Rendcomb in the 1970s. Miscellaneous Bits of School Life. The Meeting.

Supposedly the school's experiment with democracy, but in reality it was little more than the figleaf of autocracy. The days in which the meeting had any real power had long since gone. The only decisions we could actually make were ones that didn't really matter, and the headmaster had a veto anyway. There were a number of meeting officers: Chairman, Secretary, Meeting Banker, Boys Banker, Shopmen, Entertainments Committee, Paperman, Badminton/Squash Warden, Food Committee, Amplifier Technicians, Broom Warden, M.A.C. (don't recall what this was), Junior Advocate, Cycle Committee, Table Tennis Committee, Breakages Man, Nominations Committee, Games Wardens,T.V. Committee, Council. Some of these positions had little to do with the meeting, but by tradition were associated with it. E.g. Food Committee, Breakages Man, Games Wardens, Broom Warden(?). In theory all positions were elected, but the nominations committee sometimes didn't bother with more than one candidate, so they were really just appointees. In theory the council had the right to bring a sort of prosecution (known as being "councilled" ) against the meeting member. These were on fairly daft grounds. I can remember when someone was hauled up for saying he thought a particular member of staff did not deserve a leaving present, though I don't remember the outcome. And I think two boys were once councilled for rubbing linseed oil into the school cormorant. The meeting was dominated by the sixth form, which tended to make decisions that benefited itself. I seem to remember that the entire meeting record collection ended up in the sixth form common room, so none of the rest of the school got to use it. Then in 1973, a leaving sixth former initiated a motion to disenfranchise the rest of the school, which we passed, thus making it little more than a sixth form club. There was a certain amount of humour in the discussions: someone mentioned that a hole had developed in the upper deck bathroom: Kim Stuckey suggested that someone look into it.

Ents. The Ents Co were meeting appointees, and were assigned the task of providing entertainment for the whole school. A standard one was the five-a-side football contest, held in the gym in winter and on the asphalt in summer. There was a table tennis competition as well, though that was usually given up through lack of interest. I don't remember many other events, except The Loony Quiz. Apparently this used to take place in the 1960s, with the prize being The Chapman Trophy, which was actually a tin of beans. I think someone ate it. Anyway, it was revived in 1973 with Dave Barling as Question Master. I can still remember a few of the questions: e.g. if Sarah sent a letter to Dave, what kind of stamp would she

use? (Answer: a Pink Shield stamp. ) What is the name of Caroline's horse? Then there was a round where contestants had to recognise which piece of underwear belonged to which girl. Another round we had to tell a joke each on a given subject. (These included cows, a leper, an Irishman and a homosexual, which gives you some idea about how politically correct we were in those days.) I got to the final, but Jon won it. I think one year they staged a version of Call My Bluff, featuring Phill and Jon, which was quite good. Some of the fake definitions were illustrated with lines of poetry that Phill had written himself. The School Magazine. This came out twice a year, and although there were contributions from pupils, it was very much an "official" publication. It was trying to be an advertisement for the school, and as a result was rather staid and dull. For example, there was a section for academic successes, but none for academic failures: it didn't mention expulsions or suspensions either. And the Old Rendcombian news section covered marriages, degree awards, new jobs, but not divorces, drug busts and college dropouts. There was a section for original contributions, mostly poems. John Holt encouraged us to write a type of poetry without rhymes* for some reason. You can see these for yourself as the magazines are on the OR website: Vogon poetry is mild by comparison. *This tended to be more like bizarrely punctuated prose. Duties One week in every four, we had duties. For the lower forms, that meant serving. We did not actually serve as such, but prepared the tables before the meal, brought food and plates to the table when ready, and cleared away afterwards. "Let's have those plates, lads." Ron Fry. The upper forms had to assist the server, which was a much easier task. But also they had to do other jobs, mostly cleaning. This was done, for reasons that are not obvious, before breakfast. Not much was involved except for sweeping and tidying, but it was a pain getting up early to do it. I recall that there was a person called the waker-upper whose job it was to rouse the bell man and other people who needed to be up early. Then there was washing up: at the weekends, the kitchen staff were off, so we had to do that. On your duty week you would have one washing up shift. I remember someone suggesting that the school buy a dishwasher, and Medill said he would look into it, but he said it would make some of the domestic staff redundant. By the time I reached the sixth form I had a holiday job, so I could afford to pay a third former to do it. Theatre trips. These were usually organised by John Holt: some of them were to Bristol or Cheltenham, and a few were to Stratford on Avon. Most of them were to see Shakespeare plays, and were not my idea of a good night out. There was some purpose to seeing the works we were going to be examined on, but some were to plays that we were not doing for A-level. I remember one trip to see Cymbeline,

