email: oldgrumpy.mike@gmail.com
One of my few claims to fame is that I was born in the little Cumbrian town of Wigton at almost the same time as the famous novelist and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, aka Lord Bragg of Wigton.
Indeed Melvyn and I started at the primary school at the same time, passed our 11+ on the same day and spent almost our entire time at the Nelson Grammar School (later amalgamated with the Thomlinson girls’ school) in the same ‘A’ form.
We were even in the same scout patrol (Eagles) – Melvyn was patrol leader and I was his second in command.
We were also part of the first cohort of children whose education took place entirely under the provisions of the 1944 Education Act and Melvyn and I were further distinguished by being part of a group of three who passed the 11+ a year early.
Melvyn was born in October 1939, myself on 1 February 1940 and the third member, Alan ‘Lolly’ Robson, on 1 March 1940. I seem to remember that the 11+ exam took place on or near to 1 March 1950 – Lolly’s tenth birthday.
So, when we entered the grammar school in September 1950, the three us were still only ten years old.
Below is an extract from a whole-school photo taken in March 1951 during our second term in the first form.
The first form is seated at the front at the prefects’ feet and Melvyn is in the centre of this group of seven – I am the good looking chap far right.
So when I read that Melvyn had published Back in the Day – a memoir of his early days in Wigton – I willingly forked out 25 quid for a hardback copy expecting to wallow in nostalgia as I accompanied my old friend down memory lane.
As well as the book I also took the opportunity to listen to Melvyn’s interview with John Wilson as part of the series This Cultural Life.
However, the more I read the more I came to realise that Melvyn’s recollection of events in our home
town was very different to mine.
Of course, at nearly 70 years distant it is not easy to prove whose version of events is accurate.
As Melvyn says in the foreword to Back in the Day: “There are misrememberings, I’m sure, and now and
then a patch of embroidery to make sense of a scene.”
And I have to admit that I’m as capable of a bit of misremembering and embroidery as the next man.
As John Wilson told Melvyn during This Cultural Life: “You started out with a novel in mind, though
having read the book it does read very much as a novel. You have a novelist’s eye for detail. You seem to
have an extraordinary memory as well.”
“Yes, I do”, Melvyn answered, modestly.
I eventually came to the conclusion that Melvyn’s memory wasn’t the finely tuned instrument he seemed to think it was and that his latest book was simply a progression from autobiographical fiction to fictionalised autobiography.
One of the things that bothered me was the finely detailed rendering of conversations which he couldn’t
possibly have heard – something which even an “extraordinary memory” can’t explain
And there were statements that stretched credibility beyond breaking point. For instance (P 77) when he
describes how his mother and father first met at the cycling club “Sunday expeditions could take them
across the neck of England, often following the Roman Wall, east to the seaside resort of Whitley Bay
about sixty miles away.”
Now, even a 120 mile spin on a Sunday would be some going on a heavy 1930s bike, but the AA puts
Wigton and Whitley Bay 83 miles apart and, back in the day, the 166 mile round trip, which involves
crossing the North Pennines (twice), would have taxed a professional road racer.
Melvyn recounts at great length how his father had been persuaded by Mr James the history teacher to
allow him to stay on in the sixth form rather than leave at 15 to get a job.
There is a touch of the Winston Smiths about this because if there was anyone in our class who was
destined for sixth form and university it was Melvyn.
There is also a lot in the book about his parents, Stan and Ethel, taking over and running the struggling
Black-a-Moor Hotel on Wigton’s Market Hill.
He told John Wilson: “This pub was doing badly – that’s why my dad got it – he had no experience of
pubs – he was a tenant/landlord – meant if he put a foot wrong he was out.”
Yet, on page 55 of the book we read: “One of the great attractions of the job to my father was that not
only was he his own boss, he could not be fired unless he broke the law or failed to keep in credit with the
local brewery . . .”
And, rather than the poor little skivvy described in the memoir – sweeping the pavement in front of the
pub and restocking the bottles each morning before he set off for school – Melvyn was one of the better
off children in our class. His parents paid for him to have piano lessons (a truly bourgoise activity) with one of the Miss Snaiths who ran the town’s jewellers and it was rumoured that, rather than having his Wigton twang “beaten” out of him by our grammar school teachers, as he told John Wilson, his posh (by Wigton standards) accent – acquired when he was about 14 – was the result of his doting mother packing him off to Carlisle for elocution lessons.
Then he had a bit of a breakdown and became the school’s naughty boy and, as he told John Wilson, he
was demoted from 3A to 3B to 3C and finally to 3L which seems to have been some sort of dumping
ground for deadbeats and was, he claimed, literally Three Hell.
When he was thirteen, and about to enter the third form at the newly amalgamated Nelson Thomlinson Grammar School, Melvyn seems to have suffered some sort of nervous breakdown.
It’s all set out in excruciating detail in chapter 26 of Back in the Day – the out-of-body experiences; the haunting by strange voices; and much, much, more.
