The British Grammar school, or State School, had been closely modelled on the Private school, or Public school system since it’s inception. Aren’t names sometimes confusing? Stick with it, it gets worse. The system of terms in the schools were based on the habits of the parents of those who first started the system of Public Schools. In summer, ie. August, one went to ones country house in Scotland, or if one could not afford a granite pile in the Highlands, one went to a wooden house somewhere in Cornwall, where one could wear a Cornish fisherman’s Guernsey, a heavy knitted high collar jumper which kept out wind, seawater and fish of various kinds, an d pretend you lived by the sea. So the school terms could only start after the Grouse shooting season, which started on the 12th August and lasted until the 10th December, had ended. By which time there were considerably fewer Grouse left, and the upper classes had become fed up with shooting the birds.
So school year would start about the second week in September, unless you lived in Scotland, when the kids were forced back to school in early August, thus relieving country living Scots of the necessity of looking after their kilted kids, and could go off with the wealthy English to shoot their native birds. Not that the Scots did the shooting. No, they were the ones who carried the guns, hefted large supplies of food and drink around, and flushed the birds from the hillside, and generally acted like dogsbodies for the shooters from south of the border. Frequently complimenting them on the quality of their shooting in the hope of prising much needed cash from the shooters pockets.
So, the school year ended about the end of July, normally, unless you lived in the north of England – south of the border with the kilted ones. Then you fell into the category of ‘Northern Working Class’, a breed to be avoided like the outbreak of 1665. This ‘class’ worked the cotton and woollen mills of the north. After much strife and tribulation the mill owners condescended to give the workers a week or two holiday, each year. During this time the whole town would close down apart from a very small number who did not work in the mills. The mill workers would flock off to the seaside for their two weeks Wakes Holiday. To ensure that the whole cotton industry did not collapse annually each town would close down for their Wakes Week (two weeks actually) at a different time. For example. The town of Bolton in Lancashire closed for the holidays for the last week in June and the first week in July.
The town of Blackburn, famous for nothing very much apart from Kathleen Ferrier a famous singer who died in 1953, but is still revered in the town as someone who has just slipped out for a pack of tripe from the market, and separated from Bolton by some fifteen miles of moorland, closed it’s mills during the first and second weeks in July. In that way the mill owners ensured that there was always a supply of fabric to be supplied to the worldwide market. This was fine and worked well from the 18 something or other, until 1992 when the good folk of the education system realised that the cotton mills had long gone ( starting just after the Second World War) and the holidays were scrapped and people could take their holiday when they wanted to.
So, Alan and his classmates had two weeks off at the end of June and beginning of July then had to come back for three weeks until the end of the school year on 31st July. For the whole of his school life Alan had had to tolerate this dead three weeks. A time when it was impossible to do any proper lessons as the syllabus had finished for that year and the new one could not be started until September. A cock eyed system at best. A complete waste of time at worst.
On Thursday 30th July 1963 Alan sat at his desk by the open window of his classroom. The sun had been shining like a ball of fire in the sky since he had walked in that morning. All the classroom cantilever windows and the hum and buzz of bored and restless teenagers rose and fell like the quiet summer tide breaking on the beach at Blackpool. Alan looked around with the feeling someone had called his name. Nobody had but Browney, sat at the front of the class, was looking round at him. Silently he mouthed, “Are you packed up yet?” Alan shook his head and silently relied, “Not yet. Tonight.” The noise level started to rise. Mr Banks, seated at his table at the front of the class, noisily scraped back his chair and rose to his feet. The class fell silent. He cleared his throat and waved a pencil silently over the heads of the thirty 15 and 16 year olds in front of him. “Let’s keep the noise down to a reasonable level shall we?” he said quietly, then casting his eye over them all once more, resumed his seat and the novel he had been reading.
Alan resumed his watch on the sky outside. IT was blue. It was blue over the other school buildings, it was blue over the woodlands, it was blue over the topmost mill chimney just visible in the distance. The sky was blue. No cloud to be seen anywhere. A clear blue boring sky. Alan sighed in boredom. Mr Banks looked up from his book at him. Maybe the sigh had been a bit too loud. “Just another hour Robinson, “ he said. Alan grinned and thought. “Yes. For me the last day, for everyone else tomorrow is the last day. This time tomorrow I will be on a BOAC jet from Ringway Airport at Manchester and on my way to Greece“. He glanced at his watch and the thought went through his mind that perhaps by this time tomorrow the plane will have landed in Athens. The thought made him smile to himself.
Once he left this place, he thought, I won’t ever sit back in this place, this seat, this classroom, this school. I won’t set back until the results of the O Levels arrive. Then I will have to come back and hear my fate. Passed or failed, it was too late now to worry about them, they had been finished over two weeks ago. Now it was a matter of waiting. That and enjoying the three weeks in Greece at the Scout Jamboree to be held in Marathon, on the coast some 25 miles from Athens. He knew the itinerary by heart.
Arrive at Athens airport from Manchester. Coach to the campsite. Two weeks by the sea at the camp. Boat from Piraeus to Rhodes, stay for three nights, boat back to Athens. Three nights in Athens then flight home to Manchester.
It would take a mighty effort to get the smile removed from his face.
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