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Rutlish 1957 - the 50 Year Reunion
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Dudley J Brown

photo photo photo photo
1957 1958
 
1961 2007
2007 Reunion 2012 Reunion
Dudley and Elaine Brown
2007 Reunion
Dudley Brown
2012 Reunion


Notes by Dudley Brown

Dudley Brown in 1974
Dudley Brown in 1974
Left Rutlish to fly with RAF & specialised in "fastjets" - my last operational plane was Tornado bomber. After 1984 became heavily involved in navigation training and did a computing MSc before leaving the Service. Then owned an antiquarian / second-hand bookshop with my wife Elaine who is an academic historian and understands these things! I also became involved in teaching IT in the FE environment and developed my interest in the stockmarket. After 6 years or so we sold the shop and both went to work with a government Agency in the Midlands and subsequently at the London Head Office.
After 3 pleasant years in leafy Surrey we were offered relocation to another office and thus moved back to the Midlands. We are both now retired - Elaine's hobby is study & will start her 4th degree soon! I prefer the simple life trading the financial markets and driving my MINI Cooper S. There are also 5 grandchildren dotted about the UK to visit. Having done 9 house moves in the last 13 years (lost count of the lifetime total) we shall stay here…….until we move again!

Memories by Dudley Brown

How do I remember Rutlish - well, not very much until Trevor Musk finally tracked me down last June - previously there had been too many exciting distractions to allow me to dwell on long-ago schooldays. Certainly if Rutlish was in the business of inculcating dogged determination and resourcefulness then it was incredibly successful with Trevor. His introductory letter with a follow up phone call made me amaze myself how after 50 years, little items stick in one's mind and you start to realise how much schooldays influenced you.

My overall thought is that perhaps I could have taken better advantage of the opportunities offered at Rutlish. But hindsight is a marvellous thing isn't it and you could apply that principle to your whole life. Viewing Rutlish as an education machine it does somewhat irk me now that a moderen equivalent for my own children at an independent school cost considerably more than the termly 7/6d contributed to the Rutlish School Fund. I suppose that's progress. Now the teachers are frightened of the pupils - I'm sure it was the other way round in 1957 wasn't it?

So what do I remember? Well, I have the images in my mind of what we all looked like then. And now I see the current photos………..that's maturity for you! All the masters in those days seemed very old and yet looking at their photos today, some seem almost boyishly young (I now understand the line about when policemen start looking younger than yourself).

I do believe that the members of Forms 2a and 3a were particularly inventive. I've been trying to recall the generic name of the contraptions that we used to build inside our desks for the purpose of transferring a number of marbles / ball bearings from one level to another with consequent noise and interruption to the lesson. The design spec insisted that activation should be near invisible and occasioned by a seemingly harmless act like removing an errant straw from the desktop (preferably by an unwitting teacher). I suppose a German name might have been "invisible-machine-for-making loud-ball-bearing-noises-to-annoy-the-teacher-with-no-obvious-culprit" Basic principle was to use books, rulers, pencils etc to construct channels to guide the marbles round the desk for the longest time. Some of the designs were incredibly innovative and I suspect that the guy who made those clever Honda TV adverts using squirrels and self-moving reactive components may have had his grounding in this field!

CCF Field days were good fun and I remember going on a week's camp to Exmoor I think, where we practised camping in the wet and lighting fires to get dry again. I think this was organised by Mr (Major) Preuveneers who seemed a really nice chap but I never had the good fortune to be in his class (lucky for him eh?)

Does anyone remember the school canteen with "Table Captains" (think that was the term) who were responsible for issuing lunch to the 8 seated round the table. I seem to remember full scale meat and 2 veg with gravy followed by "stodge" & custard - all for 7d per day. And what about the "Slow Eaters" table? This was a euphemism for those growing lads who needed 2 or 3 servings to keep their strength up - no wonder they took so long! Invented by "Bobby Oulton" I think, and it was a very good way of using up the entire surplus from the kitchen.

I do have a chuckle these days when I remember the most heinous of crimes was not to be wearing your school cap when off the premises - it was a skilful art to not wear your cap but at the same time never get caught - the consequences could be dire if a prefect was involved. Nowadays, the wearing of caps by the young appears obligatory and if we forbade it in school rules I'm sure the Court of Human Rights would soon get to know about it.

All in all I see my time at Rutlish just like life thereafter - good bits and bad bits but in essence just what you make of it. I just hope for those teachers who obviously put so much effort into their work that they got some satisfaction and understood that one's efforts aren't necessarily appreciated at the time. Here are my memories of the staff:

Oulton
Can still remember now how he would tiptoe into the vicinity of private study periods, where anything other than work was taking place, and utter the cry "you're not working" in his best Yorkshire (?) accent. This could quite likely be followed by "lines" as has been remarked elsewhere.

Hathway
Who could forget Harry Hathway? He only smiled (at me anyway) in the unlikely event that you understood some esoteric point that he wished to make. We all heard the rumours of his timepieces and his special interest in pendulums - little did I know the significance of his work in athletic circles. I was most impressed by his Perspex model of the workings of a clock (did it have a pendulum?) and always thought this man knew so much but was greatly hampered by my under-developed brain cells. Nevertheless, he did at least instil a lifelong interest in Maths for me and to this day I'm fascinated by its history and influence on almost everything. So thanks Harry, even though as you used to say: "some falls on stony ground"!