He started to swear out loud – “bugger” and “crap” became part of his everyday vocabulary and he soon found himself at odds with the school’s rather straight-laced culture, so much so that Back in the Day records that he was called into Mr Swales the Headmaster’s book-lined office for a dressing down.
On the desk in front of Mr Swales was a report which we must assume contained a record of Melvyn’s many sins.
The Headmaster didn’t beat about the bush: “It would probably be best to expel you now and get it done”, he told Melvyn. “You’re holding everybody back. I could arrange a transfer to the Secondary Modern”.
In the end, Melvyn was demoted to 3L which was, he told John Wilson on Radio 4’s This Cultural Life, literally Three Hell.
Melvyn reports that bullying was rife and some of the 3L’s less savoury characters used to hang around the toilets on the lookout for suitable candidates for having their heads dunked in the toilet pan.
I do recall that, in our final year at primary school, we were told lurid tales about life at the grammar school, including heads being shoved down toilets, but during my time there I can’t recall a single case of anyone being on the end of this sort of treatment.
During all this time, I was in the same class as Melvyn (3A) and I have no recollection of any of this and I find it difficult to believe that the absence of such a prominent classmate as Melvyn would have gone unnoticed.
Indeed, like much of Back in the Day, I believe this owes more to Melvyn’s imagination than his memory.
Strangely he doesn’t name any of fellow 3L pupils though they clearly left deep scars on his psyche.
He claims that 3L was overseen by a Mr Southam – an ineffectual character who couldn’t keep the class in order. I think the teacher he has in mind is Mr Southern who taught geography. That is a forgivable mistake, but to get the name of the Headmaster wrong is rather less understandable. Mr Swales was actually Mr Robert Sayle (MA Oxon) an avuncular old gentleman who had been head since 1930 and probably lacked the drive to take the school through the amalgamation process.
According to Melvyn’s memoir, life in Mr Southam’s class played on his nerves to the point that near the end of the school year he was physically sick. This 3L class was housed away from the main school building in part of what was the headmasters house and Mr Southam took Melvyn through the interconnecting door into the headmaster’s living quarters where Mrs Swales was able to clean him up and gave him a cup of warm milk to settle his stomach.
At some point, Mr Swales’ daughter, Betty, who was home on vacation from university “came in, flowed in, smiling”.
This was a stroke of double good fortune because not only had Betty sung in the church choir alongside Melvyn, she was also a friend of his uncle Irwin.
Although it is never stated in terms, there are heavy hints that Betty put in a good word for Melvyn with her father because on the last day of the summer term Mr Southam asked Melvyn to stay behind after class.
When the two of them were alone, Mr Southam produced an envelope.
We’ll let Melvyn take up the story:
“I have a note from Mr Swale”, he said, and showed me the envelope. He made a fuss of opening the envelope and reading the note to himself. He gave me a not unkind smile. “Mr Swale says you can come back next term and go into 4A”.
The only problem with this tale is that it isn’t true.
Melvyn and I joined the school in September 1950 and my recollection (borne out by this rather blurry image of the school’s honours’ board) is that Mr Sayle (MA Oxon) left at the end of our second year (July 1952).
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So, if my memory is correct, by the time Melvyn came to the end of his third year, whether in 3A (or 3L), Mr Sayle was long gone and with him Betty, Mrs Sayle and that lovely, comforting cup of warm milk.
Fortunately, I don’t have to rely on either fickle memory or the school’s honours’ board because I have managed to get hold of the minutes of the Nelson Thomlinson School governors meetings for 29 May 1952 (see below) which record: “Resignation of Headmaster. A letter dated May 3 from Mr Sayle was placed before the meeting resigning his position as headmaster to take effect from 31 August next. This resignation was accepted with regret and the clerk instructed to acknowledge same.”
So, by the time Melvyn and I entered the third form in September 1952, Mr Sayle had long gone.
My recollection is that “Ikey” Burnett took over as acting headmaster for the autumn term 1952 and Leonard Ivan Stowe took up the permanent position in January 1953.
And just in case there is any suggestion of confusion between Mr Sayle and Mr Stowe my recollection is that the latter had two daughters of primary school age – so no Betty, then.
And to drive home the point, the doorway through which Melvyn is supposed to have passed to receive Mrs Sayle’s ministrations is also mentioned in the minutes during a discussion on providing a fire exit from the class rooms in the headmaster’s house by way of the connecting door
And those for a year earlier (when we were in the second form) are no help because they show the governors agreeing to pay for the removal of Mr Sayle’s furniture while alterations are made to the headmaster’s living quarters.
As for Melvyn’s entrance into the headmaster’s house through the connecting door on his last day in Form 3L, that doesn’t seem to have been possible, either, because as the minutes for 1953 record a plan to use that door as a fire escape through the headmaster’s living quarters for the classrooms in the headmaster’s house had to be abandoned because the doorway a been bricked up.
oldgrumpy.mike@gmail.com