[Redhill Comprehensive School]

I quite liked Walter Weddle, he was a bit distant, but I guess not intrusive.  He encouraged me in theatre, before it was popular and in my drawing as well.  For years after I left Red Hill he had a map of the county that I and someone else drew framed on the wall outside his office.  I guess he was also instrumental in getting me into Digby Avenue College, by working with the county to allow me to stay on at school after the Christmas holidays when I should have left because my birthday came just into the new year.  I think that someone actually wanting to go into further education from Red Hill was unheard of in those days.  He also would have been the one to authorise the four nights a week evening classes.

I'd not thought about it before, but I suppose that he's directly responsible for me moving to Canada, by allowing me to get started on the engineering qualifications that I needed.  I imagine that Mr.Pettit and Mr.Fowler must have had a say in it too, from the metalwork and technical drawing angle.  Nowadays, starting college at fifteen from a secondary school, would be unthinkable.

The theatre thing was a part time job for years and I even worked at Nottingham Playhouse for a while.  Then much later I went to university here in Canada for a Fine Arts degree and the Master's Program in Theatre Design.  And it all started because we were allowed free rein to write, design and act our own stuff for the Christmas Concerts.  I sometimes wonder if the current Theatre Arts direction that Red Hill has taken started with that Christmas Concert.

[Redhill Comprehensive School]

I was there from September 1958 to June 1962, then Digby Avenue College.  Walter Weddle was the Headmaster and Miss love the Headmistress.  Misters Pilgrim, Fowler, Pettit, and Misses Dabell, Hough, Ball? were there then as far as I can remember.  I had to take evening classes to qualify for Digby Avenue, because Red Hill didn't do things like exams in those days.

Mr. Fowler lived not far from us and used to give free extra lessons at home for boys who were good at technical drawing.  He couldn't do enough for anyone who tried, but could be harsh with those he thought were slackers.

Mr Pettit lived across from the Redhill council estate on the road up beside "Pendine", George Brough's mansion.  Cherry Close, I think it was.  It was claimed that he was having it off with Miss Dabell in his Volkswagen up by Arch Bridge after school.  We called him "Colonel Pettit" because of the way he marched with his cane along Mansfield Road.  It was rumoured that he'd only been a sergeant in the RAF.  I'd like to heat the truth though.

Mr. Pilgrim, the gardening teacher.  It was my job to water the lawns, because any plant that I touched died.

I'll sit and comb through my memory and see if I can think of any other names.  I remember Mr. Hartley, our form teacher and Mrs...  Argh, it's gone, the music teacher.  Shepley, that's it.  

We used to call the school Stalag 17.

[Mapperley Tea Gardens]

Gilbert's Tea Gardens (or tea rooms) was situated between Mapperley Top and Haywood Road and didn't seem to have a street frontage.  The buildings on Mapperley Top and Haywood Road backed onto a grass lawn, with the tea room building in the middle.

There was a driveway entrance from Haywood Road and I suspect some sort of passage from Mapperley Top, but I don't remember seeing one.

The building was, I think, a wooden structure and I have a mental image of it, but the last time I went there would have been in the early 1950s.  We had a sort of family connection with Gilbert through an aunt, who lived a few doors away, along Haywood Road.

The property was redeveloped years ago and when my wife and I visited England about ten years ago I didn't see anything I recognised.