Jill Sparrow

The sad fact is that, as the late and wonderful Harry Patch said so often, wars are brought about by a few crazy men (and, yes, I'm sorry but they always ARE men) who are eventually constrained to end up sitting round a table and making peace but only after the needless death of millions of innocent people. And for what? Just a waste. There is the point of view which says war is necessary for controlling the population and I sometimes look at 18 year old inebriates in the street, shouting their mouths off or vandalising property and I think of those 18 year old lads climbing into Spitfires

In September 1969, my first term at the Manning School, the All Seeing Eye (aka the Headmistress) had very recently been married for the first time to a clergyman. The ASE, approaching retirement and probably wanting a little companionship in her twilight years, was unusual because marriage and children were not on the agenda of the Manning ethos. That was regarded as a last resort: something you did only if you couldn't do anything else or when the time came to stop doing it. Holy matrimony with a man in Holy orders seemed to endow the ASE with an almost evangelical zeal for boring us rigid

Yes, Stephen, I too came across several former POWs of the Japanese- not at school because they were mainly female teachers but I once worked with a chap named Walter Riley (lovely man) a former policeman in Nottingham who had been in a Japanese camp. He was tall and very very thin. I remember him on one occasion- very uncharacteristically- going for the jugular of some colleague who remarked they wished they could catch beri-beri so they didn't have to come to the office. He, of course, had seen the consequences of that awful disease at first hand and, boy, did he give them a rocket for ma

Pidge Pie...yes, Terry Hill. I've been trying to remember the name and it wouldn't surface. Poor Neville Eccles, that's horrible. He was a quiet lad, like Winsome. Yes, it makes you think when you see your peers shuffling off and realise that you're probably well over half way through your time here. It's not morbid...it's all part of life's rich tapestry and hopefully it won't put Stephen Ford off his lunch! Terry Hill was a small lad- quite wiry- but not wiry enough to avoid the train. I've been looking at the photo of Mrs Price's class and there is Charles Haskey on the back row. I d

I was looking at the old black and white school photos last night. Peter Marshall isn't on any of them. The name Jacqueline springs to mind for his little sister but I can't be certain. His mother used to walk about with a stout wooden barrow- often wheeling her daughter in it and she usually wore what looked like an army greatcoat and boots. Presumably, Peter's father had a job connected with the railways, hence living in the house which was virtually on the rail lines. Pidge-Pie, do you remember Winsome Eccles and her cousin Neville? I think they were two of the best dressed children i

Kirkstead Street? I think Jayne Topham lived on Kirkstead Street. All gone now. Jane Humphries lived in Hazelwood Road...now lives in Bulwell. I think the lad you mentioned who lived in the Station House by the footbridge was called Peter Marshall and yes he did have a younger sister. Peter Marshall was another boy who sported the most outrageous green 'candles' under his nose! Sorry- Mick2Me will be complaining!!! Not that I'm prejudiced against people with green candles Mick2Me (in case you've got some- although I hope you haven't!) Do you remember an older boy at Berridge and I think

Gary Walker in trouble with the law? His Mum wouldn't like that. I think she was a music teacher. The playing fields (which I think was the Police training ground) opposite the Whitemoor Pub (not called that the last time I drove by) and the fizzy drinks depot are all gone now. I rarely go into Nottingham but when I do I don't even recognise most of it! Eeee, we're getting old! I did have milk at school but only in winter when it was covered in snow and therefore nice and cold...I couldn't drink it warm, especially when you've got to look at various dirty-kneed little lads with green can

Pidge Pie...thanks for some more memories of Berridge. Yes, I remember Gary Walker. He used to tell my mother he was going to marry me when he grew up. Even then I could have told him he wasn't!! Prefer my chaps without the green candles under the nose! He lived near The Wheatsheaf pub...houses have gone now as has the pub I'm told, though I haven't been in that area for years. I remember Kevin Green and Ian Munro- someone was asking me what happened to him only recently. I thought he went to Mundella but realise now that he didn't. I think he went to High Pavement. I always went home fo

