Tattershall Castle - Stand Clear of the Battlements

I realize that I seem to be making a habit of using my blog site to make confessions but this revelation has a lot to do with one of the historic gems of our county, the magnificence that is Tattershall Castle.

From my childhood home in Coningsby, a couple of miles away, I could catch a glimpse of the massive keep from the window of our living room. As a small child I had occasionally visited the castle with the family and I recall charging around the dungeons with my brother before ascending the tower, counting all the steps on the spiral stairs. We had several images of the castle around the house on postcards and a couple of mounted prints. I remember reading up about the builders of the castle and the fact that unlike many of the earlier castles built from stone at Tattershall they decided to follow the Flemish trend using over 700,000 bricks, probably made on site, to build the entire structure. It is thought that the building we see today had its origins in a smaller stone castle or fortified manor house built around 1230 by Robert de Tateshale.

However, it was the 3^rd Lord Cromwell, Ralph who was responsible for expanding the castle between 1430 and 1450 when he was Treasurer of England. Ralph Cromwell died in 1456 when the castle was inherited by his niece, Joan Bouchier, but it was later confiscated by the Crown after her husband's death. In 1560 Tattershall castle was given over to Sir Henry Sidney, one of Edward VI courtiers. Subsequently he sold it to the Earl of Lincoln, Lord Clinton. The castle then passed on to the Fortesque family in 1693 but over the centuries it gradually fell into a state of neglect until it was purchased by Lord Curzon of Kedleston in 1911. It was Lord Curzon who undertook a series of major restorations to the keep between 1911 and 1914. The castle was bequeathed to the National Trust on his death in 1925 and today it is recognised as one of the three most important surviving brick castles of the mid-fifteenth century.
Although the guardhouse and the 130 foot keep are the only structures that remain largely intact the moats were originally encased by curtain walls accessed by a series of smaller towers of which there is no trace. Only foundations remain of the stables in the outer ward, between the outer moat and inner moat, and the range of kitchen buildings which were close to the great tower in the inner ward.  When I was young we used to run along these and then race up and down the steep banks of the dry moats. Today the two moats are filled with water and look much as they would have done in bygone days when they were stocked up with fish reared for the kitchens to serve up to the lord of the manor and his guests.

What we used to call the dungeons the National Trust (rather boringly) refers to as the Basement. Although it is possible that it was used as a prison during the civil war it was probably more likely to have been used a place for storing spices and other items for the nearby kitchens. The large ground floor room was the Parlour and it was here that local tenants would regularly come to pay their rent. Today it is used to host civil ceremonies like weddings and private functions accommodating up to a hundred guests. A separate door leads up the spiral stairs to three great upper rooms which formed an independent private suite for the lord and his family. The design is very simple, with four floors, slightly increasing in size at each level by reductions in wall thickness. The first floor of the private suite was the Hall, which would have been used to entertain and wine and dine guests. The middle floor was the Audience Chamber, and only the really important guests would have been admitted here. A brick vaulted corridor leads to a small waiting room, before the great hall of the Audience Chamber, in which are displayed some of the Flemish tapestries bought by Lord Curzon. The top floor would have been the Private Chamber, where the Lord and his lady would have retired for the night. As a child I must admit that I was somewhat disappointed that most of the rooms were rather devoid of furnishings: I supposed I expected them to be crammed with armour, weapons, ornaments and furniture like the majority of other stately homes and castles like Belvoir. I remember that my aunt and uncle, who were in the antique trade at the time, had helped at some point in the 1970s, to source some early pieces of 16^th century furniture to help recreate a small domestic scene in one of the tower chambers. I do remember however the impressive fireplaces situated in the main rooms on each floor. Their size indicated that the rooms were never intended to be subdivided, but kept as one great room at each level. We had great fun as kids standing inside these fireplaces and looking up to see whether we could see the sky-light. I remember the story that these fireplaces had been removed from the castle, prior to its sale to Lord Curzon in 1911, and sold to a rich American collector. They were only rescued at the eleventh hour waiting to be shipped to the states on the dockside by Lord Curzon himself.  He arranged for them to be brought back to Tattershall by horse and cart to be reinstated in their rightful place.  Above the three floors of rooms are the roof gallery and battlements, which offer tremendous views across the Lincolnshire landscape, from Boston to the south, to Lincoln in the north.  It is not possible to access the turrets today but it was when I was a youngster-which brings me back to the subject of my confession.

