cricket at Olivers Mount,intensely disliked by the weedy and nonsportingamongst us (to which I pleadguilty), redeemed only occasionally byeither the hope that rain would stop playor a “sick note” to Jock Roxburgh, whotook however a dim view of colds,coughs, sneezes and other patheticavoidance measures. The opportunityevery second week in the winter whenthe tide was more or less out, to playhockey on the sands under the eye ofNorman Gallagher, presented the onlyredeeming feature by way of an alternative,if one discounted the further benefitof the only competition at hockey beingthe local Girls Schools!It is strange how, perhaps triggered by othercontributors recollections in Summer Times,such memories came unexpectedly floodingback to mind, not, I hope, as a sign of approachingsenility or alternatively nostalgianot being what it used to be, but as a belatedrecognition of the significance of some of theevents of our formative years, whether weliked them at the time or not!RON QUAIFE’S JOTTINGS(1932-37)• At the last day of school year at themorning break pupils gathered on thelower playground and the masters threwpennies, which had been heated on theirroom fire at the top of the building, ontothe waiting hordes below. Local townsfolkgathered on the Valley Road bridgeto see the spectacle.• On one occasion at the above(mid-1930's) one of the senior boys (?name of Blackmoor- probably Geoff Naltonwill be able to confirm the name)climbed up the drain-pipe up to the master'sroom. He was hauled inside butthere was no mention of the outcome. Iwas told that the boy later excelled in thearmy on the North-West frontier of India.• Leo Walmsley visited school about 1933and showed the film "Turn of the Tide”made from his book "Three Fevers"which like many others centred aroundRobin Hood’s Bay.• ‘Biff' Smith’s front wheel of his bicyclecollapsed when he was coming down theslope to school, pitching him head firstover the top of the handlebars onto the

32road. The blood was well marked by theboys!• At a table tennis evening a game wasbeing umpired by Cush Turnbull. Oneof the players’ return of the ball waswide of the mark, the ball hit Turnbullon the head and bounced back onto thetable to be acclaimed as "cannon ofcush".• Not much has been mentioned aboutCas Shires in the woodwork and metalwork department. He was also the FirstAider and I had recourse to his expertisewhen I cut the tip off one of my fingerswhen using the guillotine in the Artdepartment.• The two "Fives" courts had a lot of usebut as we did not use gloves the roughsides of the court meant many scrapedknuckles.• One of Herr Bonn’s favourite sayingswas "The flowers that bloom in thespring tra-la have nothing to do with thecase". I don't think G & S expected it tobe used for language lessons!• Once a year at morning prayers wewaited with anticipation and a sniggeras Joe Marsden stumbled over aspirateswhen reading "and those that have earsto hear let them hear”.• The new very young master, newlygraduated, who spent a whole term tryingto get through the extension of Pythagorasdue to our diversionary tactics(name long since forgotten because heonly lasted one term). Scholars can becruel given half a chance.• Eric Parry mentioned the 1933 camp, toScotland. I remember the climb up BenNevis and at the top there was an abandonedhutment and we used a sharpinstrument to punch our names onto theroof There was also an incident in theTrossachs. When we awoke in the morningwe found that some of the tents hadmoved. There had been a violent rainfallin the night and some tents had beenpitched in a depression and a hastyevacuation was required as the waterpoured in.Ray Muir comments that he was among thefirst to get Pilots Wings. My brother, Gordon(1934-39) was also among the first. He didhis training in Canada and on his returnpaid many visits to the school’s ATC.Gordon died in an aircraft crash in March1955. Shortly after that my mother presented739 Squadron ATC with a memorial shieldfor presentation to be decided by the Squadron.At the dissolution the shield becamelost but was found later by someone diggingtheir garden. It was in a poor state andpartly burned. I wrote volunteering to haveit refurbished but did not get a reply. HoweverI was told later that it was reinstitutedand was again being presented annually.School was on summer trip to Germany in1934. As a mark of respect we went to adedication service to Hindenberg who haddied recently—a very moving occasion. Thiswas the time when Hitler, who had beenmade Chancellor in January 1933, took overthe power of the President.On this trip to Germany we sailed up theRhine stopping at Youth Hostels. At Andernachthe building was a five-storied towerwith an entrance up an external stairway toan entrance platform. In the morning wecame down to the platform to find a groupof fair haired Saxon girls in the courtyardwho burst into song. We were taken abackand a hasty decision was that in reply wecould not sing "llkley Moor bar t'at" as theywould not understand it so we sang "Tengreen bottles standing on a wall"—it waswell received. We also caused much consternationwhen on our coach tour in the BlackForest area we went through the middle ofsome army manoeuvres.

33DEREK PRICEFor some time there have been manyenquiries about the whereabouts of DerekPrice, one time Biology Master. An internetsearch produced a brief mention of a ‘DerekPrice Prize’. I contacted Dr William Ashworthat Liverpool Univrsity and received thefollowing reply:‘The Derek Price prize is given by the AmericanSociety for the History of Science for thebest essay published in its journal (Isis). It isnamed after an American historian/sociologistof science—I don't think it is your guy. Goodluck. Best regards William Ashworth.’Ultimately John Webster came up with thenews that Derek is living in Bicester but is inpoor health.Editor’s note: See also page 50.“YOU’RE PERFECTLYSAFE—THEY’RE SEASICK!”by Adrian Casey (1951-59)Those are words I willnever forget as long asI live. Still in my probationaryyear as anImmigration Officer, Iwas just turned 21 andstationed at Harwichin Essex. I had finisheda late shift and wasjust getting into bed atabout midnight whenmy landlady tapped at the door. “Mr Casey,they want you at the train ferry,” she calledout.I was puzzled by this because I was not the‘on call’ IO and wondered why I had beenselected. The Immigration Office was closedfor the night and in an emergency the policeshould have been contacted to find the dutyIO. I debated telephoning the duty Chief ImmigrationOfficer at home but suspected thathe would say something like, “Well, sinceyou’re awake anyway...” So I got dressed,donned my full waterproof motor-cyclinggear and set forth into the storm.And what a storm it was! It was the worst fora decade, a howling Force 9 gale, lashing rain,and spray from the waves was being carriedfor miles. I had to go back to the office, unlockand get my official attaché case, ‘stamp on’ forthe new day, and check the ticker tape andtelegrams for a clue about the passengers onthe train ferry. This service, between Zeebruggein Belgium and Harwich, carried passengersonly occasionally and immigrationcontrol was carried out aboard when it haddocked. For some reason no message concerningpassengers had been sent to the ImmigrationOffice.I had nearly been blown off the road on theway home and again on the way back to theoffice. (The road between the town and ParkestonQuay ran for about half a mile acrossopen land. At certain times the area was blanketedby fog from which only the telegraphpoles protruded, and motorists who werestrangers to the place tended to assume thatbecause the poles were in a straight line, theroad must be straight as well. However, halfwayalong this section there is a chicane, leftthen right, at which point there is a gap in thehedge roughly the size of a car...) It was thereforewith extreme care that I rode back to Dovercourtand down through Harwich itself tothe train ferry dock.The ferry clerk himself had only been informedof the presence of passengers on theferry a few minutes before I was called out.He had remembered that there was an IOwho rode a red Ariel Leader, and one suchmachine had regularly been seen parked outsidemy digs, Hulmers Guest House, and sohe had telephoned there on the off-chanceinstead of the police.He now explained that even in the shelter of

