| This is a page where we pay tribute to all those people who made school
so memorable ...our schoolfriends! And we do it by finding the most
embarrassing photo possible to post up here, so if you have any
photographs lurking in the cupboard send them in to me!
And for the groups version click here! |
| Who better to start with than Jonno! The man with the biggest record collection ever and source of all our compilation tapes. He could hold a conversation about the serial number of all the transistors and diodes in his amplifier...if he could find someone else to listen that is! His was the car that took us everywhere but it did turn into a pumpkin at 11.00, and if it wasn't back home by then then his very scary dad would be out looking for us! Except for Tuesdays of course which was bath night! He knew every short cut between every village in Nottinghamshire, especially where there were pubs and was famous for his Ride a White Swan dance which everyone tried to copy but no-one could quite pull off! |  |
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The incomparable Mr Don Heszeltine! How did he do it? He was a qualified volleyball coach....he could play basketball when it was totally new to the rest of our school. He could canoe. He could play the guitar when our school didn't have guitar lessons. I'm not sure how he accomplished all of this but he did. He also had the use of his dad's van which was excellent for skipping games lessons (because although he could play all these sports he wasn't overkeen on rugby, hockey or cricket!). All of that and clever too...he's now a doctor! |
| It's Hank....disappeared off to the South Coast now but a highly intelligent individual who indeed rose to the heights of Oxford University. He didn't let this interfere with his enjoyment of Sassafras, Nutz and the Boat and was one of the main proponents of the ancient drinking game of Bunny Hover! A keen cricketer but everyone has some faults! He also stuck with us through the Adam and Eve's years when we used to visit the nightclub in Loughborough for cheap drinks night. In fact I think it was his car Dennis drove into a lamp post in an impromptu driving lesson. |  |
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Gabbie with long hair! She's now living back down in Pevensey Bay in Sussex which is where her heart was, even while she was in Nottingham. Her dad worked at Lowdham Grange Borstal which meant we had access to the gym (Don used to go circuit training there) and the open air swimming pool in summer. I still have Pooh Bear who she made as part of her D of E award, and one of my prize possessions - Ziggy Stardust, which she bought me. I gave her Teaser and the Firecat....we had musical taste in those days even if we had no dress sense! |
| Pete Smith who came from Burton Joyce and is still living around the Nottingham area. Still married (I think) to Jeanne who we met on a joint school trip to Kew Gardens with Frank Wheldon school. Pete was a genius at woodwork - while we were struggling to make that funny pencil sharpener with sandpaper on it and that useless model of a tugboat Pete was creating coffee tables and writing desks! He also had a motorbike which caused lots of knots in the hair when riding it...as we didn't have to wear helmets in those days! |  |
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How could anyone possibly look that cute! It's Diane of course, and she still looks like that now....well....almost. What can we say about her.....kind to animals.......generous.....loving.....and something that most of you won't know, she has a cracker of a figure in a bikini. I had the pleasure to be marooned in the Scilly Isles with her and Anna one summer. Evil with a hockey stick however, as all the girls were! She's now living near Manchester having done a degree in theology at Durham University. |
| Of course it's Mop - the origins of his name are lost in
history but for anyone having kept in touch with him over the last 30
years it's been very confusing knowing whether to call him Mop, Morris,
Tony or House! Sportsman (First XV rugby), loved by all the girls, and
totally lacking in musical taste. He was the only person who actually
liked Demis Roussos and had a great collection of old Elvis 78s. He is in
fact still mourning the loss of his All Shook Up 78 which was broken
during a particularly violent bridge game, more than he is actually
mourning the loss of Elvis. It is a little known fact that we were out
together at Isabellas the night Elvis died, and sadly had to put up with
two hours of slow Elvis songs which pleased him greatly! His strange
musical ambitions came to the fore when he chose to take up an
instrument after leaving school!
Never completely at home with public transport he rode his bike without tyres every night from his house to mine - a distance of about a mile. I don't think he ever possessed lights for his bike and used to ride on the pavement, so if you were ever knocked over by a speeding banshee (singing Hound Dog) after dark on Westdale Lane, he apologises now. Later he had a Ford Anglia called Little Deuce Coupe which generally had very little or no exhaust. Not too good at boats either! Even when on watch, he fails to notice that a fellow crewman has collapsed and died! He did find his forte in amateur dramatics (either that or has a hobby I didn't know about!) and this led to him being approached to become a holiday rep for Thomas Cook. He spent many years partying....err...I mean working in Rhodes and Verbier, and then settled down as a newsagent in Godalming. He now lives just north of London and works in insurance. |
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And just as famous of course is Tats! The schoolteachers
nightmare - never on time for anything. We used to watch him ambling
across the playing fields just as the register was being taken. Always at
least 7 essays behind everyone else in English and Geography, he is now of
course a head teacher!
