YOUR MEMORIES OF BECKENHAM cont...

This being wartime, the teaching staff was depleted by the lack of young men teachers, and I well recall the sadness felt when it was announced that  our recently called-up English teacher had been killed in action.

A strange mix, the Beckenham Technical School. Not the same insistence upon academic subjects as elsewhere, but rather a blend of  art, engineering and building subjects which, while adding to our knowledge nd abilities after leaving school, hampered to a degree the pursuit of conventional learning and examinations.

Thus lessons on the constitution of Art  (Art head teacher John Cole) : mass, movement and texture, became part of our everyday concepts, as did appreciation of typography and colour.

The school was comparatively small, some 270 boys  being divided into three- year steps and   a 30-boy classification of art, building and engineering.  It seemed to work, although some of us wondered quite how we had been selected for a certain division. For example,  I like artwork, but am no artist, and being selected for this subject had to struggle along with others of  greater talent in this direction.

Discipline was  there, but not obsessively. On one occasion  I remember  salt- and- pepper pots being slid along a  dining table with increasing momentum,   and this not surprisingly  being considered a breach of dining decorum we were ordered to line-up  for punishment outside the Head's office   For  the life of me I could not at the time or since  remember whether I had actually taken part in the fray , and felt unjustly blamed along with  the rest . However,  the kindly Head changed his mind upon seeing the number  of  miscreants, and a verbal admonishment sufficed.

Along the Beckenham Road and almost opposite the school stood  Anne's -  a kind of  tuckshop from where could be purchased those delicious and now defunct Lyons individual fruit pies costing sixpence a time.   I can taste   them now - no box, no wrapper, just pie! The Beckenham Baths, now rejoicing in the name of The Spa - had a cafe upstairs, and this was the regular target for break-time snacks  of  bread rolls - which were eaten in the time-honoured manner of being mined for their soft bread content before consumption of the outer crust. Again, very scrumptious.

Drama played its part at the school, and a  lifetime thespian,  I enjoyed every minute spent play-reading and acting.  "A Night at the Inn" by Lord Dunsany left its indelible mark on my memory; and I still cannot shake off the opening lines.:  "What's his idea, I wonder"..."And how much longer will he keep us here?"  You'll have to go to see it for the rest...

After-school activities were rather odd. I remember belonging to a chess club, but support was rather low, meetings were cancelled,  and I never did get to know the rudiments of the game.   The Maths master started up a cinema club, to which my friend Ernie Martin and I went along. And that was it. Us two.  The projector was a  splendid Pathe model, the films silent  of course,  in black-and -white. Early Mickey Mouse - Tugboat Willie. I have always been fascinated by all things cinematic, and this was  a joy.

There was also an engineering club where supposedly steam engines and the like could be constructed ,  but  I have no first-hand experience of this, although others I know did.

Sport was patchy; football on a freezing pitch  did not appeal to  me, and the so-called gymnastics would not be believed today. The  school not possessing a suitable area, these took place  in the hall of  Elm Road Baptist Church opposite. The less said about them the better.

Mind you, the lessons in Religious Knowledge contained more of sport than anything else; I remember the master standing by  our desks discussing football, and I put this down to his knowledge of religious matters being rather limited.

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