Living At Home- Part 5

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.

Me, Maths and More

I have mentioned in an earlier post my problems at school with maths. It seems I had a somewhat second-rate school option in ending up at Rushmoor over Bedford School (where three of my brothers went. Andrew went to Rushmoor for some unaccountable reason, but I can't think why my parents wasted good money on paying to have me sent to that place. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I really hated it.) As a result of all this, I was sent to various tutors around Bedford who were supposed to help me with my maths. I don't think I actually benefitted in any way, shape or form. I just think it made things worse as I was made to appear different from my classmates. I don't think I actually remember anything that I was supposed to have been taught. I can remember playing in some sort of sandpit which had toy soldiers in it, and something made of strips of plastic or rubber which you could knot or weave into all manner of objects such as key fobs and book markers, but nothing that had anything to do with mathematics. One place I went, when my mother came to collect me from school and was taken there and obviously took me out of any school lessons at Rushmoor, was in a building up some stairs in St Peter's Street in Bedford, which I believe is now something to do with the Probation Service, probably their administration offices, and just along the street from what was the Granada cinema but which has since been demolished and replaced by a Lidl supermarket. Another place I was taken was in Goldington Road, about where there are accountant and solicitor's offices. The gentleman who was the tutor smoked a pipe, and to this day I can still get a hint of the smell of the tobacco he must have smoked and there was a pipe-rack on the mantlepiece over the fireplace where the tutoring was held, and it contained a lot of pipes. Funny how some things stick in your memory, but certainly nothing to do with maths.

I think in the end it would have been better if I'd just been left alone and not dragged around these tutors. I am fine with what you call 'functional maths,' that is, basic maths skills to allow me to tot up a column of figures, division, multiplication, work out change, and so on. It was the more complex operations that were a complete mystery to me. Things like electric calculators have since come along and made my life easier, as they have for a lot of people. I think my mother just wanted what she thought was best for me I suppose and was attempting to make me like my other brothers and get me into Bedford School. I have certainly survived up until this point in time without having to worry about my lack of maths skills.

I did also have a mild form of dyslexia. I was told by my mother that they found this out because I used to use my wrong eye to look through such things as telescopes and cameras. If you are right-handed, apparently you use your right eye when using such things as cameras, but I didn't. I used my left eye. My maternal grandfather was supposed to have done done this when he was cleaning his shooting rifle, which was when it was suggested that I might be dyslexic. I did have some problems with reading but not as profoundly problematical as some people I have discovered. I have since found out that the problems with maths does have a name, dyscalculia. It has been defined by the DfE as follows: 'a condition which affects the ability to acquire arithmetical skills. Dyscalculic learners may have difficulty understanding simple number concepts, lack an intuitive grasp of numbers, and have problems learning number facts and procedures. Even if they produce a correct answer or use a correct method, they may do so mechanically and without confidence.' It just annoys me now, some 50-plus years later, that I had to be treated as if I was some sort of 'naughty schoolboy' because of my maths problems, and was generally stuck at the back of the class and left alone or treated with something like contempt. But, I can at least sympathise with those people who have similar problems.

I also had something of a speech impediment to add to my woes as a child. I had something of a lisp. Fortunately I was taken to several what I suppose would be called 'speech therapists' today. I am therefore grateful that they DID have some sort of affect as I speak correctly today. I recall going to someone in Pemberley Avenue just off Kimbolton Road (and not far from Walmsley House School which is mentioned in an earlier post on here.) I think I could even find the house if I went and looked. Some of the methods used to get me to put my tongue forward in my mouth used a peppermint chocolate sweet, which I actually love and I probably ate quite a few and helped me to 'speak corruptly' as a result.

As a result of all this I am really sympathetic to anyone with any form of disability and might account for my being able to deal with people why have any form of learning disability. My mother, for example, had a friend of the family who we used to visit when we went to the Cotswolds, called Aunty Milly, but I don't think was actually a relative. You just called such friends as 'aunt' or 'uncle' out of respect I suppose. She had, poor lady, a cleft palate, which meant that when she spoke her speech was quite difficult to understand. But I had no problems, and I could converse with her clearly. My mother said I was the only person she knew who had the patience to sit and listen to her and talk to her properly. I put it down to having had problems with my own speech as a child and having to go through that therapy. One of my all-time favourite plays is 'Pygmalion' by George Bernard Shaw, which, if you don't already now, is about a man who is a speech therapist. I don't think Shaw calls him that. But I can identify with the central character of Eliza Doolittle who goes to Higgins so that he can teach her to speech 'better English.' I have never had a problem with the 'better English' part, but she goes through some of the same sort of training that I had as a child.