OneRat

Mapperley Tea Rooms was located between Haywood Road and Mapperley Top. We used to go there from my uncle's, who still lives on Haywood Road. As I remember, we walked in from Haywood Road and it was, I think, a wooden building surrounded by lawns. The memory isn't that good now. Probably the last time I visited there would be in the early fifties, but the place had the atmosphere of the 1920s. Every time I hear Eric Satie's Gnossienne played, it takes me back there. Almost genteel, but not quite.

I live in Western Canada, but I'm in England for a while, probably until early summer, June perhaps. I guess I didn't say where I was. I hadn't been here for quite a while and when I arrived I was quite taken aback at the changes I encountered. I don't think I would talk about that though, a whole can of worms I don't want to open.

After thirty eight years, there are still some Canadian and American terms that I can't get on with. Plantar's Wart is one of them.

We walked around from British, though I don't remember that being very often. On Saturdays in the early sixties, if you were in at nine, there wouldn't be enough swimmers to make up the fifteen, so we didn't get turfed until number fifteen had been there for an hour. Sometimes it would be ten or eleven o'clock. Not a bad deal. What was it, a shilling, one and six maybe? The memory can't handle that. At British, after Mr Wood arrived, there were often events where some kids who were into making things showed their creations off. For one, they rigged a wire from the far end of the church

Oh, yes. The two guys at Arnold Baths. "One to fifteen out now!" Could one of the have been Lenny or Leonard or something? Little skinny one with the built up shoe and the other plumpish one. Council workers in dungarees, they couldn't have saved anyone who was in trouble. I remember they were quite gruff, but when they knew you they could be ok. They had a long pole with a wire hoop on the end to hook anyone who was in trouble There was the "stout" gentleman, who always wore a suit and took his jacket off. He was something to do with the Amateur Swimming Association. He always had

I was at the British School from the 1955/6 year to 1958/9. What an awful place. It became better after Mr. Wood arrived. A vicious sadist called J T (JET) Taylor was the temporary headmaster after the former one died. This Taylor held ritual public punishment assemblies in the old church hall next door, not the new Drum. One of his favourite pastimes was to stand on the spiral stairs and slash at boys bare legs with a cane as they walked past. He was moved on after a year and Mr. Wood arrived in either '56 or '57. The school dinners were so bad, that I vomited into my plate on severa