My mother was, from sometime in the mid 1960s up until the early1980s, a district nurse in the area. She frequently made visits to one of her nursing colleagues, Nurse Taylor, who lived in one of the pair of cottages adjacent to the peacock pens to the south side of the keep. On this occasion a friend and I accompanied her and getting rather bored after a few minutes sat in the car we decided to explore the ruins around the peacock enclosure. We were able to cross the waterless moat into the inner ward before creeping up to the walls of the keep. Sometimes there were volunteers on duty checking tickets but this day we were lucky.
We didn’t risk being spotted by going into the parlour room but headed straight for the stairs. The stairs were carefully designed for defence. As most soldiers held their swords with their right hands the staircase spiralled in a clockwise direction going upward so the defending soldiers would be able to stab around the twist but the attacking soldiers would not. We met a group of Japanese tourists all with their cameras snapping away, taking photos of each other, and posing inside the fireplaces whilst we hastily explored all the anterooms, garderobes and corridors.. From the vantage point of the battlements I recall seeing over to the lakes amidst the adjacent gravel-pits where my Dad once worked and in the opposite direction we could see planes taking off from the aerodrome at Coningsby. But we knew we might be able to get a slightly better view from the top of one of the corner turrets. Indeed the view was fantastic. We soon spotted some of the Japanese tourists we’d encountered earlier emerging from the keep walking towards the kitchen ruins.

It was whilst we were there that it happened! I suddenly realised that I had, how shall I put this delicately, I needed the little boys room and if you gotta go … I recall dancing a bit of a jig agitated about what could do. My friend asked me what was the matter and I told him that I needed to go, desperately. I knew the toilets were located behind the guardhouse and, even if I ran, they were a good five minutes away and I knew I wouldn’t make it in time. We looked around and seeing that there were other visitors gathering for photo-shoots on the roof gallery below we realised we had few options open to us. “You’ll just have to do it in the drain,” advised my friend. I looked and indeed in a corner of the turret roof was an open drain hole. So surreptitiously, looking casually over the battlements, I went. What I didn’t know at the time was that the drain ran into a lead-lined channel that emerged through a spout overhanging the battlements (it can be seen in both pictures). A few seconds after I had relieved myself a stream of golden liquid emerged descending like an April shower close to the heads of the unsuspecting tourists below as they clicked merrily away with their cameras. What they thought I never knew all I can say is we moved a lot quicker down those spiral steps than we came up and we never stopped running until we arrived back at my mother’s car behind the peacock pens.
I therefore not only apologise to the National Trust for entering their premises without paying the required entrance fee but also to those Japanese Tourists who witnessed, first hand, the unpredictable nature of the British weather.

Oasis Man: Confessions of a Closet Flower Arranger

  The Methodist church has strong links with Lincolnshire. Of course its founder, John Wesley, was born at Epworth, in the north of the county. Not surprising then that there were probably more Methodist chapels in the villages around Lincolnshire than in any other county. In some places chapels for both the Wesleyans and the Primitives could be found on the same street. Many have disappeared, been sold off and converted into stylish dwellings but several remain calling the faithful to their devotions week after week. The large Methodist Church at Coningsby where I grew up is at present in a state of limbo, no longer being used for worship but standing empty and rather forlorn waiting for the future to decide its fate. The congregation have a new place to meet now; the former doctor’s surgery in the centre of the village converted a few years back.  The old chapel stands proud on Dogdyke Road between the large Victorian manse and my parents’ humble cottage. It was in part because of this close proximity that much of my early life was bound up in the chapel. I must confess on one occasion I felt we were perhaps too close when, demonstrating my magnificent tennis serve to a friend in my back garden; I smashed a leaded window pane in the church porch. My father was for many years in charge of the coke boiler that provided heating for the building and my mother was caretaker and key-holder. I remember the bunch of keys attached to a wooden cotton reel, hanging on a nail just inside our kitchen door, there for collection by anyone wishing to access the premises. My brother and I spent several years in the Sunday school attending ‘Sunshine Corner,’ carol services, harvest festivals and Sunday school anniversaries. Every June wooden trestles would be retrieved from the stoke-hole and erected to support a large platform in front of the pulpit. This was to accommodate the twenty or thirty children who made up the Sunday school roll.  The church would be full to bursting for anniversary services. Visiting preachers were expected to host not only the usual morning and evening services but an afternoon performance as well, when all the children were expected to deliver their recitations off by heart, each one chosen because of its inspiring spiritual or moral message. Most were a little twee by today’s standards. I can still remember the verse I recited back in 1965:

“The best thing when you’re playing is to play the game right well

Drive the ball upon the green or shoot to ring the bell

Get your service o’er the net, or ride to clear the gate

But when it’s life you’re playing at, just play it clear and straight.”