which we had not studied and Holt gave us no information about: I sat through it without the faintest idea what was supposed to be going on. Also we went to Waiting for Godot, and the general opinion was, what the hell was that about? From our point of view, the real reason we went to was to get a beer. Officially, sixth formers were allowed to have one drink per outing, but we usually arrived early, and there was an interval, and a delay waiting for the bus afterwards, which gave us plenty of time to slip out to a pub. PW. PW, or Public Works was a feature of Tuesday afternoons at Rendcomb. I'm not sure whether its purpose was to teach us the value of community work, to use us as free labour, or just to keep us busy. Some of the tasks assigned to us had a point to them, for instance Bill White' s gardening patrol, or Colin Burden' s manole lot. Others were fairly idiotic. PW came under the personal control of the headmaster, who was Anthony Quick when I was in the third form. In my first year, most of us were dragooned into the stone-picking gang: the newly created rugby pitch up top had been laid but was full of pebbles and rocks of various sizes. We were each given a six inch nail and a bucket, and we were expected to go over it inch by inch, and remove each stone. This was a mind-bogglingly awful task which we all hated. It was quite good fun, though, when Rob Mace was I/C: as soon as Quick had started the session and left us, he would just start messing around and we all played games like The Splits with the six inch nails, or lobbying stones into the bucket from a distance: not such a bad way to spend the afternoon. In my second year, Medill had taken over as headmaster, and he was an expert at inventing pointless jobs. One week he had us tidying up the Wilderness. Steve Jackson, one of the teachers unluckily enough to get lumbered with supervising us was heard to say, "Next he'll have us up here polishing the trees." Having no particular skills or interests I was never assigned to any of the specialist PW groups, and so ended up in the general labour reserve. When I was in the sixth form, the jobs we were given became increasingly daft: one week, Medill told us to move a pile of large stones that were cluttering up the Estate Gardens. The next week, he made us tidy up the piece of ground where they had been. And the following week, he had us moving the stones back to exactly where they had been before. (I'm not making this up.) Actually by then, I had been appointed I/C of the group, and taking a leaf out of Rob Mace's book I ordered downtools as soon as Medill was out of sight. When he returned at the end of the shift he would say, "Paah! You haven't done anything!". I would usually blame it on the rest of the group, saying that I could not get them to do any work. Sex Education. None. The Language lab. This was a bit of an embarrassment: it was installed at great expense when they were thought to be the way forward for teaching languages. When I first came to Rendcomb I thought it would be exciting, and I looked forward to getting to try it. In fact, it was really just repeating exercises into a tape recorder, and was dull and pointless. Bill White would take us there maybe once the term, out

of a sense of duty more than anything else. Dave Sells didn't use them at all. The Christmas Party. I think that this was usually held on the last Friday of the term, though I don't remember now. The first part was the fancy dress, where people just milled around in their costumes for each other to see. They ranged between the imaginative to the crap. Some people put a great deal of effort into it, and others would just wear T-shirt and jeans. Staff would sometimes wear fancy dress, but others would not: I heard that one year Anthony Quick came dressed as a fairy, and was lowered over the first floor parapet into Clock Hall. There were usually some kind of entertainment, or competitions going on in Saul's Hall. The next event was the meal: turkey and Christmas pudding nothing special by today's standards but a lot better than the usual Rendcomb garbage. I think the tables were usually moved into different arrangements for some reason, and there was a special seating plan just for that meal. Staff members would bring in the flaming puddings: I don't suppose it was real brandy on them probably meths. Then we would all pile into the assembly Hall for the after dinner entertainment. This included the judging of the fancy dress competition, and the awarding of prizes, which usually consisted of a box of Maltesers or something similar. In the fifth form I won a limerick competition, despite my entry having the wrong number of lines, but it could not be read out because it was too rude: The CPC are lots of fun And should not be dismissed: The berks, they never do no work And they're always getting pissed. Me, Pete, Phill, Steve and Simon went as Des Bowie and the Spiders from Mars in 6B, but I don't think we won a prize. Then came the sketches. These were often stolen from old radio comedies, like I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again. Some were original, and satirised aspects of school life. They could be surprisingly clever, considering the age of the writers. They were sometimes slightly risque, especially ones involving the girls, and some included the participants smoking. A certain freedom was permitted with language, although there was censorship: I remember Ian telling me that Medill previewed a sketch they had planned: it involved a dog that was supposed to be deaf being given the command, "Sit!": one of the cast then said, "okay, I'll clear it up." Medill said he didn't understand it. "It's a play on the word sit, Sir." He banned it. There were portrayals of some of the staff: I recall one with Dave Shield playing Medill and Chris Higgins as himself: Chris Higgins walks in to Medill's study: Medill: Well? Higgins: oh, not too bad, thank you Sir, and yourself? Medill: what kind of flooring should we have in the new Park house building? Higgins: oh, carpet tiles I should think. Medill: but wouldn't that be rather messy? I mean, what about toast and marmalade?

