Ian Napier 1970-77

 

 

I'm the sort of person who lives pretty much in the present, and day-dreams a lot about the future, so when Paul asked me to write "a bit for the website about your school and after school experiences up to the present time", I had to set one of my 'wetware' (brain) agents to the task of dredging up memories that had lain buried in the silted trenches of my mind for up to 30 years! If I fail to mention anyone or anything that was important to me at TGS, then that's entirely the fault of my aging neurons (i.e. you can't blame me!).

 

My TGS 'career' began in September 1970, and finished (somewhat unimpressively) 7 years later in the summer of 1977. I remember TGS as being a school that I didn't mind too much going to. That's pretty good praise of the establishment, the educators and my co-learners - like most kids, I don't know if I'd have gone to school if it hadn't been compulsory but, given that I had to be there, I seem to remember actually enjoying it most of the time.

 

I had Mrs Beringer as form teacher, initially in form 1G, I think (the "1B" 'personalised number plate' had obviously been grabbed by someone with more 'pull' with the office staff), and then 2whatever the next year. We were located opposite the ground floor cloakroom (my 'favourite' place to be bullied in the first couple of years!) near the main foyer. One of my earliest memories surely has to be sitting at the front of Mrs Beringer's maths class, being made to feel extremely small because I couldn't understand the question, let alone magically produce the correct answer. Mrs Beringer, on many occasions, got furiously exasperated (in her Scottish accent) with what she (I am quite convinced) saw as deliberate obtuseness, but yet somehow in those two desperate years managed (I think) to restrain herself from thumping me! The poor woman really did not seem to understand that I truly didn't understand, and that the best I could do was go red in the face, cower pathetically, and stare at the graffiti on my desk until she decided to move on. She left a few years later to have a child ... I just hope, for its sake, that it turned out to be more mathematically talented that I!

 

I have since learnt that I'm actually not quite so stupid, but there are still many mathematical things that I have never managed to grasp (differential calculus still seems an arcane and pointless exercise, and to this day I have never managed to remember how to do long division and fortunately have never found a need for it), so I guess I just have a bit of a blind spot as far as some of the more 'unreal' maths is concerned. Actually, I think it is more to do with the fact that I need to be able to visualise stuff when learning, and to see a practical use for it ... and some teachers and subjects didn't meet that requirement. I remember a few years later, though, surprising my maths teacher (Mr Bartlett?) when I got a B for the maths 'O'-level. I promptly displayed my lack of judgement as far as maths was concerned, however, by opting to do it at 'A'-level (studied it all, but never took the exam as I just didn't understand all that 'integration and differentiation' stuff, and taking the exam would have been a complete waste of everyone's time).

 

In the 3rd year, we moved upstairs to Mr Dewey's form (3D, 4D and 5D, I presume - we were with him for the next 3 years). He took us for history, and I'm afraid to say this was one of the other subjects I found myself incapable of revelling in ... I was fine until we started getting to the true beginning of 'history' where specific people started doing specific things on specific dates, and then my brain just switched itself off to avoid the boredom. I remember him being a pretty good teacher, though, and also a guy who had a lot of empathy with, concern for, and interest in his pupils. At the end of the 5th year (the end of an era, for us), he told us all that we had been his best / least troublesome form ever (he probably said that to them all, though!), that he was very sad to say goodbye to us, and that he would remember us fondly (or some such). What a nice guy (few were as well-suited to teaching).

 

Other memories from the first few years include sitting in the language lab, having a competition with Jonathon Rosby and other pals to see how far we could wind the tape forward before a French-accented voice came over the headphones to ask what we were doing. "Just trying to find the right place, Miss," we would plead. I don't remember being terribly convincing, but we got away with it every time. This was the same young French femme whom we hassled (side-splittingly, we thought at the time) with "Ohn-ee-ohn-hohng, ee-ohn-hohng" until, after many months of this, she eventually asked us "whaht doos thaht meen?" and we were too embarrassed to explain! I think she left shortly after that, so I hope we did not chase her away! After 3 years of proving our linguistic incompetence, I and my fellow French laggards were given the option of being guinea pigs in Mr Ruddock's new CSE Commerce class - we jumped (like frogs) at the chance to get out of doing French, and I ended up with a CSE (grade 1) AND a GCE (grade C) which is far better that I could ever have expected to get for French, so good decision there!

