Dispatches From a Dilettante (8 page)

It was at this point that hubris got the better of me. I had convinced myself that a certain horse was going to win a race at Pontefract. The week before the planned Pontefract bonanza Brigadier Gerard was racing at York in the inaugural Benson and Hedges Cup. For those of you not familiar with racing, the Brigadier was named after the swashbuckling hero of an Arthur Conan Doyle novel and is now generally acknowledged to have been one of the greatest racehorses ever. At the time of this tale he was undefeated in thirteen races.

In my febrile brain I thought that by placing a big bet on this certain winner at York, I would generate a bigger stake to put on my Pontefract horse which would be at decent odds. That way I would acquire some serious money. To obtain the stake for the Brigadier Gerard bet I had concocted a story about needing a car to get to a new job which was soon to be offered me, conditional on my having transport. I drew upon all my thespian qualities and used them to persuade the nice manager at the National Westminster Bank local branch to advance me two hundred pounds. This was, in those days, the equivalent to two months wages for the average working person.

Armed with the money I got a lift in a coach provided by my local bookie to give mugs like myself a comfortable ride to oblivion. In my euphoric cash laden state I had failed to notice some key events and changes in the lead up to the race. A Panamanian jockey Braulio Baeza, who had never before ridden in England, had been given the ride on the unfancied horse Roberto. Roberto’s usual jockey Lester Piggott had declined the chance of the ride for this race and opted for a mount called Rheingold. I remained resolutely unmoved by these significant pointers. Additionally the Benson and Hedges Cup at York was to be run over a mile and a quarter, whereas a mile was the Brigadier’s preferred distance.

In films and plays the weather is often used to illustrate moods and to portend disasters but it was a beautiful day when I arrived at one of the oldest racecourses in the country. Knavesmire looked good to me as I settled down at a spot ‘by the rails’ where serious money was placed. Even when the odds lessened I failed to take heed. When placing my bet I eventually noticed that the odds on the Brigadier had got even shorter and it started at 1-3 on. That is to say to win one hundred pounds you would have to have bet three hundred. I was therefore risking what was to me a fortune, and one which I had no way of repaying, in order to win around sixty five pounds.

As the race started my confidence had collapsed before the horses had covered a furlong. Roberto came out of the stalls like a bat out of hell and eased into the lead with six furlongs to go. My throat constricted with dry apprehension as the implications of my foolhardiness began to dawn on me. I turned away before the end and defeated, demoralised and destitute, walked slowly off into an uncertain future. Ambling along in the vague direction of the main road I found myself at the start point for the next flat race, which was about to get under way over a much longer distance. Thus the start was only feet away from the road along which I was disconsolately trudging.

The jockeys were circling their horses in preparation, watched in silence by a scattering of people. The breathing and snorting of the horses provided the only sounds. The crowds and the grandstands were a distance away and part of a world that I had left behind. A woman suddenly said quite loudly, “Go on Lester I’ve got a pound on you” as the great man and his mount passed almost within touching distance. Nearer to where I was now standing I heard another jockey, Paul Cooke, respond to the woman’s encouragement by nonchalantly saying to a colleague “It’s got no fucking chance”. The thought crossed my mind that I should perhaps have consulted Paul Cooke with regards to the outcome of the previous race.

That evening I went to the pub and did my best to deny the angst that I was so obviously displaying. It was a tough lesson to learn and I kept learning it for months as I struggled to pay off the debt. Even worse news came that a non betting friend of mine had won a considerable amount on the pools around this time. As Gore Vidal once remarked, “Every time a friend succeeds a little part of me dies”, and it was a phrase that I thought about and related to no more than three times a day for many weeks.

As the correlation between behaviour and happiness gradually began to dawn on me, together with the realisation that there are very few short cuts in life, it was the events at Knavesmire that enabled me to start growing up. It was to be an excruciatingly long process but it started that afternoon in York. For years afterwards, as if to help keep my focus on the journey to maturity, whenever I drove through the city I inevitably seemed to go past a popular local pub called The Brigadier Gerard which had been renamed soon after the race.