34the ferry dock, sea conditions were too badfor docking, and so it could be hours beforethat happened. The ferry was hove to in theOrwell estuary for the moment. However,HM Customs were going out to the vesselin their small cutter and I could go withthem if I wished. The alternative was tohang around for hours with nothing to do,so I accepted the invitation.Since it was too rough for the ferry to dock,you can imagine what it was like aboard thetiny cutter, which was being tossed aboutby waves that constantly threatened toswamp it. When we reached the ferry, itwas too dark to see the vessel other than asa shape that kept blotting out the lights ofFelixstowe on the far side of the estuary.There was a single light that I could see anda voice near it. One moment the light wasseveral feet above my eye level, the nextseveral feet below, as the two vessels roseand fell. I had to jump into the stygian towardsthe voice when he shouted “JUMP!”As I landed, the ferry was dropping into atrough, and I didn’t actually fall to the decktill the bottom of the trough. Theman informed me that the passengerswere “with their animals”. Asthe ship pitched and tossed, I staggeredalong the railway deck, prayingthat none of the wagons wouldfall over on top of me. Eventually Imade it to the wagon where the passengerswere.Animals had previously meanthorses, but these were not! Theywere in a cage, and so were the accompanyingpassengers! I will neverforget the passengers’ words as Istared at their charges. “It’s all right,you’re perfectly safe. They’re notinterested in you. They’re seasick!”Have you seen the film Jurassic Parkand the velociraptors? At that moment,I felt the same way about goinginto that cage—there were six large tigersin it, all real! I still went in and dealtwith the passengers. I can remember littleabout them except that they were with acircus and were themselves seasick. Theyasked me why I wasn’t seasick as well and Isaid it was probably because I was too terrifiedto be sick. I was also concerned that themen did not have work permits and wasvisualising the consequences of refusingthem leave to land. If I let them in on thewrong landing conditions, I would soon‘get a file back’ from some person at theHome Office who was able to study the vastvolume of ‘General Instructions to IOs’ atleisure: “The Immigration Officer will wishto note that...”. Absolutely no notice wouldbe taken of the fact that I was aboard a shipthat was threatening to sink at any moment,taking me with it, surrounded by severalcreatures classified as dangerous by theWild Animals Act. I would have to composea suitably contrite ‘regret report’ and promisefaithfully never to do it again. A copy ofthe report would be placed on my personalfile, to be dredged up whenever I was feel-

35ing too confident.I do remember the tigers, though. I spenttwo hours there, following the keepers’example by scratching the tigers behindtheir ears and stroking them. I had supposedthat their fur would be coarse, but itwas remarkably soft. Tigers are the biggestof the big wild cats, and these were Amurtigers from Siberia, the biggest of all tigers.It was a remarkable experience to be soclose to them and one I shall never forget!Editor’s note: Adrian recommends thefollowing web site:http://animal.discovery.com/cams/tiger.htmlREFLECTIONS ON SOMEPAST PRESIDENTSby Jack Layton (1936-41)TF (Tommy) Binks(1938-1939)I did not meet Tommy Banks until after theWar, (as I was at school when he was President!)but Tom was still on the committeewhen I joined in 1951.I recollect a tall, fairly lean man with a laidback manner, quiet voice, and a wry senseof humour. He was a keen supporter ofYorkshire and Scarborough Cricket clubs -(he always sported the appropriate tie!). Heserved on the committee for many years.Herbert W. Dennis (of holidaycamp fame) (1948)A jovial man who confronted adversitywith permanent optimism—any problemwas there to be solved. Once, as a memberof the Rotary club he was on holiday inSwitzerland and needed an attendancemark at a regular club meeting. The nearestclub was some 12 miles distant—he skiedboth there and back! How he would enjoythe prospects of Regional government—hewas a staunch advocate of unilateral autonomyfor Yorkshire—passports and all!H. Newham-Dawson(1949-50)An enthusiastic arrival to the Presidency—he asked at the end of 1949 if he could beallowed to serve a further year. I think thiswas the start of the continuing precedent oftwo years in office. Although it was notgenerally realised, I believe he made a contributionto club funds at the end of 1950. Ihave no idea why he asked his friends tocall him “Bunny”.G Bowman (1959-60)Headmaster of a local school, he was anactive man full of ideas— not averse to anoccasional good humoured practical jokeand his enthusiasm was brought to thecommittee in a manner which perhaps beliedthe more sedate nature of his vocation.His son Michael Bowman (possible heirpresumptive to the Presidency) would bethe first member to follow a father in thatoffice.H. (Tich) Richardson(1961-62)Perhaps of those mentioned above, the personremembered by most of our presentmembership, mainly classroom days. Smallof stature but big in knowledge and ability—aman of few words—quietly confident.He possessed a phenomenal abilitywhen writing on the blackboard with hisback to the class for a piece of chalk or theduster to suddenly whiz unerringly towardsa boy misbehaving!Perhaps I digress towards school but wemust not overlook his contribution to theAssociation—in fact he was Presidentwhen the Association first acquired Clubpremises in Westborough.

36THE LIBRARYby Gerald HinchliffeI came across the enclosed (photographs ofthe library) the other day. I think I had thephotographs taken circa 1948 when I went ona Library course. It struck me that you mightfind a place for them in the archives.We do not have many photographs of theSBHS interior do we? If only I’d taken shots ofclassrooms with their various inmates(pedagogues and pupils?) in action! I thinkinteriors evoke nostalgia and if I was still inmy 3L magazine mode I might suggest abooklet of interiors with comments. It wouldsell like hot cakes.Congratulations again on all your efforts. Youare all doing a wonderful job—the value ofwhich is immeasurable. I was pleased thatDerek Price had been picked up. I sent him aphotograph of the two of us taken outside thehut on the playing field.Editor’s note: The framed photograph to theupper left of this Library picture, appears tobe of the OTC unit in 1941. Gerald’s photoshave joined the OSA archive.SCARBOROUGH FC HELPSWRITE A SERMONEx—SBHS pupil, (but non OSA member) theRev’d David Lickess, is a man who has beenin the news recently because he has twopassions in his life—and manages to combinethem both.He is the vicar of a parish nestling on the edgeof the North York Moors and is also a followerof Scarborough Football Club.He has never lost his love of the town andmany local people will remember his father,Tommy who did sterling work in localfootball for many years.David made something of a name for himselfwhen he used part of an interview Russ Sladegave concerning his methods of motivatingplayers, to relay a Christian message. Whenasked when it would be that Scarboroughwould be safe from relegation last season, MrSlade didn’t refer to any particular game butto a point when he had a dressing room fullof believers.At first, he said, only he believed that the clubcould escape—and then he got one to believe,then another and so on until the whole clubbelieved it.David saw the direct relationship betweenthis comment and the growth of Christianityand used the message in sermons to get hismessage across to his congregation.It must be the first time ever that a man of thecloth, has used the words of a footballmanager to spread the word—which is why,of course, that his comments and actions havebeen picked up on a very wide stage.As a life-long fan of the team, David has hadhis high spots but, as he readily admits, thelast few years have been very fallow.It is true to say that many local fans have hadto live with despair for several years and bynow are used to being in that state.But now as the new season beckons, do wehave cause for hope in this seaside town?Is there a chance the fans can have a seasonwhich will be eventful for the right reasons?