 

Jon Rosby (now a big cheese in MFI, and living in Henley-on-Thames) was one of my 'best pals' in the first couple of years, and again later in my TGS career when we bought ourselves electric guitars from Woolies (well, I got mine there anyway), called ourselves "Glastonbury Fayre", and thought we sounded like Hawkwind (still a great group, Hawkwind). Jon also introduced me to 'progressive rock', which is still my favourite music (70s and modern). Jon had quite a collection of LPs at home, many of which are now in my own collection all these years later. He also had unusually tolerant parents, I remember - a sizable percentage of the music we played in their lounge would have been regarded as "unbearable, cacophonic noise" by most other mums and dads, and putting up with the budding rock stars upstairs truly deserved a medal (their neighbours - on one side was Lesley something's house, she being in our year group at TGS - should also be commended for their restraint).

 

I used to walk to school with Simon Burdett (his house was on the way), although I don't remember how the routine got started. He used to play trumpet (one of those brass things) in the school orchestra. He also had a boxer dog (or two) at home. I remember embarrassing myself one morning by turning up to collect him as usual, only to find that he and the rest of his family were all still in bed - it was a public holiday! That's how keen I was get to TGS!

 

The Chemistry lab (anything with a lab involved?) was another disaster area for me, at least from the point of view of academic achievement. Mr Harrowven tried hard to teach us the elements, and how to combine them in really interesting ways, but all I remember was dunking litmus paper into anything I came across, trying to get the Bunsen burners working properly, the smell of the gas and the rubber hoses and all the weird alchemical brews, and how his super-large and untrendy white Y-fronts kept appearing above his trouser waist at the back when he wrote on the blackboard (that was an event we really looked forward to sniggering at)! Oh, and I also remember the chemical formulae for a number of acids, and for household salt and sugar (I think) - so not a complete waste, then! We had a different Chemistry teacher in the 3rd year (name slipped down the cracks in the sofa - Jones maybe?), who taught in a completely different manner. I actually (thought I) understood, and started to produce some reasonable marks. Convinced I had 'cracked the code', I signed up for 2 more years, only to get Mr Harrowven again (got a grade E in the end, more by luck than anything else).

 

I was terrible at woodwork, but we had a great teacher though. I forget his name (something beginning with A maybe?), but we all liked him, and he was genuinely touched when we bought him some small Easter eggs one year. I think he retired around 1972, when I moved on to 3 years of metalwork. At this I was moderately less terrible. We had a similarly nameless teacher (something beginning with B?), who was a bit of a 'no nonsense' disciplinarian, hard but fair though.

 

PE and Games were also major pet hates (because I was lousy at them - was there ANYTHING I was good at, I wonder now?!). Mr Howes nick-named me  "Gloria" (fortunately, the moniker died quickly through lack of use!) as it presumably suited my girly sporting abilities, and my girly hair ... I thought of myself as part of the Woodstock generation, even though I was several years too late, and along with 'Jesus boots', loons, and some other stuff I wouldn't be seen dead in now, the long hair was an important part of my 'image'. My personal challenge was always not to be last on the annual cross-country runs. Me and Timothy Bell (a rather tubby guy) used to trudge along at the back of the field, and pretend that coming 2nd last wasn't all that important to us until the final 20 yards or so when we'd go all out for the honour, elbow-barging all the way to the finish line (which was the changing room door). I don't how many miles we used to be forced to cover on those cross country runs, but it was a darn long way to walk! Only in the 4th year did I discover that a much less-structured Games activity was available: rowing! This meant cycling down to the boathouse on the river (naturally), and paddling up and down (usually not too strenuously), and then cycling home (seriously uphill!) afterwards. This was run by the Philosophy guy (I think we all used to call him Catweasel, although I'm sure that wasn't his real name). I wasn't too enthralled by the rowing, but (except for when I slipped and slid across the goose droppings, and when my scull decided to roll me into the river) it was a good 'opt out' sport for the sportingly challenged like myself.

