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On 4/3/2013 at 11:32 AM, Jill Sparrow said:

Imagine, if you will, a little leprechaun, clothed entirely in green: green skirt, green jumper, green tights, green scarf knotted around her neck (rumour had it that her head fell off without it!)...all this verdure relieved only by a pair of prosaic brown lace-up Hush Puppy shoes. Sounds like something out of a Val Doonican song, doesn't it?

The routine never varied: after placing a pile of battered maths exercise books on the table, she'd ascend the dais in front of the blackboard, sit down, remove her Hush Puppies, open the middle desk drawer and place her feet in it. There followed a diatribe about the abysmal quality of our homework, the diabolical treatment of the Irish by the English or the rotten-to-the-coreness of Churchill, during which Colleen would gradually maneouvre her chair on its two back legs (something which merited instant detention if we did it!) until the back rail was wedged firmly under the ledge of the blackboard behind her and the chair's front legs were poised in mid-air.

Feet still in the drawer, the lecture was now supplemented by fist-waving gestures or the throwing of chalk missiles in the direction of any girl whose gaze was wandering until- eventually- the back legs of her chair skidded forward under the unequal burden of weight, catapulting Colleen in all her green glory and mid-xenophobic sentence, under the kneehole of the desk with a loud crash, squeals and a mushroom cloud of chalk dust, from which she'd emerge, spectacles askew, greasy hair white with powdered chalk, backside bruised, to pound her fist on the desk and declaim in Revd Paisley-esque tones..."I suppose ye girls think tat's funny!"

All she saw was a forest of raised desk lids, behind which we were writhing in helpless, silent, bladder-splitting laughter, thinly disguised as a frantic search for pencil sharpeners, tears rolling down our faces.

Occasionally, Colleen would while away the lesson by throwing our exercise books at us: her vitriol confined to the utter garbage of the previous week's homework (which most had copied hurriedly, without use of rulers or sharp pencils, from the one girl who understood the question in the two minutes before it had to be handed in). Hence the battered, dog-eared and crumpled state of our books,

If we struggled to understand what Colleen said, trying to decipher her writing was impossible: it resembled the meanderings of a demented, inebriated arachnid after a night out on the tiles, fulled by a surfeit of chateau-bottled red ink!

There'd be at least half a page of it: the only certain element being the ultimate dictum: "See Me!"

We'd rather not, if you don't mind. We're confused enough already!

Dear old Colleen was, basically, the reason why most of us failed our Maths GCE. Those who passed would have done so without any teacher at all, which begs the question of what they were paying Colleen for?

 

@RadFordee  The above is a little reminder of a typical Manning maths lesson with Mrs Davy from earlier on this thread.  We can laugh about it now. At the time, it wasn't funny!

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While decorating recently, I found a pile of old Bygones from the early 2000s. Among them was one in which I had an article printed and which also contained the following story. When I first read 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 P

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 d

One year, we were timetabled for double maths with Barmy Colleen immediately after games. Well, by the time you'd crawled in off the hockey field, been ordered to pick up every scrap of mud that had fallen off your boots on the changing room floor because you didn't take them off outside before you came in (no good arguing with Pickleface that your hands were too numb with cold to untie the laces!), got changed, been to the loo, washed your hands and crawled to room 7, half the lesson had gone!

 

The remaining half was taken up with ranting, raving, chalk throwing and threats to put us all in detention. She never did. She wouldn't have remembered. What mathematical gems did we miss out on learning due to our tardiness? None!

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We often wondered about that, too.  I think there was a husband at one time and I believe there was also at least one child. She sometimes went off on one of her own tangents and talked about a son. Received wisdom was that her marriage collapsed. Perhaps that is what pushed her over the edge but we all have our problems. You don't take them to work with you.

 

Again, it would be very difficult to estimate how old she was but she's certainly deceased now. I have a feeling she may have returned to Ireland. She was never happy here. She lived in Tranby Gardens, Wollaton for many years. Greig and Christie are definitely deceased. Ramsden could still be with us. 

 

I've often wondered whether Mr Davy was English. Perhaps she married an Englishman and moved here. She certainly hated the English with a passion. Maybe his defection was the reason why!

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I can't recall which number Davy occupied. I was always wary of going anywhere near there in case I ran into her!