37Many are coming back into the fold and thisnewspaper is giving support to the cause asgradually a new belief spreads.The men in charge of the local club are givingsome hope to the fans. The trouble is, this initself brings its own problems.Doom and gloom have never been far awayin recent times, but there now seems to be acause for real optimism, in the past survivalhas been the aim—progress is now possible.Despair has been a constant companion yetnow the words hope and expectation areused in the same sentence as Scarborough FC.The question is, having lived with despair forso long can people now deal with hope?(With acknowledgments to, and adaptedfrom an article in the Scarborough EveningNews)CROSSWORD MAY 2002There were no correct answers to this Crossword—infact, to be perfectly honest, no answersat all! The solution appears below.1 2 3 4 5 67 8W T J M E FK I K U Y U F B I N D E RS G N U S I EM E M O R I A L T E T L E YM F O L R O MG A S W O R K S E A R W A XN A A S N13 14 15E R H A N D Y S I D E16G D A AJ M R I C E L E S B R O W NN D E C E KR O B S O N B E L L H W M25A I E A I P A26 27T I D E S G F C L A R KH E S F Y D9 1011 1217 18 19 2021 22 23 24PRIZE CROSSWORDby Alan Bridgewater (1933-40)There is again a small prize for the first correctanswer opened. Answers should be sentto David Fowler (contact details on page 1)Photocopies are acceptable. The crosswordgrid appears on page 38.Across1 (and 21 across) He knew all our fathers. (4)3 He tragically died while refereeing a rugbymatch at Oliver's Mount. (9)10 The lord of the woodwork department inthe 50s .(1,1,5)11 We read of bread, the staff of life. (7)12 This person takes particular pleasure infine food and drink. (7)13 He threw a circle of flowers onto the sea.(6)14 An earthy pigment containing ferric oxide.(5)15 An SLR camera usually has 24 or 36 ofthese. (9)18 Not essential or not inherent. (9)21 See 1 across. (5)23 H.S.P was a marvellous artist. (6)25 Maths teachers give many of these whentrying to explain the finer points of Algebra!(7)27 Many of our masters created this whenthey swept into the form- room with gownflapping in the breeze. (7)28 Black puddings are often made from thiscommodity. (2,5)29 There are two of them! Senior was allegedto be the captain of H.M.S. Widcombe. (4,5)30 The junior of the two mentioned in 29across is this of the Senior. (4)

38Down1 June was Joey's secretary. (9)2 This kind of person is excessively concernedwith his clothes and appearance. (7)4 Tess yells that the picture is dreadful. (9)5 Very useful in a rugby scrum—but strictly illegal!(5)6 We share the benefits of our membership. (7)7 The old stereo is a reminder of one's youth. (7)8 Rogues often get loose on the moors looking forthese. (6)9 The initials of the deputy Head at the time ofthe 1953 staff photo. (3)16 The Open Air Theatre was once said to be this,but, alas, times have changed! (6,3)17 This trophy was strictly for sea planes and wascompeted for in the 1930s. (9)19 The two masses of grey matter in the forebrainwhich relay sensory information. One might almostshout "Hi Malta" as we approach the island.(7)20 The whistle blows in a football match everytime this type of action is seen by the referee. (7)21 Many members of staff lived in this village onthe outskirts of Scarborough. (6)22 We all know that a conventional bomb explodes,but what do nuclear bombs do? (7)24 A riot ensued when the proportion was announced.(5)26 What a fuss was caused by a down-payment.(3)1 2 3 4 5 6 78 910 1112 1314 15 16 1718 19 20 21 2223 24 252627 2829 30

39A LITERARY MASTER OFTHE CHEQUERED BOARDThis article by MichaelRines was first publishedin the August 2001 issue ofthe magazine Chess. Itincorporates the texts ofFrank Binder’s remarkablechess club reports publishedin the school magazinein the 1940sSixty years ago, one of the most brilliant everwriters of English prose was forced to fleeNazi Germany, because he had openly opposedHitler. He had been an inspirationallecturer in English literature at Bonn University,and had published two remarkablebooks in the early 30s, but by 1940 was reducedto teaching foreign languages to unwillingschoolboys at a provincial highschool in Yorkshire. One of his consolationswas the school chess club, which he ran for18 years, and the reports he wrote about itfor the school magazine are like no othersever written about the game.To Frank Binder, chess was both a passionand a solace. After the frustrating effort oftrying to turn his pupils into scholars duringwhat he described as ‘a hard and dunderheadingday, prostrated in that battle inwhich the gods engage in vain’, he knew nobetter ‘cordial’ than to welcome a keen andtalented player to the club, which he ranevery evening after school in one half of hisclass room (Room 13). He described thatroom as ‘a haunt for the highest use of idleness,namely a well-played game of chess’.In the other half of the room, he held hisprivate detention, and if a boy in the chessThe Palm Court is a 3 Star Hotel with a superb central location and guaranteed free coveredparking, minutes to the beach, town centre, theatres, Spa.All 47 bedrooms en-suite with colour television, tea / coffee facilities, telephone. Ideal for thediscerning conference delegate offering in-house conference facilities in the hotel's purpose builtconference suite.The elegant Rosedale Restaurant offers full traditional English breakfast, Table D'Hote and A laCarte evening dinner. Adjacent is the Troutsdale Ballroom which is available for private functions ora conference suite seating up to 200 guests.Other facilities include Indoor heated Swimming Pool, Cocktail Bar, Lift to all floors, Weekend,midweek, weekly breaks all year, Saturday Dinner Dances, Christmas and New Year breaks.Rates: B& B £28.00 - £46.00

