Dick’s downfall
There were two great days at Harding of which I still relish the thought. There was a woman teacher, an ogre or the female equivalent, who took the first standard.
Miss Griffin or ‘the Griffin’ as we called her (out of earshot I can tell you). She was six foot if an inch, had teeth like mill stones and an old dog’s breath. She was the most masculine woman I’d ever seen and she seemed to despise boys. She would pad along the aisles between the desks and while we were writing one would smell her foul dragon breath and she’d suddenly hiss in your ear “that’s appalling writing” and she’d knuckle you behind the ear with a large signet ring and then when your school pen went scrawling across the page she’d slap you on the back of the head and make you write it over.
One day a woman, a Mrs Potter, a burly overweight lady, came to complain. The Griffin not seeing the danger signs talked down to her in a superior fashion as she was wont to do. It appeared the Griffin had kicked one of her sons in front of the school assembly. Mrs Potter a heroine of the Proles grabbed the Griffin by her hair and trailed her around the room saying, “if you ever put your feet or your hands on my boys again I’ll swing for you – you bitch!”
In high glee to see one of my enemies felled thus – ‘Thank you God! Thank you God! ‘
She went upstairs to Dick Taylor’s office to take the matter up with him. Unfortunately for him he struck the same attitude as the Griffin and was felled by Mrs Potter’s bag of groceries. The zip on the leather bag cut Dick above the eye and brought blood – alas blood was Mrs Potter’s Achilles heel and she fainted and crashed to the floor like a stricken, fatted ox.
Dick was running around assembling a group of teachers and the like to resuscitate the fallen warrior. What a glorious day that was!!
The second day was even better. One afternoon when all the classes were assembled in the playground in straight lines facing the steps of the assembly upon which Dick strutted like Mussolini lecturing and threatening. He suddenly espied two boys talking in the ranks, calling them out by name to join him on the steps, saying I will later teach you not to talk when I am speaking.
He droned on while we shuffled our feet. Then suddenly he whirled round upon the two boys on the steps who were whispering and laughing.
He started slapping this thin undernourished looking boy called Morrow up and down the steps punching him on the shoulder and upper arm. Mrs Morrow, the boy’s mother, was cleaning her windows. Their house beside the rear of the school looked right into the playground. Through the side gate sped Mrs Morrow, up the steps behind Dick, who was so engrossed in battering her son, he failed to see the avenging mother who paused to take off a shoe and proceeded to whack Dick on his bald dome up and down the steps several times.
Dick’s head and face was bleeding and cried out, “Madam, I beseech you”. Mrs Morrow sent the two boys back to the by now convulsed ranks and warned Dick that if he thought he had been punished then just wait till her husband came home. Off she went and Dick, scarlet and bleeding in about five places, screamed silence! To quell our laughter he made us stand still and silent till he returned adorned with sticking plasters and continued to lecture us amid sniggers from the older boys who had been punched and caned by Dick.
