Escape from the Spirit People

When a re-wired, pack-rat educator takes a deep dive in the basement there’s no telling what she will find in those decades worth of edutrivia.

(This post by the way is  Part Three of “My Life with the Spirit People”. Part One is here. You may ask: “Where is Part Two?” Well – I haven’t written it yet.)

Take this for example: My college recommendation written by my form (and history) teacher Mr. Parry-Jones in October 1965.

I liked Mr. Parry-Jones. And yes, he was Welsh and had a a habit of punctuating every fact with “in fact”.  As a way to keep myself cognitively alert in class I kept a running tally of the number of times he said”in fact” and made bets with classmates.

But he knew his history and he knew how to prepare students for the exam. 

His teaching consisted of telling us about the history we needed to know and us taking notes as fast as possible and then writing essays. This took two years.

There were three papers to prepare for – Europe 1815- 1914, British History ditto and the third ‘special’ paper that he had selected  from a range of available options:- History of the British Empire.

Taking Sides and Queen Nanny

I usually had a partisan take on history in school – I favored the less powerful, the downtrodden, the oppressed and the underdog. It meant taking sides – ancient Brits over the Romans, Harold at Hastings, the barons at Runnymede, the Roundheads, Luddites, levelers, diggers, blanketeers, Whigs, Chartists, trade unionists, abolitionists, reformers, Liberals, suffragettes et al.

Empire history provided a whole new set of the oppressed and a fresh raft of rebels and revolutionaries with which to identify. It also provided some simple-minded nuance: British Imperialism and colonialism were bad. But French, German, Spanish and especially Belgian colonizers were worse. So there was that.

The course ensured at least a passing knowledge of the world beyond Europe, albeit from a particular perspective. And where else would I have learned about the unspeakable depths of slavery and met such interesting characters as Queen Nanny of Jamaica?

But I digress. 

The College Recommendation

It was a rainy so we were inside for lunch time and there was the folder of our college recommendations on his desk. So of course we read them. I copied mine down into the back page of my sixth form notebook. I found the notebook in the basement.

Nothing remarkable about it. Just as there seems to be have nothing remarkable about me. Mr.Parry-Jones did not know me. We had never had a conversation outside the the back and forth of classroom question and answer. 

According to Mr. Parry-Jones – writing on behalf of the school – I was was sociable, had a cheerful disposition and was modest but dependable. I had intellectual potential but had only recently exerted myself. I was a quick and effortless worker who normally showed concentration and keenness. 

(I wonder what I abnormally showed – bloody-mindedness, boredom, misery, gloomy alienation, cynicism and subversion would be my guess.)

I played sports and debated and exercised my great authority as form captain and duty (second tier) prefect conscientiously without waiting to be told.

Reading between the lines it seems I was a good-enough average student, nothing remarkable, with a tendency to be lazy, inattentive, opinionated, underperforming and to not follow the rules.

But what really did me in when it came to university applications was the exam result forcast((looks like I was not always a perfect copier/ speller either). This of course was the GCE ‘A” levels. I was was preparing for three – English, History and Economics – after a very mediocre performance at the ‘O’ level. 

That prediction was enough to sink outright five of the permitted six university applications, leaving me with one provisional acceptance. And that depended on lifting those exam results to two Bs and a C.

I could do that.

The Plan

After all – it would just take the discipline to swot. And that meant four months of revision – strategically gaming out the potential questions based on past exam papers and then writing out hour long essay answers over and over again.

It meant reading and re-reading all the set texts for English:  – The General Prologue and The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale  from The Canterbury Tales;  Anthony and Cleopatra and The Winter’s Tale;  Edward II;  Childe Harold, cantos III and IV, Mansfield Park; Murder in the Cathedral.

It meant committing a “good modern English version” of the Chaucer to memory. 

It meant rehearsing essay questions “Compare and contrast…” “Trace the rise of parliamentary reform during the years ….” “Palmerston – a liberal abroad and a conservative at home. discuss”; “The Reform Acts of 1932 and 1906, To what extent do you agree with….”;  “Disraeli and Gladstone: who wore it better?”and being able to be ready for the tricky question that might ask for passing judgment on Bismarck and Garibaldi as unifiers of their nations. Back then I knew a deal about Unrest in the Balkans, Home Rule for Ireland and the Corn Laws.

It meant strategically making a bet on which chunks of the syllabus to focus and which to ignore.

It meant developing mnemonics especially for economics – reducing the answer to say to a  list of initial letters that spelled something memorable. (I remember one such list as WEASELTOP – each letter standing for some key aspect of a likely exam topic. I have no idea what although it may have had to do with wage equality and supply and demand of labor.)  Then get to the exam room, see the question – scribble the mnemonic in the margin and get cracking shaping the memorized information to fit the actual question. 

It meant spending an awful lot of time ensuring exam success that did nothing to help prepare for the actual work of university should I succeed at getting in. 

I had a revision routine. I was uncharacteristically organized, disciplined, regimented, dedicated, determined, systematic, methodical and thorough.  Eight hours every Saturday and Sunday and four hours every school night. And I stuck to it through that spring and early summer. 

I had the motivation. The not-so-happy home was either empty, or infested with spirit people. I had to earn that scholarship and make my escape. What else was there to do anyway? 

I started at 6pm every night and worked until 10pm. Then, listen to the radio for a while – the sort that glowed in the dark and took a while to warm up.

This is Radio Luxembourg

The reception whistled and went in and out – especially before dark – but at least it had something the BBC did not: music popular with teenagers.

I could get the English service of Radio Moscow if I wanted a different take on the news or Arabic music from Egypt (“You can almost smell the camel dung”, my dad used to say.) But my usual go-to choices were the BBC Home Service and Radio Luxembourg with its pop and relentless commercials: (“The time by my H,Samuel Everrite watch is ….”, “D-E-C-C-A , Decca, Decca, Decca ….”  And of course Horace Batchelor and his Infradraw method for gambling on the football pools.) 

Here’s the Radio Luxembourg gong and the jingle:

And this is the ever-present Horace Batchelor teaching everyone how to spell Keynsham.

So while I was drilling my brain with modern English translations of Chaucer and Compare and Contrast  this with that, Radio Luxembourg was doing a better drilling job with ads for Stayblonde and Brunitex shampoos, Babycham and batteries.

Here’s Barry Aldiss with a Beatles special:

There’s only so much commercial pop music and repetitive cheery jingles one can take.  I usually ended the night with the BBC. “Today in Parliament” kept me up to date with politics, followed by the news summary, Book at Bedtime and the shipping forecast for coastal waters. Great Expectations and an Agatha Christie were among the books that soothed me to sleep that season. 

So for any babyboomer Brits who might want another dose of 208 nostalgia here are a couple of top twenty programs from Sunday 1 August 1965 and Sunday 26 June 1966 courtesy of This is Radio Luxembourg; Your Station of the Stars.

Curious about that June 1966 top twenty? It saw the Beatles topple Frank Sinatra? Here it is. 

Radio Luxembourg was about to be outflanked by BBC Radio One and John Peel. Pop and rock and broadcasting were branching out. I hoped to do the same.