 

I also remember Mr Ball (the 'Head'), and his stilted, articulate way of speaking. Was he really as humourless as I remember, or was it just that we were all on a completely different wavelength? There was one time a few of us tried to get a school newsletter together (only ever one issue, on orange paper - my copy is probably a valuable rarity today!), and one of the articles (a crossword, supplied by a first former) was so full of spelling mistakes that we decided it would be fun to leave them all in. True to his perfectionist form, Mr Ball returned the draft to us with every single mistake corrected! Fortunately, I had very few run ins with "The Head", although there was, however, one rather embarrassing occasion when I was accused (and found guilty) of writing an insensitive note to Jackie French that I actually hadn't (sorry Jackie, I may have been totally insensitive and incredibly juvenile at times, but not on that occasion).

 

For some mysterious reason that I cannot now fathom, I was in the choir for my first couple of years at TGS. I was a squirrel (of all things!) in Benjamin Britten's "Noyes Flude" (sp?), but a Christmas sing-song at the Cathedral was the highlight: "Gloria in exchelsis deiooooo", "et in terra home in a bus", etc. I re-joined later to be a juror in Gilbert O'Sullivan's (sic.) "Trial By Jury", and a blue-cowled monk in a Triennial Festival bash at the Theatre Royal. I was always too embarrassed to sing solo (that was my excuse - was actually probably too crap at singing!) - the choir audition was stressful enough, thank you: "la la la la la la la la la" scales with the dictatorial Ozzie (?) guy (whose name fails to spring to mind right now, and whose wife also tried, but failed, over two years to teach me to play violin in one of the tiny rooms at the back of the quad).

 

Being a shy kid, and not into sports or much of the other stuff that my peers were, the first couple of years at TGS were, for me, mildly (but only mildly) distressing at times. It took until the 3rd year for me to really settle in and feel at home there. This was, I am sure, in large part due to having been adopted by a small clique that hung out in a form room over on the other side of the school. At the time, it seemed a pretty egalitarian bunch of chums, but looking back now I am sure that Lindsay Williams formed the active focus of this group, which also included (in no specific order) Graham Grix, Fiona Hayward, Jacqueline Smith, Beverley something, Chris Murphy, Keith Bray, Phillip Yarnall, and possibly others my aging memory is unable to identify. I fell head over heels in besottedness with Jackie from the first time I set eyes on her, but unfortunately I was too shy and naive (and unattractive  - check out my pix!) for anything to come of it ... I just didn't know how to relate to fanciable girls!

 

So many 'if onlies', in retrospect ... opportunities missed, hurtful things said in error or ignorance, and so forth ... but I guess it's like that for all of us: we made our mistakes, and learnt (hopefully) not to repeat them. I'm not sure how I managed to fall in with this crowd, but it was probably the best thing that happened to me during those years. We did many things together, within and beyond the school boundary ... several fun house parties (remember "Party 7"s?), trips to the outdoor swimming pool, etc, etc. We were all very close, and it was a real shame when we finally all drifted our separate ways at the end of the 5th year.

 

I also associated with Neil Taylor and Rick Phipps in the last few years at TGS, and for some time beyond ... we were good buddies, and did and shared many things together, including adolescent frustrations, cosmological theories, snooker, darts and vodka & blackcurrants (yeeuk)! It was with Neil that I first exceeded 90 mph (that was fast in those days!), in his dad's yellow Lancia on the Yarmouth Road one dark night, and I was scared witless! Neil studied Law at Bristol University, and then went into the legal profession. Rick was always keen on the 20s era, collected 78 records, and assisted his parents in their antiques trade (they had a shop for a while in Magdalen Street). I bought my first car from him (a 1960 Ford Popular, that I re-painted black and orange with household gloss) for the princely sum of 60 pounds!

 

I stayed behind at TGS to do 'A'-levels (English, Physics and Maths), and contributed my weirdness to a new collection of chums that included Neil Taylor, Rick Phipps, Nick someone, Jane Lovatt, Janine Arthurton, Judith Harrowven and Karen someone. One of the benefits of being in the 6th year (or maybe just the Upper 6th?) was that we got to go down under the stage in the hall and sit in a mottled collection of old armchairs and couches - a den for the privileged few. The other big advantage was that you didn't have to wear a uniform any longer, which gave me a free rein in expressing my unique and slightly hippiesque fashion preferences (platform shoes, et al).