 The other big event on the church calendar was the biennial flower festival. Coningsby had a fine reputation for spectacular flower festivals. All the ladies of the church really came to the fore when preparing for and supervising these events. They usually took a whole year in the planning and everything was organised down to the smallest detail and last sprig of Ulster Mary. A theme would be debated, for several months sometimes, before it would be agreed and the elements started coming together. Those trestles used for the Sunday school anniversary were unpacked and positioned at intervals across the tops of the pews down both sides of the church. Two or three more would be aligned across the rear of the church along the treacly-oak panels of the vestibule. Members of the local flower club, were usually awarded a trestle-table each whilst nervous amateurs and latecomers were allocated a window sill which, positioned in the gaps between the tables, were used for slightly smaller arrangements. At the front of the church between the pulpit and altar rail was a large area often given over, in courtesy, to (Mrs Cammack and) the ladies who ran the local florists; the church knew on which side their bread was buttered. The curved mahogany pediment above the door to the preachers’ vestry was a challenge normally allocated to a younger member of the flower club as she (for many years farmer’s wife, Lorna Curtis ) needed to be agile enough to balance precariously on a step ladder whilst completing her arrangement, some 8-9ft above the ground. The large vestibule with its leaded lights was where all visitors arrived before entering the main building. It too was adorned with flowers in both pedestals and vases. Everything lush and colourful; minimalism and ikebana hadn’t reached Coningsby yet. The theme of the festival was introduced by way of a simple printed guide. I still have a couple of these pamphlets from the mid-1960s, from the era of typewriters and Roneo copiers, when stencils were made on waxed mulberry paper to enable foolscap sheets to be reproduced in abundance. One year literary quotes were selected as a basis for all the arrangements. So Mrs Walker interpreted a verse from Luke 12 inviting us to "Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. Mrs Cade opted for rather the more obscure, "I saw horses in the vision: those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow” from Revelations 9. Then there was my mother’s choice clearly prompted by the fact the author was a fellow yellowbelly, Alfred Lord Tennyson,

 "In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

‘Local luminaries’ were the subject of another year’s celebrations. That’s ‘Celebrities’ to you and me. I think the title was chosen for its alliterative qualities. The obvious ones were represented; Isaac Newton, John Franklin, Joseph Banks, the Wesleys and Tennyson of course. But also allowed their fifteen minutes of fame were other notable Lincolnshire figures; Captain John Smith (friend of Pocahontas), poetess Jean Ingelow, conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent,  golfer Tony Jacklin, Billy Butlin and the founding father of computing, George Boole, the brilliant mathematician noted for his work on Boolean Algebra.

It is at this point that I feel another confession coming on. It was at one of these festivals on the Friday evening when they were downing secateurs for the day, that I said to a couple of the ‘ladies’ why don’t you put some flowers on the ends of the pews. We had seen this done when my mother had dragged me round a similar event at Hawthorn Hill, Holland Fen or some such place where they hadn’t got the window sills to accommodate any arrangements. Coningsby’s centre pews were all around 15 feet long, chocolaty brown and quite dull, being devoid of flowers and foliage whilst the sides of the church were a mass of floral colour. My mother found me half dozen or so brass tobacco tins, already crammed with rectangles of oasis, secured by a criss-cross of green tape and elastic bands. I scavenged for a few flowers and managed to glean quite a lot of foliage which the others had already discarded onto the bed-sheets strewn in all directions around the chapel floor. I had to move quick in case they changed their minds but I had soon amassed enough cuttings to complete my task. With a little guidance from my mother on the first I created the remaining five, small arrangements which were duly attached onto the narrow, yet flat, ledges of alternate pews. Now they weren’t that great I’m know so I wasn’t sure of the reaction my efforts would get when Mrs Cammack, the floral stylistic equivalent of Gok Wan, turned up the next morning. She arrived to finish her own masterpieces and help my Mum make table decorations for the school-room where teas were due to be served. Arriving about 9:30 within minutes Mrs Cammack had asked my mother who had done the pew-ends. My mother sprinted through the wrought-iron gate that linked the properties, round to our back porch, and I was summoned.

“You didn’t do all these did you?” was her accusation.

“No,” I answered, “Only five of them, mum did the other one.”