My gambling habit had been instantly cured and going through the betting equivalent of cold turkey proved relatively easy. Elwyn soon had new friends to take racing and I wanted to get my life in order. Getting the sequence of personal perestroika tragically wrong, I took the high moral ground and stopped signing on the dole. However I had misjudged the zeitgeist and was laid off from Langdale Contractors the following week as building work hit a slow patch. There is a trite old saying that ‘Those who can…do, and those that can’t teach’. Having left the profession once in fairly dramatic fashion I opted for a cash driven swift return to salvation in multi racial inner city Leeds.

6.
LIVING IN THE CITY 1973-1976

Those of you with musical memories that include Tamla Motown will recall this as the title of a Stevie Wonder hit from the seventies. Eric Prince was the Head of Drama at Primrose Hill High School when I worked there. Unsurprisingly he was known to all the staff as Prince Eric. He went onto become Professor of the Dramatic Arts at the University of Colorado but was at this point just another jobbing teacher - albeit one with ambitions. The ambition manifested itself in his declaration that he would write a play with input from kids, based around inner city life, racial prejudice, and unemployment. As part of the preparation a letter was dispatched to Stevie Wonder’s record company in Detroit who generously let us play his music as backdrop and even threw in some free LPs when responding.

To Eric and the school’s huge credit everyone seemed to back the preparation for what was to be the first time a play had been attempted, let alone performed in public. Challenging young people who had never acted before were given key parts, staff came in at weekends to prepare stage sets, tickets were printed on ancient banda machines and publicity posters put in local shops. Disaster seemed to have struck the day before the opening night when the lead male was suspended from school after a knife incident, but nothing could prevent the triumph that the sell out three night performance turned out to be. A reprise was demanded and took place at the Grand Theatre in Leeds. Furthermore a school in Birmingham, having read the write ups, put on their own version.

It was, on reflection, a representation of everything good about teaching and education in a different era. There was no national curriculum, no SATS and no OFSTED so, at best, exciting things that changed hitherto damaged lives could evolve. It wasn’t all good because such a loose system could and was abused by some staff, but the moments of glory transcended anything that was to come at the school in future years. One pupil at that time now holds a regular part on Coronation Street after making a name in The Full Monty. That of course proves nothing but I bet it still makes Prince Eric smile up there in Colorado.

I have only one other memory of Eric, who was quite a dramatic personality over and above professional requirements and had a penchant for flash cars. The drama department was situated in an old Victorian junior school building with the classic separate entrances marked ‘BOYS’ and ‘GIRLS’. Stone stairwells were worn in the middle after countless thousands of feet had bounded up and down them over the years. The sloping tarmac school playground was surrounded by the usual pre-war railings and at the bottom of the slope in one corner was the caretaker’s house together with a row of dustbins for educational detritus. Staff parked their cars in a row at the top of the playground. From the staff room on the top floor all this could be observed.

Such was the dedication of the staff here in this annexe, away from the main building, that the day often started with a round of cards. Eric burst into the staffroom one morning proclaiming to the card pool and anyone else who would listen, that he had purchased a fabulous new vehicle which he had just driven to school for the first time. John Dixon, a droll Scotsman put down his cards, stubbed out his cigarette and languidly strode to the window. “Would it be the shiny red Datsun below?” he enquired. When Eric confirmed that it was indeed his new steed John, who had not previously shown the slightest interest in cars, enquired further as to the efficiency of the handbrake system. Eric was halfway through the technical specification of the brakes when John cut him short and with a smirk announced. “I think you may want to have a word with the dealer”.

Alerted by John’s facial contortions we all rushed to the window in time to see the new Datsun slowly, but inexorably, moving with increasing speed down the slope towards the dustbins where it came eventually to rest.

