< Thread 11 Thread 12 (28 replies so far) Thread 13 >
Replies 21-28
< replies 1-20
.JPG "Nick Dean gallery")
DATE: 08 December 2012
CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1964-71
This may be the thread on which to mention a German assistant called Dittmar who was at QE in the late '60s and indeed stayed on substantively for a further year. I'm sorry to say that, several years before Fawlty Towers, my form found it difficult never to mention the war, although more often it was the World Cup. We also invented a boy called Bates who handed in homework and participated in vocab and similar tests. His marks were always very low, a shortcoming that was compounded by his poor attendance record. These matters aroused concern: "Wo ist Bates?" "Bates is away, sir" "Bates is alvays avay!" Herr D was sometimes referred to in rather overblown, almost Pythonesque terms, such as "Mr Herr Otto von Dittmar". I assumed that the 'von' (and the 'Otto') was a nod in the direction of Bismarck, but I once heard Mr C0cks posing a rhetorical question about Dittmar's name which suggested either that he was indeed of aristocratic stock or else that a bit of schoolboy silliness had acquired an unlikely status.
DATE: 10 December 2012
CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1951-58
David's tale [reply 20] reminds me of a similar incident which I had forgotten. We were waiting outside Poker Pearce's class room (the one with 2 doors - P ? - on the upper corridor next to the master's common room) for his scripture class when he suddenly came out with his finger to his lips. The class came out very quietly through the rear door as we went in quietly through the other one, in the centre two rows from the front a chap was asleep with his head on is arms on the desk! We sat down and Poker started the lesson talking very quietly in a soothing way. After about 20 minutes the chap woke up to find himself in the wrong class. Poker said "Why don't you go and have a wash?". Exit one very embarrassed person.
DATE: 21 December 2012
CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1960-67
Picking up on reply 15, I do remember during one lesson, Winkie decided we should conjugate the Latin verb 'to revolt'. He started writing it out on the blackboard but stopped when he got to 'You (singular) are revolting' to much laughter. Another recollection which follows on from your own reply 17, Vic, is a tale (which I suspect was apocryphal) that Winkie told of how he was travelling one time by train on the continent and found himself in a carriage with a Dutchman. It transpired that the Dutchman spoke no English and Winkie spoke no Dutch but as they both spoke Latin, they carried on a detailed conversation and agreed to correspond with each other in the future.
DATE: 05 January 2013
CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1951-58
I also remember Winkie talking about a conversation in Latin he held with a non-english speaker (reply 23). Recently I was reading his The Only Way Out and on p 37 (paperback version) must be the origin of this story. He had been guarding a group of German prisoners and had returned to one of them a bible which a senior officer had confiscated. The German knew a little English and some French so they used a mixture of the two to talk. It transpired they had been born on the same day and called up on the same day; they were both classical students so they switched to Latin. The next page also makes interesting reading.
DATE: 04 September 2013
CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1953 - 59
Ah yes ! I well remember 'Ben' Strickland [replies 7‑10]. He posessed very little sense of humour. On the rare occasions that he tried to make a feeble joke we all laughed hilariously, and would keep it up until he shouted "Joke Over". On one ocassion we carried on laughing regardless, whereupon he shouted "when I say joke over it means JOKE OVER". He also used to thrust his shoulders back at the end of sentences and simultaneously utter the word "then" as a conclusion to what he had been saying. Dermot Walsh found out where he lived, near Whetstone, and identified his strange looking 1930s limousine parked in the road. He then rammed a potato up the exhaust pipe as he had read that the IRA used to do that to blow up cars. Of course that could never have been true as it wouldn't have worked at all; however, we were all quaking at the prospect that Jenkins would annouce some sad news one morning at assembly !
26th REPLY
NAME: Hugh Hoffman>DATE: 24 August 2016
CONNECTION WITH QE: pupil 1955-60
Someone mentioned Rev Up. We used to count his ums and ers - I seem to recall that in one 40 minute class he reached 320 or so. One time he also chased his class along the ground floor corridor, up the stairs, along the top corridor and down again - and we still beat him to the classroom. There are several references to the Rev Up on the site. You can find them by using the internal search facility (top of page).
27th REPLY
NAME: Hugh HoffmanDATE: 25 August 2016
CONNECTION WITH QE: pupil 1955-60
Mr Wingfield [see replies 23,24 and many earlier ones on the previous page] took on the job of stuffing school reports into envelopes which he would do during his lesson, making very pointed and indiscreet comments on boys' marks and masters' comments. His description of the school secretary (a large formidable looking lady [Miss Strongman]) sticks in my memory: 'A heart of oak and legs to match'. See also Thread 133, which is restricted to memories of Winkie.
28th REPLY
NAME: Wilfred RhodesDATE: 18 August 2017
CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil from 1948 to 1955
I remember Osborne [see replies 2 & 3] - we used to pinch the handle of his wind- up gramophone, so that he couldn't play French songs and get us to sing them! Also Bailey the English master. He taught us alliteration, so you can imagine what we called him. He was sadistic too, and Tiger Timpson the house-master of Broughton House. Yuk!>