I was a very literal child; anyway I wasn’t going take the whole blame. But she didn’t censure me, instead she turned to my mum and said, “He’s got an eye for it, let him have a go at some of those table decorations in the schoolroom and I’ll finish the pedestals.” And indeed that’s what happened.

So you see, I could have been a contender, Oasis Man, up there with Llewelyn-Bowen, Alan Titchmarsh and the like. But I never did pursue a career in floristry. However, even though thirty years later it is my wife’s name that appears at regular two-monthly intervals on our chapel’s flower rota, but guess who really ends up doing the job!

Bach in the Subway...does beauty transcend?

Having recently heard this amazing story at our local church I felt it was one that merited sharing with a wider audience. It concerns a shabbily dressed man who, stood in a metro station in Washington DC started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about three quarters of an hour. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that three to four thousands of people were passing through the station during this time, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by. One middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.
A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the open case but without stopping. Another commuter paused to lean against the wall to listen to the music for a few seconds, but then looking at his watch started to walk on. Clearly he was late for work.
The person who paid the most attention was probably a 3 year old boy. His mother tried to urge him along, but the child clearly wanted to stop and look at the violinist.  Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk on though not without turning his head several times. This action was repeated by several other children. Yet all the parents, without exception, forced them to move on after a few seconds.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the top musicians in the world. He had played some of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth a fortune. Only one person had recognised the maestro playing incognito.
Two days before his playing in the subway, the same musician had sold out in a theatre in Boston and the seats averaging $100.

This is a true story. At the suggestion of a journalist from the Washington post, Gene Weingarten, the virtuoso violinist, Joshua Bell had been playing in disguise at the metro station.
It was all part of a social experiment about perception, taste and the priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour do we perceive extraordinary gifts and beauty? Would people stop to appreciate magnificence? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?
One of the possible conclusions from this experience Weingarten suggested was that if we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing some of the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing every day of our lives?

This story regarding the complete lack of reaction by the people who witnessed the impromptu concert surprised many commentators and many suspected that it was surely a hoax. However, the story was true as Bell himself explained later in various television interviews. In January 2007 he had indeed performed incognito in the metro-station in an experiment organized by the Washington Post.According to the article in April 2007 Bell had used his own violin, an instrument handcrafted by Antonio Stradivari in 1713 - that he bought several years ago for a reported price of $3.5 million.
Journalist Gene Weingarten was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for his outstanding and thought provoking analysis of the experiment. Weingarten discussed the ramifications of Bell's subway experience concluding that context clearly does play a role in our artistic perceptions. Our perception of beauty is obviously influenced by our mindset at the particular time we perceive it. If we catch the merest glimpse of genius we should acknowledge it or risk losing it forever.

The Passing of Cyril the Squirrel

 Recently my brother travelled over from Lincolnshire for Sunday lunch. Occasionally in the past he has treated us with a tasty offering like a haslet or some choice Lincolnshire sausages. The family were secretly hoping for a traditional Plum Loaf but this time he arrived with another old favourite from my childhood, Stuffed Chine. Sadly the chine did not receive much of a welcome, except from me. The rest of them turned their noses up when they saw the bacon joint generously striped with green parsley. Even after trying a morsel dowsed in vinegar they remained unconvinced of its merits. But though the reception for the chine was pretty disappointing it was as nought to that which greeted a second offering. My brother brought something I had not seen for nearly forty years, a stuffed red squirrel called Cyril.

In fact Cyril has never really been appreciated by my family since I first acquired him. At the age of 14 or 15 I was given the squirrel by a work colleague of my mother, District Nurse Taylor who lived, with Cyril, in a cottage in the grounds of Tattershall Castle. As I recall he had belonged to her father and I understood that he had acquired the squirrel in the castle grounds before having it stuffed in 1917. Therein lays confusion. I have recently been informed that red squirrels had all disappeared from the area before the end of the 19^th century.

What is the truth? There are no other clues other than  the fact that the rear of the case is lined with a page from the Lincoln Stamford and Rutland Mercury.
My mother had never really taken to Cyril although she allowed him to sit on a shelf in my bedroom until i left for college. When she died and her cottage was cleared my brother rediscovered Cyril in the roof space. He transferred him to his own garage where he remained for the last ten years. now he has rebeen returned to me but the wife has delivered an ultimatum either the squirrel goes or else… I have  had to make plans.
I decided to offer Cyril to our recently established school museum. Sadly the present curator, who up until now I considered a friend, was hardly thrilled and declined my offer saying he found it creepy and disturbing (personally I think this a wimpish excuse). He suggested I offer it to our Science coordinator to become an aid to teaching about mammals, food chains and the like. The science coordinator was equally unimpressed saying it freaked him out and couldnt have it in the room (another wimp).