Higgins: oh no, sir, definitely carpet tiles. Medill: ha well, Spring in the air! Higgins: very well, if you say so, Sir. Possibly these lines were taken from real conversations with Medill. I also remember the headmaster being portrayed as saying grace, "Benedictus Banthediscotheque", which was a reference to boys on Saturday Night Exeats being forbidden to go to the Ciren disco. The 1970 show was a classic, done by Dick Millard et al, which included the Shakespeare parody, containing the line, " 'Tis Billus, I do know him by his gate." As far as I remember, the whole thing went on until bedtime. The show was organised by the CPC, or Christmas Party Committee, who were elected, or possibly appointed by the Meeting. T. I. This was the termly weights and measures session. It stands for either Tons and Inches or Testicle Inspection, depending on who you believe. It was conducted personally by Anthony Quick, and was done in the nude for reasons which were never explained properly, but someone said that he was checking to see if our balls had dropped. I think the practice was discontinued when he left, or at least the nudity part. Games Cricket: not a bad game but it tended to take up the whole afternoon so therefore was not popular with everyone. By the fourth form, most of us had realised that if you played badly it was easier to get out of, and then you could go and have a game of tennis or volleyball or something for an hour, and get the rest of the afternoon free. Only the seriously keen, Paul, Simon, Rob and Andy kept going long enough to get into the Firsts. Rugby: you didn't need any great skill to play at our level, which was lucky because I didn't have any. But you did need a certain amount of strength. I was quite good at tackling if nothing else, because I hadn't worked out just how dangerous it was to hurl yourself at an enemy player's legs at speed, often landing on rockhard ground and getting their heels in your face. It doesn't bear thinking about now, but we were young and fearless in those days. Hockey: I started off two years behind those who came in the third form, and never really caught up. I ended up in Dave Essenhigh's game, also known as dropouts game which was good fun and not too serious. I remember Roge Ingles turned up to play with a hockey stick that he had made from an axe handle. One annual event was the Scientists versus Humanists hockey match, which was played in fancy dress. Traditionally it had been umpired by a prefect, and was a fairly rowdy game, but Medill changed that so it was run by a staff member, which completely took the fun out of it. In the preceding days, each team would put up a poster with humorous descriptions of the players. The School Play There was usually one of these per year, produced by Dave Sells, or later by Derek Bell. As entertainment goes, they compared unfavourably with watching TV or pretty much anything else,

but I think they were supposed to be educational. Of the actors, only Jon had real talent the rest were average. Pete Lace said that when he was picked for The Importance of Being Earnest he told Sells that he didn't remember volunteering for the role, and Sells replied that it wasn't voluntary. Luckily I was considered to be way below the lower threshold of ability, so I was never selected for any performance. You could also get lumbered with the job of stageman or make-up crew, but you either needed to be artistic or have woodwork skills for those. I had neither. I vaguely remember going along to watch some of the plays, but I would usually get bored after the first act and wander off. Politics: I don't remember many of us having intelligent political views, but our total ignorance of subject matter didn't prevent us expressing opinions. I think Mike and Clive became Young Conservatives in the sixth form, and Debbie was quite serious about feminism. Other than that, most just adhered to the Tory opinions of their parents and the school , except me but I was just being contrary. Conservatism was not actually part of the curriculum, but it was certainly implied. Rock Music: we were all mad keen on it in those days: many of us had a "favourite group" which we hero-worshipped. Mike James and I were big fans of Stackridge, for Nige it was Genesis, Stu's was Led Zeppelin, Jon and Andy liked Status Quo and so on. We took it so seriously. We used to go to gigs at the Colston Hall: I remember seeing Rory Gallagher, Roxy music and Black Sabbath there, amongst others, and Nazareth with Cockney Rebel at some other place in Bristol. A lot of us read Sounds, Melody Maker or New Musical Express. There was a music shop called Carrolls in Cirencester, aside from WH Smith's, and a mail order company called Cob Records of Porthmadog where we used to get most of our records. (Cob still exists according to the Internet.) Also some of us used to go to the Reading Festival, a tradition started by Crispin Partridge. There was often quite a gang of Rendcomb people there: there was nothing quite like listening to rock music on a hot summer's day outdoors, but it wasn't so much fun when it was pissing down. The Bathurst. The only pub that was within realistic walking distance of the school: we couldn't really use it safely in term time as it was Dave Sells' and John Willson's local. We did tend to go there when we were coming back from half term or exeats we would get our parents to drop us off there early, and then scrounge a lift back to school. Medill officially banned us from doing this; we argued that he had no right to tell us what we could do when we were still on holiday, but he said that if we continued to use it he would make us come back to school before opening time. I think we just ignored him. I only went there once in term time, and that was after our A-levels when it didn't matter if we were caught. I can't remember exactly who was there, but Carol and Sally were, and me and Mike. We walked down when we were supposed to be In Quarters and went into the public bar. Ron Fry, who worked behind the bar there told us that Dave Sells was in the lounge, so we were keeping our heads down. Then we saw Phill through the window, coming towards the entrance. Mike was shouting to warn him, "Sells is in there, keep away!". He didn't realise that Phill had bumped into Sells in the doorway, who was in the process of telling him that he could not let him go in. He must have heard Mike shouting, but he never did anything about it.

