Bread and Circuses

Friday. 6.25 a.m. It's mild and sunny as I write this. I'm going to the Central Milton Keynes Shopping Centre to get my haircut this morning. I booked my appointment online and it's paid for, so I just have to drive in, park and then walk through to the barbers.

Later. 11.40 a.m. I had to take his littleness out before venturing forth to the barbers. Easy enough parking in the usual place. I'm surprised to see that the old food centre, which is where Central Barbers used to be and in the same block which Sainsbury's vacated years ago, is currently being demolished to make way for a new development which is supposed to be a mixture of retail and residential properties. Just a pile of rubble and a bit of a shock to see it in such a state.

I'm also quite shocked by the number of empty units within the shopping centre. It looks as if Paperchase has gone. An empty unit. All shelving has gone. Carol would be upset, as she loved their products and we seemed to spend quite a lot of time- and money- in that store. One of Waterstone's two stores has gone, or so it would seem. As there had been two branches, one in the main shopping centre and the other in Midsummer Place, it's not surprising that one would close down. How many more are likely to close. Although I did go into the new Hamley's toyshop. This must be a new departure for them because they have always had a store in central London, Regent Street I think, which was a favourite place to visit when I was a child and a major focus on any London visit, especially over the Christmas period.

I got to Central Barbers and I had to wait outside until I could go inside the shop. Several other people also waiting. All this to keep to social distancing regulations. 

Came out after my haircut and a lot better as a result. I can't stand not getting my hair cut so the pandemic has been awful in that respect. A good ten years younger-looking I think!

I went into Lakeland's shop near Middleton Hall and bought two sponge baking pans. Heavy gauge as it's better, in the long run, to spend on better quality cookware because you get a far more even bake and they don't warp or rust like the cheap, thin baking ware. These also have loose bases which make removing cakes from the tin easier. Now to stock up on flour, butter, and other ingredients and get baking. Now I have almost all the equipment I need so there's really no excuse.

Saturday 3rd July. 6.50 a.m. Yet another mild and pleasant morning. Football this evening, England v Ukraine or something, but, as you know, I don't follow football, but I suppose it keeps the masses occupied. 

What did someone say, a Roman emperor probably, about 'bread and circuses? Keep the masses occupied and prevent revolution. (It was Juvenal who made that statement.) All that sport at school was just a means to work off excess energy. But at the school I went to in Bedford, Rushmoor, I reckon it was just a way to keep the heating bills down during the winter months. One of the reasons I hated it so much because I used to suffer excessively with cold and standing around (or running around.) didn't exactly help matters,  on a football pitch which was on the top of a hill, now the place where Bedford Modern School is today, in Manton Lane, was no fun when it was blowing a gale, or it was raining or snowing. Getting there was a bit of a hike from the school in Shakespeare Road and then up a sometimes muddy path to the top of the hill. Not my idea of heaven, although it might have been for some people. I think in all honesty it was because I don't like being told what to do, not compliant with the will of some people who should have known better. As I was no good at either football or cricket it was painful and then being the last person to be picked for a team for either game (I wasn't the only one to be left till last, there were several others.) Then they march back to the school and putting up with mud-clogged football boots and probably kit. Yuck! All that mud you had to pick off your boots was not a pleasant task. Memories! Memories! What is it someone said 'the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Harrow. . .' or Eaton, or some other public school. Rushmoor was certainly not of that calibre, but you get my meaning, or at least I hope you do. I think the purpose of that place was to inculcate its pupils into being the drones who would be the backbone of Empire, working in the administration, pen-pushers, civil servants who would do the bidding of their masters without making any sort of fuss. Without question. Something like in one of my favourite films, by my favourite film directors, Terry Gilliam, 'Brazil', set in a sort of dystopian Britain, where people work in offices, run-down, with poorly functioning machinery. The whole plot revolves around an error that occurs when a man's name is misspelt and he lands up being interrogated by the state police. I won't divulge the ending as you should watch it, even if it's to see the amazing production design and laugh at what is, in effect very much a black comedy.

