Chapter 2 — The Catholic Primary School and the Slipper

1968. St Phillips Roman Catholic Primary School: the dominion and bastion of corporal punishment? Not really; it was simply another school raised in stone by the church to raise upright Christians for a life in Leeds.

In Middleton you also had a Protestant school, John Blenkinsop, where a commonly bandied-around tale between youthful thieves was that a 'Blue Lady' wandered the night corridors as a ghost, and had one night, rubbed the throat of a common council thief upon some broken window-pane glass. No one ever dared break into her abode. Oooh, no! God forbid! Even more so to us Catholics!

Higher up the hill of Middleton – if you can call the incline that, and as the resident Catholic priest regularly pontificated to us: a superior mount to the 'proddies,' the Protestants – you had the church of St Phillips, Catholic St Phillips. Religion dictated which school your parents sent you to, a law immovable, non-transgressible, and a downright must-do for parents.

On the streets, though, to the kids complete with dirty faces, hair in the cheapest of pony-tails, boys in different coloured snake belts, all dirtied and all looking the same, all frequenting both schools, all playing in the same red-brick streets, the same council estate fold, they couldn't give a fuck: such was the wisdom of youth over religion.

I can't remember my first day at school. The institutions of the time started on your education at the age of five, and you remained in their grip until your 16th year.

St Phillips had a head-teacher, Mr Healey, and he was a gangly, tall sort of creature with wiry-grey hair, or at least that's how I remembered him back in those early days. Many years later, though, I called upon his house for the fellow to sign my passport – as you did in those days – and as he stood there in the kitchen, I can remember viewing this very old man, wizened and shrivelled up in frame and complaining of just being stung by a wasp, and how time had changed the fellow, and how, back in the days of the sixties, he was a monster of a man to be feared.

Mr Healey's chosen form of behavioural correction was the slipper, and I can remember numerous occasions when the aforementioned beast was belted against my arse. One particular occasion sticks foremost in my memory, though.

Sports and especially running, football and rounders were packed into the junior school curriculum. At every opportunity the school would have some sort of physical activity on, and all the students were encouraged, nay made, to participate.

Mr Maddon, the PE teacher, would regularly cram us all into the back of his three-wheeler van and drive us to some sports venue. One time, just as he was setting off up a hill, and giving it some throttle, the back of the van loosed open and half a pack of kids came tumbling out on to the middle of the road. Luckily, no one was really hurt, and the kids were once again packed back into the back of the van, but with the door firmly secured this time; such was child safeguarding in those days.

The golden prize of all this exercise was to be awarded Sportsman of the Year. Strange, in those days, there was no Sportswoman of the Year, or at least I can't remember if there was, and I simply didn't notice it. Every kid in the primary school wanted to win that prize, and I was no different.

Whenever occasion provided I would participate to my utmost, hoping to be the golden child to walk up on that stage and collect that trophy. I was convinced I was the best; I was deluded I was the best, and when the celebrated night came around for both the annual play and the presentation of the awards, I was on another planet.

I think I was no more than six or seven, and I know that because I had learnt all the names of the birds in the British Isles. I'd found a book and memorised them all, and the teachers at the primary school were impressed with the deed. But enough of that, and there I was, sat on the floor of the hall with all the other kids waiting for the prizes, my prize, the best prize to be awarded. Other presentations preceded the big moment and that only drove insane my anticipation for my award. And then the moment came.

'And the prize for the Sportsman of the Year goes to...' I swear I nearly stood up there and then when, the horror: '... Gerard ....!'

There are times in one's life when you're completely confounded, stunned even, and that was one such time. I'd convinced myself I'd won that trophy, and looking back now, I know that Peter Brolin was the better sportsman, as he was always the better footballer.

At the time, though, the delusional insult of not winning began to turn to anger, and the powers of the school must have thought that I would have been upset at not winning, and that's probably why they immediately called me up and presented me with the R. A. Briggs Award – and I don't know to this day who the hell he was – for being able to memorise all the birds of Great Britain.

Mr Healey, the head teacher, presented me with The Mystery of Monster Mountain by Enid Blyton – I think – when I believed I should have been receiving Sportsman of the Year. Suffice to say I was not all that pleased, and I merely muttered something awkward between clenched teeth to him and walked off the stage without waiting for a reply; a gesture that didn't go unnoticed by the head teacher because the following day, I being involved in some minor infringement of rules – and certainly not enough to warrant the dreaded slipper – I was hauled into the head teacher’s office and informed what an ungrateful child I'd been the previous night in receiving my award, and how the slipper would correct such ingratitude, which it duly did.

Looking back I was an ungrateful child, and The Mystery of Monster Mountain book didn't really have a chance when I returned home that day, and it was promptly taken out into the back field and burnt with only a ceremony of curses.

***

St Phillips School had a church adjacent to it, and to this place of worship all children, without exception, would have to attend Sunday mass. There were three appointed times: 9am, 11am, and 6pm. At the back of the church sat a teacher, and this teacher would note down all the names of all the kids attending, and lo and behold if you missed, because the first ritual on Monday morning back at the school for those who did not attend was the ruler on the back of the knuckles.

All in all, though, I recall school with many pleasant memories, and probably all the punishments that were administered were deserved and warranted. On one such occasion another pupil and I had been instructed to carefully take a big television on a wheel stand to another classroom.

Instead of undertaking the task safely and as we were told to do so, we began to play a 'push-of-war' with it, seeing who was the stronger. In the end, one of the wheels caught on a big, thick orange-haired mat, and the whole lot keeled over; when one of those big, old televisions crashes to the floor, and the tube in the back of it explodes, everyone knows about it. Mr Maddon certainly did, as he came charging out of his classroom and grabbed a rounders bat and gave us both six-of-the-best with it.