I have therefore had to think again. I have considered it putting on display in my own classroom as the children seem to like the squirrel but my work colleagues are none too keen on the idea of Cyril watching over them when they use the room. I thought I might donate him to the school as a parting gift when I retire. But I suspect he would end up in the cellars or worse still be put up for sale at the next school jumble once funding starts to dwindling after the next inevitable round of financial cutbacks. Then another colleague suggested I smuggled him into Calke Abbey and hide him amidst the surplus of stuffed exhibits that the last of the Harpur-Crewes left around the decaying mansion. No-one would spot another amongst so many. Unfortunately the staff would probably spot a parcel being carried in passed the ticket desk. 

  I have already refused the indignity of trying to sell Cyril on Ebay. Then a solution presented itself to me. The son of a work colleague was rushed into hospital in the early hours one day last week with a suspected appendicitis. Talking over lunch a few days earlier it was revealed to me that the lad had an interest in taxidermy and so I decided that I would bite the bullet and hand Cyril over to a new owner who I know would really appreciate him.

Cyril the Squirrel

I would, however still like to know whether he was really a Lincolnshire red squirrel or just another of them ‘frim folk’.

Burgess, Blather and Binder String

 In Coningsby, as in many other places, at the chapel anniversary every year, it was the custom to invite someone special to speak at the evening service. It was usually a preacher of note or some local celebrity who would be likely to draw in a bit of a crowd. A ‘nice spread’ would be put on by ‘the ladies of the church’ for tea-time, around five o’clock, to be followed by the service at six. My mother along with the rest would be roped in to make sandwiches, cakes and pastries at the weekend for this event. She wasn’t a cake baker but could make a decent scone (of the fruit or cheese variety as the occasion demanded) and was a dab hand at sausage rolls. The chapel was next door so mum would be nipping back and forth most of the afternoon with things hot from the oven. One of the most memorable anniversaries as far as I was concerned was when we were entertained by a legend of Lincolnshire dialect, Mrs. Edith Burgess. By the time she visited us she must have been in her late seventies but still as chipper as ever. I gather she’d been invited on several occasions but it had taken us literally years to get her to come. I think I am right in saying she wasn’t merely a celebrity but had been actively involved in the church as wife of a Methodist preacher for many years so she could have delivered a message filled with spiritual guidance and insights but, to our delight, she didn’t do this. Instead she told us about her life as a young girl growing up in a north Lincolnshire village and her love for poetry and tales of Lincolnshire folk and history. Every now and then she would slip effortlessly into her dialect voice to regale us with words and phrases that were familiar but from a bygone age. She had recorded several pieces of poetry in dialect most notably several of the works of Alfred Lord Tennyson, like ”The Northern Farmer, The Spinster’s Sweet-Arts and Owd Roa (Old Rover).

A few years back I heard a woman from Osgodby called Titch Rivett talking on the radio about the demise of words in the Lincolnshire dialect. Among other things she attributed this to developments in modern farming methods; like the arrival of the tractor in place of the carthorse. Many dialect words were terms associated with farms and their animals especially horses. She also blamed the moving population. She felt that 'frim folk' (people from other areas) had come to the county whilst many Lincolnshire folk had also moved out and taken their voice with them. In 2004 she was busy trying to keep Lincolnshire's dialect alive by running courses on the subject and making audio recordings of its quirky expressions, such as wozzle (root vegetable) and gimmer (a ewe which has never given birth), sneck (metal hook), blather (mud on clothing) and dowking (wilting). But when she was speaking in 2004 her course was in danger of being cancelled due to lack of interest. She was saying that she was aware that it was almost a different language but if folk didn’t sit up and take note like old farm buildings falling into a state ‘beyond repair’ that language would be lost forever . As she said at the time, “Once that's gone you can't come back and say 'we'll have it now' because it's been lost.”

One poem I’m sure I remember Mrs. Burgess reading, and very possibly Titch Rivett knew it too, was one entitled, “A bit o’ binder string.” I’m not sure whether this originated in Lincolnshire but Mrs Burgess adopted it. I ran across it recently, although I can’t swear (and neither could Mrs. Burgess!) that her version and this were the same. I suspect some phrases have been southernised:

                                             

                                                      A Bit of Binder String.
Dost mind Bill Bates as used to work for Drake at Badgers End?
There weren’t a tool about the farm this feller couldn’t mend
From a hayfork to a harvester or any mortal thing
Old Bill could always fix it with a bit if binder string.

