'68 (I think) to '76.
I think all the teachers were decent and conscientious, doing their best for us but one or two sometimes came unstuck with their old fashioned attitudes.
Mr Slade had a rule that you had to present pen (cartridge only) pencil, ruler and comb within ten seconds on demand. You got one stroke for not meeting the deadline and another for every item you couldn't present. Letters that where sent home to parents had to have the signed reply-slip returned the following day. Failure to do so would result in one stroke but this would double every subsequent day. One lad decided to see how far it would go. Every day he would get double the number of strokes. One morning, that was 32 strokes! The next day he duly presented himself for 64 strokes but Slade backed down. A few weeks/months later, Slade announced that he would not be using the 'slipper' again. I often wondered if the two events were connected...
I expect that such a punishment today would rightly carry a risk of a jail sentence...
I remember in the fourth year (Mike Openshaw's form) persuading Mr Openshaw to let me and a couple of volunteers brew some beer in the classroom after school. (Really
). At four PM we duly set up a paraffin primus stove on the teacher's desk and started heating a large pan of water. Mr Learie (excuse spelling) otherwise known as Stan whistled his way down the corridor doing his rounds, put his head round the door and carried on whistling. Five seconds later the whistling stopped and he came back to the classroom and asked us what we were doing. My reply that we were brewing beer only caused his jaw to drop further. He told us we could not do that 'here' but I stood my ground so he took us to his little room where he had a sink but also a wall full of bails of waste paper and a very large heating-oil storage tank. After a while, the primus ran out of fuel and I refilled it, with petrol. Just to make sure that I had refilled with paraffin and not petrol, I poured some into a bottle top and placed it in the sink. I struck a match but didn't get near the bottle top as there was a loud 'whoosh' and the whole sink was ablaze. Sensibly, the other lads ran out but I turned on the tap, splashed water over the sink and wiped the water and burning petrol into the sink.
I had almost put the fire out when Stan put his head round the door and said "Right, that's it. You'll have to stop now"...
Although my hands were a bit burnt, we took the equipment to the house of one the lads and finished the job.
The following day I was summoned to the Headmaster (Macguire at that time) who asked me why I had been trying to burn down the school. I replied that if I had been trying to burn it down, the school would now be a smoking ruin... He predicted that one day I would disappear in a puff of blue smoke but he let it go at that.
We finished the beer in time for the last day of term and were allowed to drink it in class. One or two of us had also nipped out at lunch time and bought whiskey so it was a pretty good last day of term.
The Italian Physics teacher (very good by the way) was Roseanna Fulgoni, not Maria as mis-remembered elsewhere.
I believe Mr McGarron, French teacher and head of languages, became the Head of St Monicas.
I left the school with a grade nine O' level in French (I was reliably informed that spelling your name correctly would get you an eight) but did reasonably well in my other subjects. This was NOT a reflection of the quality of the language teaching I have to say. M. MacGarron and the other French teachers I had were very good. I just seemed to have a block with languages. In those days even a trip to France seemed like a remote possibility. Now I live in France and I'm working hard to get my French up to an acceptable standard: Eat your greens and work hard on your language skills...
I'm not sure I understand the comment elsewhere in the thread that 'Tony Slade married Hattie Jaques and became a tour guide at Old Trafford'. Can anyone explain?
Good luck to you all, staff and old boys alike.