Thought Pidge Pie would have a few interesting memories! Yes, Miss MacDonald did marry Mr Alan Parr. Don't remember anyone going to Ireland but if it was sport related it wouldn't have involved me. Was little Eric called Eric Taylor? He's the only Berridge Eric I can remember. He's on my very earliest Berridge photo but Pidge Pie isn't and if he started at 4 then he should have been. I've heard horror stories about Mr Kemp and those rulers. He never taught me but he seemed absolutely ancient: he retired in 1967 at 65, so to us children he would have appeared very superannuated. I'm tol

Well done, Pidge Pie. All these names bring back warm memories. I once punched Noel James on the nose (look out, it's confession time) because he was irritating me in the playground. His nose poured with blood which was a slightly different colour from what was usually escaping from his nose! (Do you mind, I've not had my breakfast yet!) He ran off to Mrs Platts who was on duty (and we were all terrified of her) to report what I'd done and she refused to believe him. You see, I had the reputation of being so well behaved that I couldn't possibly punch a little boy on the nose...see what yo

During the last (almost) four decades since I excavated a successful tunnel out of The Manning School, I've met many former pupils who endured its rigours long before I was even a twinkle in my Daddy's eye. The moment the realisation hit home, one was aware of a kinship stretching down the years, an unseen bond linking fellow martyrs together: a kind of invisible Bostick of affliction. Most of them assured me that I'd been fortunate: the regime in their day having been far more Draconian than the 'permissive' (eh? must have blinked, cos I didn't see that bit) 60 and 70s. The reigns of such

I agree entirely that respect has to be earned but I am not sure that what we felt for Pickle-Face was respect...more like loathing and naked fear. On the whole, we were well brought up girls anyway: our parents were strict enough to have instilled in us a knowledge of how to behave. Some of the Manning teachers were completely OTT in their attitude toward discipline. As a former teacher myself, I know that there is a point where respect is lost and pupils become alienated. The fine line should not be crossed or you'll have a class full of enemies rather than pupils. Look how serious I'm b

The first Thursday in October meant only thing to the Manning girl: the following day was a holiday. Goose Fair, you see. Manning was the only secondary school to enjoy this privilege since it was deemed impossible for us girls to work due to the noise. In reality, we could barely hear it and compared with the racket of of Robespierre, Pickle-Face et al bawling in one's tender lughole, the clamour of the Goose Fair paled into auditory insignificance. On the Friday, we were free to do as we pleased and to visit the Fair (in mufti, of course) if the fancy took us but, on the Thursday, it was

So pleased my miserable memories are making someone smile. Still lots more to dredge up, including Manning Girls at Goose Fair (not officially allowed), the Manning Gestapo (Pickle-Face in uniform); sports day, the Speech and Drama competition to mention but a few. Oh yes, the thorny subject of male teaching staff...few and far between they were. The Manning ethos was always very suspicious of anything found in possession of a Y chromosome (and I have to say, I'd go along with that to a fair degree). On the positive side, I've given my 'shrink' the bum's rush...he wasn't very comfortable w

In the weeks prior to the term of September 1969, I was dragged several times through the portals of Dixon and Parker (Friar Lane) to be kitted out with a Manning School Uniform. Old girls (Mum's friends) told me I ought to be grateful for the changes made since their day when it was grey blouse, grey gymslip, grey sash, grey coat, grey felt hat, etc., etc. Manning girls were known as 'carthorses' back then. By 1969, there was at least a tad of red and white to relieve the grisly greyness.. However, the one thing on which there was no compromise was that item despised by all - the regulati

Stephen Ford...you might have a point there. Since I started writing about my days at the Manning Girls' Penitentiary...I mean Grammar School... I've been seeing a lot less of my shrink. Nottstalgia offers better therapy and it's certainly cheaper. Let's see, 38 years at two sessions a week...adds up, doesn't it?