40club lacked an opponent, one of the detaineeswould be drafted in. ‘You’re chess-ganged,’Binder would say, and that’s how many a badboy learned to love the noble game.The club had been founded in 1935 by MrMarsden, and F Dobson and E J Peet hadbeen joint secretaries up to 1941. They reportedin that year’s school magazine thatBinder and Dr Hanes, another academic whohad been forced to flee Germany, had donemuch to help the club.The club had been struggling, but Binder’scareful teaching of young players laid thefoundation for future fortunes, so that theplaying of the game spread beyond the wallsof Room 13 to involve almost every boy for atleast one period whenever the weather wasbad on weekly sports afternoons. By 1956, 355of the school’s 540 pupils took part in a clubknock-out competition, with attendances ofas many as 72 players a night.Not surprisingly, some good playersemerged, though perhaps the best knownname is that of John Rice, a problemist, whoeven as a schoolboy had problems publishedin the magazine Chess, The Manchester Guardianand The Observer, for example. Today, heis the British delegate to the FIDE ProblemCommission, past president of the BritishChess Problem Society, and editor of itsmagazine, The Problemist.But it is for his school magazine chess reportsthat Binder should be remembered. Eventhough, as he said, in chess ‘there are nodrums and trumpets to attract the giddycrowd’, he could make a game between acouple of schoolboys sound like a mightyclash of arms, and endowed the combatantswith all the power and pomp of historicalheroes.He wrote his first report in 1943, celebratingthe first fruits of three years of teaching.We have got some chess players at last. Gone arethe mere timber-shifters, gone the old dominogang who, with both kings in check and the twoqueens en prise, could play happily on and seenothing amiss! Those were the days when Noakeswas supreme, when he gave the odds of everypiece and, with a lone king and eight pawns,made hay of the opposing host. Smote them hipand thigh! We have seen it done! What a revelationof skill! The lone and elusive king, his poorwee sprinkle of pawns, the vacant waste ofsquares around them, and then! a move here, afeint there, a swiftly insinuating subtle advance,a pretty en passant dribble and some passing-thebuckon the sixth rank, and bless us! There itwas! Mate! A smothered or rather a suffocatingmate with the paltry and final pawn.But alas! Noakes is going. We shall miss him. Forwho could forget Noakes, his odds of the wholeback line, his nippy use of the nags, his blitzingbishops, and his porcupine cluster of pawns? Agreat player.But he has great successors, quite his equals, wethink, in all the higher duplicities of the game:Ayress, a fine performer, who has probed thedeepest recesses of ‘Nimzowitch, My System’;Sutton, sticky, close and dour, who delves inTarrasch to the eyebrows and conquers by sheerweight of study; Melton, the unfathomable Melton,with a really eerie capacity for getting in andout of scrapes; and finally Rook, who can beat hisopponent on every move but the last.A truly hot quartet, who need only the maturinginfluence of time to become absolute paladins ofthe board. These are the principalities and powersof the Club, but we have our lesser nobility;Harper, careless and slap-dash, who can pull off asnap mate against the best, and Read, the everrepentantRead, whose second thoughts would bereally brilliant if he would only commit them tothe board.And the rest is logbook, of course? Not a bit of it!How about Swopper Smith, our best exponent ofthe skittle style, who plays chess like a furnitureremover and leaves not a rack behind? Andthen—Oh! how could we forget?—we weregrateful for a briefer visitant, fickle and fleeting

41though she was, with a high and rippling sopranogiggle and a blaze of auburn hair. A faithless combination!She flitted into our society like a butterfly,toyed and dallied with the pieces awhile, ledher forces to repeated ruin, and then vanished likean idle dream.The lady of the soprano giggle was one ofseveral delightful women teachers (JohnRice’s mother was another) recruited by theschool to replace men who had gone off to thewar. Unfortunately, she was not the onlyplayer to leave the club. Every year, inevitably,senior boys would leave school—most, inthe war years, to join the forces—and Binder’s1944 report opens with a lament for the departureof the club’s top player.And so Ayress has gone, our first board and chiefof men! How clearly I recall the day when he firstcame along, a seemingly blank and callow youthwho peeped through the window of Room 13 withthe mere flitting glimpse of a passer-by. Just aglimpse and he was gone. School was over, and inthe quick to-and-fro of the faces outside I hadhardly noticed him. But in a trice he was backagain, this time at the door, and after hoveringthere for a moment with his hand on the knob heentered and asked for a game. I eyed him askance.No, it was not dominoes, or draughts he wanted toplay, but chess. And he sat down to a game withNoakes.Heavens, what a tiro he was! To see him trundlingthe wood around, exposing his luckless king tocheck and leaning his queen against attackingpawns, would have brought a tear to a glass eye.His first move, P-K4, was chess; the rest wasrough and tumble, the mere tactics of a tavernbrawl. Down went his hapless knights like nags ina knacker’s yard, felled, bludgeoned, poleaxed,amid a Cannæ of stricken pawns. Down went hisrooks in the same fell ruin, and as for the poor lordbishops, their fate was most profane. Of course,Noakes was at his brutal best and went to worklike a shovel in a load of coal.But enough! The game—your pardon!—the brawlwas over, the board replaced, and as those prettysymbols of high estate, the kings, the queens andthe noble lords were toppled with a Marat-likehand into the box, I thought of Edmund Burke andhis lament for the fallen chivalry of once genteelerdays. So Ayress got up and went. Not a drum washeard, not a funeral note. ‘Luggage!’ was Noakes’sonly comment.But Linden saw another sight. How well I rememberthat too! Not Noakes, nor even Mr Sutcliffe [ateacher] was opposed to Ayress this time, but thatundimmed luminary of Scarborough chess, MrSaunders himself. I have a vision of the latter inhis perhaps most puckered mood, puzzled, perspiring,panting hard, and nervously twiddling cigafter cig or despairingly tapping his noddle for theintuitions that never came.And Ayress, what of him? Well romance is apt toprompt my pen, and memory has lent a halo to thescene, but I have a vision of Ayress too. I can stillsee him sitting in the corner, far from the veilingflurry of smoke and from the trembling litter ofgraying ash by which Mr Saunders was surrounded;I can still see him regarding the boardwith that stilly look of unconcern which, in anycritical contest, is worth the odds of a major piece.My word! How time and study had matured hisplay! And how reflective he had become! Howadept to his very finger-tips in the higher diplomacyof piece and pawn! No tavern brawling now,no club and bludgeon law, no blind and brutalfelling of the timbers. Indeed what most impressedme in Ayress’s play was his saving use of thepawns. Perhaps reverent use is a better phrase. Forhe never fingered a pawn without seeming to fingerthe fate of the game, and to see his rankersadvance to the fray, not as mere trumpery items inthe chequered war but as peers and paladins of theone noble order, each as it were with a marshal’sbaton at his back and with royal honours on thefinal rank, was as bracing to the knowing observeras a brimful bucket of quinine.And now that he has gone, on whom will his mantlefall? Of course we have Sutton, the dour indomitableSutton, who always wins his games atthe club, though less by the devious and designing