Always to be found in the company of Bert, this obviously did get to be a bit much for him at times! It must have been this which turned him to drink...or was it the bad influence of Jonno? Worse than his drinking is his addiction to Forest, and even now, as an older and wiser person he refuses to see the sense of spending his time at Meadow Lane, instead of that place over the river. Tats was always a big music fan and is even now trying to get his copy of "Tears began to fall" back from me. He has been known to do impressions of his favourite bands, and must hold the world record for the number of times anyone has seen Sassafras. He was our recording engineer, standing for hours on end with a microphone in a bottle, to create cassettes of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Sassafras. One of the group of many who did teacher training in Sheffield, which included Hodgie and Ollie, Tats is obviously the ideal person who should be teaching our children to be polite, well behaved and well mannered citizens of the future. Luckily he's teaching the children of Kent! |
| Yes its Coral and Gwynneth - inseparable of course, like err...Sonny and Cher, Bonnie and Clyde and Tats and Coral. Ok, so everyone loved Coral! I'm not sure what they were dressed as here, but they did get up to some funny stuff at those church meetings they went to! Very determined, they did actually manage to get the boys to go to a couple of Crusaders meetings, but I suspect only because we were all in love with them! Gwynneth is now in the middle of Wales married to a harpmaker and strangely enough I never used to associate her with being Welsh, even with a name like Gwynneth Davies! Coral is out in Australia but has been in touch via the website. |  |
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And there's Mart! Always very sensible and the man to
get us organised. He had the use of the green dormobile which was
excellent for trips out to the Lakes and he organised our holiday to the
Scilly Isles when Mart, Anna, Diane and I were marooned in storms there!
Always into good music he was listening to Bob Dylan and Mott the Hoople
when we were into Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep! Note the Cat Stephens look
when he was aboard the good ship Crane in the seventies.
He did an abrupt course change from engineering to psychology and has been in some form of social work ever since. In fact some would say his work is now more social than ever as he has been running the Hilltop Inn in Belper for the last couple of years. |
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Note how he has matured and changed his appearance by putting on a t shirt and a hat in the last 30 years - this was him at Cropredy Festival in August 2003. He was the first person who ever played me any Fairport Convention (I think it was probably Walk Awhile off the Bumpers sampler album) and it was a pleasure to spend the weekend with him at Cropredy listening to Fairport, along with 19, 998 other old hippies, who are now systems analysts, bankers, Microsoft directors etc. |
| And of course Bert doesn't get away! Absent for a long time due to illness in the early school years he soon made up for lost time . Subject of that famous song "Ballad of Bert and Laura" he went out with Laura from California - a challenge, as I believe that Californian girls started wearing bras a good two years earlier than any of the English girls. He was inseparable from Tats, both having come from Ashwell St school together. With a brother called Mad Harry and a sister called Dirty Tom, you can se that family values were very important to Bert! |
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Rumour has it that Bert had several false teeth and here he
is seen trying to prevent them from disappearing over the side of a cross
channel ferry on one of our visits to France from Tats home in Kent.
Taking out his teeth was only one of his party tricks and he does a
passable version of "Where do you go to my lovely", dropping his
trousers whilst accompanied by Lewy on the guitar. This used to ensure
multiple party invitations.
Bert was a star of the hockey team in the sixth form but later on re-visited rugby, playing for Boots and doing a lot of serious drinking at the same time. And trying to keep Mop out of trouble on a Saturday night.... |
| He failed his exams in the sixth form and found himself working in Boots research labs while doing re-sits. Many are the merry stories Bert tells of the ...er..humane methods of killing rats....you wouldn't believe how many ways there are to do it! This was of course all worthwhile as he passed his exams and was offered a place at Salford University. In fact we celebrated his acceptance letter with a night at the Boat watching Nutz, when Bert appeared at the doorway of their dressing room wrapped in toilet paper with a girl on each arm! |
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He was at Salford University while I was at Manchester and
we used to communicate by writing messages to each other on the wall of
the famous Plaza Cafe. We also used to meet up for social occasions when
we always looked our best. Here he has on his best denim jacket!
All this was of course worthwhile as he got his degree, went on to work for cancer research, got his PhD and of course is now Professor Austin! He is living in Manchester, and thankfully raises his boys as Manchester United fans. |
