Perspectives

IMPRESSIONS OF ST. PETER'S

Before returning to South Africa, Neil Malherbe addressed the School...

The day before I left to come to St. Peter's I got hold of Dylan Perlman and Philip Bartlett (who had visited St. Peter's over the past two years) and asked them about the place. When Dylan heard that I had received a letter from Mr. Bulcock of The Manor, he said that The Manor was definitely the best House. Philip, however, who had been in The Rise, was adamant that The Rise, being better at sport, was the best. Dylan's retort was that The Rise couldn't sing properly in Chapel, blurting out "RISE!" whenever it occurred in a hymn. Now, this intrigued me, so I listened out for it when I arrived, but never heard it. On enquiry I was told that "The Rev." never chose hymns with the word in them or simply omitted the harmful verse!

Before I left, Philip told me to look out for a great teacher called Paddy. I laughed and said I could just imagine what he looked like — this large, red-faced Irishman who drank too much! When I arrived, the third person I met was Paddy Stephen — how wrong I was! Here I was confronted by an articulate charming man!! (surely some mistake here? The Editor).

I have learned many things about your School and your country during my stay. Firstly, I don't believe you have what one could regard as weather. Rather, it seems as if you have all seasons crammed into one day, just to keep everyone guessing. Before I left South Africa I said to everyone "Enjoy your winter — I'm off to enjoy summer". Little did I know what awaited me!

Secondly, you have a superb mimic in Joel Hopwood. I had been here for only a few days when I walked into the fourth form prep, room at The Manor, only to see Joel doing his impersonation of "The Rev.", complete with sound effects and "First hymn this morning. . . . 2 1 1 ".

Another thing that I learned was that cricket comes in all types. I umpired several games but my last was particularly amusing. It ended in a draw, agreed upon by captain's Gordon Gibb and Nick Hales, when both balls ended up lost in the surrounding hedge. I still wonder whether the fact that it was 4.00 p.m. had anything to do with the sudden finish!

An interesting bit of terminology I learned was that "Dressers" are not people who know how to dress in the latest fashions! While filming a video around the School a few days before I left I was asked by Dickie, a third former from The Rise, whether I would like to film a fight. When I asked where the fight was, he replied that he would gladly beat up some "Dressers" who happened to be crossing the Peter's fields at the time.

Most importantly though, I have learned that Peterites are individuals — they are not scared to give their opinions or to ask questions. They seem to have direction to all they do. To borrow a quote from a speech I gave at the Clifton House Leavers' Dinner — "There is nothing original in an echo". I am pleased to note that there are very few echoes in your School.

Finally then, thank you to all of you for making me feel a part of your School. I have really appreciated it and take back with me many happy memories of my time at St. Peter's.

Neil Malherbe

AN OLD BOY REMEMBERS

Gerald Vero joined St. Peter's in 1935. Recently he returned after being away for nearly half a century. These are his recollections....

So, here I am, back again after almost fifty years. From the front anyway the place hasn't changed a bit!

Like most small boys going to boarding School for the first time I remember the misery of saying goodbye to my mother and father. I longed to call them back. Someone hovered in the background and I was taken away to unpack and meet the rest of my dormitory — Hobson, Greenwood, Smythe, Graham, Milburn, Parker, Jefferson, Smith, Killick.... It was quite a jolt to read, for the first time, the names of some of my contemporaries in the Roll of Honour in the glass case beside the Chapel entrance.

Our Junior Common Room was somewhere on the first floor, on the right just before you got to Kenneth Rhodes' study. A gentle, kindly Housemaster if ever there was one. We crept past his door to reach our dormitory. I remember the two oars over his fireplace and the not unpleasant aroma of pipe tobacco. I remember being caned for some silly escapade, moonlight bathing I think, in the freezing cold outdoor swimming pool. At the end of the Summer Term he organised a Swimming Display and we, the Swimming Team, did somersaults off the high board and dived through flaming hoops.

S. M. Toyne had been Head Master for many years. He was a great personality, and under him the School had a good games reputation. I think we were one of the first of the Northern Public Schools to build squash courts. Our academic record was not so good. Mrs. Toyne was charming and motherly and it was quite an event to be asked to tea on Sundays. Sally, their daughter, was a good squash player like her father.

Do you still have tuck boxes, white wooded with black metal corners and handles? Full of homemade cakes, tins

of fruit, baked beans, chocolate etc. My mother used to make a mouthwatering "Yorkshire Parkin" — moist, dark gingerbread.

Discipline in the boarding houses was a hierarchical tyranny and we, the juniors, were at the bottom of the heap. Only School Monitors could cane, but everybody else could beat us, and they did. First our own dormitory Captain and his Deputy. Then the Middles, followed by the Studyites and finally the House Monitors. To get to assembly or prep you had to pass the Middles Common Room. Woe betide the boy who failed to knock and ask permission to pass. You were beaten, in turn, by each boy. There could be as many as twelve of them.

