Days We'll Remember All Our Lives
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Gooseberries? We love them! It is June 1965, Sandi Shaw is Number One in the charts with “Long Live Love” and our O-levels are due within a fortnight. Biology was an interesting and varied subject. Our text books covered all sorts of subjects and towards the end of it there was a long section about “Reproduction” – it dealt, briefly, with humans but all the definitions and diagrams were of rabbits which, when one thinks about it, is appropriate in view of their breeding habits! We never did get to cover this part of the book and whilst our teacher never said anything about it he knew that the Oxford and Cambridge Examining Board would NEVER ask teenage boys and girls questions about reproduction! Our teacher was Mr Underhay or “Pinhead” as we called him as he was very tall and had a small head. He was a decent teacher but not that friendly with us as some of the others were but he managed to get most of his charges through the O-level and none of us gave him a hard time in class. Now this success may have been down to his teaching or maybe the fact that he effected a dramatic piece of cheating, sort of! With the O-levels so close the school would have already received certain information and requests from the examiners. Now, there was a practical section to Biology where we were given a flower or a fruit or a vegetable and had to dissect it in half, draw it onto our answer paper and name all the constituent parts. The school would have to know what that item was to be, as they would need to buy a large supply from the local market. One day before the exam, we were in the classroom waiting for “Pinhead” and he strode in and we stood up, as we always had to do when a master came into the room. He told us to sit down and he picked up a piece of chalk and went to the blackboard. “Now listen boys, I want you all to know how to spell this word.” He wrote: G-O-O-S-E-B-E-R-R-Y. We all wrote it down. Why? We were not sure at first. Then one of us looked at another knowingly – nods passed around the room. Some boys looked and remained perplexed and had to be talked to after the lesson. What we told them was we need to know how to spell it, as we need to cut it in half, dissect it and name it in the forthcoming exam! Well, surprise, surprise examination day comes and the fruit to be dissected in the Biology exam is… a GOOSEBERRY!
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About the Book
The 60s saw great change from the latter stages of the austere post-war years, through the years of “you’ve never had it so good” to pop music, long hair and free love. National Service went, the death penalty went, Man went to the moon, the birth pill arrived to liberate women and much, much more… Throughout all this, the post war baby boomers flourished into teenagers and were to enjoy this changing world. Despite these changes some things stayed the same. School discipline was as rigid as ever – school uniforms remained as ornate as before – parents never had much money - not many families had a car - some had no TV. Teenagers then as now had to cope with the various aspects of puberty, getting to know the opposite sex (always an embarrassing prelude to adulthood!), sit examinations at least twice a year and then decide whether to go on to further education or get a job? They had to walk or cycle everywhere, rarely left the country and had no money but through all of this there were friendships formed that have lasted a lifetime. The eleven year olds of 1960 are now in their dotage but when they went off to secondary school in 1960 little did they know what fun they would have and it certainly was, for most at least, the time of their lives. When they meet now stories are swapped and re-told and seem funny to this day. There were disappointments and even tragedies along the way but it was a defining time for all. In “Days We’ll Remember All Our Lives” these stories have been brought together to show the often hilarious escapades of a group of baby boomers through their teenage years both in and out of school.
About the Author
Steve was born in Chelmsford in 1949 and attended King Edward VI Grammar School from 1960 to 1968. He worked for 40 years in the financial services industry. He first started writing in 2002 and his first fictional book, More Than Just A Life, was published in March 2010. He is currently working on a sequel to that book called Joining Forces but in the mean time has put together Days We’ll Remember All Our Lives which is a collection of largely humorous stories from those 1960s schooldays in Chelmsford. Full details can be found on www.stevelittlebooks.com Steve still coaches football and is a massive Burnley fan and has been for over 50 years. He plays golf and enjoys watching football and cricket. He has been married to Chris since 1971 and has two grown up children and three grandchildren.