Having secured a place at The Winsford Verdin Grammar, I now had to get there! I discovered there was a special school bus that left Weaverham Monday to Friday for Winsford via the back lanes and villages. So for a weekly fee of probably 10 shillings I sat in the chauffeur driven limousine with 35 other raving lunatics. There was always a full bus load and a daily scramble to get a seat or stand all the way. There were many more but the memory dims. So for us each day we lived in Weaverham but traveled to ‘work’ at Winsford. We had learnt the skill of ‘commuting’ in the 50’s!
The highlights of school had nothing to do with learning and everything to do with socializing and ‘wagging’. The forbidden ‘fag’ was shared with mates at the back of some purpose built wall on the outskirts of the playground. Unfortunately for the ‘smokers’ we hadn’t worked out that smoke rises and as soon as the ‘Indian smoke signals’ appeared the teacher on patrol would head for the wall. The alarm was sounded and bodies would fly in all directions! Another favorite site was the bicycle shed, which afforded less cover but an alternative diversion from the prying teachers.
School lunch was a hoot, and conducted in two sittings. The masters sat on one central table and seemed to eat the same food as we did, but we suspected the quality was different! All pupils sat on tables eight, I think with a two designated senior pupils, who were responsible for dividing the food amongst the eight. In some cases the ‘dishing out’ process was not scrupulously fair, and without the prowling attention of a ‘master on patrol’ some younger pupils would miss out on a complete meal. Talk about ‘Lord of the Rings’!
Physical activities were an interesting event. They took place each week and you could either elect to play the main sport, football in winter, cricket in summer, or choose cross country running. Those who were not football or cricket mad, selected cross country running, including myself. The great advantage of latter choice was that it was unsupervised! This meant that we could walk, jog, or run and best of all stop for a ‘smoko’ I can still vividly recall running in the midst of winter, with snow and ice on the ground in white shorts and singlet (designed to prevent masters from spotting erring students), and stopping for a quick ‘smoko’ with chattering teeth and blue lips. The only thing that kept us warm was the matches and fags! Summer was more leisurely and we could lie on grass hilltops under blue skies and intermittent sunshine!
Did I mention that the school was co-ed? Well that was not particularly significant for the first two or three years but as the hormonal system kicked into place all hell broke loose! But, more about that in the next instalment. Some of the ensuing romances are still active!
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