One day a Friesian bull got out and raged and tore around
Nobody dared go near ‘im as he roared and hooked the ground
Till Boss shouts “Bill” the bull’s got out and been and broke his ring
An Bill lassoed the beggar wi’ a bit of binder string.

Bill courted Mabel seven years an’; then he said “Let’s wed”
I’ve got a table an’ some chairs an’ Granny’s feather bed
Ther’s half a ton o’ taters up in the field as I can bring
An’ I’ve made some handsome doormats out of thic’ there binder string.

Well Mabel said “ We’d best get wed before they cut the hay
So they had a slap up Wedding on the seventeenth of May
But when they got to the church Bill found he had gone and lost the ring
So he had to marry Mabel with a loop of binder string

Next year a little daughter came to bless the happy pair
Wi’ girt blue eyes and a tuft of ginger hair
And Bill, he says to Parson at the baby’s Christening
Zee, ‘er be just the colour of a bit of binder string.

Well time went on an’ old Bill died an’ came to Heaven’s Door
He heard them all a singing there and he was worried sore
An’ he says to good St. Peter, “Zir I’ve never sung before
I were always kep’ so busy mendin’ things wi’ binder string.”

“Don’t worry Bill”, St. Peter said “The Good Lord understands
He’ve been a carpenter and likes to see folk use their hands
An we’m very happy to see ‘ee here, we’ve plenty who can sing
But we need a handy chap like thee, has ‘ee brought some binder string?

So Bill do bide in Heaven now, he’s very happy there
He’s got a liddle workshop round behind St. Peter’s chair
An’ while the Angels play their harps and all the saints do sing
Bill mends the little cherub’s toys with bits of binder string. "

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Anyone coming to the Bull's Head?

We all have experiences in life that we would prefer to forget or at least draw a veil over whilst they have the potential to cause us some embarrassment. I was recently reminded of an occasion when I was guilty of committing a faux-pas that for months afterwards caused me such discomfort that friends only had to ask the question, “Anyone coming to the Bulls Head?” and I would flush pink. Now, some fifteen years after the event, the time seems right to enter the confessional.

  Working in a residential special school in the centre of the county there has always been an emphasis on practical activities as preparation for adult life. In those far off days, before ‘domestic science’ was repackaged as ‘food technology,’ and long before things were complicated by the national curriculum, I found myself teaching cookery. I was charged with helping the kids prepare a range of basic recipes drawing on straightforward ingredients they could find in every store-cupboard. Nothing fancy or cordon bleu; we were simply making cakes, biscuits, pastries and a range of easy meals. Once in a while I introduced a few recipes from my own childhood, raspberry buns savoury pinwheels, cheese and bacon pie, sausage rolls and a fruity flapjack called Tyzan. In the days before learning support assistants apart from the occasional student on work experience, sent in for a taster session, I was on my own. I learnt from my own mistakes and experiences as a single man cooking for myself. Then one of the school governors, in fact the chair of governors, offered to come in and help out for a couple of hours once a fortnight. Things went well. We became more adventurous extending our range of foods and trying out recipes from other countries.

I was a little nervous however when we heard that we were going to have a local authority inspection. The governor, Sara, normally dropped in on a Friday for the period between morning break and lunch. However, a fortnight before the inspection was due Sara mentioned that she may not be able to come in the following Friday as she was probably having to attend the local magistrates court where she periodically sat on the bench. Instead she said she would try to pop in sometime earlier in the week if she could find the time. I thought little more of this until the following week when having just started a lesson with my own tutor group I spotted Sara through the window walking across the playground towards the cookery room. The children and I greeted her and, not having time to chat beforehand, started handing out the aprons and doling out the equipment to make cheese and parsley scones. The lesson ended and as we were washing-up I asked Sara if she could possibly give me a lift down to the local village as I needed to pop in home. I arranged to meet her in 5 minutes time by her car parked which I knew was just inside the iron gates to the school. After locking up my room it wasn’t long before we were both travelling back into the village. Although I asked her to drop me near the turning to my cul-de-sac she insisted on taking me right to my door and waiting for me. I explained I just needed to pick up my wallet before meeting up with colleagues for a bite of lunch at the Bulls head , the nearest pub, before returning to school for the afternoon session. She said she might as well take me down to the pub car-park as it was virtually on her way home. Having thanked her I entered the pub, ordered a half pint and sat in down in our usual corner by the fire. After waiting some 15 minutes or so I realised my colleagues must have got delayed or had been called into some impromptu meeting that had arisen back at school.

