IN MY YOUTH, like many 13-years-olds, I had a paper-round for which I was salaried at (in old coinage) 13 shillings and six pence a week, plus a further three shillings for delivering 13 copies of the Eastern Evening News each evening. From this income, I bought my first bike and a season ticket to the local open-air swimming pool where, during the summer holidays, I would spend whole warm and sunny days swimming: I loved swimming; I swam a 100-yard length after 100-yard breaststroke lengths. I swam 19 such lengths to get my one-mile swimming certificate.
I had no other aptitude for any sport at school apart of course from swimming which was purely a summer activity at the time[1]. I liked kicking a football about as much as any child today; but as for playing in a team, I neither had the skill nor the wish to do so; so like many with the same indifference to team sport as my own; we were sent to another part of the field where was mapped out a pitch for the losers to do as they liked; several of whom chose to mess about, lazily sitting and kneeling beside the surrounding dyke poking and prodding the water with twigs – we were the third class athletes or none athletes who went ignored by our PE teacher who was refereeing a football match on the premier pitch between 22 of the most talented; eleven of whom would be picked to play for the school in the local interschool league.
Would you believe it? Our PE teacher could not swim. It is true; and not only that, he exhibited suspicious behaviour toward the boys. At the time, none of us took any notice of it. There was never any kind of touching. In fact, it is only when I became an adult and had long since departed my secondary Alma Marta that I began to query such behaviour in the light of the modern fashion for rightly exposing paedophilia.
I can remember our PE teacher who I will call Mr White, lining us boys up before we entered the school hall which also supported the gymnasium, and telling us to stretch our navy coloured shorts so he could peer at our genitals; the excuse being that pants could not be worn underneath our shorts and this was an excuse (and it was an excuse) to see whether we were wearing pants underneath our shorts.
Mr White was semi-bald, had a beard, and physically attained the correct proportions for a physical education teacher. He threatened more often than he used the slipper, but the threat proved sufficient. Another of his, shall we say habits, was to join us boys in the showers. Remember that although we were of the same age, the outward appearance of puberty did not express itself at the same time with regard to all of the boys. It was in this climate that Mr White would strip off and join us under the showers. A friend of mine a year earlier suggested it went further (not to any kind of abuse of the boys) but through remarks made about the state of puberty the boys were going through, when he mixed with them in the shower.
BUT I WISH TO return to my first love of swimming. At the time, this sporting venture was my only love. State schools, like many private ones, were then divided into houses. In my case, living as I did and still do in Norfolk, into the rivers Yare, Thurne, Bure, and Waveney: these were the four houses of my secondary modern school; and I was, as well as my class (and my teacher) members of Waveney.
Every year our school had a swimming gala held at our town's open air pool. I was picked to represent my house for the 50-yards breaststroke; it being my only competent stroke; but nevertheless my best. And so it proved, I not only won but broke the school record. From then on, when it came to physical activity, nothing mattered more to me than swimming. I cared little about any other physical activity. I looked forward to the next gala where I was determined to break my own school record – but then I was sabotaged by school politics. When it came to the next gala I was told that I would have to swim in the hundred yards freestyle immediately before I wanted to break my previous record.
Having swam and finished nowhere in the 100-yard freestyle, the technique of which I felt no need to master; my House, however, needed a representative in the race and so I was chosen to be it, where I came second from last; and was broken by the experience. Immediately after I had to swim my favourite stroke, where I finished second: I broke down and cried; not because I was beaten, but because I was let down by teachers who seemed to care more about providing entrants to every race rather than providing winners. The school gala demanded representation from all four houses in all events; and if my house suffered a deficiency in one particular discipline, then someone, preferably Mr White (instead of me) should have been thrown in at the deep end.
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