Recollections of an Old (but young at heart) Oswestrian, circa 1952 - EPISODE 41, MY CRUMBLING RELATIONSHIP WITH THE HIERARCHY AND THE RESOLUTION OF AN ENIGMA
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| David Pickup receiving the House Cup from Mrs P Humphreys |
I was never going to be bosom buddies with Headmaster Frankland who arrived at Oswestry School in the wake of Mr Ralph Williamson MA during the latter half of 1958, and by the beginning of 1960 he and I seemed to be almost permanently at loggerheads about something. I was told by somebody close to him that he believed myself and others were actively stirring things up for him behind the scenes at School House.
By the time Sports Day arrived on 2 April 1960, relations between us were pretty strained and it must have been difficult for him to raise a smile as he watched me being presented with the House Cup, on behalf of Oswald, by Mrs P Humphreys.
Nor was I getting on too well with Capt. Womack, who was Frankland's chief sidekick and right hand man, having been appointed as Bursar with special responsibilities for helping with the development of the newly formed CCF and the gym club.
During a training session in the gym a group of us were playing with a football which was booted accidentally (on purpose) onto the lavatory roof, and the boy sent up by Mr Womack to retrieve it fell through the ceiling into the lavatory where he seemed to be moaning in pain. Womack went into a panic; scurrying over the floor of the gymnasium he dashed into the lavatory only to find the boy, whose name escapes me now, sitting on the loo with his shorts round his ankles and a wide grin on his reddening face. "I had a sudden urge Sir!" he explained mischievously. It was straight out of a Carry On film and we all collapsed in a heap on the floor. The Old Man, Frankland, was not amused!
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| The missing keys turn up |
The duty prefect was charged with locking up last thing at night, but on this occasion I could not find the keys and Dai Lewis (Stoker), our House Master, tore a strip off me because he thought I had lost them. It turned out that good old Capt. Womack found them later in his jacket pocket, so i was belatedly exonerated. On enquiring, none too delicately, as to whether Stoker was going to rip into the bumbling Bursar in a similar fashion of admonishment he simply grunted, growled and gave me a filthy look. No apology was forthcoming.
As the CCF summer camp would take place after my school days at Oswestry had come to an end I saw no point in joining the cadets at Kinmel Park, although I gather it was good fun and everybody enjoyed the experience. Tony 'Towanny' Hughes, our Captain of Athletics, told me later that some of our cadets were far fitter than their instructors who could not keep up with them on training exercises. I am afraid I cannot shed any light on what caused the uproar during the Memorial Hall lecture.
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| A disappointing day (1960) |
Football seemed to play rather a supporting role this particular term as athletics came more into prominence and, with Sports Day looming on the horizon and the participation of our running teams in competitions with other schools, we played fewer 1st XI matches than usual. One of my races started badly in a competition against the 'Cabbages' (the Boys' High School), when I lost a sock and one of my pumps in the mud shortly after the start of the race and had no option other than to continue through gritted teeth to the bitter end. The Bursar would never know how close he came to feeling the sharp end of my fist that day when he had the gall to accuse me of not trying!
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| Bernard and the 'budgie' squad |
The following day the bonkers Bursar was at it again; he wanted my brother (our kid) to assemble a squad of boys to go out in the snow in search of his pet budgie which had somehow escaped his clutches, and which he claimed to have seen flying around the Paddock in search of a mate.
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My diary entries for 6 February did raise my eyebrows, as it is now obvious that by this time we did have nets on the goalposts, but I do remember the arduous task of marking out all five football pitches with creosote. The entry in green reminds me that Tony Furnival (1947-54), enlisted my help in setting up a Northern Section of the OO Society which unfortunately eventually petered out through lack of numbers. In the red section a group of OOs are planning a holiday, and the black pointed shoes I bought that day were designed specifically to upset all parents. Commonly known as winkle pickers they probably appealed to Teddy Boys rather than Mods, but they were the latest fashion.
During the next couple of weeks leading up to half term our running teams engaged in several inter-school competitions with moderate success, culminating in a match against Wellington in poor conditions on 17 Feb in which our Senior Team was soundly beaten, the first three runners to cross the line being from the home team. Even our stellar performer, R A Hughes, could only manage 4th place, so I guess we were competing against very strong opposition. This, allied to the fact that Wellington had home advantage with superior knowledge of the course, made our task pretty difficult.
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| A fun run in the snow |
I recently made a connection via Oswestry Connect (which I urge all OOs to check out), with David Tomley who was a boarder at School House from 1942-1950, and during our conversation I asked him if Mr Ralph Williamson was known as 'Woof' in his day. He replied by saying that he was actually called 'Wilf' by some of the boarders, so it would seem that 'Woof' was a corruption of 'Wilf'. It looks as though a lengthy period of Chinese Whispers resulted in a metamorphosis from Ralph, to Wilf, to Woof. EUREKA! And so it is that the enigma of Headmaster Williamson's nickname has finally been resolved - at least to my satisfaction anyway. Thank you David.
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| David Tomley, 1942-50 (left) and OO John Manford |
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