Matt Harper

I remember you well, Mr Sharpe. You tested me to establish my 'tone-deafness' as a candidate for clarinet lessons. My ear was sufficiently well tuned and I spent happy hours in the school vestibule trying my best to emulate Acker Bilk. My not so positive memory was the day myself and another lad skived-off from games one afternoon and were making a Great Escape-esque run for it out of the gates adjacent to the music room. Sadly for us, you busted us. You then collared us and frog-marched us back into school and handed us over to the delightfully sadistic Mr Sutherland, who administered to u

That is awesome! If I remember, there was a row of much more modern classrooms up a flight of steps at the back, overlooking the playing fields - or did I dream that?

Wow - I'm intrigued. Yes, you got me. David Featherstone and I were friends (both from Radcliffe-on-Trent), but met at that school - I went to R-o-T Juniors, I think he must have gone to a private junior school, as he had quite well-to-do parents. He also had a brother in the year above us (Stephen) who we figured would be good insurance if things got dicey - but we were sadly deluded as he and his mates were a bunch of bullying psychopaths, in my view at the time. I didn't like that school very much and I certainly wasn't a gifted scholar - very mid-stream I recall, though I did talk a good g

Correct - it's a sleepy older neighborhood that surrounds the Lake Conway chain - not typical of cookie-cutter central Florida, in that we have lots of very large oak trees and only one real thoroughfare, so zero commuter traffic - which is all on the roads you mention. It was originally planned and built to accommodate workers at NASA and Lockheed Martin - I have lots of neighbors who actually are/were rocket scientists! All a far cry from rural Nottinghamshire...

True - though I never felt threatened much by them - they seemed to spend most of the school day in that big wooden hut in the quad, presumably sleeping or perusing jazz mags.

Wow! Small world - I live in Belle Isle, just west of Orlando International Airport.

Ha! I'm sure I did deserve most of the horrible things that happened to me at that school. I remember being terrified of the last day before school broke up for the summer holidays when I was in the first year, because the rumor was that the second-years 'bog-washed' and then threw all the fags in the gorse bushes. As it turned out, no such torture occurred when I was there, so my fears were unfounded. Thinking back, I also remember the school had a really good tuckshop and there was some kind of military cadet thing too - I remember staring out of the window during latin class (we were actua

Thank you for the welcome - I'm from a big family (7 brothers and sisters) and growing up together out in the countryside was just brilliant. My parents bought an old house (that was falling down!), but had a massive garden, surrounded by fields - just perfect for children. There was a stream at the bottom of the garden (Polser Brook?) that we spent hours fishing in during the summer. There were a LOT of kids my age close by in Radcliffe and the youth club there was great. We also used to camp at the old gravel pits (now called Finger Ponds, I believe), back then, they were still active gravel

I started there in 1970 and the first years were somewhat un-pc-like referred to as "fags" - it was an intimidating place for an 11 year old, particularly as most of my mates hadn't passed their 11+, so I only knew a few other kids at the start. The teachers I remember were "Jed" Strutt who was the headmaster and a guy called Driscoll, who was a very angry looking deputy - they both used to where scholarly gowns and waft around the corridors like Batman and Robin. I also remember Bonsall, a sickly looking music teacher (amusingly called Mr Sharpe). My geography master was called Hutchinson - h

Hello - just discovered this resource when googling my old school (Henry Mellish in Basford). My family lived in Holme Pierrepont from 1968 until 1973, before my dad's job moved us to Yorkshire. I went to the Junior school in Radcliffe-on Trent and then the 'big school' from 1970 to '73. I have many very, very happy memories of living in that part of the world.