The St Botolph's School Blazer

I was in my last year at St Botolph’s when the newish and decidedly tyrannical headmaster decided that what the school needed to lift it above those lesser academic establishments in the district was a uniform and a school anthem. Mr Cooke was a man with an ambitious agenda for making sweeping improvements to the school. This included compelling we students, and with an undoubted all-embracing flow-on effect in mind for the adults in our lives, to focus upon what he called the Rich Tapestry of our Kentish heritage. Henceforth there would be maypole dancing and one lucky girl would be crowned Queen of the May and wear a white dress. Furthermore the ancient tradition of a Boy Bishop was to be revived. The fortunate candidate would be suitably robed and would circle the cottages and businesses around The Hill giving all and sundry his blessing. We listened politely. Our joint academic performance was to be immediately lifted, by force if necessary and the headmaster himself would personally teach Mathematics to those approaching the dreaded Eleven Plus exam. His style of teaching as previously documented included a great deal of shouting, kicking desk tops onto fingers and becoming alarmingly puce in the face. As a group we were terrified of him, even the previously most disruptive and disorderly boys and it was to be fifty years before I came to realise that this dread and dislike extended also into the staff. Our much loved class teacher, Mr Will Clarke in email correspondence eons on revealed just how profoundly the new headmaster had affected his life, with general bullying and demands involving compulsory after school sports teams, and the organization of social evenings for parents. This was a man who successfully instilled fear and loathing into the hearts and minds of all who were unfortunate enough to cross his path.

We were told about the proposed anthem on a Thursday morning at an unusual assembly. It was explained to us that our Old School would in years to come be known to us as our alma mater and the anthem we were about to learn was a patronal song. This of course meant nothing whatsoever to us. Mr Cooke added that the famous Charterhouse School sang `Jerusalem’, Dover Grammar School sang `Thou Whose Almighty Word’, The Liverpool BlueCoat School sang `Praise to the Lord, the Almighty’ and Magdalen College School sang `The Lilies of the Field’. We children of St Botolph’s, Northfleet Hill who knew nothing of the worthy establishments that tripped from his tongue were to sing `Front to the Northern Breeze’, recently composed by himself with the help of Mrs Frost the pianist. There followed a twenty minute rehearsal of a mournful hymn-like refrain which began with `…At St Botolph’s School on the hill we stand with our front to the northern breeze….’ and about which I recall nothing further. We were told that we should run through what we had just sung, in our heads over the next few days and be mindful that by Monday next our singing had to be flawless.

The following day at yet another unusual assembly, this time held at the end of the day rather than the beginning, we were told about the School Blazer which Helen Gunner the vicar’s daughter modelled for us looking both important and embarrassed as she did so. This garment, the colour described as maroon and later called wine-red by my mother, was undoubtedly smart, double breasted with gold buttons. It could be ordered directly from the school for a mere twenty two shillings and sixpence apiece. We ten and eleven year olds in particular, definitely needed to emphasise to our parents, that a St Botolph’s School Blazer was an absolute necessity. A notice was handed to each of us which we must ensure was passed on with immediacy as soon as we got home. An order form was attached which should be filled in by an adult as speedily as possible. Significant penalties might be incurred by those children who simply abandoned this important notice in a pocket.

Later that evening, relaxed after a Friday tea of fish and chips my father commented that a School Blazer was not an altogether bad idea and it would certainly define the wearer as a pupil of a school that Cared. That fellow Cooke was no sluggard and was trying to do Right by his pupils no matter how much girls like me objected to his bad temper. Possibly he was going to be exactly what we needed to ensure that we gave the Eleven Plus examination our very best shot. My mother was doubtful and pointed out that it was over a guinea and I wasn’t going to be able to wear it at my next school whether I passed the Eleven Plus or whether I didn’t. She discussed it a day or two later with Grace Bennett in order to ascertain if a blazer was to be purchased for her Joan but apparently no decision had yet been made. Molly Freeman said that there was no chance whatsoever of either her or her brother George becoming the proud owners of blazers. Jennifer Berryman’s grandmother had definitely agreed to the new item of clothing and was going to take her to the photographer in the High Street to have her photographed wearing it. Pearl Banfield’s parents were in favour which pacified Pearl who had been getting more and more anxious over the weekend as to what might happen to those of us whose parents did not respond in the affirmative. A few days later I was to find it had been decided that I would also become a proud blazer-owner which I have to admit was something of a relief. Within three weeks it transpired that more than two thirds of St Botolph’s Eleven Plus Year 1951 were blazer-clad and mostly completely paid for. Photographs were taken for the Gravesend & Dartford Reporter of us singing `Front to the Northern Breeze’ and Mr Cooke was quoted as confidently expecting a very satisfactory exam result.

