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A Gloucestershire Lad
by Paul Edmund Norman
July 1962: I take my leave of the Crypt Grammar School, Podsmead Road, Tuffley, Gloucester; we leave Gloucestershire for the last time. I did go back for a school dance in 1963, but that's it. The place in which I was born lies alien to me - I have no desire to go back there, though it remains in my memory as the most idyllic childhood one could have wanted. My earliest memory is of me aged about one and a half sitting in a tin bath on the lawn in our rather large garden in Boverton Drive, Brockworth, a small village nestling at the foot of the hill down which they roll the cheeses at Whitsuntide. I did the cheeseroll hill run once myself, though by accident rather than design. I was never allowed up the hill, but we went anyway, the Ginger twins from next door and I, and halfway up the one-in-two face of the six-hundred-feet-above-sea-level hill that heralds the start of the Cotswolds, I slipped on some stones and rolled over and over till I reached the bottom. The twins scrambled down after me, white faced, ashen, fearing me dead. But I was just bruised, and ever after I was allowed up the hill whenever I wanted. My Mum said, now you know how dangerous it is, you'll probably take more care. I did.
Growing up in Brockworth was the kind of childhood you'd give your right arm for. A small country village, a large three-bedroomed semi-detached villa with a large garden, your large nuclear family occupying various houses in adjacent streets, a great primary school, and miles and miles of country lanes and fields to roam at your leisure. Long, hot summers with endless blue, cloudless skies. Only two major incidents queered this idyll for me. But they came during my secondary, or grammar school years, and they must wait until infancy and primary years are accounted for. I remember being taken to the Bear Gardens infirmary in the town to have something corrected with my feet. There I learned to pick up pencils with my toes, and there I learned the awful truth about the revolting stench that came from the same street in which the infirmary was situated. There was a tannery in the town.
I entered the world of academia at the age of four-and-a-half years, and travelled the two miles up the hill to the infants' school at Dinglewell. A year later, Brockworth New County Primary School was opened, a mere two hundred yards up the road from Boverton Drive, the beautiful tree-lined avenue in which I lived with my Mum, Dad, and elder sister.
A small parade of shops nestled at the bottom of the road where you turned left to go down to catch the bus to the city from the stop in Ermine Street. There was a butcher's shop, Mr Jacomelli's. A grocer's store, run by Mr Ellis, where we bought things like tooth powder in a tin which you had to wet with your brush to turn into a paste. Two other shops, but I forget their nature, though one could have been a hairdresser's. Mr Ellis always addressed me as "Peter-called-Paul", the significance of which was always lost on me, but he seemed to like us. My sister Jean was born in the flat above his shop, before we moved into the house. There were no cars, and the greengrocer and the coalman delivered their wares with horse and cart. Once a week, a lorry drove round the streets selling "pop". Fizzy drinks, the variety of which was staggering, with the brand name Corona. Mr Ellis sold only Tizer, the "pop" man sold limeade, cherryade, all manner of fizzy drinks packed with sugar and stopped with rubber stoppers. Favourite sweets were Spangles, of course, and chocolate bars were Fry's Chocolate Cream or Five Boys. We lived next door to a milkman, Mr Eldridge, who had a refrigerated shed next to his house. You'd think a milkman would want to sell you milk, but if you ran out and went next door to ask to buy a bottle, he would be most grumpy - I didn't like him. Down the road, actually in Ermine Street, was Mr Lees' newsagents' shop, where I eventually secured my first job, as a paperboy. At the opposite end of Boverton Drive was Court Road, with another, smaller parade of shops, where Mr Lees opened his second newsagents, and the first "supermarket" in Brockworth opened, a Cooperative store. The death knell for Mr Ellis's was beginning to sound, and he shut up shop long before we moved.
Through a field to Boverton Avenue, where Gran lived, with Uncle Johnny and Uncle Ernie. Uncle John worked at the aircraft factory, where he had two clock cards and took home two wage packets - don't ask me how he did it, but he did. And when he didn't fancy turning in for work, someone else would clock him in so he didn't lose any money. Most of the time he was working in the pub in Hucclecote. He would often bring home the pub Alsatian dog, Rego, the biggest dog I'd ever seen, but he seemed to like me. Uncle Ernie was an insurance agent. He was the first in the family to have a car, and it was whilst cleaning it, that I found (and read) his copy of the newly published Lady Chatterley's Lover. The language of D H Lawrence is something I am particularly fond of now. Back then I was just amazed at the sexual imagery, amazed and inspired, though I remained a virgin till the day I got married! Also in the "Avenue" lived Great Aunt Grace and Great Uncle Ernie. They had a television, and on special occasions I was allowed to go and watch Robin Hood or The Lone Ranger.
Behind our house was a tract of land given over to Nissen huts housing Italian prisoners-of-war who had stayed on to make their lives in Brockworth, together with various poorer families who couldn't afford bricks and mortar. Not that Boverton Drive was "posh" for its entire length, though, for further down towards the turn to Ermine Street was a row of prefabs. They were there when I was born, and they were still standing when we left in 1962. Our other next-door neighbours were the Muirs, a large, cheerful family, with whose children we played, my sister and I. But they moved out in 1950 or thereabouts, and a new family moved in, the Hughes. They had four children, ginger twins, Nigel and Norman, two years older than me, Adrian, who was in the forces, and a daughter who disappeared shortly after they moved in to get married. Nigel and Norman swiftly became my best friends, and of my family I was the only one who could ever tell them apart. Their father was a strict methodist minister and the boys were rarely allowed to play in their immaculate garden, so they came into ours, often to fight with each other, something they were definitely not allowed to do in their own, and at which point I would take ?my leave and go back indoors to pick up a favourite book or comic. More about the twins later. Eventually the Nissen huts came down to be replaced by another housing estate. Immediately behind our house there suddenly appeared a semi where two delightful teenaged girls came to live with their parents. I was never sure if they undressed for me or for the ginger twins next door - they always seemed to be waving at me! Those were fond memories. When I was supposed to be reading, they would be doing a striptease for me, or so I hoped - and believed.
