25 July 2024
Yesterday evening I was eating a meal at the Windmill Pub, Acton High Street, thinking that it is a long time since I did my writing at the Colt House shack at Hatch, some years before it was occupied by Hornbeam Group. Miss Leila had a preference for intelligent children, often not scholarly, but by the time boys were over 14 they were mostly able to string together words on paper, used in those days. We did not have the sophistication of older girls such as EN and AB who were under the wing of the literary Miss Elizabeth Lloyd, but we were not short of words even if not always the best ones. CP, year above me, had an O level Geography exam question asking him to describe a geographical feature that he knew well. That harked of school field trips such as by AGS [Ashford Grammar School] classes to the Devil's Kneading Trough on the North Downs. However, CP wrote several pages on the merits of Folkestone F.C.'s Ground. Another boy wrote three words and decided that the exam was not really for him.
Choice of reading could be open to opinions. My first three housemasters in the shack had no problem with my buying Private Eye magazine. The fourth housemaster evidently regarded it as a subversive influence, but he did not mention it to me. At the end of term once I was off on the coach to Victoria, he marched into my cubbyhole and confiscated the set of Private Eye mags, as I was later told by GS. I might have supposed that I had discarded them as my growing collection of records took up my limited storage space.
That housemaster decided that the CC Colt House should be a member of Kent Association of Boys Clubs. Most of the boys, in common with boys our age elsewhere, were interested in things such as football, table tennis, motor bikes and activities such as the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme, camping and going off to the Army to shoot and tackle obstacle courses. I doubt if most of the Clubs gave priority to literary writing. However, KABC had an annual Chamberlain Award competition for this open to boys of 16 or more. In Spring 1966 CP and I were asked to write essay. He won first prize and I won second prize.
In Spring 1967 a number of us were persuaded to write for this competition. I won first prize with an anthology of poems (with self-serving notes). CP came second with Where are we going? Others featured from CC were MR (I look at the modern world), DC (Hitch-Hiking in Wales) and JM (The Forgotten Soldier).
By Spring 1968 CP had left and there was a rather different housemaster. I wrote something that seemed fashionable supposedly on Psychiatry Today, not really knowing anything about it, but I reckoned nor would those judging my literary effort. I trotted out some populist stories on psychology and whatever suited me such as mentioning Captain Beefheart's Safe as Milk LP. I won again but also became Writer of the Year for the National Association of Boys Clubs (I had no idea that my essay went beyond KABC). In the Autumn that cup was presented at the Royal Festival Hall, although by then I was at University studying law and having fun, and anyway I was unaware of the need to attend a rehearsal to be taught how to receive an award from a royal Duke, but that is another tale.