I therefore finished my drink, left the pub and walked briskly back to my house to grab a sandwich in lieu of the pub lunch I had missed. It was then that I happened to spy the kitchen clock…

I expected the time to be somewhere in the region of 1:00 but instead the clock was showing 11:45. Funny, must have stopped I thought until I noticed a similar time on the oven-clock. I grabbed my jacket and fairly sprinted the 3/4 mile back up the hill to the school, arriving in the playground as the bell rang for the 12:00 lesson changeover. I ran to my classroom meeting a mesmerised group of year 7 students standing by the door.

How I got through the next lesson I’ll never know. It gradually dawned on me what I had done. With Sara turning up on a different day and at a different time to help with cooking, I had completely forgotten what day it was. She’d come at 9:15 on a Thursday instead of her usual 11:00 a.m. visit on a Friday. When the lesson finished at break time (10:30) I had assumed it was the 12:30 lunch break. To make matters worse I had persuaded the school governor, a week prior to a school inspection, to take me down to the local pub midway through a school morning. Luckily I hadn’t been missed at school as I luckily had a free period between break and the final lesson on a Thursday morning.

 I ought to have left things at that but I was young, naïve and didn’t know any better so, when lunch time arrived, I compounded the situation by going down to the pub with my colleagues as originally planned. I might have known. I was greeted by the landlord with the words, “what are you doing here again?” Accordingly I found myself recounting what had happened to my colleagues and the effect was immediate. They started rolling about, tears streaming down their faces almost choking on their ham cobs. Needless to say by the end of the school day everyone in the staff-room, including the Head, had heard about my mid-morning foray down to the Bull’s head with the Chair of Governors. I did try to spit out some feeble explanation of my behaviour when I met up with Sara a few days later and but she claimed that she hadn’t noticed -bless!  

Shock Tactics

One of the joys of living and working in a small village community is being able to walk to and from work.  I’m lucky to live about a mile away from the school where I have worked for over thirty years. It’s an uphill journey each morning and in the winter months given the chilly weather I admit to being very grateful for the occasional lift. In the summer months however it’s very different and the journey is certainly no hardship. Each day I pass an Edwardian terrace with their immaculate cottage gardens then a pair of tall, Victorian villas clad in Wisteria. Next I walk alongside a newly planted copse and a couple of farms before crossing the road for a short walk alongside crumbling stone walls. After that it is through a tunnel of trees which mark the boundaries of the school estate. It’s not your standard school but a Victorian country house converted into a special school some 50 years ago. The Hall itself is little changed, it still has original mullioned sash windows and steeply- pitched, Swithland slate roofs.  The purpose-built school buildings are nothing remarkable, most are of the pre-fabricated variety dating from the 1980s. However, the grounds still boast a lot of the original outbuildings from the days of the farm estate. There is a kitchen block fronting a double courtyard. At one end is the blacksmith’s forge now converted into a workshop whilst at the other the laundry building and servants’ pantry have been transformed into a library and small museum area. The crowning glory is the recently restored turret clock that rises up from the roof of the boiler house surmounted by a bell under a lead cupola. In earlier times this was employed to notify the folk out in the estate fields when it was time for lunch or to knock off at the end of a long days work. A few of the old  farm buildings have survived like the pigsty and apple-store which are now used classrooms and the stable block which serves as a canoe and outdoor pursuit’s store.

We are in fact a special school for students with special educational needs with a unit catering for students on the autistic spectrum. Still a local authority school we have survived several changes of local government and national policy by the skin of our teeth. Why? well I like to think because we do a damn good job but that’s not what I want to talk about. I simply wish to set the scene for a tale of plotting and counter-plotting, of intrigue and of sweet revenge…