42arts that are the real delight of chess than by sheerfear of losing. He is as afraid of the tiniest risk asany convent maid of a mouse, and yet he wins. Notonce, but game after game. For to play Sutton is along and brow-puckering business, a kind of totalwar of attrition, where he wrings drop after drop ofgrim perspiration from his all but prostrate opponent.In fact every game he plays is a ding-dongepic of a queening pawn.A grand player, but we have others; Cranston, whowas attracted to ‘Nimzowitch, My System’ butwho, alas! still prefers his own, and Melton whoread ‘The Art of Sacrifice in Chess’ and reduced, Iam sad to say, that art to a bad habit. Good fellows,however, and I think highly of both. But the palm Iaward to Lister.He has forethought, decision, and skill, and withthese something more. He has a sense for the duesand dignities of the game, for its symbolisms inwood and pasteboard of the grander strife of life. Heseems when disposing his royal throng like somefine old major-domo of the Spanish courts of longago, cool, controlled, distinguished, and with a tactso in keeping with the princely company over whosefortunes he so ably presides.One of the stratagems in Cranston’s system notmentioned by Binder became known as ‘TheCranston Swerve’, a move that resulted in bothbishops ending up on the same colouredsquares.The club did have its downs as well as its ups,but the downs were of short duration, and the1945 report dismisses one of them:Someone said last term that the chess club is a waninginterest, a kind of guttering candle, a mereflicker of the light that was. In fact there was a darklingwhisper in the corridors and lower places thatwhenever young Ingram had a detention the clubjust ceased to be. A vain and profane rumour!There once was a time, admitted, when players wererather sparse, when Mason and Hargrave used toslip in and sit like fragments of forgetfulness in thestilly recesses of Room 13. And I have even seenMelton open the door and gaze all amazed at thevacancies that once were a turmoil of tables andchairs. ‘Nobody coming?' he asked in surprise.And his voice seemed to echo through the emptinessof a club that was now no moreBut unlike the hush that fell on Tara’s halls, ourswas not a silence whence the soul of chess had fled.Our room still is, what it always has been, a hauntfor the highest use of idleness, namely a well-playedgame of chess. Of course in the hurly-burly days wehad lots of traffic on the boards, much ado andmany a-doing it, and there was some very slummystuff in the scrum. But now that the stuff and thescrum have gone there is room for a deeper theme,and in the twilight shadows and in the still beyondsof after five we are able to fondle the art and, with amore enduring tête-à-tête, to woo the chequeredmuse.So let us speak no further of a thing that never was;of the club as a final flicker; of a climacteric longsince passed; of dotage and dowager days. Thosewho think like that have never seen us play. Theyhave never confronted Sutton, or had a lightningslam with Melton, or even—if pace be their object—pirouettedthrough a bout with Owston, oneof the really minor lights and major flashes of theclub. Mere kick and rush, you think? Not altogether.Shall we ever forget that night last Marchwhen in a ding-dong couple of minutes he flooredthe mighty Noakes?It was a typical Owston game. A bit of highpressurepushing of the central pawns, some crisscrossgive and take, till, with some pretty flicks ofthe bishop, away went Noakes’s rook. Gosh, it almoststruck Noakes cold. But Owston never lost amoment. Pell-mell into the gap ahead he began tobucket those nags! Heavens above, those nags! Theyseemed to spread like a rumour, jumping, checking,forking, filching, here, there and everywhere, whilepoor old Noakes went battling on with all his stuffin a ghastly rout careering down the drain.But halt! Let us refuse, in the name of justice, todim the nimbus of the mighty Noakes who himself,when faced with the best in the club, used to attacklike a demolition squad and slam on to a smithereenfinish. Is it any wonder that he, who dealt suchsmashing blows, should also in a murky moment

43get a back-cracking thwack in return? He grandlygave his skill to the club and Owston who got hisappointed share was flattering enough to use it.Owston still plays chess and was at one timea keen and successful member of the Kingston-on-Thamesclub. He says Binder’s reportswere ‘gems’, but that they did involve adegree of poetic licence. ‘I cannot believe myknights did what he said they did in that report,’he says.Binder was less flattering later in the samereportYet Owston let us down at York … Where wasthe sparkle, the pace or the spirit that had markedhis game with Noakes? And where was the easeand grace, which, in all his games at the club, heseems to lend to his royal array? I stared at theonce noble party; his knights, two clodhoppingdrays; his bishops, a couple of bumpkins; his rooks,a brace of lumping hulks that seemed to be eternallydumped and sunk in the mire of their owninertia. And as for his lumbering tub of a queen—well, Ingram, who was standing by, tried to makea remark and was speechless. Words fail to describewhat Ingram failed to describe and so I shallendeavour, in the interests of truth, to fail to describeit.And the victory at York? Ah, yes, that victory atYork which I ought to celebrate in lofty rhyme. Idespair of rendering something of that day. It wasnot the scenery as we went there, nor the receptionat Archbishop Holgate’s [the grammar school inYork], nor even the brilliance of Melton’s playthat I now most gladly recall. It was something inthe venerable setting so in keeping with the royalgame. And I felt it every moment of those briefsummer hours at York as we were sipping tea andplaying chess in the thanksgiving shadows andwithin the tremble of the Minster chimes.What an accent of forgotten voices! What a peepinto the storied deeps of life! What a subtle hint ofthe eternities in even these fleeting days! Perhapsin some posthumous hour, as the ancients fondlyimagined, we may in the cathedral space of thesoul relive the vanished scene and, with immortaldust beneath our feet and with the stones of theages about us, we shall ponder again the perennialdrama of Pawn to King four.The 1946 report reverted to less spiritual andmore parochial concerns. Our school wassplit up into four houses, named after 19 thcentury writers: Arnold, Carlyle, Kingsleyand Ruskin, and for many years Carlyle haddominated the inter-house chess competitions.Carlyle was led by Sutton, who Binderdescribed as ‘a really great exponent of theScotch pawnbroker style, one who shylocksevery move and padlocks every opening,who is ready to sit for hours on end, takingall and giving nothing, and never losing hisfaith in the maxim that nothing attempted issomething done’.But in 1946 Carlyle came under threat. Into its‘fleckless space of sky’ came a ‘touch of summercloud’.Low on the horizon yet, and no bigger than aman’s hand, but primed even now at this earlyhour with lightning flash and thunder stroke andthe burst of a coming storm. No passing wisp ofvapour this, no distant chimney reek, but a trueherald of the cloud pack that Kingsley’s wildNorth-Easter has wiffed into the private welkin ofthe once supreme Carlyle.We expected a draught, of course. A forcible breezefrom Spink who can spring a surprise on the best,and a rare gust from Wilson who, when playing inthe proper spirit, can topple the eminent Meltonfrom his monumental perch. But who ever thoughtthat the trumps of the club, Mason, Hargrave,Owston and the rest would be scudding away in apell-mell rout before the whirlwind might of Mac-Dougall [a junior]? And none of your snap mateseither.I can still see Mason sitting down to the first ofhis four defeats. No smile is sublimer than Mason’s,no eye more elate with inner content, no lipmore aptly prone to the witty word. And hebeamed like a summer morn. Alas, poor Mason!At the very first drubbing away went the smile; atthe second his eye was sadly dimmed; at the