As I walked the dejected mile and a smidgeon along Gregory Boulevard to school each morning, I'd run the gauntlet of those lucky blighters who didn't get through the 11-Plus, en route for the bus to Peveril Secondary Modern with their cookery baskets, gingham teatowels and Tupperware boxes full of ingredients (well, the girls, at least). We didn't do much cooking at the Manning Girls' Grammar, which may explain why it takes all my ingenuity to boil an egg. There was a domestic science room, I recall, and a needlework room on the first floor over the main entrance. Sewing wasn't deemed very

Once a week, in all weathers, we'd trail in crocodile out of the back entrance of the Manning School, up Stanley Road and left onto Berridge Road Central, en route to Noel Street Swimming Baths. Whoever wasn't occupied in launching chalk missiles (otherwise known as teaching, though I'm not sure I'd dignify it with that term) would trickle along to keep Pickle-face company, at the same time ensuring that us girls didn't talk- especially to anything male. The experts tell us that the olfactory sense is the most primitive we possess, dating back to the days when our cave-dwelling ancestors rel

We were not permitted outside the school gates at lunchtime until we reached the fourth year at the Manning but once that day arrived, we'd be off across the footbridge over Gregory Boulevard and cutting along to the Forest Recreation ground or even The Arboretum. Sometimes, we'd sit in the Bell Gardens and eat our sandwiches...a highly risky strategy as eating in school uniform off the premises was regarded as a cardinal sin, probably punishable by death...but we were never caught. When I was a child, I often visited the Arborteum with my parents. In those days, there were animals in cages.

Lab technicians in the Manning School laboratories...I remember two of them: one male and one female. They scuttled in and out of the back room with jars and pickled specimens of various kinds. Those labs were untouched since the school was built in 1930 and when I think of the facilities other more modern schools had, we must have been very deprived. Anyway, I didn't like the labs- especially the biology lab because at certain times of the year there were cages of locusts in there. One year they all escaped!!! Horror. I don't like locusts (especially when they've been round Tesco's in th

Enjoyed looking at the maps of Forest Fields. I traipsed along Gregory Boulevard to the Manning Girls' Grammar School every morning between 1969 and 1975. Ye gods did I detest that place. I'd sit in maths lessons fantasising about stealing a bulldozer and razing the buildings to the ground. Whilst doing so, of course, I was not paying attention to Pythagoras' Theroem and ended up having to write it out twenty times in the back of my maths book. I filled a boxful of maths books with that wretched Theroem and I'll bet I still couldn't recite it if asked. Our maths teacher tried several times t

Yes, I know all about Beeston Boiler Company. Alf Sheen took my father there one day and he recounted an amusing story about the visit which I will post when I find it!

In 1938, my father was apprenticed to a Mr Alf Sheen who ran a company called Nottingham Sheet Metal in Lower Regent Street, Beeston. These are his memories of working for a chap who was widely known as "the meanest man in Beeston" but who sounds great fun to me! "The winter of 1941 was freezing. At Nottingham Sheet Metal on Lower Regent Street in Beeston, we had no heating whatsoever. The building had once been used as a lace factory and had a boiler house at the rear. There were even central heating pipes but these had been disconnected to enable the building of another workshop. Reconn

September 1968 marked the start of my final year at Berridge. The previous year with Mr Chandler had served somewhat to ameliorate my opinions about the dubious merits of schooling and, at some point during that academic year, I had even ceased to emulate a sloth on our banister rails at home of a morning, having to be prised off and pushed out of the door by my mother! This last junior year was presided over by Mr T T Williams in the first floor corner classroom of the main building, overlooking the playground, corner of Berridge Road and Brushfield Street. If you leaned sufficiently far o

Major alterations were ongoing in the Berridge main building for most of 1967, with the upshot that come September, my peers and I started the third junior year camped out in the wooden hut nearest the railings, sited in the playground facing Oakland Street. These edificies dated from 1929 and were dark, clattery and not very warm in winter. Our new teacher sat on a dais at the front (shades of the Manning School yet to come) and for the first time in my formal educational experience, I was taught by a male, name of Mr G O Chandler. We got off to a rocky start, Mr C and I. I'd missed the f