The first good thing about the School was its cost which if I remember rightly was £125 a year including tuition and board. As I was an exhibitioner
(a second rate form of Scholar) my father managed to wangle a deduction of £50, but this was more due to his being a retired Brigadier General with a KCB than any academic prowess on my part.
The second advantage was the complete absence of bullying. Fagging was also at a minimum and consisted of occasionally polishing Prefect’s shoes and polishing the buttons on their uniforms. New boys however, were not allowed to put their hands in their pockets for the first term. Later, boys were allowed to have top buttons undone and later as Prefects all buttons could be undone and with hands in pockets this was called ‘Plussing’.
Thirdly there was an absence of any form of homosexual practices, in Mead’s House anyway. Though towards the end of my time there were two angelic boys who assisted the Padre in Chapel who were suddenly suspended under suspicious circumstances.
Another good point was the food which was good. At the start of the War when food rationing came in, each boy had a sugar bowl with his name on and his own supply of butter. To supplement Dining Room food there was the practice of heating up things like baked beans in a saucepan on the Common Room fire, this was called ‘brewing’. New boys were not allowed to brew in their first term. At some stage it was decided that the names of Old Boys should be painted on the Dining Room wall, when I entered to look, the sign writer was inscribing the name of Armstrong – Lushinghton – Tullock. I have often wondered how far I would have got with a name like that.
One unpleasantness was a compulsory cold bath every morning, but we soon learned to fake this exercise as no Prefect was actually going to bother to check it.
Doubtless they were a knowledgeable lot with university degrees but with the exception of Mr Pollard who had a Teaching Diploma, not one of them had any Teaching Qualification whatsoever. (This was common practice in all Public Schools of this period).
Mr G A Riding (Headmaster)
A lugubrious and ponderous man with few teaching talents who was known to the boys as ‘George Awful’, he had a very beautiful blond wife who adored him and an elderly golden retriever who raised its tail when about to break wind. On the credit side it was rumoured that he had set the School on a firm financial footing. As he was a qualified cleric, he could give us one oration from his lectern in the Hall, and another basin full from the pulpit in the Chapel.
We had to suffer him for a short period when he took over our English class on the death of Mr Croft.
He was really a Shakespearean actor of the Old School, he entered the room with the air of a Matinee Idol, mounted the dais and flung the marked papers into the air with a wild gesture and the imprecation of “Watch the seagulls boys”. There followed a period when the class scrabbled on the floor in an attempt to find their particular papers.
He was also hot on essays and would say, “An essay boys should have a beginning, a middle and an end. It must not look like a brick, nor like a comb with every third tooth knocked out. You are now in a good position to write one. You may continue.” He was equally knowing about babies. “A baby, boys, is a small pink mass, you feed one end and powder the other. That is all you need to know about babies.”
As we were doing ‘Hamlet’ for School Certificate, we were taken to the Old Vic to see the play. Laurence Olivier played Hamlet and Vivien Leigh played Ophelia. As they were both getting divorced to marry each other, we thought the whole thing was wonderfully wicked.
He was our Housemaster, a kind and generous man who was extremely shy and bashful. He was a diminutive form of Mr Chips though he must have regarded sex as almost obscene. A Classical scholar (known as ‘Tibi’) who had composed the School Song (in Latin of course). As he had never screwed up enough courage to ask any girl to marry him, he had to rely on his sister to run the domestic side of the House. She was called Tabitha and was also kind; she would read stories in the study to new boys and pass round sweets.
Mr Mead was fanatically keen on winning silver cups for his House. He would stand on the touchline bouncing up and down like a demented leprechaun screaming his head off. During my last term I managed by a fluke to win the Senior Victor Ludoram. As a result he took me up to Town to see a Variety Show at the Coliseum. He also paid my subscription for the Aldenhamian, as he knew I was broke at the time.
The last ritual in the House of an evening was Prayers, the boys would line the walls of the Common Room, then three Prefects would slowly stride up the centre with hands deep in pockets and an expression of deep concentration on their faces (the full ‘Plus’). At the same time the Head Boy would depart at high speed to fetch the Housemaster. Mr Mead would sweep in complete with gown and mortarboard and read out any notices followed by Prayers.
Once a year he had to announce the ‘Tinia Inspection’, which he found extremely embarrassing. “Inspection will be between the toes, and in the crotch, crutch, critch”.