44“SOLICITORS ARE A MEANDERING ANDLEISURELY PROFESSION WHOSE LAST CON-CERN IS THAT OF THEIR CLIENTS”Judge James Pickles(Prematurely retired at the request of the Lord Chancellor)Try to prove the Judge wrong by contactingDRABBLE & CO.Solicitors and Commissioners of Oaths50 Albemarle CrescentSCARBOROUGHPrincipal: Freddie Drabble (1951/58)Half price swearing for Old Boysthird—but heaven forfend my saying that his lipwas ever profane.Yet even I myself, with a heart of concrete reinforced,was barely able to suppress my sighs as hestaggered up from his fourth defeat, hang-dog,limp and slack in the knees. One drowning look atthe stricken board, one gulpy groan—but a truceto this tearful note. If even Homer nods, if even thesun has eclipses, then allow to Mason, one of theluminaries of the club, the lapse of his darkesthour.Kingsley may triumph in their newly ascendantstars; in the promise of Spink, in the wizardry ofWilson, in the waxing dazzle of MacDougall. Theyhave already won the junior championship, and itwill seem to the over-sanguine that with a hop,skip and a lucky jump the senior honour is theirs. Ihave heard loose talk of the kind; of a comingKingsley highland fling, and of an easy rompthrough the tournament with a victorious clogfantastic on the coffin lids of Carlyle. After whichin a rollicking requiem they’ll bid us good-bye withthe shovel.But whoa! Just put all that back on the lorry. Thestoried urns and animated busts have been sent tothe wrong door. For the chess elect of CarlyleHouse are still on the greener side of the turf,wilted a little and tossed by the wind, but standinglike some pride of the forest unbowed by the rush ofthe storm.Thus the clamour of ‘Out, out brief candle!’ willnot produce one sinking flicker in Sutton and hismighty men. And how firm, fixed and unflickeringthe light of Sutton is! We saw that only too well inthe championship last year.Melton had practised a trick attack, which he hadlearned from a player in the town, a flashy bishopsacrifice with rampant play for the queen. Firstbishop took pawn, check! Then after the bishop wastaken, down came the queen into the black positionin a big bulldozing rush, careering at will through

45the enemy ranks amid no end of wreckage. It wasone of the really decisive moves that Alekhine hadmissed. Or so it seemed. In match after match inthe championship Melton won hands down.He riddled Hargrave through and through, scupperedMason in a dozen moves, then dished it outto Owston and left him licking the ladle. Myword, it was a cracker gambit. Like the masterlymoves described in Creasy’s ‘Decisive Battles ofthe World’. You have heard I suppose of the Trojanhorse? of Greek fire? of the Nelson touch? ofNapoleon’s sweeping march on Ulm? or of theskew attack of the Thebans at the Battle of Mantinea?Of course you have. Well it was each andall of these things in Chess—with a little bit overto make sure. And Melton had made sure.But at last he tried it on Sutton, the canny,Scotch, close-fisted Sutton, who never looks at asingle square without looking at sixty-four. Andhaving looked at the sixty-four he looks at them allagain. No wonder he is our safest player, our chiefof men, the champion. Oh, the cautious scrutiny ofSutton! No artful dodge that was ever devised,from gilding the pill to tubbing the whale, couldexpect to run the gauntlet of his sceptical Scroogelikegaze.Yet for the first few moves of the game he seemedto sink into a full eclipse. Melton came swoopingdown the board in the flash of his blitz attack,bishop here, knight there, with a headlong checkfrom the queen. Heavens! we all thought Suttonwas lost. But no! Sutton just gazed and gazed,and slowly the perils faded away like the Assyrianhosts of long ago who attacked all gleaming inpurple and gold and on the morrow were no more.Poor Melton and his trick attack! When the openingflash had passed away how drab his cohortsproved to be! How plainly spurious the purple!How changed into so much sounding brass wasthe one-time seeming gold! Faced by the steel of aSutton defence what a tinsel attack it was! Just apompous parade of braid and buckram that we allhave agreed to forget. But shall we ever forget ourglimpse of Sutton as he faced the storm that night,as grandly steady as the Great Orme amid theswirl of the onrushing waters? Perhaps granderstill was the glimpse later on as he sat there,wholly unmoved by his triumph, and watched theretreating tide.In 1947 another crop of the great names of theclub left, Sutton, Mason and Spink for theusual reason, but the young MacDougall tomove to a different town and a new school.So Binder once again mourned the loss ofmore of his mighty men.What a player we lose in Spink! I am unawarewhen first he came. He seemed to drift into theclub, an unnoted one in the unnumbered many,and for a term or two he used to engage in thecrude and kickshaw, give-and-take of queens as afair exchange for pawns. But then I have neverknown a boy so keen. He talked chess and studiedchess, breathed, lived and dreamed chess, resolvedthe whole of his world on chess, and made it thefirst and final phrase in his morning and eveningprayers. And so by force of habit he became areally able player, perhaps our speediest playerwho often in the subtle rush of things could topplethe best opponents; Mr Saunders twice, an unparalleledfeat; Sutton three times in succession; andonce when playing for the Scarborough team hefinished his game in four minutes before any of theothers had begun. In the slick scrimmage of agame a minute I have never known him to lose.But MacDougall! In him we have lost not a manbut a team. He was only twelve, just a dot of a boyand a seemingly idle item in the minor fry of theclub, but what a towering talent he proved to be,what an all-controlling magnate in the big businessof piece and pawn! Let us recall the hourwhen he actually carpeted Noakes three times in asingle sitting. I remember Noakes coming in thatnight, borrowing my glasses for a moment to getyoung Mac into focus, and then settling down fora quick one!‘What odds shall I give him?’ he asked, with arather pointed hint that to mop up such small beeras Mac was a little infra dig. Small beer, begad!How little Noakes suspected what big and brimmingflagons, what portly barrels on tap would behis flooring portion! My word, such a liquidation!If you have tears—but who had not, when the

