4. Entertainment
I have already discussed the Musical Evenings and the occasional concerts by visiting classical musicians. Still on the highbrow end, we were sometimes offered poetry and drama readings. Miss Leila was a particular friend of Rumer Godden, and I think it was Godden who arranged these, coming down from London with a group of students.
More to young people’s liking were the various parties and competitions. I entered one of the annual fancy dress competitions as the Dong with the Luminous Nose. Helped by Mr. Draper, I constructed a papier-maché Dong’s head and covered it with fluorescent paint. The staff were remarkably willing to lend us items of their clothing and other personal belongings with which to mimic them. Another favourite was the Hallowe’en Party. Mangelwurzels (to be hollowed out with candles inside) and chestnuts for roasting were in plentiful supply in rural Kent. The American-style “trick or treat” was unknown to us and the party was graced by more English delights such as “bobbing the apple”. Guy Fawkes’ Day was celebrated in the usual manner. I do not know what the Catholics made of it, but I suppose none of us knew who Guy Fawkes was and why he had been burnt. I forget the date of Miss Leila’s Birthday Party, but it was celebrated with the usual children’s games – musical chairs, musical bumps and the like. I have to confess that these things had little appeal for me. I was grateful, at least, that they took place in the library – I would take a book from the shelves and sit the whole thing out in the most ostentatiously unsocial manner imaginable.
Christmas was notable for an enormous Christmas tree placed in the first floor room leading onto the rear balcony – Miss Marion’s playroom and later the Staff Room. It was laden with lighted candles – heedless of the fire risk – and small presents for each of us. Before we got to the presents, we sang carols round the tree. The library grand piano was wheeled as close to the door as possible but would not actually go through. That meant we did not hear very much of it once we started singing and, as I discovered when I had to stand in for an ailing Betty Rayment, there were problems for the pianist too. I do not know how Betty managed, but I started the first carol merrily and, hearing nothing but a confused mumble from the other room, ploughed ahead. When I finished, I realized the assembled community the other side of the door was only about two thirds of the way through. Comments from those nearest the door were not complementary. “Is he deaf?” said Mr. Marshall. “He’s going to ruin the whole thing”, said Miss Morris. This is where Mr. King’s ability to calm the waters appeared at its most useful. Though his musical credentials were no greater than those of Mr. Marshall or Miss Morris, he evidently understood the problem and stood in the doorway between the library and the room with the tree, singing with the community and beating time as he did so, enabling us to proceed at the same pace. Another disaster was threatened when Mr. Gerald Cooper, a young man of somewhat subversive inclinations then in charge of the West Wing, materialized behind my back during “Silent Night” and dared me to play the next verse a semitone higher. Fortunately, I did not take him up.
Another Christmas event was the Nativity Play. This was a high octane thing done before an invited audience. We Caldecott rabble, except for those actually playing a part, were kept at a safe distance and saw only the dress rehearsal. I was never in it, so can only say it combined spoken verse with songs. In the earlier days – very much earlier, historical photos show – this also combined eurhythmics but, though Betty was a qualified eurhythmics teacher, she seems to have let this drop after the longstanding eurhythmics teacher, Desirée Martin, ceased active service. Though unconnected with the Nativity Play, I will mention here another musically related activity with which I had nothing to do. In the real world of ballet, there are both male and female dancers but so far as I remember it was strictly for girls at Caldecott. A teacher, Elizabeth Glass, came from Folkestone. There were occasional ballet demonstrations and I suppose I saw some of them, but I have no memories.
A more original form of entertainment was Talent Night. Here anything went, provided it fell in the category of “good, clean fun”, and many of the staff pitched in with the rest. As I have already mentioned, Miss Elizabeth could be hilarious, as could the combined forces of Mr. Marshall and Mr. Draper. One of the older boys, Sebastian Grove, convulsed us by turning up as a vicar, using the simple expedient of wearing his white shirt back-to-front. His “sermon” was a very clever parody, not only of country vicars in general, but of a certain Mr. Good who periodically spoke in our Chapel and had a tendency to draw religious lessons from banal events of everyday life.
“As I was on my way here”, Sebastian intoned, “I alighted from the station and I happened to go out by the way by which one should go in. A railway official called to me and said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ At least, that is the gist of what he said. And this brought to my mind the question I wish to ask you today. Where do you think you are going?”
Later, he turned to the question of tinned sardines.
“… But at the end of the tin, there is always a small part which one cannot get out. So I want to ask you today: ‘Is there a small part of your life that you cannot get out?’ I know there is in mine”.
The most effective things are often those so simple you wonder why no one thought of it before. One such was a song in which a string of children and staff sang a verse each, spiritedly accompanied by Betty Rayment. They all began, “Before I came to Caldecott a … that was me”, naming a profession and then, as a refrain, uttering some kind of sound associated with the job, accompanied by suitable actions. As the song proceeded, the chorus became increasingly animated with the various professions pitting their wares against each other. Starting it off in fine style was Tamsin James, who had “been” a fair operator. Tamsin was one of those energetic people who, whatever they do, always do it loudly. Outside talent night, this could be tiresome and her preference for coloured language got her into no end of trouble. Here, as she belted out her “Roll up, roll up, for all the fun of the fair”, she was in her element. Of a gentler nature was Ursula Stephens, who had “been” a typist and looked like one. Between each line of the chorus, we heard her “ping” as she flipped the typewriter carriage back to its starting position. Other professions that stood out from the melee were a knife grinder and Mr. Cowling’s rich tones as a farmer, his hands going up and down to mimic the milking of a cow. There was an element of crude typecasting in the choice of profession for each person with the result that, if anyone had thought of it, the whole thing could stand as a skit on Miss Leila’s insistence on discovering the individual talent of each single child.
Much appreciated by the many was “jiving”, a sort of innocent forerunner of the disco.
If you call sports entertainment, there was plenty of it, not to speak of the annual Gymkhana. Even if you could not tell one end of a horse from another, you could not really escape this. Betty Rayment’s solution was to officiate at the tea tent or to sit at a table at the car park gate taking the entrance fees, flanked by likeminded staff of un-horsey dispositions. As I grew older, I managed to get myself “assigned” as her assistant.