On one occasion nearing Christmas there were balloons around the Common Room and above the Housemaster’s position were three balloons, two were orange and spherical and the third was long and red. As Mr Mead swept in, the end of the red one rose slowly upwards caught by the breeze, a titter rang round the room causing him to examine his flies, and blush profusely before continuing with Prayers.
He was another heavy weight who taught us Political Science (if there ever was such a thing). At the start of the war he advanced on the blackboards to determine the result. He put all the men, guns, tanks and planes owned by the Allies on one side and all those owned by the enemy on the other. Things did not look good for our side. “It looks bad,” he said “but on our side we have the Vast Imponderables.” We all copied this phrase into our notebooks. For all I know he might have been right; but even after the War I never found out what the Vast Imponderables were. They might have been the Yanks, or even the Almighty – who knows?
He was a bouncy man brimful of enthusiasm who took early morning PT in the courtyard, and was responsible for most of the running of the OTC. Under his tutelage I managed to get a Certificate A but failed spectacularly with Certificate B, which was a viva voce test where a military problem was posed for the candidate to solve.
“You are in a trench completely surrounded by the enemy, you have 5 men each with a rifle and 5 rounds of ammunition. What do you do?” said the Officer. Having sent a runner to the North for help, he got shot. The same fate overtook the men I sent to South, West and East. What now? I ordered the remaining soldier to ‘fix bayonet’ (a gleam came into the Officer’s eye – this was obviously good stuff). And then? Extracting a white handkerchief from my pocket and impaling in on the bayonet. I told the soldier to wave it from one side of the trench to the other. This had a remarkable effect on the Officer. His eyes bulged and he turned purple. “Failed” he said. “You will never make an Officer in the British Army.” (Prophetic words). When I asked for the correct answer he said “To the last round and the last man.”
Having measles which affected my eyesight and prevented my becoming a fighter pilot I had finally to resort to the ‘Senior Service’.
After the war I learned that after his retirement Buckingham’s house had caught fire, naturally it was not insured.
He was the most outstanding personality in the time that I was at Aldenham. A lad with a saturnine expression and a very broad base. At soccer his method was quite unique, he would work his way up the field in a crab wise fashion with his back towards the opposing side and at the last moment he would swivel and kick the ball into the net. It made the other 10 men almost superfluous.
For House Plays he would always select an item which had much ranting and roaring at the end, which he conducted as a solo performance. The petrified judges would invariably give him the prize.
To see Sprent plussing down the Common Room prior to Prayers was a wonder to behold which has stayed with me for many decades.
Sir Bernard Pears – He was an expert on Russia who came to tell us what fine chaps the Russians were. It did not take long to find out how wrong he was.
Sir Somebody Something - He was a well-known but somewhat elderly solo singer who was to perform on the stage in the Hall. We had been rehearsing ‘The Songs of the Sea’ for many weeks; songs like “Eastward Ho for Trinidad and Westward Ho for Spain with a Lame Duck a lagging all the Way”. The culmination of these efforts was due when the solo singer arrived. The Headmaster ushered him into the Hall, the orchestra burst into life, it soon became apparent that the soloist was as drunk as an owl. Mr Riding grabbed him from the stage and escorted him to his Rolls Royce which swept majestically out of the School Gates. As he had just dined with the Headmaster, it seemed strange that his condition had not been noticed before he joined the Lame Duck Brigade.
The Clairvoyant – There was no doubt that this man was a great success. For his first demonstration he had the Head Boy on stage. The Head Boy was a very good-looking lad with a serious disposition (otherwise he would never have made it), his name was Agate. He was asked to write a name on a paper and seal it in an envelope. After a pause, the Clairvoyant said the name was Diana Burgett, Agate agreed that this was correct. I was particularly interested here as the Burgetts owned the house next door to ours in Sandbanks and they would come down and occupy their house for the summer holidays. She was in fact the ‘girl next door’.
For the next demonstration the Head was involved, he was asked to do much the same and retire to the back of the Hall and concentrate on the name. After a considerable length of time the clairvoyant managed to produce the name which was Anthony Eden which Mr Riding confirmed was correct.
An Ordinary Seaman - Not too long after the start of the War an Old Boy returned to the School in the uniform of an Ordinary Seaman, it turned out that he was on the Battleship Royal Oak, which was sunk by a German submarine at Scapa Flow. He was greeted as a hero.
I later joined as an Ordinary Seaman at Butlins Holiday Camp at Skegness which was renamed HMS Royal Arthur. Later as a Midshipman I joined HMS Nelson which spent most of its time in the Med. Finally the Italian Admiral surrended his Fleet onboard Nelson at Malta.