A Somerset Lad

“Some teachers pick on you, sir,” complained one of the students.

“Do you ever think about the teachers?” I asked. “Do you ever think that they might be having a bad day? I had a bad time in March when my Dad was dying and you were all very kind to me. Do you ever think that teachers might be going through bad times?”

It was an avoidance of the question, an evasion of the fact that there are some children who get a hard time from some teachers.

I remembered my days in my first primary school. Never gifted in anything visual, whether it was painting, or handicraft, or drawing or even handwriting, I had an awareness in the infant class of never having work displayed.

One particular moment remains vivid, a Christmas, probably 1966, the class had made Christmas decorations: candles manufactured from toilet roll tubes wrapped in crepe paper, with paper cut in the shape of a flame tucked into the top and a ruff of green paper wrapped around the bottom. It had taken great effort with scissors and glue, and because no great artistic skill was required, my candle seemed as good as that produced by anyone else in the class.

“Let’s put the best ones along the big window sill”, said the infant teacher. Of course, my effort had not been successful, it was not chosen so it might be seen by the rest of the class and by those who passed the window on the outside. (It was an early lesson that the world was divided between those who were “chosen,” and the rest of us who were not).

Perhaps the candle moment would not have remained so clearly etched in the mind if it had not seemed to reflect an attitude that some of us were ugly ducklings who would never become beautiful swans, that we would never be any different.

In England of the 1960s, there could have been no suffering under an illusion that school was anything other than a preparation for what we might expect from life and that to call things that were not as though they were would have been regarded as a disservice to those who were taught. (Pink Floyd’s 1979 album The Wall, which included the track “We don’t need no education,” found a deep resonance with many of us who had failed at crepe paper candle making).

But perhaps it might have been different, perhaps there might have been more of a mindfulness of human differences, a realisation that even those who are talentless had feelings, an awareness that destroying people’s self esteem neither assisted them, nor the teacher’s standing within the school, nor the educational standards of the school.

Our teachers now understand that affirmation, that building confidence, that creating a sense of self worth, aren’t just indulgences of a soft liberal educational system, that they make a difference to those being taught and they make a difference to what can be taught.  Well, most teachers understand.

They might both have come from Marks and Spencer, but the navy blue pullover was a much better shape than the sky blue one. Of course, it was the navy blue one that I managed to shrink, leaving the disliked sky blue one to stare accusingly from the cupboard, as if demanding to be worn.

The pattern to which the sky blue pullover is knit is odd, I am never sure whether I have put it on back to front. It has become a pullover for wearing in the house where no-one will notice if it appears baggy or misshapen.

When I was young, I would have been delighted at having a pullover from Marks and Spencer about which to complain. For some years, the pullover I wore around the house was a hand-knitted one that was a dark chocolate brown in colour. It endured so long because it was made from very coarse wool which felt more like the pile of a carpet than anything from the fleece of a lamb.

The pullover was a familiar companion, much liked by the chocolate brown dog that was our family pet. The pullover was so tough that it was possible to have tugs of war with the dog. The dog would pull at one end of the sleeve, and I would pull back, chiefly because my arm was still in the sleeve.

Jumpers like my chocolate-brown home knit were functional.

None of us would have thought about fashion or style, there would have not been enough money for such considerations. A jumper was about keeping warm. If it was oddly-shaped, or oddly-coloured, or had oddly lengthened sleeves from the tugs of the dog, it didn’t matter. Who was there to notice? Who was there who would have said anything?

As long as the pullover kept you warm, and you were prepared to let it be a goalpost for games of football in the neighbouring field, then that was all that was required.

The passing years brought a greater awareness of fashion, but never a capacity to dress fashionably. In the company of my cousins, I always felt myself a Wurzel Gummidge figure. Even if I had had the money to buy clothes different to those that I wore, I wouldn’t have known what to buy.

If there were a single symbol of my youthful years, then it would be that old brown jumper. Battered and not quite right, it might still have a contemporary relevance.

Walking to Sainsbury’s at Saint John’s in Worcester, I passed a brand new Mercedes Benz estate car. Sleek and shiny, there was not a speck of dirt on it, despite the wet roads of the past week. Inside, the driver sat typing a message to someone. Perhaps the price of driving a brand new Mercedes is having to deal with e-mail at eight o’clock on a Saturday evening.

I pondered for a moment how much money you would need to earn to drive such a car, would £100,000 cover it? Probably not, by the time you had paid tax and national insurance, and then paid your mortgage and other bills, there wouldn’t be much left for the masterpiece of German engineering.

Janis Joplin’s lyrics came to mind:

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends.
So, Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

“Skip, you wouldn’t be able to afford the tyres,” said the voice of my late Dad.

He was right. A salary of £24,373 wouldn’t cover the maintenance and insurance of such a car, let alone the first month’s repayment.

I have never driven a Mercedes Benz and even if I had the money, I can’t imagine I would ever buy one. Dad would ask me, with good reason, why I would need such a car.

Dad believed that the function of a car was to take someone from Point A to Point B. The only car he ever said he would like to own was called a Chord. I think it was an American car from the 1930s. Dad’s philosophy of motoring was typified in the fact that in 1976, he bought two Renault Dauphine cars, one for £30 and the other for £25. From the two, he made one car that ran. (That it was 1976 is clear from the logbook of one which is still in a drawer of the desk on which his computer still stands).

My present car, a nine year old Peugeot diesel, was bought a year ago, when it had sixty thousand miles on the clock. In the past year, because of lockdown, it has only clocked up another eighteen thousand miles. I hope it will keep going for another four years, by which time it will have totalled around 140,000 miles (only half of the 280,000 miles covered by my last car).

A Mercedes covering such a mileage would leave me broke. All the same, it would be nice to have a chance to sit in a brand new one.