Simon Spedding 1972 to 1977 (leap to 1977)

In 1972 we left Kidlington for the north. Scawby, a small village near Brigg in what was then Lincolnshire but within 18 months or so was South Humberside.  We lived in Acacia Cottage a great house with a large Acacia tree in the front garden; ideal for climbing provided you avoided the spikes. This was also used to gain extra height before throwing action man and his parachute as high as was possible. The back garden was equally great with a number of smaller trees and bushes that gave forth pears apples and provided places for low level tree houses.

Christmas 1972 and my record collection tripled. To add to the Herb Alpert single I know had the New seekers LP (I cannot EVER remember liking it, still I never ever got rid of it, Sgt Pepper came and went, Pink Floyd came and went, but the New Seeker never budged!) and a Hot Hits LP featuring a scantily clad girl leaning over a tennis net with a dumb look on her face. The music was awful, session people doing covers of Gilbert O’Sullivan, Wings, Gary Glitter, and yes you guessed it The New Seekers, “All my life’s a circle, sunrise to sundown” Aaaarrggghh.

Scawby school was a brief spell with no great memorable incidents. We played footy in the playground and managed to kick the ball into the adjacent churchyard. This came in useful for sneaking things into school, which were hidden in the Yew trees of the churchyard. It was during this spell that whilst down on a local farm while practicing with catapults and generally getting into mischief I came across some soft porn magazines with Nick  and John. For some reason we decided to sneak these into school and instead of sticking pictures of Sweet, Slade or Alice Cooper on the underside of our desks lids, we’d have naked women. Not such a wise idea really as this didn’t take long for teacher to find and confiscate.

Out of school was almost continuous mischief. Lighting fires at “Roman Bridge” an old but certainly not Roman bridge about a mile from the village. Shooting things with air pistols! Throwing rotten apples at passing cars. Leaving large rocks in the middle of the road. Entering farmland and messing with the vermin lines of dead moles, Jays, rabbits etc. A lot of time was also spent cycling up Messingham lane to the local skip and rummaging around for anything of use, or even no use. One day we found about 20 dead rooks in the skip. So we lifted them out and lined up while the traffic was not around over the full width of the road. We stood a safe distance and waited for the traffic to pass by and do their business.

In September 1973 it was time to head off to big school. This was the Vale of Ancholme School in Brigg about 3-4 miles away. The journey to school involved a bus ride via other villages. The coach was another opportunity to act up. During my time at school I must have been thrown off the bus or severely reprimanded a few dozen times for things ranging from letting off stink bombs to jumping around and seeing how much dust could be bashed out of the seats.

We had the usual lessons and I did the usual messing around in between learning. Again my reports suggested that I was a bright boy who did not really apply himself, as perhaps I should. Pranks included the phase of pea-shooters when we managed to stick tiny little bits of chewed up paper all over the classroom during French lessons (sorry Mrs Stinson), making loud burping noises and throat clearing noises during English (sorry Mrs Chadwick), setting fire to polyester trouser in Science (in-between cutting up rats), (sorry Mr Hutchinson). Top lessons for me were PE and geography closely followed by History. Later on in school there were enough pranks to fill a book. Swapping the locks around on the school lockers at the back of the class with the aid of a screwdriver, so that nobody could open their lockers without dismantling the locks (sorry Mr Lofas). Poems: “there was a school teacher called Fritz, who was intrigued by women’s tits…(sorry Mr Finucane). Mr Sooby once told me off in a history for messing around and giving lip. He gave me a shove and I took a dive over the desk to exaggerate it effect, very spectacular and talked about for a while amongst my friends.

In 1973 I actually bought my first record, The Sweet “Hellraiser”. Until then I had reel-to-reel recorded songs from the radio and some bought LP’s including New seekers and The Sweet. John was my soul mate for music and in 1974 he brought a Sparks record round. This seemed more grown up than Sweet and the lyrics were great too. We tried Pink Floyd but apart from the novelty value of Money and Time it was boring and could go back to John’s sister from whence it came.