More School Memories

The Rushmoor School playing fields were on top of a hill (where now Bedford Modern School stands. It was moved there from the centre of Bedford in the 1970's. That old building was converted into the  Harpur and Howard Shopping Centre.) This didn't exactly help my interest or otherwise in cricket or football as to get there you had to trudge around two miles and then up a very muddy path and then stand around in all weathers, usually a howling gale, in rain and snow. So, you can see my dislike of the whole process which dwindled considerably as those winter afternoons dragged on and on, and then  having to drag oneself back to the school in Shakespeare Road and change back into your clothes in a crowded changing room.  I seemed to suffer really badly from the cold, not entirely helped by lashing rain and howling gales. I think the master in charge of sport seemed to relish the thought that he had some sort of control over us and to make you stand and shiver in the cold was some sort of control over us all. Probably there were those who enjoyed the torture, but it was supposedly meant to make 'men of us' but I don't for one moment think so. Why on earth they couldn't build a changing room on the side of the playing field I will never know. I think there was some sort of pavilion there, more like an over-sized garden shed, and even then it didn't contain facilities for changing or even toilets. Such are the future men of this country 'made' as they say, not on the 'playing fields of Eaton' as someone or other said, or was it, the 'battles' or something, by some brave future prime minister or some such person. Was it Churchill? I don't know whether he said that, or a variation of it, but I wasn't impressed as a child of tender years, nor now, as an adult, of far more mature years. Just cruelty to be expected to endure such cold and total unpleasantness. (The quotation  about 'the playing fields of Eaton' is actually attributed to Matthew Arnold.) It just further put me off the stupidity of kicking a leather ball in-between wooden uprights with a net slung between or to endure the hitting on some delicate part of the body by a fast-moving lump of red leather, a cricket ball, or standing aimlessly pretending to understand the stupid 'flannelled fools' playing cricket on a bright, sunny afternoon in summer. That quotation comes from a poem by Rudyard Kipling called 'The Islanders.' If I use a quotation somewhere I always want, wherever, to get the quotation and the attribution correct.

Anyway, you will have discovered by now, as you read this, that my interest in cricket and football is virtually nil.

I do remember that we had sports day on that games field in Manton Lane, Bedford. I was fairly good at running and long-jump, but never got through the heats to actually get a chance to win anything. I remember being used as a sort of runner of a different sort on the actual day of sports day, delivering messages of one sort of another. I suppose quite good training for when I eventually get into working in stage management. Also, Rushmoor put on several gym displays in a drill hall which if I remember correctly was in Ashburnham Road, Bedford. A lot of jumping over wooden horses and displays of one sort or another and set to music. One of the teachers, Mr Crutchley, got me interested in tape-recording, and I quite liked the idea of being able to use a tape recorder to read stories or to produce little dramas. I eventually bought my own Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder and recorded music and plays off the radio. Later on, when I was working in stage management my interest in tape recording and tape recorders came in handy when I worked on the sound side of various productions, having to create sound effects and then operate the sound decks on some of the productions I worked on.

Although I grew to total detest both cricket and football, I did quite enjoy swimming. We used to go to the Bedford Modern School swimming pool in Clarendon Street. I presume it was hired out to Rushmoor for a couple of mornings a week. I actually gained something as a result: learning to swim, although my memories of the lessons weren't favourable as I recall being jumped on whilst in the pool which I never liked, by some idiot child or other. Ever since I have had a dislike of having my head under water. My father, who I have mentioned elsewhere, had several boats, would not allow any of us children on these boats until we were proficient swimmers so learning at school did have it's advantages.

I met a former Rushmoor friend of mine a few years ago, name of Andrew Allen, and we were talking about our time at the school. He reminded me of the long walks we were taken on  some afternoons, and we seemed to walk for miles, usually towards the village of Clapham and along Bromham Road. Looking back I couldn't see what the purpose of all this was. Those walks, when we walked along in long crocodiles, with a couple of teachers in attendance, seemed pointless, until he pointed out that they were usually during the winter months, and were no doubt so that we were out of the building and which would mean they didn't have to put the heating on, hence, a way to save money! Seems unlikely, but no doubt true when I come to think of it.

We produced a couple of plays at Rushmoor. There was a stage, of sorts, in that tin 'chicken house' gym. It was mainly used for wood work, where there was a variety of woodworking instruments such as vices, saws, hammers and so on, but for the plays the stage was converted quite successfully. One play was an adaptation of "Oliver Twist." Being an all-boy school any female roles had to be played by us boys. I wanted to play Fagin, but didn't get cast as that. I played the matron of the workhouse (I think in the original Dickens novel she is called Widow Corney or something), but this was supposed to be set in modern times so the workhouse became a boy's school. Could it conceivably have been Rushmoor? I don't know, but we had fun putting it on. There is more on this in an earlier post. The second play was called "The Bookworm's Nightmare" and involved a plot whereby a whole host of characters from various books come alive. I played another female character called Rutabaga, and I think she was from one of the "Tales of the Thousand and One Nights" but I really can't remember much more about it as it's all so long ago it rather fades into the mists of time, unfortunately.