Tank
How I now cringe at the thought of how this man, who had served his country and been a Japanese POW, suffered at the hands of errant schoolboys who were fortunate enough not to know or understand what he must have been through.

Bryson
"Bill" Bryson (did he emigrate and write books?) was a good teacher of French and especially good at translating explanations of how 12-year-olds on school holiday to Belgium managed to accidentally break the hotel beds in the course of trampoline practice. He was able to get the repair charges down to "pocket money" level and placate the Manager. I suspect Bill would have been a very useful participant in any "boys night-out" situation.

Blenkinsop
The "Champ". I did have the benefit of him teaching me Latin in Form 3a. His methods were dull, boring, routine and very disciplined - in fact just perfect for a lazy 12-year-old who under his influence managed to rise from near bottom to near top of the Latin set. Despite never sitting Latin "O" level I did feel an achievement in finding a grammatical error in the text book. And of course, "Pliny was a hard man"

Walker
Great Guy! "Johnny Walker" would spot miscreants in the Quadrangle from his overlooking classroom window and then in best parade-ground voice, order those concerned to report to him. Can't remember much of his geography but he did an excellent line in anecdotal reminiscences (eg. first lesson of economics: how his penny bun actually cost fourpence because he had also to buy them for his family).

Hope
I recall countless sessions in the new gym where we played 5-aside football or something while "Bas" sloped off to his little office (presumably for a fag or to do his pools). Shudder to think what H&S would make of it today.

Draycott
"Dan Draycott" - I love Physics as a subject but this teacher had almost perfected the art of making it dull, dry and boring. However, he did ram home the essentials sufficient to pass the exam so I suppose he knew what he was about - if only he could have made it as enjoyable as I find it now (or is it me that's changed?) During a class debrief of a homework question to do with water pressures I think, I remember him calling upon some innocent victim to explain the physics behind the already established result. Bloggs answered: "because water always finds its own level, Sir" - now that seemed a pretty reasonable answer to me but poor old Dan's face showed his innermost depths of despair when he realised this was not the erudite explanation he was seeking. He made some quite sympathetic remark like "No Bloggs, that is insufficient!"

Davies
Stood no nonsense - "Mr" (didn't know he had another name) Davies knew his stuff on chemistry and had a wry, slightly sarcastic sense of humour. He was an expert in the theory of "phlogiston" - I know because he spent what seemed like a whole period explaining it instead of the 5 mins it probably requires. (For the arts graduates: phlogiston was a theoretical substance invented by eminent scientists to cover up the knowledge gaps of eminent scientists).

Denning
An excellently interesting teacher of Physics who smoked a foul-smelling Sherlock Holmes pipe that gave rise to much discussion as to what he put in it - the majority verdict was "his old socks". I always thought that he was an embryo "mad professor" who might one day invent a time machine or such like!

King
John King - Never actually found out what he did in the RAF but I do remember that his super-smart CCF uniform made the hairy serge of his troops look rather downmarket. But that was nothing compared to his double biology lessons. On these occasions "Sam" often took the full 2 hours (certainly seemed like it) to explain how much we were downmarket and how standards were not being kept in respect of discipline, self reliance, turnout etc etc. Had I known it at the time I would have appreciated what good training this was for undergoing interrogation (say nothing, avoid eye-contact, show no emotion) and the RAF could have saved considerably on my training costs.

Lee
For a long time I used to see this pleasant old chap on his bike around the school, sometimes with gardening implements or flowers / plants etc. I assumed he was the gardener and thought no more of it. However, he (Char-lee) turned up to teach Maths one day and most enjoyable it was too. He would sometimes talk about his being "smashed up" which I think referred to being involved in an aircraft accident when he was a pilot presumably during the war. How little we knew………..

Playfair
I assumed that "art" had been put into the timetable as a bit of light relief from "proper" subjects. The best teacher in the world couldn't make an artist out of me but Playfair (no idea of his first name) was willing to give it a go. I think I may have been in his first class where he was still enthused and maybe hadn't quite realised what he'd taken on. His cunning plan was to spend the first half of the double period setting the scene: a double-decker bus had driven under a low railway bridge and got stuck - with all the ensuing emergency services and casualties etc. We were to imagine the scene and draw / paint accordingly. Unfortunately, the only thing that stuck in my mind were the engineering difficulties involved in recovering the wrecked bus (years later I was to learn the standard solution is to let the tyres down!). Can't remember my artistic creation but I do recall it took many, many weeks to realise (art does require a lot of contemplation doesn't it?)

Neale
Having decided I wasn't an artist I thought woodwork might be more useful and indeed it was. Mr Neale was an excellent instructor and taught me how to use a chisel safely and why good carpenters cut into the "waste wood" as opposed the object you are making. He too showed much patience during my build of a wooden box for 35mm photo slides - something like a one-term project crammed into a full academic year! As to the value of his instruction - having just changed all the door furniture in my current house, who says a "grammar school education" isn't worthwhile?

Rumbell
Reggie (Major) Rumbell was my housemaster and was greatly disappointed that I didn't at first join the CCF. I found him to be a very likeable and patient character who had interesting stories to tell (so much better than French grammar). He believed in "standards" and was evidently a generous man too - I remember him flicking a half-crown (2/6d) piece to someone at the back of the class and telling them to get a haircut.

Endnote: I wonder what these men, many of whom had seen war service, would make of today's environment where integrity, honesty and duty often seem like things of the past?

Dudley Brown
29 August 2007


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