Pubs in Cirencester and Cheltenham were of course frequented on Saturday night exeats. Gym. Or was it called PE? I think we did this up until the fifth form, maybe twice a week. Colin Burden took it; in fact I think that was what he was employed for. There were various bits of equipment in there, horses and boxes, mini-tramps and climbing bars. We did a lot of circuits. I can't remember doing anything useful in the sessions. The only memorable thing was that in summer we occasionally did swimming. Pens. In those days we used a bizarre device for writing called a fountain pen. ( So called as they tended to spurt out ink, fountain-like, over pretty much everything. ) Their use was justified on the grounds that they led to more stylish writing, but in reality they were messy and scratchy. The invention of the biro in 1938 had not been officially acknowledged at Rendcomb, and its use was strictly forbidden in class, though I suppose we should have been grateful we didn't have to use quills. Woolton: this was the name for the telephone room, between the third form com and Saul's Hall. It was a bit of a mystery to us why it was called that: Bill White told us that it was named after the Minister of Supply in the second world war, when the room used to be the domestic bursar's office. I think it is now the ladies' toilet. When I first came, the phone was the old-style type with a button A and button B: because of a design flaw, you could make free calls by tapping out the number on the receiver cradle. Also you could get Dial a Disc without putting any money in. (And kids today think it's so cool to be able to listen to music on their phones.) Waggers. We tended to assume that this was a Rendcomb name, but it turns out to derive from prewar Oxford. Certain classes tend to corrupt words by sticking -er on the end, as rugby becomes rugger or football becomes footer, or snacks become snackers. At one point, waste paper basket became wagger-pagger-bagger, but that got contracted to Wagger. Sleep. Aside from the duty master, there was a separate member of staff for dorm duty. This was to make sure that we were all tucked in at the right time. Some of them would be quite chatty, and I remember we would swap jokes with John Willson who was quite good fun. I think in the third form, our bed time was 8:45, and we had half an hour or so to wash and change etc. After lights out we were allowed to go on talking for a while, and then the master would come in and tell us it was time to go to sleep. David Sells was famous for his brusque, "stop, goodnight." Obviously he thought that dorm duty was below his dignity, and saying more than two words to us would cut into his drinking time. On Saturdays we were in theory allowed to talk for as long as we wanted to, although if we went on too long Bill White would eventually come in and shut us up. And what did we talk about? Many things, but I remember on one occasion Mike Denley telling us that if you travelled at the speed of light, you would have infinite length and no width and therefore could be everywhere in the universe at once: some people thought that this was the nature of God. So, philosophy and theoretical physics mostly.

The first bell woke us at 7:10 a.m., although you only had to get up then if you were serving: the rest of us could stay in bed until twenty-five past. But I remember that sometimes, we got up even earlier: in the fifth form, me and Simon used to get up and have a game of squash before breakfast. I can't imagine why as there was plenty of time in the rest of the day. In the sixth form, the whole getting up business was a bit of a drag, and missing breakfast was a realistic possibility. Bill White could be quite observant about things like that, and would send someone to fetch you if he realised that you were absent, but mostly no one noticed if you were on a table at the other end of the dining room. In Park House, I slept in quite often, but occasionally Denis Price would come round and check on us. I remember once that I was asleep, and the boys' phone started ringing: I ignored it to start with but it just went on and on. So eventually I went down to answer it, just to shut it up, but then Price came out of his flat at the same time: "YESH! You should be in breakfast!" To that I had no answer: at that time of the morning my brain had hardly begun to engage. The punishment was to be banned from that Saturday's bar, and the same applied to Jon who was also still in bed. But luckily, that was the week in which he was accepted into drama school, so as a celebration he was let off, and there was a general amnesty which included me. Thanks Jon. Prefects. These were selected on the basis of their leadership abilities, organisational skills and for being loyal, honest, trustworthy and virtuous. There were certain privileges associated with the post: they had their own common room which had a TV in it, and their own toaster. Big deal. In fact, when the sixth form com opened, that became the preferred meeting place, so the prefects' com wasn't so popular. One supposed advantage was that it looked good on your university application form. Things you never hear: "You were a prefect at Rendcomb College? Right, you're in!" Their responsibilities consisted of organising and inspecting the work of duty groups, and keeping order at meals and at other times. They had the power to issue punishments, which included an hour's work, an extra week of duties, or end of term Clear Up. There was an unwritten rule that prefects did not take any action against their own classmates, and by and large they did not. Sundays . We got up an hour later than usual. Sunday breakfast was much as normal, except that I think we usually got bacon and egg. Church: This was compulsory, and mindnumbing. After a while, I removed the pages of my hymn book to accommodate a novel, so I just used the time to catch up on reading. Or sometimes I would take a pad in, and play word games with the person sitting next to me. I don't think anyone ever noticed. I ought to have taken a deck of cards in, as we could have come up with a good excuse if we were caught. In fact, as no attendance was taken, I doubt if anyone would have noticed if we didn't turn up. Stu used to play the organ in church as part of his music studies. I tried to persuade him to liven up the proceedings by breaking into Light My Fire or a bit of Emerson, Lake and Palmer and he agreed in principle, but never actually did it.