Larger than life teachers were conspicuous in numbers at Primrose Hill and John Dixon was one of them. In a previous life he had been a professional magician. Consequently he was called into action by colleagues to perform at their children’s parties. One such gig was duly booked by the art teacher Rod Wells for his daughter’s birthday ‘do’ to be held on a Sunday. Dramatically and tragically John was killed in a freak accident the day before the party. Ignoring all advice he had decided to repair a leak on his roof and rigged up a ‘safety’ rope around the chimney. It snapped and the fall killed him instantly. Rod broke the news to his five year old daughter as gently as possible. After a pause for thought which Rod interpreted as grief she replied, as only a five year old could, “Daddy do we know any other magicians?” John would have loved that.

One of the biggest TV hits in the early seventies and one of the first ‘Talent’ shows was the original version of ‘Opportunity Knocks’ hosted by Hughie Green. The nation duly tuned in every week to watch the old cornball say, while hamming it to the camera, “And now for the musical muscle man from Southport (dramatic pause and rise in voice tone) Opportunity Knocks”. The audience on the night aided by the famous ‘clapometer’, judged the most popular act and then viewers voted to determine who returned to the show in later weeks. Back in the smoke filled staffroom one break time, the lone non smoker and head of PE declared that he was going to enter the school gymnastic team in the regional auditions for Opportunity Knocks, which were about to take place in Leeds.

He was a man who, remarkably, had no enemies among the staff. Gordon Fee was a swarthy, stocky muscular Christian with lovable, successful and slightly eccentric teaching methods. He was liked and respected by the kids, but would be languishing in jail in today’s nanny state. Eschewing formal punishments he would approach a transgressor and give him the famous ‘Chin Pie’ which consisted of rubbing his stubble into the offender’s face. This was offered without the least trace of malice and always had the desired effect. The only time I observed him getting even mildly angry was when the rowdiness in the minibus on the way back from a basketball game continued after his final warning. He stopped the bus which was five miles from school, calmly and without rancour ordered the occupants out and drove away leaving them to find their own way home. That one action alone, if carried out today, would have meant the end of his career.

Against all the odds and with saintly patience Gordon had formed, trained and developed the gymnastic team into champions and they had recently won the Sunday Times national school gymnastic competition. Consisting, as they did, of twelve Afro Caribbean boys and Petros Petrou who was a precociously strong Greek Cypriot, they were talented and entertaining. Consequently they romped through the auditions and were scheduled to appear on an upcoming programme. This necessitated a trip down to ABC Weekend Television at Teddington Lock in for the recording of the show. My wife and I were roped in as minders, as for many this would be the first time away from home, the first time in a hotel, the first time in London and certainly the first time on national television.

We arrived in a high state of excitement and ABC had booked us into a four star hotel ready for rehearsals the following morning. Some of the team were taken to the cinema and all four adults went with them. The others were given strict instructions to watch TV in their rooms. Floodlights in the car park shone upward to illuminate the hotel sign fixed high on the building. On leaving for the cinema we glanced back to see a fourteen year old member of the team in the room above the sign clearly lit up by the floodlights, smoking a cigar and quaffing what turned out to be a glass of champagne ordered from room service the moment we had left. I doubled back and was gently accosted by the manager in the foyer before I could get up the stairs to remonstrate with the miscreant. He naively asked if there was any limit on the phone calls to St. Kitts being charged to my room.

On the day of rehearsals the kids were nerveless and thrilled to be meeting return winners who they recognised from previous shows. Readers of a certain age will recall the East End singing duo of Peters and Lee and the comedian Frank Carson. As a rule of thumb the less the talent the more the prima donna attitude and some long forgotten Welsh songstress complained that the aroma from the muscle rub the boys were using to loosen up limbs was spoiling her voice. There was no liniment on earth that could have been held responsible for the dismal performance she produced, much to the amusement of the Primrose Hill High School party.

When the great moment came Gordon Fee was, as the custom, given a minute’s chat with the host before the introduction. After that was finished Hughie Green turned towards the camera and intoned with his usual patronising insincerity, “So ladies and gentleman, for the wonderful school children from Leeds and their teacher Mr LEE…. Opportunity Knocks”. When the show went out the kids could still be seen laughing as they started their act. An act incidentally which got them first place on the ‘clapometer’ and resulted in money flowing into the school coffers after requests for performances at galas and summer fetes around the north of England.