Pocket money. Some people got as much as £1 a term. I was given half a guinea (ten shillings and sixpence), which was about average. One term, I remember blowing the whole lot on a secondhand ukelele. What did we buy with it? Penny bars (old pennies) of Cadbury's chocolate; hot, greasy sausage rolls.

The Tuck Shop, a small brick building, more attractive than the present one, could pack in about forty small boys at breaktime. It also stocked white bianco for our cricket boots and green bianco for our O.T.C. (Officer Training Corps) equipment, bottles of ink, shoe laces, notepaper and envelopes, and many other things besides.

In the Summer Term a popular punishment was having to dig plantains out of the cricket field, '100 plantains' being the unit of punishment. These were dug up with a special fork which could be bought from the Tuck Shop for 1 /6d (7 '/2p). One cardboard shoe box held one hundred plantains. Inevitably a Black Market sprung up and boxes were traded at 3d to 6d. Boxes that passed through many hands were 'watered' to freshen them up but this ploy was seldom successful and the Monitors were not fooled. "It takes a thief to catch a thief."

I wonder, does each form still take its turn at dragging the horse roller up and down the 1st Eleven Cricket pitch at lunchtime?

The food wasn't bad. Long tables in the House dining room covered with heavy linen table cloths. Big bowls of sugar, other big bowls full of salt. If you mistook one for the other you could be very sick. At least one new boy would be caught. I still remember Sunday lunch — boiled beef and carrots, onions and onion sauce; large, greasy dumplings that stuck to the roof of your mouth. "Dead baby" for 'afters', a grey, glutinous boiled pudding studded with currants and raisins, full of jam, which spurted out when you stuck in your spoon. Big enamel jugs of custard.

Fagging. A fag had to be in the dining room half an hour before teatime to make toast for his 'Monitor'. It had to be evenly browned and thickly covered in butter and jam. If your Monitor was in a good mood you got a piece too. Rugby boots had to be washed, blacked, dubbined and the laces scrubbed white. Cricket boots and pads were blanco-ed. The bath had to be just the right depth and temperature, the towel kept hot on the pipes. You cleaned his shoes before you had your breakfast, swept out his study, removed the ashes from the fireplace and relaid the fire ready for lighting. Life in the Army was a canter after all this.

Early on Sunday morning, when it was your turn, you raced to Chapel, often in your pyjamas, to ring the bell for early service. One foot in the loop and then three sharp tugs before the bell began to sound. The rope is still there, the hole in the stonework polished smooth, just as it was then.

School Monitors had their own studies, House Monitors usually shared, studyites were three or four to a room. Everyone brought their own furniture or bought it from the previous occupier. None of it would have brought a bid at a Jumble Sale.

Is there still a Corps Band and does it still practise in the quadrangle behind the Assembly Hall? We buglers had to practice for half an hour before lunch on the verandah of the old wooden cricket pavilion.

The Assembly Hall is longer than I remember and now sticks out further into the tarmac quadrangle. This was a favourite pitch for lunchtime hockey. Sticks so worn down by the rough surface that the ball was continually being hooked through study and dormitory windows — l/6d a time, a fortune in those days.

K. G. Chilman, second Master to Mr. Ping at St. Olave's, now has a building named after him. Immensely strong and with a good eye he would hit six after six during the Staff v 1st XI cricket match. The ball would soar over the pavilion, crash against the Chapel wall or bounce over the roofs. He was seldom in for long but it was exciting while it lasted.

In my day, the Library was a Gymnasium in the charge of Company Sergeant Major Puddick. He was a jovial, red-faced, retired Infantry Warrant Officer. He issued us with our scratchy, uncomfortable O.T.C. uniforms and showed us how to roll our puttees and polish our boots and buttons. Parades were a bore but battles over the playing fields firing blank ammunition and letting off thunder flashes were great fun. I enjoyed being a member of the Shooting VIII, competing against other Schools, firing live ammunition on the open ranges at Strensall Camp.

Then the War came and we Sixth Formers wore armbands on our uniform sleeves bearing the letters L.D.V. (Local Defence Volunteers; later to be re-named the Home Guard). We patrolled the river bank and the Ings, in the evening and at weekends, keeping an eye out for German parachutists. If the authorities thought this would keep us out of mischief, they were wrong. We used binoculars to spot the courting couples in the long grass and then would creep up and practise shouting out, "Halt, who goes there?". The screams of some of the girls. It's a wonder we weren't lynched by their boyfriends.

I joined my regiment in the middle of the Christmas Term and suddenly School days were over. Several years later in the Far East I was introduced to a tall young officer who had recently arrived from home. He smiled as we shook hands and said, "We've met before Sir, I was in the junior dormitory the night you came up to say goodbye".