 

As said before, the maths was a disaster (didn't sit the exam), but I got a B for English and an E for Physics (I seem to remember being crippled by a hay fever attack - feeble excuse for a pathetic effort, but I was expected to get a B, and was certainly capable of it). My exam results, whilst perhaps being creditable for someone who almost never studied and who often did not pay attention in class, were not exactly encouraging enough to justify a stab at university. I decided to work on the basis that this was a good thing (all that drinking, womanising and getting up late the next morning would not have agreed with me? *grin*), and set about obtaining gainful employment (i.e. where I was actually given money for attending, rather than the other way around). As I had no driving career ambitions or interests, I took the easy option for the vocationally undecided, and joined Norwich Union on 4th July 1977.

 

Just as I left TGS, Robert Harrowven and I briefly got together with a couple of other guys to form a 4-piece rock group called 'Blenheim', but (as everyone was either unemployed or soon disappeared off to university) we never got past the rehearsal stage. Good thing too, really, as using my little red Mini as the band transport meant taking the front passenger seat out, and doing several trips to assorted parts of the City in order to get everything and everyone assembled at The Griffin pub on the Yarmouth Road for practice, and then to get them all back home again afterwards!

 

I spent 20 years at Norwich Union, and sort of drifted along through most of it. The first six and a half years were spent in a number of Pensions Admin. departments, towards the end of which time I qualified as Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute (ACII) - impressive, huh? ... nah! I proactively transferred myself into I.T. on 4th January 1984 and found my niche in life ... I had been dabbling with micro computers at home for a few years, and finally managed to get paid for doing what I enjoyed. I started as a COBOL mainframe programmer, and progressed over the years, but always leaned towards the hands-on technical aspect of applications development. Over 1995-1996 or thereabouts, I was involved in designing and developing the NU's first Web site, which was something of an eye-opener for me, having had almost solely mainframe development exposure up until then, and I have never looked back.

 

I left NU in March 1997, to relocate to South Africa (my long-distance girlfriend was South African, and resident there, and it was easier for me to go to SA than for her to come to the UK). We are now married, have a lovely home, and a family of 6 dogs, 3 cats and 2 horses (plus my wife's 2 grown-up children, one of whom is at university and lives with us). I have a great job at African Life in Johannesburg, where I am currently "Assistant General Manager - IT (New Technology, Systems Architecture)" ... bit of a mouthful, but my wife keeps telling me that "AGM" means Annual General Meeting so it's difficult to shorten it!

 

Life is now active fun (with a bucket load of work - which I mostly still love and get enthusiastic about - thrown in), and not quite so much "going along with the flow" any more. The move to South Africa was a big thing for me (I was always one of those who said he'd probably die before moving out of Norwich or leaving NU), and it has taught me that change can actually be a good, invigorating thing, and that 'just drifting' is one of the worst things you can do with your - all too short - life. Despite the disadvantage of living in the official number one most-dangerous (deaths and injuries through violent crime) city in the world, I'm enjoying it here in sunny South Africa, and looking forward to a long, happy and healthy future.

 

OK, Mr Yates ... what grade do I get for this essay??? 

 

Hi Paul,

Well, I just spent 3 days (and nights) at Microsoft's "Tech-Ed 2001"
conference at Sun City, about 2 hours drive north-west of home.

All 1,300 delegates were forced to enjoy the evening bashes they'd laid on
(unlimited free booze!), and the conference sessions weren't bad either.
Plenty of freebies were given away during the breaks, or earned during the
sessions for 'interacting', and I now possess 4 assorted Microsoft T-shirts,
and a whole bunch of other stuff (both useful and useless)!

Got home at around 16:15 on Wednesday afternoon, just as the first hailstorm
of the year started. I had seen it brewing, with its orange-tinged, dark
grey clouds on the way home, and it looked like it was going to be a bad
one. Hailstorms are worrying events, as they can be as big as golf balls,
and really do your car bodywork a lot of damage, so I was glad to get home
just in time. This time, though, the hailstones were only the size of peas.
Dropped for about 10 minutes or so, leaving the garden awash with little
white balls. The temperature had dropped too, as a result, and there were
still some there in the morning (and this is Africa!).