I said that various members of our families lived in Brockworth. I don't remember having a lot to do with them apart from my grandmother and great aunt,?but I do remember walking the three miles (and back) to the next village, where Uncle Lesley and his brood of seven children lived. We would be taking clothes, food etc., for them, as they were really poor, but we'd always get a hugely warm welcome and would come away with bags full of American comics, Superman, Batman, Tarzan, and these introduced me to the thrilling world of comic book adventures, a love that has remained with me to this very day. All of my uncles on my Mum's side, plus my father's half-brother, were in the forces during the war and the ones we saw often would regale us with thrilling tales of their exploits and the fun they'd had with their comrades. None had sad stories to tell about fallen comrades so I guess they'd avoided too much of that type of conflict, and had only happy memories. Uncle John was a pilot in coastal command, and when I visited my Gran's house I would raid the wardrobes, wearing his uniform, putting on his gas mask and so on. They were my heroes. Uncle Johnny looked like Battler Briton from the Sun comic.
We didn't know it then, but we were baby boomers - at least, I was, born in 1946. My sister, Jean, born in 1941, was a war-baby. They tell me that when the district nurse, Nurse Doyle, first saw me, she pronounced me a German because I had a square head. Mum was the sixth child, the youngest daughter of a large family that had moved out of Gloucester in 1939 to work in the munitions factory in Brockworth that would eventually become the Gloster Aircraft Company. Dad was the fourth child of a family of five, split by widowhood courtesy of the battle of Ypres in WW1. I never met either of my grandfathers or my father's mother, though Mum's father died in the very late 1940s, so I probably saw him but have no memory of him. Dad and Mum married in 1939, but the rest of Dad's family stayed in London, and I have many fond memories of spending long fortnights of holiday time in Hornchurch.
I remember those bus journeys up to the infants school, which comprised one teaching room, a small gym, and a couple of outside toilets. But Brockworth was growing. There was a large, burgeoning?council estate to the north, close to the Cheltenham road, and a paramount need for a new children's primary school. I don't remember the precise opening date but I do remember the headmaster, Mr Gillow, and some of the teachers: Miss Page, with whom I was in love, and Mr Rossiter. I remember also being in love with a couple of the girls in my class, Brenda Offer and Joan McLaren. I was usually paired with one of them for country dancing, which was hugely enjoyable.?There was also a lovely girl called Lynette, who joined the school towards the end of my stay there, and I remember fighting with the headmaster's son, Robert, who was a bit of a bully, and fancied himself, but I beat him easily. Possibly the most enduring memory of Brockworth New County Primary School was during my last year there, when a boy called Tully accidentally shut my thumb in the french windows, giving me a two inch scar I have to this day. But they were happy days, apart from the time I led the rebellion against the school custard, and was severely chastised by Mr Gillow. But it was so lumpy...
Other memories of primary school included story-time with Wurzel Gummidge, Milly Molly Mandy and the Jungle Book, and in our last year at that precious seat of learning, we had to write an adventure story which would be sewn together and deposited in the school library for future generations to read. I doubt mine still exists, as the school has been rebuilt in the fifty years since I was there. Other projects included compiling a book of facts on ocean-going liners, for which I was obliged to write to White Star, P&O and Cunard to enquire about the technical details of their fleet, and imagine my surprise when they responded with beautiful brochures and booklets describing the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary! Nowadays you'd collect such material online!
Sundays would see us going up Cooper's (Cheeseroll Hilll) as a family, with sandwiches and Tizer for a picnic meal on the summit. The view was breathtaking - you could see the Gloucester County Cricket Ground, attached to the Aircraft Factory, and you could see Robinswood Hill, which had some kind of installation on its peak, giving free rein to my fevered imagination regarding rocket scientists, radar and secret goings-on, fuelled by frequent forays into Enid Blyton's books. You could see the Malvern Hills, too, to the south-west. It's a view that remained unparalleled until my adult years, and remains one of the most spectacular memories of my childhood. Every Whitsun we would go for the cheeserolling ceremony, where a couple of ambulances would be waiting, along with an ice-cream van at the foot of the hill. Broken legs and arms were commonplace. Oh, and you could also make out your own house on a clear day, and of course, the New County Primary School which I loved so much. When we got home, we went to church in St George's Church, a mile up the road, then went home to butter crumpets in front of the open fire and listen to the radio.
I passed the 11-plus exam at age ten, and secured a place in the Crypt Grammar School, seven and a half miles away, right the other side of the city. But I was so proud. My two cousins, Peter and Brian Kimber, were already at the school, but it was on the grounds of it being by far the better of the two all-boys' grammar schools in the city that clinched it for me - I had very little to do with my cousins. In September 1957, still aged ten, I started at the Crypt, resplendent in my new school uniform, complete with cap, and found myself amongst pupils who were, amazingly, as gifted as I was academically. By this time I was devouring schoolstories, such as the Billy Bunter of Greyfriars books, with the other famous five, Harry Wharton and co. The Crypt was very much like Greyfriars to me,and in fact it was one of the oldest grammar schools in the country, founded by John and Joan Cook in 1539. Contrast that with the Sir Thomas Rich school for boys, the other Gloucester grammar school, founded just before the war. Talk about proud! But now I would have to work that much harder! In fact, througout my grammer school days, I was never out of the top three in my class, at a time when you competed for top place and were proud to do so. How times have changed!
Next: The Groves of Academe....
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