King Henry VIII Grammar School

Hi Johnnie I never knew Edwards, but I like the match head stunt! There was a similar stunt at GEC in the 60s. A vogue developed for some young guys to smoke a pipe. A match head pushed into a pipe was quite spectacular when it went off!! There was another good practical joke there that I remember. We had this apprentice who bragged about taking his gorgeous new girlfriend to the cinema, and how he'd bought a chocolate bar from the vending machine for it. Someone found an excuse to send him to the other end of the factory, and while he was away, his chocolate was carefully unwrapped, measured, and a block of plywood substituted. He didn't say a word next morning, but we could all imagine the result, in the dark, in the back row!!!! Happy days! I think I left before Edwards appeared, never met new maths. And we called 'Jack Wrench' "Bert". I never knew why.... BTW, talking earlier of Ted Norrish. A bit of Norfolk squit. What's the definition of "jargon"? Thass wut Naarfolk folks do in a tracksut....

I certainly remember Allen Edwards. He did have a nickname, and a very appropriate one - Tramp! He was always dressed like he had slept in a shop doorway, and with his mop of wild hair all over the place. I was a contemporary of his son, whom I think possibly was named Jonathan. Tramp never actually taught me directly, but we all came under his influence. The reason was that he was writing a maths text book. We were all the guinea pigs for his new methods, and we never had text books. We were given duplicated sheets with the exercises on, usually almost unreadable. Invariably there would be errors and they would be rewritten! It was a shambolic method of teaching the entire school, but Tramp was Head of Maths and seemed to have a free hand. His books are still around under the name "Mathematics - Modern Style." I was surprised to read that a teacher had been sacked for brutality. I thought it was compulsory, so many were there that seemed to enjoy hitting pupils. It was mainly informal, such as when Kolisch would slap people on the head for the smallest thing. Bebop Barnes was also a serial offender, I once saw him drag a boy off his chair, onto the floor, and kick him in the ribs! Ted Norrish was far more considered in his punishments and loved getting boys running around the field when he could. Apparently he mellowed in later life and led a laid-back life as a taxi driver. I have lots more KHVIII anecdotes, which no doubt will be posted when my memory is 'jogged' again.

Aaah yes! Tramp - and wasn't it appropriate! Nice guy though!

Couldn't afford tracksuts in them days (April 1965) Back row is Howard Darling, who I think coined the word "Droob", myself and Bob Brandon?. Front ??, Greg Thompson, ??, Alan Dale, and another ??. My apologies to those who I used to know so well and whose names won't come to mind. Greg and I get a nice mention in the Octavian Droobers website - actually from a speech by Ted Norrish himself. Bob Brandon is now the Club Captain.

I doubt that Darling was actually the first to use the name "Droob" Ted Norrish took us for English in 1959/60 and he was well known then by that nickname I can be sure of the dates since he travelled to Rome to spectate at the 1960 Olympics under orders from me to return with a programme from the games - which I still have

Howard and I were Fuzzers in Ted's first year at KHVIII - which must have been 58/59. I think he was using the word droopydrawers and stumbled over it one day, coming out with "droobydrawers". Mick Cole - who was a few years older, and probably captain of one of the newly-formed senior cross-country teams - overheard it, explaining how Ted came to believe that Mick was the originator. Perhaps in that sense he might have been.

Sounds good

May I add something about a much earlier old boy of KHVIII? I'm referring to the First Sea Lord, "Dreadnought" Fisher. Certainly when I attended KH, there was a fair amount of pride expressed about Fisher's having been a pupil in the 1840s/50s, prior to his going to sea at 13, on 29th July 1854. Jackie Fisher bought the Kilverstone estate, near Thetford in Norfolk, which he only briefly retired to at the time of his death in 1920. Both he and Lady Fisher are buried in the churchyard on the estate. I was rather saddened to hear recently that his gravestone is now very neglected and overgrown, and that the nearby figurehead of his first ship, HMS Calcutta, is now rotten and disintegrating. When I visited Kilverstone some years ago, it was a stud for Falabella horses. I'm not sure if the stud is still there. I also heard recently that his grandson and family are no longer living in the hall and have moved away. A sad postscript for a great man.

I've remembered the name of the teacher who - so we were told - was a "captain in intelligence during WWII. It was "Fred" Perry. The master of the sarcastic put-down!

Back to 1955 and Junior School sports day - there's two HCF moderators on this photo !

Hi Gosh, & is that Mrs. Gates in the top left corner? (Not sure really) Thank you so much. I have not changed, Hey! Seriously, I don't think that it is Mrs. Gates the more that I look at her. If I had not been such a rat-bag in upper-prep B, I might have been such a nice boy. Listening to wireless this morning, the third most regret is not mucking in at school. I was so silly, as I was ok for most of the time, then screwed it up when it mattered most. I was fortunate, in lots of things coming together at the right time later on.

No, I don't think it is Mrs Gates - we all wait patiently for our trials for the 2012 Olympics, featuring Sack Race, Egg & Spoon Race and Three-legged Race (sorry, the 1964 Olympics!) I can name many of them (how about you, Philip?) - Tony Youngjohns has the sun in his eyes, you are between Michael Spanton and Michael Christensen ; Brian Holt is the only one without a white top I still know some more, but it's your turn Philip! PS No-one was more guilty than I at screwing up an education (yet I still learnt how to spell and add up, which the kids these days don't seem to)

Hi, not so easy for me. I was only with them in Transition. Half way through the summer hols, I went into Paybody's & was not back at school intil the end of November, & then put in Lower prep B whereas you & most of those in the pic were lower prep A. I know Tony Youngjohns, as he was at Ctlds for a short while. No joke, I only had two full years of schooling between the ages of 5 & 16. That's why I was put in the slow lane. You were in the fast lane. I don't know if you remember, but I started late in Transition. Mrs. Gates gave me separate exercises until about the January. I even had full leg plasters when I started. My longest period away was the whole of the first year in the main-school. In transition, I sat next to Michael Spanton, but I could not remember his first name. You see how slow I am! What did come as a shock was when I received surgery in Walsgrave, just ten years ago as a result of a flu-bug gone wrong, I had another issue that I was born with that until then, I knew nothing about. I might have shared that with you at a breakfast. I sometimes think that I was born out of an Airfix kit, with half the correct bits missing & the glue not very good. I at least have no hang-ups nowadays, as it is turning out that I am out-living a lot of my school chums & relatives.

It may be of interest to some of you King Henry VIII ex-students to know that there is an autobiographical entry in Wikipedia by an ex-student named Stephen T Cobb. I think he must have been there about 1965+. Thought some of you might know him and want to read it.

He's also my cousin's father - also a Tile Hill kid done good Defendapack- and my aunty had to go to court to get a measly couple of quid a week out of him for maintenance, so he's not that highly rated in our family! Seem to recall Lowri Turner wasn't best pleased with him either. Still, the charity work sounds good - we can all change our ways if we put our minds to it. Getting back to Henry's, my late father went there - Philip Shaw - I'm guessing from 1954 ish. I know very little about his experiences other than when at his funeral, a chap called Adrian Sparkes introduced himself to me outside the Crem after the formalities had been concluded and said "Your dad was great at maths. He did all my homework for me when I was stuck." And with that he went on his way.