To Sir with love...

I heard on the grapevine yesterday that my old headmaster from Primary School has died. He'd made it well into old age and by all accounts was active until quite near the end, which is consoling. As is often the case when one is in middle age, I was surprised after a little simple arithmetic to work out that when he was Head, he was actually a few years younger than I am now. A man in the physical mould of the late Stratford Johns, and in his prime in an era when 'men's grooming' didn't extend much beyond a tub of Brylcreem and a styptic pencil, he always seemed ancient to us. And nobody ever saw him wear anything but the same baggy navy pinstriped suit, which became so shiny over the years that it already resembled taffeta by the time I left. By all accounts he got another decade of wear out of it before taking early retirement in the mid 80s. He was not a man visibly troubled by personal vanity.

When he 'conducted' the school orchestra, which he loved to do, he would become demonically animated and clouds of embedded chalk would fly from his body as he tried to urge a tune out of the resolutely unmusical ensemble. When the sun shone through the high arched windows of the hall and illuminated him in this state, he looked like an angry god meting out thunderbolts. He was no more sparing of the school choir, almost inducing an aneurism as he tried - for the thirtieth time - to coax our Cockney/Irish vowels into a semblance of a Scottish burr for a folk song called 'Westering Home'. "... Ain' it's waistering  haim wi' the soon in the airrr..."he demonstrated desperately, waving his baton wildly. We cleared our throats and began again.
 ".... an' it's wessssssterin 'ome wiv the san in the aiiiiiia.."
 "STOP HISSING!! WILL YOU STOP THAT...THAT PERISHING HISSING!!"He was beside himself, purple, sweating. We never did master the rolling Hibernian brogue, but the words of 'Westering Home' are forever embedded in my memory. I could sing it right now, although it's better that I don't.

It was said that nobody - not even the scary caretaker Mr Washington who looked like Mike Nesmith - ever arrived at school before him, or left after him. Despite having four kids of his own he was dedicated to the school, with its rattling Victorian windows and parquet-floored corridors that you could speed-skate on (but woe betide you if he caught you - and he could move surprisingly fast for a man of poundage.). He seemed in constant turmoil as to how he could possibly raise money, and then more money still, for new sets of exercise books (we often had to share), luxury items like a second TV (which would be wheeled into classrooms on a trolley like it was the Eucharist itself), or ultra high tech kit like a film projector (when thick black sheets of sugar paper would be hastily stuck over the windows to recreate that home-cinema atmosphere.).  There was always a bring-and-buy sale, tombola or tote in the offing, and our mothers would rummage in the backs of cupboards for tins of fruit salad or ravioli to donate as prizes. There was certainly no sign of Hot Stone massages or balloon rides over the Weald at those particular raffles.

Though an Englishman, he understood the dynamics at play in many of the Irish immigrant families who sent their children to him, my own included. He knew full well the strict triangular route favoured by the hard-drinking fathers who worked at Fords - assembly line - bookies - pub, and he coped with the gimlet-eyed competitive rivalry of the mothers, already a step on from their own families back in Cork by virtue of home ownership or their Ford Cortinas and seeking a still better future for their own offspring. He knew about the violence, the affairs, and the poverty which meant kids from certain families arriving at school in shared Wellington boots, because there wasn't enough money to buy shoes for them all and keep Dad happy in the Prince of Wales (these were the biscuit-smelling kids who got blamed for, and were often actually responsible for, the relatively rare acts of direct subversion within the school. You could always blame it on a Lynch or a Flaherty.).

With what I am certain would have been a heavy heart, he wielded his cane to the boys, once silencing the whole school in the playground as he meted out six of the best there and then to Timmy John Malone and Brendan Burns. They'd insulted the dinner ladies, and it didn't matter that Timmy John regularly had to carry his drunk father home from the pub (we'd seen him on Christmas Eve, as we came out of midnight mass) - he'd done wrong, and it wasn't going to be tolerated. It's hard to reconcile the two halves of a man who clearly loved children but could and would eke out harsh physical punishment to them. I often wondered if he'd do the same to his own children, but none of us ever met them. I always imagined a world of ponies and piano lessons for them, or that they lived like the Famous Five. When I myself transgressed, with a clumsy attempt to fix the school lottery so my Mum could win a pound, he didn't cane me. He took me to his office, sat me on his lap and waited - over half an hour - for me to stop crying and tell him the truth. Then he gave me a hug and told me he understood why I'd done it, but I was never to do anything of the sort again. I suppose I never have, looking back.

I'm sure there were and still are head teachers all over the world coping with the same or worse problems, and stoically trying to manage the brood they've been sent, not to mention the staffroom intrigue (the exploits of miniskirted Miss Ford and denim-shirted Mr Norris Who Was Married are a whole other story.). Encountering JP was the first time I can remember having nascent feelings of actually admiration for a man, and of seeing something in his values and attitude that I actively wanted to know more about, and maybe even adopt.

I'm glad to have known him. Thanks for everything, JP. It's meant a lot, I now realise.