After posting here about the teacher called Gorf and the terror he struck in the hearts of pupils at his school, I was sent memories of how frightening had been the PE teachers at one local school.
The one thing certain to evoke those memories is a pair of black plimsoll shoes. There were people who had lace-up versions of such shoes, but for most of us the elasticated version was used for those activities which filled me with a sense of dread and foreboding. Black fabric and rubber soles, they provided little support for the feet of someone who always walked awkwardly.
Plimsolls were worn for physical activities, gymnastics, basketball, running; things that were approached with delight by some people, but not those of us who had no aptitude for anything that demanded speed or agility. The problem with plimsolls was that it was not even possible to drag out the time putting them on, to pull on each took no more than a couple of seconds, and then we were expected to gather around the teacher to listen with enthusiasm to the instructions that the teacher would give.
The capacity of a pair of canvas shoes to cause a feeling of unease, forty-odd years after such footwear was last worn, suggests that physical education really did instill a feeling of fear into the hearts of many of us. The worst part of PE was rarely the game itself. There was nothing inherently wrong with basketball in the school gym, or athletics on the field, or our attempts at gymnastic manouvres, the pain came with the attitude of the teachers. Those of us not good at the prescribed activities were subject to belittling and sometimes even insults.
The worst treatment ever (albeit we were wearing football boots that day) came from a teacher who decided to try to teach first form boys the rudiments of rugby, despite the fact that we did not attend a rugby-playing school. One boy displayed a lack of skill in his attempt at kicking a rugby ball, something he had probably never done before in his life, when the teacher ran up from behind the boy and kicked him in the buttocks with such force that the boy was sent stumbling forward.
When those charged with caring for the health of the nation complain about the high incidence of obesity among middle aged Englishmen, they might ask themselves why there is an aversion to physical activity. If a pair of plimsolls can bring painful memories from the early-1970s for me, then how many more people had similar experiences?
I remember plimsolls with dread those like me who’s parents couldn’t afford them were issued with school plimsolls, these weren’t new mostly well worn lace up’s often didn’t have laces and the slip on’s often had torn elastic or no elastic at all, the plimsolls weren’t kept in pairs so you’d often get two mismatched ones, just to add a little more insult they had their size painted on their canvas uppers to stop us stealing them.
But they weren’t just worn for PE often young ladies who wore shoes which didn’t get the schools approval were sent to the gym mistress to be kitted out with school plimsolls, they had they’re own trainers or plimsolls but the gym mistress insisted they wore school issue one’s you can imagine what that did for their street cred
Ah, yes, I remember a school recently where label trainers had to be removed in exchange for the dreadful plimsolls!