Sometimes there was a visiting vicar, and they could be mildly diverting. But if you were unlucky you could be chosen to meet this visitor after church. I once suggested to Sid Lambert that he invite a "fire and brimstone" preacher to give us a sermon, but he declined. The rest of Sundays were more or less free, except for meals, a brief evening service and QP, or Quiet Period which was a time in the evening when we were supposed to be in our studies or common rooms. There was plenty of time for bike rides, or long walks, though if the weather was bad it could be a bit of an aimless day. I can't remember if we were allowed to watch TV on Sundays. When we were in the sixth form, one of us would often phone up a friend and get them to drive us over to a pub. The Mill at Withington was a popular choice. Food The quality of meals at Rendcomb ranged from mediocre to dreadful in the 70s. There would have been financial constraints in those days, and as they say, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. (But they could make our tea out of them.) That doesn't excuse the lousy cooking, though: if they couldn't boil eggs without making them either watery or solid then the cooks were obviously in the wrong business. For breakfast we had cornflakes I think, and very occasionally porridge. Then a cooked breakfast, served up by Ron Fry e.g. egg on toast, or sausage and fried bread. (The bread was deep-fried and was probably the most efficient way of getting the maximum quantity of molten grease into a confined area.) Then bread and marmalade, which I think was unlimited. Lunch was a standard two course meal: meat, potatoes and one other veg would have been typical. Liver was a staple, and it was invariably like leather. Toad in the Hole was another. Occasionally spaghetti Bolognese, (pronounced bollockneighs by us.) Or maybe curry and rice. I think most of the meat was either mince or stewing beef. (At least I assumed it was beef we used to refer to the burgers as horseburgers la plus ca change?) Chicken was a rarity. Dessert might be Apple pie, or rice pudding or something, usually served with custard (popularly cow's turd) which was slop. (I ain't talking about creme anglaise.) Tea started with a cooked course: I can't remember many of those, except leftovers pie which was baked beans with a layer of mashed spud, and topped with cheese. That was one of the better ones. Fish cakes are now a feature of fine dining, but at Rendcomb they were just a way of using up rotten fish, and they were vile. I think that there was usually a bottle of HP sauce along side the salt and pepper on each table possibly there was tomato ketchup. Then we had bread and jam. Maybe we got cake as well. In the servery there was a pig food bin where the uneaten/inedible food would be dumped: it was collected* once a week to be taken to a local farm by a character who was known as "pig man", or something less polite. Last time I was there, this bin had gone. *At least I assume he was collecting: it was widely suspected that he was actually delivering. But we were not expected to survive on just the three meals a day: at long break there was something called snackers by us, and sandwiches to everyone else. They were either peanut butter, Marmite, lemon curd or very occasionally honey. There was also an evening snack available in the servery. And of course there was the tuck shop which opened after lunch and was run by the pupils, just in case we were still hungry. (This has long gone; now they have to make do with hampers from Fortnums.) I think we used to get a weekly visit from an ice cream van as well.

