The Old School Bench

 

On March 3^rd 2022 I went back to my old High school to do a talk for World Book Day. That school is Kenilworth School & 6^th Form and while it is now well respected, back in my day it was a festering piece of shit.

Arranged two years ago and thwarted by covid I finally got to go back for the talk roughly 18 months before it will close forever, after 62 years, and move to new premises. I flew back from my home in Rome to Manchester and borrowed a friend’s van in order to drive the 127 miles to get there, leaving at 1.30am because I was unable to sleep the night before (and driving down the M6 when there’s virtually no traffic is fun).

In 1961 Kenilworth Grammar School came to be. A renowned and respected place, it won BBC’s “Top of the Form” quiz show twice and fed many clever young people into the Oxbridge educational machine. Then, in 1965 they built a new High school next door where the plebs who hadn’t passed their 11+ went. I’ve heard it from two separate people that the grammar school kids were given detention if caught talking to the High school kids over the fence that separated the two worlds.

Everyone had their place, and everyone knew where they stood.

Then, in 1974 the schools merged to create a Comprehensive. A mixture of both worlds with the once prestigious Kenilworth Grammar now being diluted with the students from the other side of the fence. The Headmaster of the grammar school took early retirement rather than be a part of the new regime and by 1977 the transition was complete. It was now one world….well sort of.

Abbey High school stayed as it was and became Abbey Hall but Kenilworth Grammar was now Priory Hall and the only difference was that the blazer badges for Priory were blue while Abbey had red. It was still two schools, with two different headmasters, overseen by a rarely seen principal but the love was gone. The grammar school teachers who hadn’t gone by this point were disillusioned and bitter. Their beloved, posh school was now just a normal one, and they were obliged to teach the hoy-poloi. Some were bitter, some were angry but nearly all of them didn’t like what their fine establishment had become. When Kenilworth Grammar died, so did any sense of love from all but one of the teachers**

I had visited 9 years ago to talk to a group of children in the library about my two anti-bullying themed fantasy novels, The Catastrophe of the Emerald Queen and its sequel The Sunder of the Octagon. Both books were partially inspired by the experiences I’d had at this school, nearly all of them negative. I created a hero who I would have wanted to protect me back then, when I was a scared, skinny teenager. A 7-feet tall, half human warrior with anger issues and a three-bladed sword. Basically a badass. The talk was OK but as the years went by my bad memories of Kenilworth School didn’t abate.

In 2014 I tried to write a book under the title “6 of One” about Kenilworth School but gave up after about one page. The memories were simply too painful and too toxic. Years later I reached out on a Facebook group for Kenilworth and asked if anyone was interested in helping me write a memoir, with both good and bad stories accepted, from any point in the school’s history. A total of 29 people got in touch with tales from 1977 to 1990 . The majority of the stories were depressing and sad with only a handful being upbeat and funny. Anecdotes of sexual abuse, racism, brutality and violence from staff plus an underlying intolerance, indifference and lack of empathy from the teachers in that 13-year window, towards the children they were supposed to be educating.

When I came to the place in 1983 I didn’t know any of its history, only that Abbey was considered to be the place where they shoved the troublesome kids (although this turned out to be untrue as there were as many little bastards in blue badges as red). Abbey also had a slightly more relaxed regime with a vending machine selling crisps and chocolate and, once a year, a Wear What You Like Day for charity. The Priory Headmaster, Mr Crowther didn’t like vending machines or casual clothing and still seemed to think that he had taken on a Grammar school in all but name so we didn’t get any of that.

I hated my 4 years at Priory Hall, being bullied almost constantly (although, and harder to admit, I was sometimes myself a bully) and getting zero support from the teachers or staff. Get hit more than once then you were obviously “doing something” to make people hurt you. Retaliate physically and you were “fighting” and you both got punished.

I knew that going back, one final time was exactly what I needed to do to finally put my demons to rest about this place.

I liaised with the Chief Librarian Jane about the visit, with a talk on creative writing being mooted and then finalised, with two groups of 60+ students. Having read “6 of One” Jane said it was categorically off the menu for promotion at the talk, adding that the Headteacher had also read it. When I asked her what she thought of it she replied “uncomfortable to read and I’m surprised you haven’t been sued for libel”***. We agreed that I’d only talk about the book as being one of the 17 that I’ve written and published and that the main focus would be on my two kids books. I offered to do a raffle of the sequel novel (being cynical as this would mean they’d have to buy the first one to avoid spoilers) which I would sign personally for the winners. I also ordered in 20 copies of Catastrophe for the school to sell should the kids want to buy it.