46lofty Noaksian empire, when the temple and towerof a great tradition, came crashing to the ground?One bout, two bouts, three bouts, what a vintageMac served up that night! Tot after tot and measureafter measure of the truly luscious blood of thegrape! And still he went sublimely on, serenely andsoberly, while Noakes kept drumming his drunkenheels and gurgling in his cups and hiccups thingsbetter left obscure!And a fourth bout? No, the game was up, or Macwould have removed him flat on a shutter. Noakesjust went, vaguely swaying away like the last backwashof the old bar when the door is finallyslammed in their faces, the lights put out, and thefumes of a long convivial eve dispersed into thenight air.And yet! Noakes is still to all of us and even to Machimself the mighty Noakes. Black though the passagemight have been it was only a relievingshadow in the luminous view of his chess career. Solet us indulge the luminous view. That eye is betterclosed which sees nothing else but spots in the sun,squints in the stars, and in the fair and virgin faceof the moon a whisker.And now a lament for Mason. This is a true occasionfor the willow and the weeds, for Mason morethan anyone else was a master of that most civil ofall the arts—the art of losing. It was a pleasure toplay with Mason, to approve each move as it camealong and to think of triumph and failure as onlythe fleeting phases of the one perennial game. Heoften won, for he was a fine player, but he neverforced a victory, or grimly wrung it from you aftera long and ding-dong struggle. He was too urbanefor that. He received your defeat as a favour andmade you really feel that you were the architect ofhis success. And when he lost, what mutual joy!Verily a game with Mason was a lesson in civilization.How well I remember his coming to the Club! Itwas the year when the fisticuff style was in fashion,when tempers were short and discussions long, andwhen Cranston came less for an hour of chess thanfor an orgy of the slack jaw. Games were obstructed,neglected, forgotten in argument and angry clamour.It was then that Mason came along and taughtus all in his winning way the gracious art of losing.What an influence he was, a very balm of Gilead,moving here like oil on the troubled waters, therelike water on the fires of contention, unruffled inany and every breeze, yet breezy enough to fill theflapping sails of all his foes! For Mason was noblyresponsive to the symbols of the royal game.More than any other member of the Club he indulgedthat lovely illusion, which only chess affords,of living in high estate, having a castle or twoat his own disposal, bishops and knights to do hisbidding, and even a king and queen at his constantbeck and call. As lord of such lordly vassals he alwayspractised the courtesies that were their mutualdue. Inspired by the privilege of such a positionhe could even lose and be glad.And the monumental Sutton? Trembling rumourhas it that the monument may remain. O how weshould love to believe it! But till the powers havespoken, his fate and ours are finely poised on thepinnacle of a big perhaps. We hope and fear.Sadly, though Binder ran the chess club formany more years, he resisted all appeals towrite further reports. Perhaps it was simplythat the later players failed to inspire him, as issuggested by a passage from his last report.‘We have turned the last and luminous page ofa folio of epic deeds and, with a poignant senseof something gone, have heard the closingcadence of its rich memorial prose. The longstory is over, and so with a fond and farewelltouch of the vellum and leather of better days Iturn to finger the cheap reprints of a more plebeianage.’SOME RANDOM RAMBLINGSby Stan Halliday(1949-1954)As the sun-dial in the Valley Gardens belowthe School had it at the time, Tempus Fugit, andthe 53 intervening years certainly have! Andisn’t it odd, how some of the memories fromthose “summer times” are often clearer thanevents closer to hand as one event triggers

47another, and thetrickle becomes aflood.Late Summer, 1949,and with more than alittle trepidation,some 70 or 80 newboys, complete withnew bikes, satchelsand name tapes courtesy of Messrs. J. J. Cash,present themselves at Westwood. For many,the rather sombre building and the aura givenoff by be-gowned masters would haveseemed rather daunting. For a few, with elderbrothers or friends already in situ, the transitionfrom Northstead, Gladstone Road andCentral, from Falsgrave, Barrowcliffe andFriarage and from a score of village schools inVale and Moor, might be a little less so.For myself, having become used to alternatingwith Shaun Ireland, top or second in endof-termexams at Central School, the shock ofcoming 20 th of 26 at Christmas, was a rudeawakening, and, sad to say, did not doenough to galvanize in the ensuing 5 years,leading only to a modest handful of ‘O’ levels.But with hindsight, those years were designedalso to provide character, pride, confidenceand responsibility in those meek littlefirst-formers, as we hesitantly entered pubertyand adolescence.They were good times, although like the succeedingNational Service years, perhaps betterin hindsight.And the masters—what a diverse collection ofbullying, timid, erudite, sarcastic and eccentricindividuals they were!From the mournful Harry Wallhead, whosethought-provoking admonishment “Sufficientuntil the day is the evil thereof”, left you ponderingwhether perhaps the tea-tray you weremaking had not been just a little too ambitious,to the attention-grabbing “Why does amouse when it spins?” of Norman Stoddardwhose answer “Because the higher the fewer”has puzzled me to this day. Thick or what?And what about Billy Binder in Room 13,built and dressed like a West-Riding alderman,whose daughter allegedly had to conversewith Dad in French and Mother in Germanat home? Not much fear of her hearinghis immortal phrase, “Better come along tothe Chess Club this evening—uh-huh-huh!”Derek Price could fairly easily be side-trackedfrom dissecting earthworms to war experiencesin the Fleet Air Arm, although his recountingof the incident where a fellow serviceman’sbrains were exposed by an aircraftpropeller was not for the squeamish. Hisstraw-poll of the class, as to which chapter inthe text-book they would most like to reviseduring the last session of term, inevitably ledto the almost unanimous choice of“Reproduction of the Human Species”, eventhough for many classes, that particular chapterhad not yet been covered by the syllabus.Spike Jones in Room 4, whose modus operandifor the teaching of History seemed to centrearound your taking of copious notes, with

48scarcely a break to ease the mounting RepetitiveStrain Injury.“Giblets” two doors away, courteous, mildmannered,and much given to the slideprojector.He could, while delivering a languiddiscourse on the hinterland of the Niledelta, hurl chalk-stubs with devastating accuracy,before regaining full-flow as thoughnothing had happened.C.H. Bradley, Justice of the Peace—the powerbehind the throne. One to avoid, both atschool and also in later life, if at all possible.H.S.P. Taylor --- the epitome of laid-back tuition,but with a keen sense of observation, aswitness the steady flow of cartoons in the EveningNews.Pike Richardson, in Room 9, whose worldwearyimpatience with his more spiritedcharges only rarely led to any show of temper.Several years later, when becoming acquaintedwith his bubbly, blonde daughter, Ididn’t know who was the more taken abackwhen the front door was opened to me oneSunday afternoon.As for the “one-off” in Room 10, I am relievedto say that the ‘U’ forms only met him on rareoccasions when deputising, but such was theterror his reputation engendered, that eventhe likes of Pete Hough, Louie Henry and TedLancaster were content to keep their headsbelow the parapet for all 40 minutes.The trials and tribulations of Mickey Manfield(aka Mauler) are, of course, well documentedon our website, and it has to be said that hischoice of profession was grossly ill-advised. Ihave to confess my passing of GCE in French,owed more to the ground work laid down byHoly Joe Francis, Les Brown and Billy Binderthan the year with Mr. Manfield. It was anepisode which I am sure we all now agree,was one in which we regret involvement.Of course, I always knew I was in with thewrong crowd and this inherent good-naturenearly led to the ultimate sanction in our finalyear. However, nobody really liked toiling upOliver’s Mount to play rugby in the middle ofwinter surely, and the arrival at the LondesboroughCinema of the French classic film“The Wages of Fear” (with English subtitles),afforded both the chance to broaden ourFrench vocabularies, and to stay warm also.The plot involved a runaway lorry, loadedwith unstable nitro-glycerine, but included ascene shot in a steamy Marseilles transportcafé, where a group of drivers laid bets as tohow long it would take for a large black fly toalight on the naked bosom of a young lady. (Ibelieve the French call it cinema verite or somesuch, and it has acquired respectability, butthen, it was an ‘X’ film into which we shouldnot have been admitted).Anyway, at the conclusion, around 5.00 p.m.,we spilled down the cinema steps into the wetJanuary night, only to encounter a latefinishingMr. Perry from Handicrafts. Nothingwas said—we did wonder if he hadmissed us among the departing audience—but at assembly next day, we were required toreport to Joey’s study, forthwith.After initial hints of expulsion, our abject displayof remorse led to mercy being shownand Brad was duly called in to carry out sentence,Miss Blakemore being asked to leavethe room.One recipient later volunteered that what wehad received was certainly preferable to thatwhich would have been administered by hisfather had we been expelled. We all said amento that, and survived a few more months to sitour GCE.s…….It all happened a long time ago and with theexception of Pete Hough (Art, OrdinaryLevel) some years back, our paths have notcrossed since. I see from the website howeverone or two names re-emerging and I trust mymusings will not embarrass.As for me, apart from 8 years with E.T.W.Dennis and Sons, the local printers, and 2years National Service with the Royal Artil-