On the way to Sun City, it was in the mid-30s C (and it's still only
spring!), and I was congratulating myself (for the millionth time!) for
coming to live in a country with such a great climate. It's now bl**dy
freezing here in my office, and my air-con heater thing is not having much
of an impact ... max in Jo'burg today is set to be a cool 13 degrees C.
*brrr*

Anyhow, I got to bed early on Wednesday night, as I had some serious beauty
sleep to catch up on. Tuesday night's organised event had spilled over to
the "Traders" bar, with a live group, until the wee small hours - and I was
up again at around 06:00 to get ready for the final day's events!

Shortly after getting to bed on the Wednesday night, a serious wind started
getting up (no - not too many onions for dinner!) - more hail like in the
afternoon, we wondered?

The trees began to whip about backwards and forwards. The 50-or-so foot
pines that border 3 sides of our property were almost literally bending 90
degrees from one side to the other! Every few minutes, the wind strength
(and accompanying noise - like living in a jet engine!) increased another
major notch ... and just when we thought it could get no worse, it did it
again, and again!

Then we lost the electricity supply (not an unusual even in Midrand, where
lightning commonly has this effect). We started to get rather worried,
though, when the roof ('open thatch' - i.e. no internal ceilings) began to
vibrate up and down, and shower us with years of accumulated dust!

As the storm eventually died down, we noticed a dark heap outside in the
garden. Our triple stables (a single block of 3) had been blown entirely up
into the air, and dropped upside down halfway across the property! Now this
is quite something ... the stables were made of old mine wood (dense and
heavy like railway sleepers), fitted together within a seriously heavy-duty
angle iron framework, and all anchored securely to the ground! If our horses
had not been 'pensioned' off to a stud farm in Kwa Zulu Natal at the
beginning of the year, they would surely have been killed.

The power stayed off all night, and the burglar alarm kept beeping every so
often to inform us of this fact. This, and the wind and rain, meant very
little sleep (for me, again!) that night.

The following morning, we noticed other damage, although nothing quite as
dramatic. One of our neighbour's walls had been blown flat, one of our trees
had been snapped in half like a matchstick, tufts of thatch had been blown
off the house and lapa roofs, one of our outdoor light fittings had been
snapped off, our (heavy builders) wheelbarrow had been blown over quite a
distance, all the dustbins had been emptied and their contents scattered to
the wind, and there was so much muck (sand, leaves, pine needles) in the
pool that it looked like your average B-movie quicksand swamp!

Yesterday evening, we got home to find that we still had no electricity ...
something major had blown, and was taking time to get fixed or replaced. We
had to go get takeaway food and hot coffee.

Later, another storm started a-brewing, and we expected the worst, but
(whilst quite violent) it was just a baby one in comparison. The power was
restored as it was dying down.

We then heard on the news that the previous night's effort was classed as
having been of hurricane strength, with winds of up to 220 miles per hour!!!
Entire hangars at the local (small) Grand Central airport at had been blown
flat, and planes turned upside down too.

I guess that we can thank our lucky stars that we got off so lightly (and
that the insurance people have been enormously helpful, and will repair
everything with a pretty trivial excess!).

I'm told that the weather should improve by the weekend, although it is cold
and cloudy right now ... I hope so, as my wife's daughter gets married
tomorrow, and she isn't going to want to do the whole thing in a hurricane
(the event has been planned to be partly outdoors, and it would be difficult
to change the arrangements at such short notice!). And it is also a good
thing that the power supply has been restored ... can you imagine the
problems of everyone trying to get ready for the wedding without light, hot
water, hairdryers, and whatever else women need to feel good about
themselves (*grin*).

Well, I slept like a log last night ... didn't even notice the major
lightning storm at 04:00, just kept right on sleeping!

And now, looking out of the window of my office, all I see is weather that
reminds me of the UK, and (despite having survived a hurricane) I'm so glad
that I'm in SA and not the UK .... this is a rare period, weather-wise, and
I've gotten so used to almost constant warmth and sunshine over the last
four and a half years, that I'd find it very difficult to adapt back again!

Well, enough (more than enough, I hear you say?) for now.

Keep well, and keep in touch,

Regards from bl**dy freezing South Africa.

And a follow up mail

 And the photos,

 

 

 

 

For some more try Ian's website.

http://www.geocities.com/ianapier

Site first published march 2001

To contact us with your own fortyodd experiences / school photos or items

or any other stuff for our pages please contact me at

paul@fortyodd.com

Ta!