At last someone has remembered Sheldon Heath Comprehensive; I should have done so years ago!
The school was a no-expense-shared flagship school, heralded in by the Labour Government as the way education in this country would be provided in the future. I believe it was a happy school, I know that I loved it –shiney and new and with the best teachers around. Being a true ‘comprehensive’ there was a socio-economic and educational mix that rarely actually mixed. There was a ‘remedial’ department headed by Mr. French. He had a remedy for all educational problems – his cane! He did not teach us in the ‘higher echelons’ of the school but several of my classmates and I had a bizarre experience that was to be the foundation of ‘The Boomerang Club’. Frenchie had been on holiday to Australia, a very rare experience, and had returned with a boomerang. At break time he had decided to give us an impromptu demonstration of the ancient aborigine hunting skill. However, lean and fit aborigine he was not; podgy, balding sixty-year-old he was! Time after time the weapon would lethargically spin from his hand, only to come crashing down into the ground at a distance. He would trudge out, getting redder and puffier with every failed attempt. There was a small group of us watching this display, which of course we found increasingly humourous; Frenchie’s humour though had long evaporated as sweat. He ordered us to stand back for safety, still harbouring the forlorn hope of a return flight. Another failure brought forth another riotous outburst of laughter from us; he had had enough. He stormed back towards us and in a typically sexist outburst ordered all the boys to his room for a demonstration of another use for a boomerang! Once up in his room, down came his cane from the top of the blackboard. “First one, bend over” he bellowed, is his face red, puffed and enraged even more; one Reginald Reynolds, being the smallest, found himself suddenly at the front and received three whipping stokes. Not satisfied with the damage he felt he had managed to inflict, Frenchie raged, “ that’s no damned good!” and stormed into his storeroom, emerging a few seconds later with a collection of odd pieces of wood, which he was soon shattering in all directions on our backsides. We were totally transfixed at this bizarre display, he was obviously totally mad! And so The Boomerang Club was born!
We enjoyed English, taught by Clifford Stanley, who was recalled in an earlier post. He was something of a cult figure and a lunatic driver who had a number of vehicles over the years: A 1930’s Austin Seven; an RME Riley and an Austin A35. He drove everywhere at breakneck speed, the tyres squealing out a protest at every turn. The A35 was the first in the line of ‘boy-racer’ cars, before the Morris Minor and Mini. It would lean precariously as it did four wheel drifts to the left and right at the traffic roundabout at the Garretts Green Lane and Sheldon Heath Road junction. Occasionally, so Mr Stanley told us, the Austin Seven would simply tip up onto its side. He would climb out of the uppermost door, tip the car back unto its wheels and scream off, as if all was quite normal.
As I progressed through the school, it grew. When I started, the building work was still underway. When I left, it was finished and there were 1700 pupils. When I returned for the fortieth anniversary reunion, parts of the original lower-school building were about to be pulled down, and a new block completed, all this had been finished by the time of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations. Sometime in between, a music room had been added to the middle school, totally alien in design to the original building, it was a 'carbuncle', totally out of keeping. Mr. Smith would never have allowed it to happen; he had ‘class’!
Ted