The day of the talk and I wasn’t nervous. I was simply glad that I’d flown back and driven down in order to finally face my demons. While the school had changed a great deal since my time (the sports hall was demolished and rebuilt on the same spot and the admin block containing the library and the Headteacher’s office was cycle sheds in my day) enough remained for me to remember my time there. However the feelings I’d expected to come flooding back weren’t there. There was a sense of sadness and weariness to seeing the old buildings, classrooms and corridors again but not the immersive nostalgia I’d expected.

I did the talks in the main hall of what was once Abbey (now Lower School) and then me and Jane moved on a little tour of Priory (now Upper). I suggested that I show her around and point out what the building used to be for back in the 1980s. The corridor that once linked Abbey to Priory was now closed to all but staff and Jane let us in with a key. The boys’ changing room was still there and I went in (after yelling twice “IS ANYONE IN HERE?!!”) and the room was simply a place now. While I remembered the casual, embittered brutality of PE teacher ‘Pancho’ Jenkins, I found the room to just be mundane.

The music room was now used for drama and as Jane unlocked the other door for us to step out I remembered being on prefect duty at that door in 1986 and being insulted by a rat-faced dinner lady we all called Hitler’s Wife.

The corridors and rooms were mainly the same. Mr Crowther’s office was now occupied by the Deputy Head and the room for special needs pupils (called MACOS in my day) was still used for that.

I went upstairs towards my old registration classroom and the flight of stairs I’d once been shoved down by an irate bully seemed smaller (7 steps) than the escalator my mind had made it into in the 3+ decades after.

I walked around and finally realised that the place had been such a vile shithole simply because I’d had such a miserable time there. It also seemed a lot smaller than I remembered it but as I’d been 16 when I left I couldn’t put it down to a growth spurt and realised it was because I’d felt tiny and vulnerable there.

As the tour concluded I felt no epiphanous moment or the sighing of long buried ghosts finally fleeing my tortured psyche to a peaceful after-life. What I felt was simply a sense of acceptance that the bad experiences were due to a boy aged between 12 and 16 being verbally abused, kicked, punched, spat on and humiliated by a system that simply didn’t care.

I went into the empty main hall and got Jane to take a photo of me stood on the empty stage. A hall where I’d sat my O’levels. Where I’d listened to Mr Crowther droning on in assemblies. Where I’d posed along with the others in my year for our 1987 photo. Where I’d felt so much anger, boredom and frustration, now replaced with a sense of “it’s all over now”.

Nobody there now remembers me or any of the people that were there during my time, or the years before. If the former Headteachers are still alive, they could walk through the door now and absolutely no one would recognise them or know anything about them. In less than 2 years, this piece of history will be gone, when the school moves and everything will finally be put to rest.

I realised that it is only our thoughts and feelings that make a place what it is. Some people enjoyed their time at this school (but then some people claimed to have liked school canteen semolina!) and while my perspective was harrowing and awful and scarring and traumatic, going back one final time made the school become nothing more than walls and a roof.

As me and Jane were walking back we met a staff member coming the other way. Jane introduced me and said the lady went to the school before me, in the 1970s. After a few anecdotes she told me the following story:

“I was a pupil at Priory Hall from 1977 to 1982 and when I came to work here about 15 years go, I was based at what was Abbey. It was a YEAR before I could set foot in Upper School because that was Priory and it was too traumatic. It brought back too many bad memories. If the children weren’t here then I was fine but it took me that long to be able to step into this place without having a panic attack”.

After she went on her way I turned to Jane and said “In a school of roughly 60 staff we just happened to bump into someone who had a worse time here than me”.

Sometimes we need to face our demons. But they are never where we were. They are only who we were with at the time and how we felt about them.

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** David Hardy. An excellent teacher and sorely missed. Started teaching at Kenilworth Grammar School in 1961 and retired from Priory Hall in 1989. Died in 2013.

*** Coz it's all fucking true.