Callover. This happened at the beginning of tea, and the school list was read out by the duty prefect. The idea was to make sure we hadn't scarpered since our last lesson. It was a bit pointless in a way, because you could just get somebody to answer for you when your name was called out that happened on occasion. The standard response was "yes sir", or just "sir". But when girls became prefects, that became questionable. The first time Ruth Beckett was doing it, Pete Millard responded, "Yes Miss", which reduced everyone to laughter. Then Bill White announced that the prefect was representing the headmaster, so the correct reply is "Yes Sir". Founder's Day In my first year, I was talking to a couple of fourth formers, Jase Gillham and someone else, before the event. Jase said he wasn't going to go, and they went up the Wildie. I tagged along, so we all missed it and no one seemed to notice. After that I did the same every year, so I never actually attended the Founder's Day speeches. The headmaster's speech was usually printed in full in the school magazine, and by the look of it I wasn't missing very much. As all the staff and prefects would have been required to be there, there was little chance of detection. In the fifth form though, I was in the study block, and I heard footsteps. So I kept quiet, thinking I was going to be found out at last. But then the door opened and it turned out to be Pete Sayers, who evidently had the same idea. From what other people have said, there was the headmaster's speech, the speech from one of the governors and an invited speaker, who was usually Lord someone or other. After the speeches, there were various exhibitions on: arts and woodwork and that sort of thing. I think that the day was combined with an exeat, so afterwards our parents took us home for the weekend. Changing Room and Drying Room Fines, Breakages Parade, Smoking Fines. I think we got fined a penny each for any item of clothing in the changing room that was left on the floor or benches, and anything that was left in the drying room that was already dry. Breakages parade: anything of school property that we broke, we had to go before Bill White and pay for. You could try to get out of it if you could prove that it someone else's fault, and if it was nobody's fault you could get the Meeting to pay. I remember once breaking a commonroom window with Pete Lace's head, and tried to persuade Bill that he had been partly to blame because he did something to annoy me, but Bill wasn't having any of it. (From then on, Pete and I became firm friends.) Smoking fines: these were 50p for smoking outdoors and a pound for indoors: the money was donated to Cancer Research. Lessons A few years ago I came across one of my old school reports: I can't remember what it was for probably English and it said something like, he has no enthusiasm for the subject. I was mystified by this: enthusiasm? It never even crossed my mind that we were supposed to enjoy any of our

lessons, let alone enthuse about them. I thought that they were just an unpleasant, but apparently necessary part of growing up. Latin: I remember little of it now, and have no reason to. Bill White taught it well. He used to have mnemonics for various things, which I have mostly forgotten (that's the trouble with mnemonics) except the following: one and two, bo bis bit, three and four, am es et for future tense of the different conjugations of verbs. On one occasion Bill asked us to translate the verb in a particular English sentence, which was "he said". Then he started singing the chorus of Dixit Dominus by Handel. I assumed he was giving us a clue, and so translated it as dixit: in fact he was pulling our legs, because there was a negative subclause, so the correct answer was negavit. He was a bit of a humourist, modelling himself on Frankie Howerd. I can't remember many of his jokes now. (Can anyone else?) We used to have a vocabulary tests from time to time: sometimes he would give the highest scorers some sort of prize, like 10p. It wasn't much of an incentive to win because the class swots always got it, and the rest of us never had a chance. Scripture was a soft subject, as Sid Lambert did not expect a great deal from us, and he didn't get it. He was a genuinely pleasant man, and was tolerant of our bad behaviour. If you listened to what he had to say, actually it was quite thought-provoking, (ignoring the religious content), but mostly we didn't listen. Neil has reminded me of Stu's famous Scripture exam answers: One was a question like 'How did Jesus answer the Pharisees? (please use no less than 150 words in your answer)'. Stu's answer: ..." most succinctly". Another (in the same exam) was something like 'explain the scene at the crucifixion (please use no more than 250 words in your answer).' Stu's answer: a matchstick men illustration of three crosses etc. I think Sid made him resit the exam. Music. Those of us not studying it, and not in the choir had relatively little classroom contact with John Willson, although up until the third form there was a sort of music appreciation lesson. This occurred in the arts block. I think all that happened is that John put a record on, and we listened to it. He did let us take books in and read though. I have no memory of any of the music. Willson's main non-musical interest was mountaineering, and he occasionally gave talks/slide shows about climbing up some big pile of rocks or other for no particularly good reason. I can't remember if anyone ever asked him why he did it. Art was, well art. There were some talented painters in our form: Neil, Jon Dixon, Pete Millard, Henrietta and Suzanne spring to mind and no doubt they were learning to be serious artists, but for the rest of us it was just messing around with paints and stuff. We did some artsy/crafty things as well: I still have an LP case that we made out of cardboard and it has not yet fallen to pieces. (Mind you, Mike Denley and Jon were mostly responsible for making it.) One day we were making hardcovers for paperback books: someone had brought in some Monty Python annual and I was reading it: Keith Thorne started giving me really dirty looks. I just ignored