 

She drove an Austin 1100, green of course.  Drove it like a maniac, too.  Twice, when I was crossing the bottom of Russell Road on my way home after school, she came bombing down there and roared straight through a red light, turning right onto Gregory Boulevard where she zoomed off into the distance. On one occasion, she narrowly missed me and on another occasion, she narrowly missed the friend I was walking with. I often wondered if she was trying to run me over but I don't think she had even seen us!

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And lucky you missing half a maths lesson, although i wasn't much a fan of hockey either especially on freezing cold days, have always been useless at any kind of sport too.

 

Sounds like her driving was on a par with her teaching then jill & she still had that same car when i was there.

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  • 7 months later...

Harping back to the Forest fields area , reminds me of a memory of me and me brother walking back from the forest recreational ground after goose fare had cleared of , we used to hunt for money that folks had dropped and coconuts , we took a shortcut in that cemetary,  can't remember the road that ran along side of it , Mansfield road maybe ? 

Any way one of the Graves had some very shiny green stones that looked like pirates treasure to me and I scooped a double handful up and put them in me pocket ,

Me brother said don't take them as the ghost of that grave will come to yer house and haunt you !

I said no it's pirate's treasure , any roads that night I got so scared and directly in the morning I said to me brother , come on Kev let's put that treasure back on the grave and say a prayer 

The prayer went like this, sorry Jesus,   sorry mister for nicking yer green stones , please forgive me and don't come and haunt me tonight , Jesus make that mister stay where he is , and do you think he was really a pirate ? Amen !!!

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Noel street swimming baths , brings fear and memories of a painful sting to my derriere,  we used to go there from our school in st anns well road Morley school , I hated swimming then as I couldn't swim so I used to alway devise a plan to lose me trunks that were rolled up in a towel , 

Setting off to school I'd hide them behind the sofa cushion until me mam would shout down the street , yer forgot your swimming kit , plan foiled from the start by yer own mam ,

So plan B was to hide them behind the radiator in the class room , until Mr Wilks said to me  are these trunks yours  laddie ? 

Then plan C came into operation,  whilst on the bus to the swimming baths I would carelessly leave the on the seat until a little old lady piped up , ere duck don't forget yer swimming trunks ,

So that was it I would have to brave the water which always felt like the rough Atlantic Ocean,  those who couldn't swim had to grab hold of the side in the shallow end and thrash yer legs until they were numb and cold , in between gulping down mouthfuls of chlorine in the water , sometimes the school bullies would try to drown you by trying to take you into the deep end , also sometimes I did manage to mislay me trunks and towel but if you didn't have  note from yer mam , you'd get a slipper smacked across yer bum , I always thought a little sting is better than flailing in the water like a titanic victim !

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Jill  God loves a trier they say , I can still taste the chlorine water to this day , the bum has recovered and has stopped smarting !

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  • 5 months later...

While decorating recently, I found a pile of old Bygones from the early 2000s. Among them was one in which I had an article printed and which also contained the following story. When I first read it, it reduced me to tears and I still find it very powerful as an account of memories few people will now have. The writer, Stephen C Morris, was a Nottingham solicitor and is now deceased. I know Ben will relate to such powerful memories as these and I thought it deserved to be given an airing on this site.

 

Life of a Little Boy in Baggy Trousers

 

My parents' wedding reception was held in the lovely garden of Pentillie, 132 Foxhall Road, Forest Fields,on Tuesday September the 1st 1931. Years later, in the autumn of 1941, as bombs were falling, it became my home for the first five years of my life. Even now, 60 years on, I remember it clearly and most happily, yet was unaware for years of the sad circumstances that brought me there.

 

My grandmother and her family of two girls and two boys had moved to Foxhall Road in the late 1920s from West Bridgford. Pentillie was a semi-detached, Victorian building like so many at the bottom of Foxhall Road and the junction with Gregory Boulevard. The area, then, was most desirable. a lasting memory of mine was the large, shady apple tree at the bottom of the long garden. I still have, pressed in my mother's 1941 diary, a dried leaf from that tree. I also seem to think there was a Bramley apple tree in the garden for I recall,despite war time restrictions, we often had baked apples in season, a special favourite of Uncle Arthur when he came home from the horrors of the Atlantic.