School for me was a great time to mess around. I think every lesson involved some form of slapstick yet through my whole 5 years I avoided the cane. I was slippered once or twice in the early years. I think every report had some sort of comment stating that I was a clever boy but was easily distracted, was a nuisance, bad influence on other pupils and did not concentrate enough

Around 1976 I moved into the fourth year, the year when the lessons became a little more serious, well for the teachers anyway. I took the following subjects:

History (Mr “Drac” Mouncey)-

Drac was a bit of figurehead at school; I think he was deputy head for a while. He had a scary reputation and fangs with which to suck your blood. We did history of the last 100 years with focus on the First World War, Russian revolution, Hoover Dam et al. We had to do a topic as part the coursework and I picked the life of Lenin. Vladimir Illych Ulyanov while researching I picked up an interest in the communist ideals and sort of formed a Vale of Ancholme communist party with Ian Shuttleworth and Nick Smith. Nothing too serious but what is with 15 year olds?

Geography (Mr Jefferson)-

Geography was a great lesson. I really enjoyed it; I knew just about every capital city in the world, could draw a freehand map of the world and genuinely enjoyed learning about spheres of influences, hinterlands and ribbon developments. I can’t remember too much messing around in this lesson, well except for the trip to Scarborough. We went to Scarborough for a week in May. During the week I managed to get covered in a huge great wave while stuck in the railings on the seafront, wade into a river to retrieve my school work, find three porn mags in the bedroom and hire them out for 10p a night to other kids, sneak into the girls half of the hotel with a couple of others and sneak through their underwear draws, and get involved with others on the trip with the local yobs who turned outside the hotel with bicycle chains!

English Language (Mr Gallimore)       

This was bit of a boring lesson, I did not get to do English lit as It was felt I was I did not take it seriously enough. I was disappointed to not do it but what the heck. Bit of non-descript lesson really I can’t remember anything about what we did at all.

French (Mr Hartley “Hare”)           

Didn’t like French, Mum made me do it she thought I ought to end up working in a bank using my Maths skills, French and English. I was good at French earlier on but because I did not like it just drifted and it turned out as my worst exam result. CSE 3.

Maths (Mr Lofas)

Mr Lofas was a nice bloke and I quite enjoyed Maths for all its boring subject. Mr Lofas had a hard attack during the spring of 78 and that seemed to mess up our class. I think only about 5 or 6 pupils got C or higher (I was one of them)

Tech Drawing (Mr Owen)

 This was very enjoyable lesson once I figured out what oscillate and those engineering terms meant. I liked the drawing but was bit lost on interpreting the instructions. During the summer of 76 (the hot one) Mr Owen bought the whole class Ice creams. I read that he committed suicide later in his life. A Sad loss. 

Environmental science (Mr “Jet” Morgan)

The coach trip down saw me getting off with Wendy and having a jolly good time of it too! We did a selection of walks and projects all very enjoyable. We spent a day in Abergavenny where I managed to steal a couple of badges, he he. One night we were told off for making a noise so in comes one of the teachers, switching the light on yelling at us to shut up. As soon as he walked out we took the light bulbs out and made more noise. This time he came in and …no light, so even more yelling. He was handed the lights but forgot to switch the switch off. He stuck the bulbs in and was so shocked that the light came on he dropped the bulbs and pop! We had to run around the cabin, which was perched on a hillside in darkest Wales in the middle of the night with just our pyjamas on, brrr. I came back from this trip with a skull of a pit pony or was it a cow?

PE (Mr Mick Atkins)-

This was compulsory but I seemed to loose interest as I got older and even walked one of the cross-country races at the back with Weg. Footy was still Ok but I was not playing for the school team since being threatened by Ricky W once who felt he was better than me. I never volunteered. I enjoyed cricket but never played for the school.

The next two years we were supposed to knuckle down and prepare for life in the big wide world. I had a couple of options in my own mid, I fancied outside work so I considered the Forestry Commission, and for inside I fancied combining my favourite lesson of Geography and Tech drawing and working for ordnance survey

Then there was punk to read more go to 1977