I've mentioned in an earlier post how I went to Rushmoor School in Bedford, and how I absolutely hated it. I'll repeat myself by saying I can't understand why my parents wasted good money sending me to such a hopeless school. I dread to think how much money it cost per term or year. I came away from there with nothing in particular and had to go to a state school, Abbey Sec Mod in Elstow to complete my final few school years. I've said before somewhere on this blog that I had problems with maths at school. I think my basic skills were sound, but when it came to complex fractions and the more advanced stuff I really struggled. Anyway, I have survived all my life without the need for such things as algebra so I'm not worried. It was the fact that I wasn't able to get into Bedford School as my other brothers was the problem. Or, perhaps, that's what my mother thought. So I was dragged around a variety of tutors, actually taken out of Rushmoor School in, presumably, an attempt to get me through whatever exam it was so I could join my brothers. But it wasn't to be. It was great to be taken away from school for a couple of hours, as anything was better than being at Rushmoor School. I recall a couple of the places where the tutors ran their sessions, one being above a shop in St Peter's Street, about where the Probation Service had, or used to have, their office, and the other was around Goldington Road, about where the offices of an agency I used to work for and opposite my former doctor's surgery. All I remember of that one was that there was a pipe rack on the fireplace, odd that I should remember that, but absolutely nothing about doing maths exercises. All I remember of the other place was that there was a sandpit and I played with toy soldiers in this sandpit. Again, nothing remains of any maths I might have done.
I had another dose of tutoring (or whatever you want to call if) of a different kind as I had a slight speech impediment, a stammer. Not surprising if I was always being picked up over my maths. I went to a speech therapist (I imagine that was what this person was, but probably not called that in those days) and the house I went to was off Kimbolton Road, in Pemberley Avenue, Bedford. There again, I can't remember a great deal about the sessions I had to endure. But I remember having to shove my tongue to the front of my mouth to get me to speak properly and being given chocolate mint sweets as a sort of incentive. Even today I really like them, but I don't suppose today you've be able to use them as an inducement to stop lisping or to push your tongue forward because they'd be considered unhealthy or something like that, with too much sugar in them. Even today, although I don't recall much else about these sessions, I think I'd know which house in that road they were and I have a sort of thing about 'speaking properly.' I have a certain affinity with the George Bernard Shaw 'Pygmalion' which is about 'proper speech.' My mother was constantly picking me up if I dropped an 'H' when I could easily drop one off the end of certain words. I don't know why me, in particular, as I don't think she did it to my other brothers.
I've mentioned my lack of skills in anything sporty, somewhere in an earlier blog post. I think it's got a lot to do with being forced to use my right hand when I should probably have been left-handed. I think that is how you were taught at school in the late 1950's- early 1960's. Probably just to make it easier for the teaching staff. If you were left-handed you would be considered a problem child, thus creating more work for teachers, so it would have been easier to make a child write with their right hand. I think this made me very clumsy when using a cricket bat, making it really difficult to hit a flying cricket ball in any sense of a straight line or merely hit the thing. The same with kicking a football or merely catching a ball when thrown at me. So, I didn't like being made the butt of jokes or have unpleasant remarks made by teachers or other pupils. So, inevitably, it put me off sport of any kind. This lead on to maths skills. Totally hopeless. I think this 'disability' if such it can be called, wasn't (or isn't) dyslexia as such but dyscalculia, a term which I've since discovered. So, as a result, I can't stand either cricket or football. I just have memories spent at the very edge of cricket grounds on long hot summer afternoons. Or football, played on the school playing fields, a long walk from the school in Shakespeare Road and along Manton Lane and then trudging up a muddy path to the top of the hill and having to endure cold, wind, ice, snow and whatever awful weather conditions to 'play' a game which I detested, as I suffered terribly from the cold at that age. The hill seemed to be open to every thing the elements could throw at me and then having to trudge back to school, coated in mud and our boots encased in thick, claggy mud. Shivering like crazy and taking an eternity to get some warmth back before leaving to walk to the bus station in order to get home. Not nice. I think the sports teachers were just sado masochists to make us go through that ordeal. Sometimes you could get to the top of that benighted hill and look down to where the rest of Bedford should have been, to find it had disappeared in a haze of fog.
I had another dose of tutoring (or whatever you want to call if) of a different kind as I had a slight speech impediment, a stammer. Not surprising if I was always being picked up over my maths. I went to a speech therapist (I imagine that was what this person was, but probably not called that in those days) and the house I went to was off Kimbolton Road, in Pemberley Avenue, Bedford. There again, I can't remember a great deal about the sessions I had to endure. But I remember having to shove my tongue to the front of my mouth to get me to speak properly and being given chocolate mint sweets as a sort of incentive. Even today I really like them, but I don't suppose today you've be able to use them as an inducement to stop lisping or to push your tongue forward because they'd be considered unhealthy or something like that, with too much sugar in them. Even today, although I don't recall much else about these sessions, I think I'd know which house in that road they were and I have a sort of thing about 'speaking properly.' I have a certain affinity with the George Bernard Shaw 'Pygmalion' which is about 'proper speech.' My mother was constantly picking me up if I dropped an 'H' when I could easily drop one off the end of certain words. I don't know why me, in particular, as I don't think she did it to my other brothers.
I've mentioned my lack of skills in anything sporty, somewhere in an earlier blog post. I think it's got a lot to do with being forced to use my right hand when I should probably have been left-handed. I think that is how you were taught at school in the late 1950's- early 1960's. Probably just to make it easier for the teaching staff. If you were left-handed you would be considered a problem child, thus creating more work for teachers, so it would have been easier to make a child write with their right hand. I think this made me very clumsy when using a cricket bat, making it really difficult to hit a flying cricket ball in any sense of a straight line or merely hit the thing. The same with kicking a football or merely catching a ball when thrown at me. So, I didn't like being made the butt of jokes or have unpleasant remarks made by teachers or other pupils. So, inevitably, it put me off sport of any kind. This lead on to maths skills. Totally hopeless. I think this 'disability' if such it can be called, wasn't (or isn't) dyslexia as such but dyscalculia, a term which I've since discovered. So, as a result, I can't stand either cricket or football. I just have memories spent at the very edge of cricket grounds on long hot summer afternoons. Or football, played on the school playing fields, a long walk from the school in Shakespeare Road and along Manton Lane and then trudging up a muddy path to the top of the hill and having to endure cold, wind, ice, snow and whatever awful weather conditions to 'play' a game which I detested, as I suffered terribly from the cold at that age. The hill seemed to be open to every thing the elements could throw at me and then having to trudge back to school, coated in mud and our boots encased in thick, claggy mud. Shivering like crazy and taking an eternity to get some warmth back before leaving to walk to the bus station in order to get home. Not nice. I think the sports teachers were just sado masochists to make us go through that ordeal. Sometimes you could get to the top of that benighted hill and look down to where the rest of Bedford should have been, to find it had disappeared in a haze of fog.
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