A Coventry Kid's Tale

Chapter 7: Aged 11, Senior School days

In Priory Street the New Coventry Cathedral had started to be built. The child remembers this well, for the builders had demolished one of his main little orchards. No more scrumping there. Later on when the cathedral was finished he remembers standing on the corner of Cox Street and Lower Ford Street by the longest pub in Coventry, called the Elastic inn and watched as the helicopter lowered the "spire" (known as a "Fleche") into place on the roof. Coventry was changing fast. The cathedral was built between 1956-1962.

Back to school the child went, one of his favourite lessons was swimming. A double decker buzz took the children to the Livingston Road baths. Here they learned diving off the boards and swimming different strokes, back stroke, butterfly stroke and the crawl. The child liked the breast stroke the best, but back to swimming !! After swimming it was back onto the buzz. Now this the child liked because he had found a child he knew that did not like his cold buttered toast. So a small supplement of toast was added to his daily intake of food (how the child was growing). For some unknown reason we had a "stand in" teacher. The teacher was supposed to be there for one term, however he was replaced after only three weeks. I think this was because he must have been a torturer at some time in his life. This teacher did not give the cane, he gave the ruler. All the pupils thought it was funny when the first child to have the ruler went to the front of the class. They all knew a ruler did not hurt like a cane. The teacher said "hold out your hand", this the child did, "know turn your hand palm down". When the child turned his palm down the teacher brought the ruler, sharp edge first down across his knuckles. By the end of the week all the pupils had had the ruler. This hurt far more than the cane, you lost the use of your fingers for hours after. The teacher was a keen scuba diver (pity he never drowned) and brought his spear gun in to show the class. He then showed the pupils how you wound the gun up and loaded the spear into it. Then he very slowly aimed it at every pupil. Not one child in the class was scared, they were PETRIFIED. It was heaven sent when one morning the headmaster (Mr. Harris) came in and said that "due to circumstances your teacher has had to leave, but you will have another one today". At least after that the schooling settled down to a routine. Most of the teachers were fairly normal.

One of the nice things that happened in this year at school was an aeroplane trip from Baginton Airport. After every pupil had paid their 7/6p, the day came when they were "buzzed" to Baginton. Lining up in an orderly queue (after the fight to be first), seven pupils then boarded the Rapide aircraft. I'm not saying it was old but it had four wings held together with wire, and struts to keep the wings apart. Every pupil had a window seat. Taxiing to the runway every pupil was spellbound. Turning into wind, the pilot opened both throttles and down the runway they roared (there was no sound proofing). The pilot then rotated the aircraft and slowly climbed into the sky. What a joy for the child. Flying over Coventry, the pilot shouted to the children "which school do you go to", "Freddie's" was the immediate answer. "We will fly over it" said the pilot. So on to "Freddie's" they went. First dipping the right wing the pilot let all the children on that side have a good view, then dipping the left wing the child got his first view of his school from the air. It was then back to the airport to let the other children have their turn. The rest of the day was boring!!!!!!