King Henry VIII Grammar School

Ha! You have a great memory for detail MR! During my attendance at this great seat of learning, Room 10 was always the 'detention' room... especially for the Saturday morning variety. Was this the case during your time?

Amazing as it may seem... I can't actually tell you!

Room 10 was the detention room. Well it was for Tuesday afternoon detentions, of which I got plenty. Not sure about Saturday mornings, never got one of those luckily, it probably was though.

Tuesdays were prefect's detentions lasting half an hour. You used to get them for piddling things like not wearing a cap, or climbing on the roof to retrieve a ball. But a few of us were savvy enough to avoid them. The prefects had a list on their notice board in the prefects' room by the tuck shop. The trick was getting in there and removing your name from the list before the next Tuesday, so that nobody was any the wiser. Teachers' detentions were on Thursdays for an hour, and not so easy to avoid. I only ever had a couple in 7 years, and never had a Saturday one. A triumph for keeping my head down, I suspect!

We were now 6th form students, some wore grey suits and some the traditional black blazer that you could only buy from the one store down from the "Hotel Leofric" I think it was called. Amongst our number was the fashion magnate Rick Rogerson. His mum had re-married and his name changed from DeMarco to Rogerson one Wednesday morning. I liked Rick a lot, but he was a good athlete and should have done more on the sports field, we could have done with him. Rick's new dad bought him a car that looked like an Austin A40 but was probably a more modern bigger car, painted it black then put bright orange swirls on the side of it, and orange highlights. It certainly was hippie-esque and we and Rick called it "The Bomb". It was a car you could visibly see from 5 miles out or less, and there was no way to be inconspicuous in it. David Pennington drove a blue Hillman Imp at some point and "Henry" Ford a green Triumph Herald. His long almost white hair flowing behind him, with Nigel Chatland in the other front seat, his jet black long hair following in synch. Sometimes we would get to drive a parent's car to school, so when we did at lunch time we generally tore off to Barr's Hill School to take in the scenery. I remember well Jack the Wrench and that plum colored waistcoat he wore continually, and a greeny brown jacket that bore elbow "pads" as so many of our masters wore in those days presumably to stop the elbows of jacket wearing out on school desks. I think Jack drove a green MGB roadster, highly out of character it would have seemed, but one never knows. I had an idea he lived in Leamington Spa or Warwick. There is a "Leamington" over here in Ontario, Canada, about a three hour drive west of us, en route to Michigan where Kyle went to University. "The Tomato Capital of Canada" its welcoming signs proudly hail. Geoff Courtois at the time drove a monster of car, I can see it now, black and grey, but do not remember the manufacturer or make. We could get almost all of our basketball team in it if we were playing locally, I can still smell the old leather in it, it was a big car for sure. On some days when we had finished paying rugby on Wednesday afternoon on the A45 Geoff would run back to the school and would often beat the coaches we were on. Man he was fit in those days. Probably Harry Shaw coaches? I see they are still going! We had an exchange master once from America, Jack Packenham I think was his name, I don't remember what classes he used to take but I was in one and there were often slide shows. About one in every 15 slides was of an NFL cheerleader, lame really but he seemed to find it amusing. Of course he was very animated, we sent a teacher over to the USA on the exchange but I cannot remember his name. I remember John Skermer's first day at the school, and his involvement in track and field with Droob. I used to throw the javelin and undertake the shot putt for Droob, I remember John had a blue holdall bag he habitually carried. He had velcroed it so that he could put a black and white large patch on it that Droob or someone had had made, it said in bold letters "King Henry VIII Grammar School", after the meet off came the signage. My friend Bryant said a very very strange thing to me on Skermer's first day, and it has been with me forever. It directly alluded to his first reaction of John and years later when my wife's mum called us from England and told us of John's plight I reeled that Bryant had been so accurate in his initial instant reaction. Could he have know or sensed something or was it a pure guess? I think we know that John made mistakes, and his life has been ruined for it. I remember well school outings in the summer. Ironbridge was one I particularly liked, and one Shakespeare play in Stratford. Years later Alastair and I were enjoying a bright pint of beer in Stratford on one lazy Sunday afternoon and sitting with us was a young lad called Nick Faldo, and his female companion. He was golfing in a tournament locally. This was before anyone ever knew of him. Now as I understand it he is Sir Nick Faldo, I see him here on American television all the time commentating on PGA and other golf. I remember almost everyone's dad had been in the war, or so it seemed, and at the time the large employers were Massey Ferguson, The Jaguar, Rootes Group/Humber Motors/Chrysler, and more. Coventry felt like it was an industrial juggernaut, and last time when I was home I was shocked and saddened to see that the entire Humber Motors plants had gone, vanished, from Humber Avenue to Bolingbroke Road, and away and beyond. My granddad worked on "the track", and my dad in the purchasing offices off Humber Road, and as a kid when I stayed with my granddad over some weekends we went to the "Rec", Recreational Club on Humber Road on Saturday afternoons, and the "Top Club" on a Saturday night where my granddad played snooker and bingo, and I watched Match of the Day and got cockles with vinegar from the "Fish Man" who came in at about 9.30 pm. On the way home, fish and chips! Emerson Lake and Palmer came along, and Alastair loved them and I like them. I guess at Christmas staff were allowed to take vinyl albums into the offices at Chrysler and play music of their choice. My dad came home one Christmas week, beside himself. Someone had played "Brain Salad Surgery" by ELP for half the day, and my dad was an emotional and physical wreck. Somewhat shaking he said "Why would anyone subject themselves to that kind of torture!", all could do was smile. Give my dad Louis Armstrong or the Ink Spots any day, but ELP ? One of my dad's other favorite sayings to my brother and I when he sensed our hair was getting to long was from his RAF days : "Son, is your hair hurting you?".. "no dad, why?" "well it should be son, because I am standing on it !" Our first car had actually been a black Austin A40, license plate GEN183. When my dad went to pick one out the salesman at the car dealership said "you can have it in any colour you like sir, as long as it is black". My dad had been a bomber pilot in WWII, he flew the Lancaster platform. Like my dad was he never waited for papers, he went down, signed up and said he wanted to fly. I guess he got his wish. Late in my dad's first campaign he got shot very badly over Germany, from memory his co-pilot and rear gunner were dead, and my dad managed to stay conscious long enough to get his trouble aircraft home and save the rest of the crew. On landing he was taken to hospital, and they amputated his right leg from the knee down which had been destroyed by bullets. Eventually my dad attended Buckingham Palace where he was decorated for bravery by the King, and awarded The Distinguished Flying Medal. Of course it affected my dad for life, but most people never even knew he only had one leg. As I said his medals hang in my office, as do two perfect pictures of him and his crew, one signed by the crew, and his aircraft pre one flight. Brave men and women those people. Aside from the day when he dropped Shona and me off to come to Canada I never saw a lot of emotion from my dad, except for one day that I do remember distinctly. It was a dull Saturday morning, and I got up at probably 9.30 am or so and went in to our family room, where the black and white tv was playing on the corner cabinet, and the coal fire was heating the house. My dad was sat on the sofa, crying, and crying. This I had never seen before, I think I must have been 6 or 7, and it shocked and perturbed me, it was so out of character and seemingly impossible. Like any youngster would I sought the refuge of my mum and asked her why "daddy' was crying. "Oh Nicholas" she said, "Mr. Churchill died this morning and your dad flew for him and he is very upset". I guess he had every reason to be upset. Several years later on the same television in the early hours of the morning we watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. I was in a room over here with Neil Armstrong one time, he just stood there in a power blue suit and everybody seemed to freeze up. He spoke, you listened on his every word. When he died recently, I think it was Time magazine, had his picture on the front cover, just two words "The Man". My wife and I were travelling from Detroit, Michigan to Louisville, Kentucky one time recently and we went through his small home town. There was a small museum dedicated to him, it was fascinating, quite the guy?

