King Henry VIII Grammar School

What's all this chemistry stuff? I never did understand it: physics was more my bag. Now, who knows the full tale of the physics teacher knocking a Bunsen burner over, straight into a pile of magnesium ribbon on his desk in P4; and then finding the fire extinguisher was empty? It must have happened early 70s.

Missed that because I left before then. P4 was opposite the music room, and seemed to be underutilised, i.e. empty most of the time. It was also remote from the science block, which seemed a bit odd. I do remember an old Carry-On type character of a lab steward in a white coat who accidentally dropped, from some height at the top of a stepladder, on the landing upstairs in the "new" science block, a huge glass cathode ray tube thingy. It sounded like a bomb going off. Ron Hough rushed out to find shards of broken glass all over the shop. I enjoyed chemistry to begin with, and got good marks, whilst all about equations and reactions and practical experiments. But then it switched to atomic particle theory, covalency whatever that was, and I couldn't understand a word of it so decided to drop the subject asap. Which I did in the lower fifths.

Slim, if you are right about the location of P4, I have the wrong room number. The room I was referring to was in the old science block and formed the corner unit abutting the playground(s).

I think that was P3. It was our house room, so we were squeezed in there every Monday morning with Pop Cork.

Yes, it was used as a house room. Whites?

Yes, Whites. As I recall, anyone who had the surname White was put into Whites house. I never understood why the house system existed. It seemed to me to be a throwback from centuries before my time, that they dare not get rid of, and that it had no purpose whatsoever. My memories of Pop, who never taught me, are that he always seemed disappointed with our house when pitted against other houses.

I was Hollands and that same disappointment was very evident from Mona Liddiard who IIRC was our housemaster. I'm glad I'm not the only one who couldn't understand why there was a house system: it all seemed so pointless to me. Mind you, I wasn't interested in much at school, other than catching the bus home ASAP.

I was never given a plausible explanation either. I have a theory; the philosophy seems to have been that competition is good - therefore more competition is better. There were inter-house versions of all the competitions in existence; divided into age-groups, of course! There were even some inter-form competitions! There were so many teams to put together, there was significant pressure (even on us non-sporty types) to participate. Maybe they were right; maybe I'd be healthier even now if I'd thrown myself into it with enthusiasm. I don't think the sporty types can comprehend someone who doesn't like sport (ref Vivian Stanshall's song 'The Odd Boy'); similarly, I don't understand why they like it. Takes all sorts, eh?

KHVIII House System This is from the KHVIII website. It's been a while but there are (or were) statues scattered around Coventry of all these people who gave their names to the houses. I too was in Holland's with Liddiard as house master, favourite house hymn was "To be a Pilgrim" which we irreverently misquoted as "To be a Pilchard".

That was me, that was. My ambition, the highlight of my day, was to be the first boy, at 1600 hours, to be legging it off the premises, down the road to either get the train or the bus. I often managed this, helped by a teacher who was probably keen to get home himself, who would let us go a couple of minutes before 1600. Bob Griffiths was one. Sometimes he would be charging down the road, in his Mini, fag in mouth, before me!

Thanks, Bohica and Vtopian. At school, I always felt as if I were the odd one, the other 999 kids being normal. It's nice to know quite a few others shared my view. But in those days it was "a view that dare not speak its name"! Earlsdon Kid, thanks for the link. I never knew the houses were named after former headmasters. It's amazing that the house system still exists, as strongly as ever. I'm surprised it hasn't died out as being politically incorrect. An obsession with competition seems to be in the DNA of most of the human race. As Robert Morley the late actor said, it's all about "doing better than, beating other people". Ultimately it leads to war. It's been said that sport is a modern replacement, an outlet for man's natural aggression, in a "civilised" society, which is a thin veneer. A lot of things get the blame for this aggression. Racism is one. In reality, that's a poor excuse. It wouldn't matter if everyone on the planet looked the same, i.e. didn't have different skin colour, hair colour, physical features and so forth, or spoke a different language. Violence would still exist for some reason: they live in a different country to us; they have different laws/customs; they earn more money than us... an excuse would be found. Even people from similar backgrounds and necks of the wood have turf wars; e.g. the Kray twins.

Just a shout out for the fifth house, Kings (colour, royal blue) which for some reason no longer exists

I can't ever remember singing anything in Monday morning house meetings. Truth be told, I can't remember much ever going on in house meetings other than a lot of sweaty pupils being hoarded together in a rather confined space.

In Whites, there was always the mandatory religious ceremony to start with, but I remember it being quite a short affair, unlike the school hall, led or taken by Pop. There were never any hymns or singing. Well there was no piano or Ernie Shaw for one thing! The rest of the time was the inter-house sports results, other inter-house competitions (I won a prize in the arts and handicraft one year, and Pop, who had never met me, praised me in my school report that year). Once in a while there would be the comment that we were falling behind and must do better against other houses.