The idea of blazer owning had certainly added a dimension of excitement to the school day for a large part of the term and protected the wearers from the extremes of the headmaster’s frenzies of temper. Most of his fury was now more specifically directed towards those who remained blazerless, particularly the boys who were kicked and slapped with cheerful regularity. After a while the maroon jackets, once so carefully hanger-hung in parental wardrobes were more carelessly slung on hooks in hallways or at the bottom of stairs. My mother even stopped telling me to take mine off the moment I got home from school. This was just as well because by the end of the term its right hand pocket had become the home of my pet mouse, Timothy Gunner.

Some progressive parents back then allowed their children to own pet mice and even bought little packets of mixed seed to supplement table scraps and provided birthday presents of mouse homes in the form of new-fangled metal cages from the pet shop in Gravesend. Predictably mine were not among them. Generally speaking my mother was not overly fond of animals and found it difficult to extend much affection to the family dog. She could just about tolerate cats and had no time at all for the tortoise my father once gave me, breathing an audible sigh of relief when it perished during its first ever period of hibernation. A pet mouse was out of the question and I knew better than to even pose the question.

So I would never have become a mouse owner in the first place if Helen Gunner the vicar’s daughter, whose parents were of the progressive variety, had not had to give up her beloved pet when her family made their final arrangements to move on to a new parish in far-off Bermuda. I inherited Timothy Gunner with great delight and solemnly promised Helen that his name would never be changed because now he was used to it. Sadly his cage, home-made by the vicar himself was going with them. Housing Timothy Gunner became a dilemma and that was how he came to live in the right hand pocket of the maroon school blazer. This arrangement worked extremely well for several weeks and Timothy Gunner behaved beautifully during school hours, sleeping peacefully and not drawing undue attention to himself except at playtime when other girls lined up to admire him and offer him bits of broken biscuit. When I got home he would happily explore the bedroom floor and as long as I left the blazer close by could be relied upon to return to it. Later in the evening he and the jacket would be hung on a bottom-of-the-stairs hook. I have no idea what he did during the night but he was always safely nestled in the pocket in the morning.

The ownership of my first ever pet mouse had been surprisingly stress-free and I even began to wonder why anyone thought mice needed cages. Was it not even quite cruel to confine a white mouse to a cage? At some stage I might write a letter of enquiry to the RSPCA. So all was well until the fateful Saturday morning when I skipped happily down to Molly’s house to exchange gossip about film stars, and returned to find the maroon blazer missing from its hook. Casually enquiring as to its whereabouts I was struck mute when told by my father that it had been taken to the dry cleaner in the High Street. My mother, it appeared, had decided it was becoming very dirty and smelly – smelly enough to be in need of dry cleaning. But we were not a family that ever used the services of a dry cleaner and the news made my throat suddenly very dry indeed. When I regained my voice I pointed out that I hadn’t noticed the smell – what kind of smell was it? It was like ammonia I was told, and later my mother herself said she would have very much liked to know what on earth I had been doing with it to get it into such a state. And to think it had cost over a guinea too not to mention that the dry cleaning would be half a crown. When it returned I was never, ever to let it get into that kind of condition again.

In panic I headed for the library and asked the mystified librarian where the section on dry cleaning was but of course there wasn’t one. Where then might I find information on what was entailed during a common or garden dry cleaning process? She looked annoyed and said it wasn’t a topic that involved many enquiries. An elderly borrower lingering in the General Science Section said he believed various chemicals were used but was unclear as to what they might be. Ammonia might be one of them. No he did not know if they might be dangerous to mice. I was crying almost hysterically as I retraced my steps down Dover Road so much so that old Mrs Eves waiting at the bus stop asked me what on earth the problem was and looked puzzled when I said my mother had taken my school blazer to the dry cleaner’s. That was nothing to get so het up about she sagely advised.

I waited anxiously for the return of the blazer some days later, now in a paper package and hung on a metal hanger, smelling of lemons and lavender and nicely pressed. In horrified anticipation of a mangled mouse corpse I inspected the right hand pocket as nonchalantly as possible. It was empty. It was as if Timothy Gunner had never existed in the first place. Henceforth on each school morning I donned the maroon blazer I began to cry and could provide no convincing explanation as to why this was.