I don't know when your time at Henry's was but in mine it was Monday for Prefect's detention, which as you say was half an hour, though I never got one and Tuesday for hour long Teacher's detentions. I am 100% positive on this. I was '69-'75

It is embedded in his mind without any doubts whatsoever and forever

Yup, I was wondering if the days had changed too.

Well at least I suppose we can all agree that Saturday morning detentions were still held on a Saturday morning!!

My years were 1964-71, so it is possible the days changed. I wasn't a regular so it may be I have the days wrong, but my memory is usually pretty reliable too.

I was 65-70 and Juniors before that, so I ought to know who you are, but don't. I'm not sure about detentions now, but Monday night rings a bell, Saturdays - ah well - I had a couple, though a friend of mine, Keith 'Spud' Murphy managed to get one every Saturday for a whole term.

I'm proud to say I never got one personal detention during the whole of my stretch at KHVIII. I never got caught - if I had, I would have been in serious trouble, at least suspended. It gave me great satisfaction to know I'd outsmarted them, and got one up on the "system".

I had just the one Saturday morning detention. Three of us decided that spending the afternoon in the 'unfit' room doing your homework was a far better proposition than cross-country running around the streets of Earlsdon and Canley on cold, wet January afternoons. It was a simple plot... we wrote our own unfit notes. Two of us (myself included) had the sense to copy our parents handwriting. The third miscreant however became somewhat blase about the situation. This resulted in him turning up one morning, ripping a sheet out of his maths book, and handing a note in with no attempt at disguise. Not surprisingly, by 11 o'clock we were rumbled and hooked out of class by Piggy Shore to be taken to the office of the venerable H. Walker. We were each given a Saturday morning detention after only admitting to the offence on the one occasion! (Phew!) A letter was also sent to our parents explaining why we were to be incarcerated for three hours on a Saturday. Luckily I managed to intercept the post and convinced my parents that the offence was merely retrieving a ball from the roof of the chemistry lab!... now that would have been a harsh punishment!! Needless to say the rest of the term, on games day, was spent pounding the streets of Coventry or, as MisterD-Di pointed out earlier, playing rugby, after a fashion, on those dreadful pitches at Allesley Park.

I seem to remember it was Monday evening and Saturday morning detentions. Never heard of prefect's detentions. I also only got the one Saturday - right at the end of my time. When we did our 'O' level mocks, a number of us achieved such a low score in French that we had to come in on the following Saturday and retake the exam as the school considered we had obviously not tried hard enough the first time (which I suppose was true).

I remember his younger brother, Phil Duckham was was also an Old Coventrian and one of my teachers at Manor Park Junior School on Ulverscroft Road, Cheylesmore in the late seventies. He told us he had a famous brother and used stories about him in his teaching, such as 'Now children, I want you to think ahead and plan how you're going to do this task, unlike my brother who went out and bought a new car, only to find when he got home that it was too big to fit in his garage'. Mr Duckham was very proud of me when I passed the entrance exam - the only one to do so in my whole year.