Having mentioned Mr. Kerr, there was one evening during
the one winter when someone had been letting off stink bombs around the school
and the place absolutely stank! It was like walking round in a sewer. Mr. Kerr
was shouting about the disgrace of it all and was thundering around the school
with a hockey stick in his hand. I came upon him in what we used to call the
"schoolroom corridor" which housed the art room & rooms 3, 4 & 5. As it was
cold, even inside school, most of us were wearing those old corduroy jackets
and they had a large breast pocket on each side. Mr. Kerr tapped, no hit each
pocket, then the trouser pockets so that if he had found the boy with the
stink bombs and he had any in his pocket then he was going to stink for weeks.
What Mr. Kerr hoped to achieve I didn't know then and
don't know now. He was in one of his eye bulging, purple faced rages about the
smell, so all he was a going to do was keep the stink around for a long time
afterwards!
When Mr. Kerr was nice, he was smashing and as a hockey
coach and motivator in that respect, almost unequalled but when he got angry,
it was dig a hole, get in, fill it in and hide!
He did help me make a great sewing box for my mum in
about 1964 and I proudly carried it home on the train.
I must have looked a right pillock.
I remember once my class had to share the 6th form's
French lesson with Mr. Sim and
Lenny Wilson was sitting at the front just a
yard from I think it was Christine Henderson,
but I'm not 100% sure of that, so if it wasn't & Christine reads this, please
accept my apologies.
Well, Lenny being Lenny, got his willy out and
Christine[?] saw what he was doing with it whilst smiling at her. She reported
the matter and Mr. Kerr had Lenny down to his classroom for the usual telling
off. This consisted of bending over a bench and having your backside thrashed
with a hockey stick. We all congregated by the big gate and listened to the
punishment taking place. Lenny got a good few very painful swipes and left in
agony. We would have been next if Mr. Kerr had known we were there.
"
He also owned the
shop/tearoom over the bridge at Rumbling Bridge.