49FREE ideas to grow your businessWant to grow? Be more successful? Pay less tax? Have accounts, an audit,and an accountant that really help you get your business from where it is towhere you want it to be?Then talk to Chartered Accountants who specialise in helping businesses likeyours do exactly that.Fixed fees - Plain English - FREE Business Builder meeting - Fully guaranteedClaim a FREE "How to explode with growth" report by calling 01723364341Winn & Co Chartered Accountants,62/63 Westborough, Scarborough, YO11 1TS(01723) 364341lery in Germany, I have worked and lived inNorwich and Bury St. Edmunds ever since,and retired a few years ago. Over that time, Ihave encountered several contemporaries,including Frank Gallagher (1950-55?), whowas project managing several miles of powerlines across the East Anglian landscape, BrianMilner (1951-56?) who in the 1980s was teachingin Bury St. Edmunds, and Richard Toft(1949 onwards), who retired as Chief Executiveof St. Edmundsbury Borough Council ayear or two ago.I’d like to think my contribution to the Magmight stir a few memories and thanks toDavid Fowler for extending the copy deadlineto include it. I only discovered the site inJuly and now eagerly await the tie.Best wishes to all.POSTCRIPTWe were very near to press date, and awealth of copy was still to sift through, whentwo last minute items arrived.First, an adaptation of an article from TheScarborough Evening News.ROYAL HONOUR MARKS 50YEARS OF SERVICEOSA member, former pupil of SBHS anddeputy head teacher of Gladstone RoadJunior School has been handed a top award inrecogntion of his 50 years service as a St JohnAmbulance volunteer.John Morley, who worked at Gladstone RoadJunior School for 28 years, has been promotedto the grade of Knight of Grace.He received a letter from the Order of St Johnsaying the Queen had given permission forhim to be awarded the top honour.He will be invested by the Grand Prior of theOrder, the Duke of Gloucester, at a ceremony

50at St James' Palace.Mr Morley, of Scalby road, said, "I was verypleased to receive it and to think my servicehas been noted.”Since joining the organisation in 1949 MrMorley has had many roles including publicduty officer, cadet officer, county staff officer(cadets) and area commissioner for the coastalarea. After retiring from teaching in 1995 thegrandfather of two devoted more of his timeto St John Ambulance.He was county commissiooner for three years,and following the merger with the formercounty of Cleveland spent another three yearsas deputy commissioner of North yorkshireand Teesdale. Since his wife retired MrMorley has reduced his duties and now doesmuch of his volunteer work from home.Mr Morley said. "As a boy. I joined because Iwanted to do it as a hobby. Then when I didmy National Service it was the obviouschoice. It has given me so many opportunitiesto do things I never would have done." Hecould have a long wait for his award becausethe presentation ceremony is only held everythree years.The second item to arrive, was a letter fromJohn Webster who provided photographsfrom the era of Derek Price—see page 33.John Webster writes from NorthVancouver, B.C. Canada(1944-55)I enclose some photos fro your archival collectionof the Old Scarborians Association. I wasnot sure to whom they should be sent but Iknew you would know what to do with them.This particular trio of photos all relate to theera of Derek Price, the biology teacher of the40’s (late) and 50’s. I have marked them on theback for clarification.Hope all is well with you and fellow OldScabs in town. Sorry to have missed your specialsummer gathering but I very much enjoyedthe January Centennial Celebration.The photo, (top of page 51) was taken in August1955 when Derek Price organised agroup of the previous year’s (1954-55) sixthbiology students to go to the Dale Fort FieldCouncil Centre in South Wales for a week’scourse in marine biology and natural history.It was a marvellous week and I am sure allThe printed version of Summer Times isposted to all members with knownaddresses. The online version is availableby visiting our web site:www.oldscarborians.org.ukAdditionally, we can now provide acomputer CD which contains ALL issues ofSummer Times since November 1999. Thisincludes an index, some colourphotographs, a list of most members’ e-mail addresses and a free program toenable you to view and print the files. Thecost including p. & p. is £2 (overseas £3)and CD’s can be obtained from DavidFowler. Cheques should be made payableto “O.S.A”.Contact details are on page 1.

51participants recollect it well.We stopped en route for avisit to the Llandarcy oilrefinery for an educationalvisit.The photo above is takenthere, of the group, withMajor Bryant who was afriend of Derek’s and ran therefinery.Back: L to R:John Waterworth; ? ; ? ;Colin Leppington; BobLangley ; ? ; John Webster;Front L to R:Derek Price; Major Bryant;? ; Wendy Sanderson;(The two girls were 6th formbiologists from the SGHS)The photograph at the footof page 51 was taken on an

52SBHS Natural History Society trip to Troutsdale in July 1955.Left: Derek Price; Right: Jack SpeightThe photo below was also taken at Troutsdale and John recollects the participants to be:L to R: Jack Speight; Peter Yule; ? Cornforth; Derek Price; Ian Morrison (front); David Mann;Colin Leppington; David Webster; Leonard Norton-Wayne. (The member in the cap at the rearis unidentified.)EVENTS DIARYAGMTuesday November 26th, 7.30pm Stephen JosephTheatre, WestboroughCHRISTMAS DINNERFriday November 29th, 7.00pm for 8.00pmPalm Court Hotel, Scarborough. Price £20LONDON LUNCHSaturday 15th March 2003, 11.00 am for 1.00pm, East India Club, St James Square, LondonSW1, Price £42.Please complete and return the enclosedevents booking form if you are able to attend.~~~COMMITTEE CONTACTDETAILS APPEAR ON PAGE 1~~~PLEASE PROVIDE YOURCOPY FOR OUR NEXTEDITION BY15th FEBRUARY 2003

1David Pottage GolfGolf Course ArchitectsA Complete ServicefromProject AppraisalthroughDetailed DesigntoTurnkey Development70 Whitesmead RoadOld TownStevenageHerts. SG1 3JZTel/Fax 01438 221026e-mail davidpottage@hotmail.comMembers European Institute of Golf Course Architects

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