him and went on reading. "Do you really think that is the sort of thing you should be reading in class?", he asked. I was mystified: I thought that was exactly the sort of thing that I should be reading in an art class. Then I twigged what was bothering him: the cover of the book was a mock up of a porn mag, entitled, Tits n' Bums: A Weekly Look at Church Architecture The Brand new Monty Python "Bok". The practical side of art was quite good fun, but the theoretical stuff was way above my head and I didn't get much out of it. Thorne would get 10 out of 10 for teaching us what a bone folder was, but he never taught us to draw noses, which is the only thing that you really need an art teacher to do. Then there was woodwork, or manole as we called it only Colin Burden ever referred to the room as the Manual Workshop. I wasn't particularly good at it, but I did do some decent pieces. I still use a sturdy footstool that I made, a fruit bowl, and my fish-shaped cutting board only wore out a few years ago. The trouble is that the temptation to mess around was greater than my interest in woodwork. In the fourth form we had what was scheduled as an electronics period. This was bizarre, as I never worked out what we were supposed to be doing. Nothing was taught to us about it and I had no prior knowledge. All the other boys seemed to know what they were doing, and were busy making radios, metal detectors and such things. I would just sit around, and after a while I started bringing books in and spend the time reading. Boff Fell would occasionally give me a funny look, or a hard stare as Paddington would say, but he never said anything so I just continued. Sappy Swaine's biology wasn't bad. One thing I remember about him is that he never gave us a single class test, probably so that he wouldn't have to mark them. Another thing is that he never addressed me by name most likely because he didn't know who I was. But he had a good lecturing style, and was quite informative on a lot of things. I can still remember some of the stuff he taught us, like the chemical formula for simple sugars, C6 H12 O6, and semi-permeable membranes etc. As for chemistry, I never had the slightest idea what that was all about I think that Bruce was the only one who did. I gave it up in the fifth form after failing my mock exam. Roger Medill took us for English in the fourth form. Actually we did relatively little English it was more of a general class. He didn't make us do much work, which was the good thing about it. He gave us a number of memorable, but totally useless quotes, E.g. "It's better to be gullible than suspicious." * "If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it." "Bene mangiare et dolce far niente", "E pur si muove", "A man who looks on glass, On it may stay his eye; Or if he pleaseth, through it pass, And then the heavens espy."

* I googled this one and it turns out that there's no such saying. So I guess he fooled us there. I remember that one winter's morning he insisted that windows be opened. Groans all round. "Do you not like it? It's so bracing, it's stimulating, it's so " "Bloody cold", interjected Denley. Another time he brought in an LP of one of the Brandenburg concertos. ( I think he was trying to get us interested in culture: didn't work.) In return, we brought along some rock records, and made him listen. I think they were Jimi Hendrix and Uriah Heap. I wonder how much he appreciated that I wouldn't wish Uriah Heap on anyone. It's difficult to evaluate Medill's performance as headmaster. Maybe it should be done on A) the commercial success of the school. B) the academic performance of the pupils. C) overall popularity. I don't suppose we had much idea of what the job entailed: these days it's seen as managing a medium-sized business, and I have no idea how Rendcomb performed commercially in his tenure. He didn't actually bankrupt the place, anyway. We were only aware of him from his interactions with us, but that would have been a small part of his job. I suppose he would have been responsible for hiring new staff, so presumably he can be judged by their quality. As regards popularity, some people liked him for his enthusiasm and for the changes he made. For one thing, he had a stronger policy on bullying than there had been before. We didn't always appreciate his reforms, though: one of the first decisions he made was to ban writing on the bog walls. His reason for it was unconvincing: he said, what if a prospective parent came to visit and said that they always judged a school by the state of the lavatories: what do you suppose they would think if they saw ours? It doesn't seem so unreasonable now, but I don't think we liked it at the time. Prep. This was not much fun, especially in the third form when we were supervised by the duty master. We were not even allowed to read if we had finished our work. In the fourth form, we had a member of 6A to supervise us, and they took a much more relaxed attitude which wasn't nearly so bad. And from the fifth form onwards we had no supervision at all. The sixth form. Having our own study bedrooms was great: at least it was better than the dorms. In 6B we boys were on either lower or upper deck. They did not have power points, which was a nuisance as we couldn't have record players etc. I think some of the more electrically minded (Stu and Nige) worked out a way of running them by running a live wire from the light switch, and hiding it behind posters. That was strictly against the rules and it tended to blow fuses and so on. Girls: Entry into the sixth form brought a new batch of girls. This was a big deal to us: most of us had been in a single-sex environment for some time, and this was a return to something like normality, although the uneven numbers meant that it was not quite normal. Their arrival did change the dynamic of the class, and whereas before you might meet girls in the holidays if you were lucky,