As a result of the production of "Oliver Twist" some of us went to London to see "Oliver!", the Lionel Bart musical. I imagine that it would have been the original stage production at the New Theatre. It must have been my first experience of a West End musical, although i think I had been to see other shows, most notably going to see "Peter Pan" when I was very young and I remember as part of the treat having tea served on a tray in the stalls. This is also mentioned in an earlier post on here. We later went to see another musical, based on another Dickens novel, "Pickwick' which starred Harry Seacombe but I don't think it was anywhere as successful as 'Oliver!'

School Memories

How is it that any memories of school are never of actual lessons? In fact, I don't really remember anything at all about things we were supposed to be taught.

Walmsley House school was I think the first school I went to, and it was in Kimbolton Road in Bedford. School dinners weren't cooked on the premises and used to arrive in a gray van that used to turn up in the playground and the meals came in large tin containers.  I presume the meals were cooked elsewhere in the town and then delivered in this van , but to this day I have no idea where this was. I think most people's memories of their school dinners were of over-cooked cabbage, lumpy gravy and custard and possibly liver that was as tough as shoe-leather and inedible meat that was full of gristle and fat and which you had to chew fifty times before you could sallow it. The school always had a permanent smell of that awful boiled cabbage. Enough to put anyone off  that particular vegetable for life. Perhaps Brussels sprouts have the same effect on perhaps 95% of the population. I had no choice in whether I liked them or not, as my father, being a farmer and a Bedfordshire farmer at that, grew Brussels sprouts and we had to eat them. Not the tiny little  excuses for Brussells they sell today in most of the supermarkets throughout the country, but  a much bigger variety. And actually, as a result of having to eat them, I can say I actually like them, a great deal down to the fact that my mother didn't boil them to death. They should not be soggy and tasteless but cooked to the point that they are still crunchy.

Something else I recall about school lunches that that school was that there never seemed to be enough space for everyone to sit in the dining hall. Some people had to sit out on the landing of the staircase which lead up from the front door of the school. We can't have been supervised by the teachers very well, or perhaps it was that the teachers were useless at keeping control of their charges, but I remember some delightful child throwing food over the bannister along the landing and onto the floor below. I'm not sure whether any landed on anybody passing below, but it's something that sticks in my mind.

Every year the school used to put on an out-door show on a raised piece of grass in the playground. It was something like an outdoor stage. A dancing display was part of this entertainment and parents came to watch. I think this dancing was similar to country dancing with two rows of children facing each other and you moved forward in time to the music and slapped your opposite number on their opposite hand, for example, right to left, left to right. The music was played on a record player and operated by a teacher at the side of the stage. Unfortunately, during one performance, this teacher, who wore high-heel shoes, trod on the electric cable which ran from a power socket to the record player. There was a cloud of smoke and no doubt a bright blue flash and the record ground to a halt, no doubt making quite a spectacle in itself, and the whole proceedings came to very ignominious conclusion no doubt amidst roars of laughter.
I have never been a great lover of sport. I didn't mind gymnastics, athletics or field sports, although I wasn't that good at any of them, but cricket and football left me feeling totally uninterested and still do. Cricket to me has to be one of the most pointless sports invented.
Walmsley House didn't have it's own sports ground so we had to walk to Bedford Park to play football. My one and only goal I ever scored was a real disappointment. I kicked the confounded ball in the wrong goal. Nobody had the sense to teach me the rules and to say that you kicked the ball into the opposite goal depending which way you were playing. For a seven or eight-year old it must have been a real let-down.
From Walmsley House I progressed to Rushmoor School, still, I believe in Shakespeare Road in Bedford. I have always had - and still do to this day- real problems with maths. I think it may have been because I was mildly dyslexic. Numbers and maths were my real stumbling block at school. My two elder brothers managed to get into Bedford School but I failed the entrance exam when I was around 10-11 so I went to Rushmoor instead. I have to admit I didn't enjoy it. As for sports, we had to go to a games field up a hill in Brickhill Drive (where now Bedford Modern School stands when it was moved there from the town centre in the 1970's.) We had to trudge up and down this muddy hill, come rain and shine, and then play this benighted game of football usually when it was pouring with rain or it was freezing cold. Well, I imagine it would be extra cold with a bighting wind whistling around our bear knees in the middle of winter. I suffered greatly from the cold and the added extra of mud and rain didn't exactly help matters.
In the summer it was cricket. Just as bad for me. I had trouble with my left or right hands. I think I should have been left-handed but I was made to use my right to write with. I think this, and the mild dyslexia didn't help either. As a result I found using a cricket bat really difficult and as a consequence my ability to hit a ball with it, and one flying at several miles per hour was not exactly going to make me into a first class cricketer. So, as a result, I was never chosen when teams were being picked. I usually ended up fielding, if you could call it that, and I managed by some stroke of effort to end up in the long grass and as far away from the action as possible. But it was a good way to spend a hot summer's afternoon I suppose.
I remember clearly an incident while I was at Rushmoor. Unlike today, punishment could be metered out if you did something wrong, usually with a cane, administered my the Headmaster. This particular incident revolved around a cupboard in a classroom, which was used to store art supplies, such as paint, paper and so on. The teacher had found a screw or a nail lodged in the keyhole of the cupboard so that he could not open the cupboard. I think he had a vague idea who was the culprit was  but he needed to find out who had done the deed using a form of justice which involved the entire class. We had to stay behind, probably during break or it might have been after school, and he asked us one at a time whether we had stuck the screw in the cupboard's keyhole. Nobody would confess. If things weren't resolved he would use a ruler and make us hold out our hands and hit us with the ruler on the palm of the hand. It really hurt, as you can imagine, but if you flinched in the slightest he did he again. As a result you didn't flinch or attempted to not flinch. It really stung your hand and the pain remained for quite a long time after. I don't know whether the culprit was found but it meant that the entire class had to take the blame for one stupid person's crime. I don't exactly believe in capital punishment, but in this case it did make you think again before you did anything wrong at school. Today there is absolutely no sort of 'ultimate sanction' such as this and as a result children seem to get away with all sorts of bad behaviour. One teacher used to walk up and down the room when we were supposed to be silent and would hit you on the top of the head with a bunch of keys which hurt. I think he was a bit of a sado-masochist to do this, gaining pleasure from inflicting pain on his charges, but at least it kept you focussed and you never spoke if you had been told to keep quiet.