 

 Number 132 Foxhall Road was the first house up on the left hand side, coming from the Boulevard but between it and the Boulevard there was then a lovely big garden of a Boulevard house. I recall a child on a swing that hung from a branch of a large tree. This garden has long since been built upon. On the opposite side of the road was a very large, detached house where there lived a family whose name I think was Widdowson, who my grandmother often visited.

 

 Readers may wonder why I was living with my grandmother. Sadly, in September 1941, my mother -her youngest daughter - became ill with toxemia in her pregnancy and Miss Margaret Glenn Bott, the well-known Nottingham obstetrician, felt an admission to the Women's Hospital on Peel Street was necessary and I should be brought early in the world. This was achieved by Miss Amelia Burch, her registrar. Dr Amelia Burch was later better known to a host of Nottingham ladies as Mrs Marrow. Unfortunately, my mother died of uraemia five days later.

 

 I must mention my aunt at the time, my mother's elder sister. She gave up a good job as a family doctor's dispenser and bookkeeper and, when I was eventually allowed out of Peel Street hospital, I was cared for at Pentillie by grandmother and aunt Molly who, after the war was over, married my father.

 

Living next door at 130 Foxhall Road was a Miss Smith and her mother. They had living with them a girl whose name I forget but who I think was 10 or 11 she often played with me. She was I suppose my first 'girlfriend'.

 

 One day in 1945, my grandmother and aunt told me the news that daddy was coming home and I rushed to the gate to wait. After a while, an officer in the Sherwood Foresters walked around the corner of Gregory Boulevard. I waved and he waved back. I didn't know him...my father hadn't seen me since I was a babe in arms but, even now, I recall that joy at the gate of Pentillie.

 

During the early days at Foxhall Road, I do remember the sirens but not really the meaning of them and, in truth, the war did not affect me. Later, daddy was a cuddly stranger who seemed to spend much time lighting his pipe. I didn't know it then but he had a flat in West Bridgford where he and my mother had lived pre-war. He would read me a bed time story and then, after building a house with my bricks which I would find the next morning, he would make his way south of the river. 

 

Towards the end of the war, my grandmother, or Mama as I called her, took to her bed for long periods or sat sleepily in the garden. There were regular visits from Dr Whimster, who I later knew well at the General Hospital. As a child, he would give me piggybacks round the front hall. I do remember going regularly with my aunt to collect bottles of medicine from the pharmacy on Berridge Road. One day, I must have realized I hadn't seen Mama for a while and I asked if I could go into the bedroom to see her. Gently and with great skill, my aunt explained that Mama wasn't here anymore and showed me the empty bedroom. A few days later, I was very excited because a lot of people came to Pentillie and stood around with drinks in the garden. This gave me the ideal opportunity to go around with my bus conductor's uniform on and punch out tickets. Of course, this was grandmother's funeral. She died on VJ Day.

 

My father was not yet back in his professional capacity as a solicitor and so we went for walks around the Forest and Hyson Green. My favourite walk was onto the Boulevard and past the Manning Girls' School. I would stop and stare through the temporary fence for I assume the railings had gone. I made a number of friends there. I could ramble on for ages with genuinely happy memories of Foxhall Road of that era 60 years ago.

 

Then came a sad day when aunt Molly , as she was then (and I always thought of her as my mother) sat with me at the kitchen table to have a last tea amid packing cases, ready for the move to daddy's flat in West Bridgford. I didn't really understand why we were going from Pentillie with its garden and friends and comfortable safety. Our last walk through the french windows and into the garden reduced me to tears. Then the Streamline taxi arrived and that was that.

 

For many years, I took my daughter to Goose Fair (although my son didn't care for it). When walking away on the Forest top, we could see the end of Foxhall Road and the top side storeys of Pentillie. I assume the house is now flats, due to the fire escape running up the side of the building . All my relatives from those happy days are now gone. Despite the wartime deprivations, I knew only the happiness of a little boy in baggy trousers.

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I knew a lot of Nottingham solicitors but I don't recall the subject of this story.  It struck a chord with me when the edition of Bygones arrived early in 2006 and I first read it. My father had just passed away at the time and I think I must have been feeling a bit fragile. The original article was accompanied by several photos of young Stephen in the garden of the house which made it all the more poignant.  I was struck by the care with which he was shielded from the trauma that was going on around him so as not to interrupt his childhood with adult worries and anxieties. 

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