     “You don’t have to be mad to work here but it certainly helps.” I can’t tell you how often I cringed as my old head trotted out that line to visitors and new staff. He ran a disciplined and happy ship, in spite being a closet Morris dancer with some rather eccentric ideas. He advocated shoe-cleaning every Friday and the use of fish knives whenever the school canteen served up plaice. Nevertheless he had a heart of gold and a mischievous sense of humour, not quite “Carry on Matron” more like “Summer Wine”, but it still infected students and staff alike. In the 1980s, being a school with boarders as well as day students, the teachers were expected to fulfil regular evening duties alongside the care staff.  It made for good social relationships but there was nevertheless a conspicuous, friendly rivalry between the two staffs that surfaced during sporting events like the “It’s a Knockout” afternoon and the annual skittles evening. Both groups were constantly vying to score points over each other with an array of pranks; all on the understanding that you didn’t involve the students in any of the stunts. It’s hard remembering now all the shenanigans that went on but I recall the night we scared one of the house-mother’s (indeed that’s what they were called) witless by placing the bonfire guy in her bathroom; so that when she returned to her flat there, in the shadows, (we’d removed the light bulb), was this tramp-like figure sat on the lavatory. The same house-mother lost her lime-green Fiat Uno the night we put it in the kitchen garden disguised as a small haystack with bales we had ‘borrowed’ from our farmer neighbour.

The teachers didn’t have it all their own way, on occasions the care staff came up trumps with some A1 mischief of their own. There was the time we received a phone-call, purporting to come from our neighbour, that he’d spotted a snowy owl in a tree overhanging our chicken pen and that he’d already lost several hens to the same predator. We spent ages outside before discovering the owl was in fact a plastic bag flapping wildly in the branches where it had become entangled. The care-staff were nearly wetting themselves with laughter by the time the rest of us returned red-faced to the staff room.

In only my third year of teaching one particular housemother skilfully concocted a letter purporting to come from County Hall stating that the Director of Education himself had heard great things about my use of dramatic role-play in assemblies and wanted to observe me in action. I was so naïve at the time that I spent more hours than most people do in a pre-Ofsted frenzy getting my assembly technique perfected only to discover the ruse as the entire staff filed for my “performance.”  I should have been on my guard after this but only a few weeks later I was caught out by this selfsame joker in another rather childish prank.  

The boys had had iced buns for supper and there was one left over, which I reserved for myself when I came off duty after lights out at 9:30. The housemother decided it would be a wheeze to fill some of the buns with English mustard. Unfortunately one of the senior boys sent down to the laundry just before bedtime sneaked into the servery and pinched the contaminated bun intended for me. His loud protestation on tasting the added ingredient could be heard throughout the building. He was admonished for his deed and so was the housemother when the matron (yes we also had a matron) found out what had occurred.  Our pranks were curtailed for several weeks after the bun incident.

But the truce between that housemother and I didn’t last for long. One morning she and her husband had spotted me walking up the road from the village towards the school. They normally parked their rusty Volvo estate by the verge outside their cottage, about 100 yards below the school gates. As I approached the school I crossed the road below their cottage and was forced to skirt around their parked car. What I didn’t realise was that they had already spotted me whilst I was still a way off and had reclined their seats in order to lay flat and conceal themselves from view . As I drew alongside their vehicle they both shot to an upright position yelling like banshees, causing me to scream like a schoolgirl and throw the entire contents of my briefcase and lunch box into the adjacent ditch.

Now I don’t think I am vindictive sort of chap but needless to say these events served to focus my mind on the sweet notion of revenge. I didn’t have to wait long. Three weeks later crossing the kitchen-yard playground I spied the purple Volvo belonging to my colleague, pulled up outside the back entrance to the school. There, sat in the passenger seat, was the house-mother in question wearing her familiar brown duffel coat, seemingly nodding off in the warm spring sunshine, oblivious to the rude awakening that was about to rouse her. I crept forward furtively, like the cat Sylvester after Tweetie Pie, and then rose stealthily up the side of the passenger door. With a deafening shriek I presented my best gurning face to the car’s side window as the startled hooded figure spun round. Imagine my shock as the face that confronted me was not my work-colleague but that of a young woman who I’d never seen before! She screamed back at me, understandable in the circumstances I suppose, and I reacted by screaming at her a second time. It was like something out of a teenage horror flick. I tried to make my apologies but my attempts at an explanation did not seem to help. She wouldn’t unwind the window to allow me to apologise so what could I do? What made matters worse was that I later discovered the young lady , who turned out to be called Naomi, had come to the school for the first time that day to attend interview for a job as night-sleeping staff. She had been spotted by my colleague walking up from the bus-stop in the village and given a lift the rest of the way. Arriving at school a good ten minutes early she had chosen to wait in the car to collect her thoughts before going in for her appointment with the head of care. If this wasn’t all bad enough I also discovered, weeks later I might add, that she had only recently recovered from a nervous breakdown after leaving her previous job as a dental hygienist. Needless to say, she didn’t get the job but personally I don’t think she would have coped well with everyday challenges that school would have thrown up!