We put on a couple of plays when I was at Rushmoor School. I'm not sure whether this was where I got my interest in theatre from. Probably not. Being an all-boy school, there was a problem as regards  casting for the female roles. As a result I got cast as a female in these plays. Don't ask me why, but in one, an up-dated version of "Oliver Twist" I got to play the matron character. My mother managed to solve the wig-situation by making one out of wool. It had to be worn the right way round, but for one performance this wig was put on the incorrect way. For one of my entrances unfortunately I came on through a door which was far too low for my height and the 'wig' (for want of a better word) brushed the door and rode up and I got a laugh which I shouldn't have. As a result of putting on this play we were taken one Saturday to see the musical 'Oliver!' This was the original West End production starring Ron Moody as Fagin, at the New Theatre, renamed the Noel Coward Theatre. It had a profound influence on me and I have really loved the show ever since. We went up to London by train. I'm not certain if it was this visit to London or not where we had to travel on the Underground, but I do remember a member of the party getting on an Underground train which he wasn't supposed to get on and the rest of the party had to follow, I suppose so that we were at least together and so none of us got lost. I have an idea it would have been the Circle Line, so we would have just gone round and come back to where we had got on! When I think of the effort it takes today to take school children out, doing risk assessments and making sure the outing is fully of an 'educational' nature, I can't believe how we managed to go to London. Later on we had another theatre trip, that one being to see another musical, perhaps not as long-lasting as 'Oliver!' but also based on a Dickens novel and starring Harry Secombe, 'Pickwick." It was running at the Saville Theatre in Shaftsbury Avenue, but the theatre closed years ago and the site is now a cinema. 

Drive To Bedford

I took Carol to the Academy early this morning. I should really say that she drove and I drove back. There has been a fall of snow over-night. It seemed very fine and almost like granulated sugar. The surface of the road going through Crownhill was really slippery. We got to the bottom of Hendrix Drive and the intersection with Munro Drive, and Carol put her foot on the brakes and the car almost didn't stop. A rather nasty grinding noise which was the tyres on the surface of the road. There was a possibility that we were going to end up in the house opposite and join the family inside for breakfast! It was quite traumatic, to say the least. We managed the rest of the journey without further mishap.

I dropped Carol at the Academy, came home and had some breakfast and then drove over to the Registery Office in Bedford. I was somewhat reluctant, considering the snow and ice, but as it turned out there was very little snow or ice on the roads.  It seems that the estates within Milton Keynes are the worst hit by the night's snow, and I had no problems. Bedford's traffic system seems just as bad as it always was when I lived there, particularly going into Bedford from Bromham, and all along Shakespeare Road. I got to the Registry Office and could find nowhere to park the car, so had to find a space off-street in one of the roads off Brickhill Drive and then walk into the office. There seems to be no problem getting a full Birth Cirtificate , although it costs £7 and they will post it out to me 2nd Class and so it should get to me in a couple of day's time, so that is one less problem to worry about.