now they became a much greater focus of attention. The decision to introduce sixth form girls had been made by the governors some years before. I do not know what their motives were: perhaps they thought it would civilise us or maybe it was a realisation that single-sex education was out of date and misconceived. Welcome to the twentieth century. Did the girls have a civilising influence on us? Or did we reduce them to our level of depravity? It's hard to measure such an effect, especially as it was so long ago. I'm not sure which is more uncivilised anyway: boys in a single sex environment or boys trying to compete for the attention of girls. Entering the school in the sixth form, the selection process for the girls was different from the boys, who had come in the third or first forms: there may have been more competition for places. Certainly the successful candidates appeared to be unusually accomplished. We speculated at the time that they may have also been chosen for their good looks: whether that was true I do not know, but the resulting group was fairly radiant. The fact that the girls were in such a minority in the school was a potential problem: the large number of boys who were competing for their affections would be prepared to do things for them, and therefore they might end up being pampered. Perhaps some individuals took advantage of the situation, but by and large they didn't and most put in more than they took out. I remember an incident when I'd been doing washing up: one of the girls was in the dining room, and she wasn't part of the washing up group, and she wasn't anyone's girlfriend, but she just started helping us lay the tables. I was perplexed: why was she doing that? That's probably the first time in Rendcomb history that anyone did someone else's duties for them for no personal gain. It was a quite different way of thinking. One of the major contributions that the girls made was their sensitivity and kindness: they were able to give us the sort of emotional support that we did not give each other. And did we learn from this, and develop these qualities ourselves? I'm no judge; perhaps some did towards the girls, but I'm not sure that the boys' behaviour improved towards each other: I suspect that our minds were too rigidly divided into "behaviour towards girls" and behaviour towards boys" compartments. There was an element of unequal treatment by the school system; for instance girls were normally addressed by their first names, whereas some members of staff still insisted on addressing sixth form boys by their surnames. Also the girls had more freedom about dress. These were fairly minor things, and showed a lack of thought more than anything else. In his book, A History of Rendcomb College Volume 2, David Sells said the following about the behaviour of the girls: "Their advent brought also a refreshing revision of the boys'-school notions of discipline. Whereas with boys detection in flagrante delicto virtually concluded the case, apart from the imposition of a suitable penalty, with girls it immediately provided a basis for discussion of the merits of the rule involved and the extent to which it applied in the particular case." I do not know how true that was of the girls, but that's a good description of what I did if I was ever caught in in flagrante delicto, whatever that means. I thought that was normal practice. Some of the girls already had boyfriends at home, but there seemed to be an unwritten rule in those

days which allowed girls to have two boyfriends, one for the term time and one for holidays. Park House It's only been on recent visits to Rendcomb that I've noticed just how good the landscape and buildings look. Park House is the exception: it is a festering eyesore and how they ever got planning permission for it I do not know. It was a good place to live, though. The building was designed with a view to keeping the sexes apart. The study windows were a sort of slatted arrangement with the gaps being too small for a person to get through, and we were locked in at night, but there were various methods of getting out. You could remove and replace the glass sheets from the windows so the staff didn't find out how we did it. You only needed a knife, which the school helpfully provided. The other way was via the fire exit. There was a key in a sealed glass-fronted case to be broken in the event of fire: Stu worked out that you could open it by sticking a pin through the casing and releasing the catch, so he took the key out and had a copy made in Ciren. He was caught outside at some point, and was brought before Medill, who asked him how he had got out. Rather than reveal the truth, Stu told him that the key had been photographed through the glass and a copy had been made from the photo. Despite the obvious implausibility, Medill swallowed it whole (well, "It's better to be gullible than suspicious.") and the locks were changed and the glass was painted to prevent this from being done. Obviously that didn't work. Eventually they figured it out and replaced the key case with something more difficult to get into. Then one night there was a fire practice, and Stu smashed it open with a chair, pretending that he thought it was a real fire. There was something called The Contact Rule: I don't think it was ever written down anywhere, or even clearly stated by a staff member. We only heard about it through the grapevine. One formulation of it was that you were allowed to hold hands, but nothing else. Another was that it was a total ban on any kind of touching. Certainly it was forbidden for a boy and a girl to sit on the same chair together. From time to time, Denis Price would come into the sixth form common room and catch any couples who were doing anything. The standard punishment was to be banned from the common room for a week. I don't suppose anyone actually observed this rule except when being watched by staff, which just shows how unrealistic it was. On Saturday night there was a bar: we were allowed four half-pint glasses of a beer or cider. The trouble is, it only went on for one hour and it was immediately followed by bedtime, so there wasn't time to enjoy a drink. The school had to get a special dispensation to allow alcohol to be served to 17-year-olds, and only 6A got to go to it, so it wasn't really satisfactory. It was a high point of the week though. That was our A-level year, and exams came and went. After that, there was a strange period where there was nothing for us to do, except a bit of PW, and have a good time. (Plus there was that business conference, when we were taught how to exploit the workers.) We got up to a few things we would not have dared to do earlier. These included Jon F opening the bar middle of the day when the Prices were away: at some point some Sappy Swaine came over to check up on us, and so some of the girls went out to waylay him before he could see what was going on. Some went to a rock concert at Wembley Stadium, featuring Elton John and others (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KldSglCoYaU ) They got caught though. And I think Mike J decided to take a trip to London for some reason after

Price had refused him permission. The staff had few sanctions against us: they could hardly expel us as we were going to be leaving anyway. Some years later the arrangements were changed so that the sixth form left immediately after exams because they were so much trouble. The End. The accuracy of the information in this document is not guaranteed. The "If you can't remember it, make it up" principle has been used throughout. This is a toned-down version of a piece that I wrote, edited in order to comply with Internet guidelines regarding descriptions of living people. If anyone wants the original, feel free to contact me via Friends Reunited, Scribd, or at des dot knox at talk21 dot com.